Cora’s embrace is delicate, as if there’s a Fabergé egg between us. She smells the way a summer afternoon in the Hamptons must.

She pulls back but keeps her hands on my shoulders, studying me. She isn’t even preserved—I think she’s aging in reverse. She’s thirty-nine but could be twenty-five and, now that I think of it, reminds me a lot of the blonds my father always favored.

“Did you dye your hair since I last saw you?” she asks.

“No.”

“Oh. It looks less red. More dull, I guess.”

This is Cora.

“Well, thanks.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, silly. You look beautiful as always, Baby Sister. I can’t believe how long it’s been.”

Yes, you can, I think. And I’m sure you’re not happy I’m invading your little world now.

I think about the placement of her hands on my shoulders and how I would react if she were attacking me. I have these thoughts from time to time, about how I would physically control a situation if I had to. I’ve taken enough self-defense classes over the years that my mind can shift into a defensive mode when someone touches me.

Parry away Cora’s right arm, then seize her left hand and bend it backward toward her wrist. The pain will force her to her knees. Then finish her off with a swift knee to the bridge of her nose.

I don’t want to think these things. I want to love Cora.

Growing up, we were fiercely different in our personalities: she was always more feminine, preferring dolls and dresses, whereas I liked video games and sweatpants. In high school, she was a cheerleader and I played soccer. The boys drooled over her, as she inherited my mother’s Grace Kelly looks. I inherited my looks from god-knows-whom and was the fiery, freckled redhead who looked like she’d start a bar fight, given the opportunity.

Cora and I were closest before she turned ten. Then our closeness diminished, year by year, as she grew into her own world and I sought out mine. Whatever affection we still had for each other disappeared in the course of one night, a long time ago.

Tonight, she and her family have come for dinner, and as I look at Cora in the foyer of our childhood home, I wonder if any of that affection will ever come back. The probability is low.

Cora removes her hands and whisks past me. Her husband, Peter, is close behind, carrying a bottle of red wine. Nature, grooming products, and likely Botox have finely sculpted Peter into the perfect accessory for my sister. He looks like one of those Scandinavian actors trying to play an everyman role but looking a bit too perfect to be ordinary.

I don’t have anything against Peter other than he’s enchanted with my sister, but admittedly, that’s a pretty big character flaw. Truth is, I hardly know him, and I can only imagine what she says to him about me.