The only answer I could think of was so unspeakable that when I pulled onto my parents’ street at 2:00 a.m., it was all I could do not to drive right by and leave this aberration of a life behind.

There was a car in the driveway that hadn’t been there before, and through the living room window I saw a light on deep within the house. I’d called ahead to let them know I was coming back, and they’d hidden a key for me. That allowed me to creep inside without being heard. Even before I made it into the hall I knew what awaited me. Sure enough there was Doug, shoulders hunched at the kitchen table, a bright green bottle of Dad’s J&B at his elbow.

My brother stirred at the sound of my footsteps creaking on the hardwood, and the corner of his mouth glided into a grin. The gravitational effects of age had drawn his weight toward his waist and his blond hair was graying around the ears, but to me Doug’s face was etched with a lifetime of shared Christmases and family road trips. When he stood up, I rushed into his arms.

“It’s late,” he said into my hair.

“Sorry I broke curfew, swear to God it won’t happen again.” Doug’s shirt had a chemical sweetness to it, that freshly laundered scent, and the realization of what I must smell like—sweat, rank marshland, Bogle’s cigarettes—made me cringe.

“Not good enough,” he replied gruffly, playing along. “You’re grounded—and you can forget about that sleepover with Suze.”

We laughed when we parted, equally amused. “I saw her, you know. Suze owns a dance studio on Merchant Row now, and she’s married with a second kid on the way.”

“Sounds like she got her shit together.”

It was with fondness that I said, “Yeah, I think she did.” I rubbed my eyes and felt exhaustion bear down on me from all sides. This day was a serious contender for the longest of my life. I’d seen Crissy and Suze and Sam and Tim, conducted a search for a missing kid, and driven for hours from Swanton to A-Bay and back again. I had watched my past and present converge, and the experience had left me dead on my feet. The soft, warm bed upstairs was persistent in its call, but I gave it the brush-off and slumped into a kitchen chair. “Josie asleep?”

“She stayed at home with Hen.” Doug sat down next to me. “Work and school tomorrow.”

“Ah.” I hadn’t seen Henrietta in ages, and feared that at thirteen my niece was on the verge of casting Auntie Shana aside. “No work for you?”

“Took a couple days off.” He tipped back his head. “Don’t act like you don’t know why I’m here.”

My brother and I haven’t always been close. The three and a half years between us felt like ten when we were younger, when he had no desire to let a whiny tween shadow him wherever he went. That changed as we aged, and by the time Doug was off at college and I was plodding through my final year of high school, we’d cultivated a whole new relationship. It wasn’t built on common interests or even sibling loyalty, but a mutual recognition that our family was screwed up, and a solid hunch that there might never be anyone else in our lives who understood that as well as we did.