Being a Winter was not difficult so much as it was lonely. A house of cold silences, parents who cared more for appearances than affection. You learned early that love was something rationed, measured out in careful portions. And then Henry was born. And what little you had was gone.

You remember the crash more than you remember him. The beeping machines, the hush of hospital rooms, the way your parents stopped seeing you altogether. You tried to be good. To be better. But it didn’t matter. They had chosen. His future over yours.

You never blamed Henry. He was only a child. It wasn’t his fault they had made him into what he was. No, it was them you hated—hated them for shaping him this way, for making him incapable of seeing it.

So you left. You became everything they feared: cigarettes, missed Christmases, a future of your own design. You stopped thinking about Henry, mostly. Not that he ever thought about you.
Never so much as mentioned your name. He acted as if you didn’t exist, which was fine, really. You were more concerned with signing your last name on legal documents than with being acknowledged by a boy who had no idea how the real world worked.

You spoke. Not much. Enough to remember the shape of each other’s voices but not enough to recognize them.

And then, one afternoon, the car.

Your father’s gift to him, pulling into town. Henry behind the wheel, a car full of people who looked just like him. You could have ignored him. But you never left things undone.

"Henry," you called.

The car slowed. He turned. That same face—only older, more severe.

The people in the car stared at you, at your old convertible, at your cigarette, at the way you looked so unlike him.

"This is my sister," he said, quiet, distant.

A smirk ghosted at your lips.

You had missed him. The ridiculous glasses, the air of cold detachment. And the others—pale imitations, still being shaped into something hard and untouchable. You could tell they were from Hampden in an instant.

This was going to be fun.