Of course it’s me. And she knows it. “Yes. It’s me.”

Silence. She’s thinking. I’m standing at the crack in my bedroom door.

“Remember when we were little and the wind would blow against the house?” Her sentence has a smile in it. “You used to think it was lions roaring.”

I was so small then, I could curl the whole of myself against Ruth’s body as she hugged me. She would stay like that, a canopy over me until I fell asleep. But it wasn’t just the two of us then. The memory’s swift and visceral. I feel him, right there with us, curled up beside me and Ruth, so close that I can feel his little heartbeat. I know what Ruth’s doing now, how she’s softening me. But still I let her. I close the door to my bedroom and walk down the few stairs toward her. “We were sure those lions were right under our window.”

Our voices are velvety in the high-vaulted space as I turn on the dim lamp by the television.

“That’s better,” Ruth says. “I can’t sleep in here. It’s too quiet, and the fridge keeps plinking.”

I don’t answer her. She’s sitting, stooped like a vagrant on a park bench.

“Alex,” she says again, her whisper softer. “I really need your help.”

She’s never said that before. Not once. Chills shiver down my back. I sit down next to her. She drags the sheet to hook it around my shoulders, but I shrug it off.

“Will you help me?”

There’s a swell in the deepest part of me, a heaving undulation. She’s shifting a rock at the bottom of the seabed, and I don’t think I want it moved.

“You’re my sister. The only one I have.” She edges closer. “Anyway, I thought coming here would be good.”

She reaches to move hair out of my face, just like the old days, but I dodge her.

“Good for who?” I ask. “For you?”

“Yes … yes, I suppose, but also good for you. After everything that’s happened, Alex, I thought the timing was right. We’ve both made mistakes.”

Both of us? Any mistakes I’ve made, Ruth was at their very center. How could her coming here pregnant and destitute, and wanting help, ever be good for me? I take a deep breath and remember Chase’s words about family, about being there.

“Are you clean?” I ask.

She nods.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Alex. Yes. I’ve been clean for years and years.” She glances across the room to the coat hooks, where her bag hangs in the shadows. “Totally. One hundred percent. I’m clean and sober.”

“Okay, that’s good,” I say, not that I believe her. But this does feel different. In the past, she would slide away from any answer, slippery as an eel.