By then I had my own life outside the family anyway. I was done living in a house full of echoes. That’s why I clung to Hal. He filled in all the sadness, made me feel safe and loved. Fuck your family, he’d say, handing me a pill to swallow. Who needs them? Stick with me, baby. We’ll make our own home. Every pill he gave me back then made me feel good, let me escape. I laid myself at his feet. I didn’t know then about the other side of him, the side that would sell me out, abandon me in a heartbeat when a jail term was looming. When I did, it was too late. Alex made sure of that, made sure I could never come back to my family. One lie, and she sealed my fate forever.

ALEX

I wasn’t the problem child, even though that’s what Ruth thinks. The worst thing I ever did was go to a party when I was fourteen that my mom and dad didn’t know about. It was the height of my sneakiness, which was pretty mild compared to what Ruth was getting up to at the time. Through her last years of school, she stopped trying entirely. She flunked classes, didn’t even show up to most of them. At home, she was quiet and secretive. Mom and Dad didn’t know what to do with her.

She started smoking weed in eleventh grade. I could smell it on her clothes and in her hair. She hung out with kids in trench coats who drew their eyebrows on in pen. Dad was always getting calls from his friend in the police about her being up to no good. The more she disappeared into that world, the less she held on to any lifeline at home.

But she still thought of herself as my great protector, and whenever I did anything at all that a normal teenager does, she squealed. She caught me sneaking out to that party, and when Dad’s cop friend brought me home, Mom and Dad were right there on the front porch, and she was behind them, her arms crossed, smug.

“You carry on down this road, Alex, and you’ll be ruined in no time. You’re better than that.” He turned to look at Ruth momentarily, whose face crumpled a little. “You want to end up like your big sister?” He paused, then carried on. “Like her? Be a lion, not a sheep. And don’t lie to me anymore.”

I couldn’t help it. I started to cry right there on the front porch, and I ran to my mother.

“It’s not so bad,” she said, enfolding me in her arms and kissing the top of my head. “Just don’t do it again, LittleTiger.”

“I won’t,” I promised. “I won’t.”