It was nice to live close to Jenny, too. Having her nearby was like being with family, and Erin couldn’t wait for when Jenny and Alex started a family so she could dote on their kids. She tried not to think too much about the children her brother and Jenny might’ve had together. Toby and Jenny had wanted to be young parents, so their children would have been approaching high school age by now.

Erin couldn’t think about that, or she’d send herself spiraling. It had happened far too often for her not to recognize the signs. She’d gotten through Jenny’s wedding in the fall, in large part thanks to Slim’s support, and she’d find a way to deal with the emotional wallop that the eventual birth of Jenny’s first child was sure to bring. Erin had no doubt she would be treated as a beloved aunt to Jenny’s children, but she was painfully aware that they wouldn’t actually be her nieces and nephews.

“Enough of that,” she said out loud, as if saying the words would steer her thoughts away from the perilous path to nowhere good. She clicked on an email and tried to lose herself in someone else’s problems, a practice that had been strangely cathartic since she’d been writing the column.

Dear Erin,

I’m not sure if you can help me, but I don’t know where else to turn. So many of her letters were from teenage girls who were afraid to tell anyone else their problems. Even if she didn’t feature their questions in the column, she replied to every one of them, hoping her words might make some small difference to a struggling teen.

I caught my brother stealing from a local store and confronted him. He said his friends dared him and it was a one-time thing. Then I saw him do it again. We were at the drugstore, and he put things in his pocket and walked out without paying. His friends weren’t there. It was just the two of us. I want to find a way to stop him without getting him into trouble with the police, and I don’t want him to hate me for ratting on him. Please help me. I can’t sleep or eat or do anything but picture my brother in jail.

Sincerely,

Tara