I do what I’m supposed to. Call Jo when I’m two seconds away from giving my “jeweler,” my dealer in Harvard Square, a call. I go to meetings. Sometimes I talk at them, but usually I just listen and drink too much coffee.

My day looks like this: school and group therapy—at school since we’re all addicts—an extra meeting at NA on hard nights, coffee with Jo or my new sober friends or making soup with Aunt Nora or taking a walk with Mae. TV. Bed. Where I lie awake and count my fingers.

I hate my life.

But at least I have one. Use it or lose it, right?

C’est la goddamn vie.

“Must have been some gift,” I say to my sister as we near Park Street station.

She turns to me, eyes bright. “It helped me figure some stuff out.”

“Including Ben?”

Mae’s phone buzzes before she can answer. She glances at it, frowning. Then her fingers fly across the screen and she stares at it, openmouthed. She blinks. Smiles.

“What?” I say.

Her expression turns uneasy. Guilty.

“Don’t be mad,” she says.

“And the day was going so well,” Nate mutters.

I take off my sunglasses. Stare her down. “What did you do, Mae?”

Count your fingers. Count your fingers.

How bad can it be?

“When you were in detox over Thanksgiving, I emailed Rebecca Chen.”

The sunshine and happy of the day falls away so suddenly it’s like tumbling into a well.

“Why the hell would you do that?” I say.

“I wanted to know about the baby,” she says softly. “Our brother or sister. It’s not their fault.”

“That kid’s not our—”

I stop. Realize. They are. That baby my dad and Rebecca have—technically, they’re related to me.

I shove my glasses back on. “Stay out of it, Mae. Just. Leave that whore alone.”

My sister’s tropical-sea eyes turn as dark as the Atlantic. “I’m sure there are people in my bio family who wanted to forget me just as easily.”

“Mae. Jesus. I wasn’t saying—”

She steps closer to me. “It’s not her fault.”

“What the hell do you mean? It totally is her fault.”

Pot, kettle—I know. I fell in love with Drew while still with Micah. So maybe I understand Dad more than I want to. But I didn’t break up a family.

I see the look on Micah’s face, though, when he thought Mae had betrayed him in that orchard, brought him there just to hurt him. He’d been like her big brother. And how sorry he was, how sad. I believe him, a little, that the grief had made him do something so crazy. But I chose Drew. So maybe I broke up a family, too.

Mae holds up her phone. “No. It’s not her fault.”

And.

There.