Chapter 3How Blessed I Am to Have You as My Brother

Cole started working.

He hauled bricks on a construction site during the day and bussed tables at a diner at night. After that, he’d come home and glue cardboard boxes for a local factory until dawn.

His health was poor, likely a side effect of his transplant. He coughed constantly, and his face was always pale.

But every cent he earned, he spent on me: a new backpack, new clothes, even the expensive novels I’d mentioned offhand.

I had to admit, he was taking good care of me.

But the world I lived in was still a swamp.

In eighth grade, I placed first in my class.

For the parent-teacher conference, he borrowed a decent shirt and combed his hair neatly.

The moment he walked into the classroom, the whispering started.

“Is that Anna Anderson’s brother?”

“He looks so quiet. You’d never guess…”

“It’s not like they have ‘murderer’ tattooed on their foreheads.”

He kept his head down the entire time, his hands clenched tightly on his knees.

On the way home, I walked behind him, watching his slightly stooped back.

“We should move,” I said suddenly.

He stopped but didn’t turn around.

“Where?”

“Anywhere,” I said. “Anywhere but here, where everyone knows what you are.”

He was silent for a long time.

“Okay.”

A month later, we moved to the state capital, three hundred miles away.

Cole used all his savings to rent a tiny one-room apartment with a bunk bed.

He found a job at an electronics factory, working rotating shifts on the assembly line.

The first night, I lay on the unfamiliar top bunk, staring at the cracks in the ceiling.

“Hey,” I said into the darkness.

A rustle from below. “Yeah?”

“Why did you really go to prison?”

Silence.

A long, suffocating silence.

Just when I thought he wouldn’t answer, he spoke, his voice low.

“…I did something wrong.”

“What did you do?”

“Something terrible,” his voice was as soft as a sigh. “Anna, don’t ask.”

“All you need to know is that I’m sorry. For what I did to you, to Mom and Dad… that’s enough.”

I rolled over, facing the wall.

Always the same.

Always.

I was never entitled to the truth.