Chapter 1How Blessed I Am to Have You as My Brother

When I was ten, my parents died in a car crash. They were on their way to pick my brother up from prison.

At the wake, I stared at the man kneeling before their caskets, his forehead pressed to the floor. It was my brother, Cole, freshly released after a five-year sentence.

I ran at him, shoving him with all my might.

“This is your fault! If you hadn’t been in prison, they wouldn’t have gone to get you! They would still be alive!”

Cole staggered from the force of my push but didn’t look up. He just pressed his head harder against the cold floor.

From that day on, I never called him brother again.

* * *

My mother kept her treasures in a small metal box.

As a child, my curiosity was a force of nature. I waited until the house was empty and pried it open.

Inside, there was only a single, yellowed ultrasound report.

The report read:

[Cord Blood Match Successful. Donor: Fetus. Recipient: Cole Anderson (Firstborn Son)]

Cole was my brother, fifteen years my senior.

For as long as I could remember, he had been in prison.

My parents never spoke of his crime. But every time they came back from a visit, my mother’s eyes were swollen shut, and my father would chain-smoke on the porch all night, enveloped in a silent, suffocating cloud.

Before I turned ten, my entire concept of my brother was a blurry name, a stranger who made my parents weep, and the sole reason for my existence.

Yes, I knew.

I wasn’t a child born of my parents’ love; I was proof of their love for him.

My mother had a weak constitution. She risked a late-in-life pregnancy for one reason: Cole had leukemia, and the only thing that could save him was the cord blood of a newborn sibling.

The day I was born, my brother’s transplant was a success.

And I became a “useful tool” in our family’s home.

But fate has a twisted sense of humor. The golden child, wrapped in all my parents’ devotion, committed a crime so terrible it landed him in prison.

I was five years old.

I have no memory of what he did.

It didn’t matter.

What mattered was that I was finally promoted from “tool” to their one and only child.

That bliss didn’t last. The year I turned ten, Cole was released.

My parents left early that morning, their faces bright with hope, ready to give their son a new beginning.

Then the call came.

A truck with failed brakes had slammed into their sedan.

My father died on impact. My mother held on until she got to the hospital, where she used her last breath to tell me one thing:

“Anna, sweetie, take care of your brother.”

I didn’t understand.

Why was I, a child, being asked to care for him? I was the one who needed to be taken care of.

Before I could argue, her eyes fluttered shut for the last time.

At the funeral home, I looked from the stiff smiles on my parents’ black-and-white portraits to the strange man kneeling before their coffins—the brother I hadn’t seen in five years.

He knocked his head against the concrete, a rhythmic, sickening thud. Blood seeped from his forehead, mixing with his tears.

Relatives whispered behind their hands, their pitying glances like needles on my skin.

“Poor thing, an orphan at her age…”

“And now she has to live with a killer. What kind of life will that be?”

I balled my fists, my nails digging into my palms.

That’s when I charged him.

“This is your fault! If you hadn’t been in prison, they wouldn’t have been driving to get you! They wouldn’t be dead!”

Cole swayed but didn’t look up. He just knocked his head harder against the unforgiving floor.

The night after the burial, Cole found me sitting in the dark living room.

He wore my father’s old, ill-fitting clothes. His eyes were sunken, making him look like a walking skeleton.

“Anna,” he said, his voice a dry rasp. He reached out to touch my hair.

I flinched away.

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

His hand froze in midair, then slowly fell to his side.