As I eat, I stare out the window at our garden. There’s a snowstorm forecast for tomorrow but the garden is oblivious, its bare branches delicate in the faint streetlight. I snap a cookie in two, and suddenly I’m picturing Abigail and me as kids, each of us down to our last Famous Amos, competing to see whose stash would last longer. My sister’s fine hair in messy pigtails, pink fingers snapping her bounty in half.

Now I have two cookies!

I sigh, and pop a last cookie into my mouth. When I’m done I wash up my plate and glass and climb the stairs as quietly as I can, then pause outside Sam’s door. It’s slightly ajar, and I push the gap a little wider and look in.

Faint streetlight filters through the blinds, illuminating a room so neat and tidy that my heart breaks a little to see it. Even his few belongings on the shelf seem to be arrayed at perfect intervals. I feel a squeeze in my chest for this child who’s trying so hard. It’s an impulse I understand. I look down at his face, its angles illuminated in this watery yellow light: his slight frown, still soft and childish, not yet a teenager’s; my sister’s golden hair and lashes, colorless now in this night.

We’ll bring her home, Sam, I find myself saying, the voice in my head suddenly clear and determined. We’ll make this all okay. It’s a risky promise, albeit a silent, unwitnessed one, and I’m struck then by an unexpected feeling.

It comes over me in a wave, this bone-deep desire to protect, a feeling both sweet and heavy, and it feels new and yet not new, like a long-ago debt suddenly being called in: a blood-vow I didn’t know I was making, ten years ago when my only sister brought life into the world.

We’ll bring her home, the voice in my head says again, daring me to contradict it.

The problem is, it’s a promise I don’t know how to keep.

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

It’s still dark when I wake the next morning and Oliver’s at the end of the bed, putting on his socks.

“Morning,” he says, still tugging one sock over his ankle. “Hey, I have game night tonight, so I’ll be home later.”

“You’re going to game night?” I say.

He looks at me. “I always go.”

It’s true, he always does—it’s a once-monthly thing he does with his three best friends, and I know it means a lot to him.

“I know…” I say, “but we have Sam.” And I’ve hardly seen you these past weeks.

Oliver swings his leg back down onto the floor, turns more fully towards me.