Page 212 of This Life of Mine

“Self-defense.” I snort.

Lina always did have a flair for dramatics.

I lean back against my pillow, irritation rising.

We were never close. People like to rewrite the past, but I remember it clearly—we fought like siblings do. She cried a lot and blamed me for everything.

She was always in the way.

Acting as if she knew better. Like she was in charge.

She never understood respect.

She especially never understood when to stay out of things between our brother and me.

My jaw tightens at the memory—fragmented, blurry, inconvenient.

She hovered—always stepping in—always grabbing him, pulling him behind her like she was something solid enough to stop me.

She only made things worse.

That’s how I remember it.

People forget how exhausting it is to live with someone who’s always crying and intervening, always acting like they’re the victim.

She called it protection.

I called it interference.

She came to see me once after I was locked up. After she turned eighteen. Already grown. Already distant. Sitting across from me in that visiting room like she was studying something broken and deciding whether it was worth keeping.

She finally had the nerve to face me because there was glass between us.

She asked me what I did. So I told her.

I didn’t soften it. Didn’t lie. I told her what happened on the street. About the guns. About the idiot bystander who inserted himself and got himself killed. That I killed him.

I told her about the rage too. About how it came on so fast everything went dark around the edges. How I’d lost time. How I’d come back to myself with my hands shaking and people staring at me with the gun in my hand.

I admitted that much.

What I didn’t admit—were the things she claimed I did to her and Sam.

The way she tells it, I was some kind of monster.

She leaned forward in that plastic chair and told me what a terrible brother I was. Told me I hurt her. Hurt Sam. Told me she’d never forget it.

Never forgive it.

Like she’d been rehearsing the speech for years.

I remember staring at her through the glass, listening to her describe things I don’t remember happening the way she says they did.

That’s the part that still pisses me off.

Because I pointed out the obvious.

Anna.