As kids, we’d been close—I adored her and she protected me like a lioness protecting her cub, though the difference between us was just eleven months. But things changed. Or maybe they didn’t change: instead of growing out of the willful, headstrong child she’d been, Abigail’s defiant side only seemed to grow as she got older. What I guess had been charming in a small child turned into an ongoing battleground with my mother. By the time I was ten, it seemed like those days-long, door-slamming altercations between Mom and Abigail were a regular part of all our lives. Sometimes I’d lie in bed at night longing—guiltily longing, but longing all the same—for the day when my sister would leave home. I used to fantasize about what it would have been like to be an only child, to be the apple of both my parents’ eyes and live in a calm and peaceful, sibling-free world. When Abigail took off that day, without preamble or follow-up, it seemed like all my basest wishes had abruptly come true.

She was fine, of course, in the end. She’d made her way across the country, right to the West Coast, and found a job there in a restaurant. She stayed there for a decade and a half, give or take. Never looked back. I guess my dad got over it, though I’m not sure Mom ever quite forgave it—although it appeased her somewhat that my sister had settled down with someone like Dennis, a person as composed as my sister was chaotic. Some people are drawn to chaos, some people love it. I don’t. Mom never did. And it always kind of surprised me that someone like Dennis would. Dennis is one of those people that seems like life is an animal they’ve quietly tamed, and Abigail was always the opposite.

When they finally moved back to the New York area with young Sam in tow, I thought things might finally be different for us all; that with the benefit of all those years and all that water under the bridge, we’d be able to knit our way into being a different kind of family than the one we’d always been. But I guess you don’t free yourself from the past that easily.