Upon the Brewers coming to collect her, Lexi had worked herself into such a state, she had to be sedated for them to be able to take her from the foster home where we’d been since our parents had abandoned us. Lexi had been nine. I’d been fourteen, too young to be emancipated, too young to take care of us by myself.

Up until that moment, I’d thought having my parents decide they didn’t want to be a family anymore was the most devastating thing that could happen to me. They were suburban junkies, hopped up on OxyContin after a car accident left my dad with a crushed vertebra and my mom a debilitating case of guilt since she’d been the driver. Their doctor tried to make it all go away by prescribing the wildly addictive narcotic painkiller. What he actually prescribed was the death of a family.

My father became an addict first, and he dragged my mother down the dark path with him. When they couldn’t get their scripts filled anymore, they rolled over to street drugs until they were selling everything we owned to supply their heroin habit. Looking back, I was only surprised they didn’t try to sell me and Lexi, instead of just handing us over to the state when parenting was cutting too deeply into their drug money. Still, none of that had cut as deeply as losing Lexi, the one person who understood how horribly awry our childhood had gone. The one person I loved, who loved me back unconditionally.

I shook my head. There was too much. Too much hurt and anger and grief to unbox from my past. I had moved on, pushed through, and I had no intention of backsliding now. I had enough on my plate, thanks.

“No, I couldn’t reach out,” I said. “If I did, your ‘dad’ was going to have me arrested and thrown in jail. I had to give you your best shot, so I did. Now we’ve both moved on. We’ve built lives for ourselves. There’s simply no need to revisit the past.”

Lexi ducked her head but not before I saw a tear slide down her cheek. All of my old brotherly instincts rose up inside me. Always protect Lexi. I heard the voice inside my head as surely as I had when my mother said it while putting Lexi in my arms the day she came home from the hospital. Holding her swaddled in a pink blanket with her wrinkly red skin, scrawny fingers, head of downy hair, and milky blue eyes, my five-year-old self had experienced love at first sight for the very first time.

“But I need you, Nicky,” she said.

Shit. I didn’t have the reserves it would require to resist a plea from my sister. Why couldn’t she just give me a dollar amount so we could be done with this?