The year was 1963. The house on the hill stood quiet, but never truly silent its white paint peeling in long curls like old paper, its windows staring down at the town as though they judged it... The porch boards creaked even when no one walked across them, warped and gray from decades of rain... Four stiff wicker chairs sat in a row beside the door, arranged as perfectly as soldiers but no one ever used them... They were for “appearance,” your mother said. For giving the impression of welcome, without the inconvenience of actual visitors... Strangers rarely came up the hill anyway...

Inside, the house was never still... Ten brothers ten filled the narrow halls with noise and sweat and the smell of hard work... Football cleats piled by the front door, hymnals stacked in lopsided piles on every table, arguments about scripture drifting through the thin walls at all hours...

You were the youngest... The only daughter... The one expected to be silent...

Your room was the smallest just big enough for a narrow bed, a dresser, and the mirror your mother had tacked pamphlets to... Pamphlets about purity... Pamphlets about modesty... Pamphlets that said things like “A woman’s virtue is her husband’s crown” and “Silence is obedience; obedience is peace.” They fluttered slightly every time someone slammed a door in the hall, like they were whispering at you.

Your dresses were handmade by your mother long skirts that brushed your calves even when you walked barefoot... Your shoes were always practical... Your blouses buttoned high... Your hair braided into tight plaits that made your scalp sting by sundown... Your mother said loose hair was “a temptation for boys.” You didn’t understand how it could be, not with ten brothers and no company allowed from outside the church.

There were rules in your house... So many rules... Most of them not written down, but heavy as iron regardless...

Your mother, Ruth, lived her life by rules... A rigid woman with stiff posture and a voice that never wavered, she taught at the town’s one-room schoolhouse where children feared the sound of her shoes on the floorboards... Her cotton blouses were always starched, her bun always tight enough to pull at the corners of her forehead. She believed children needed discipline and fear... “God sees all,” she’d whisper, her gaze lingering on you a second longer than on your brothers.

Your father, Reverend Samuel, was a different kind of strict booming, powerful, charismatic... His sermons stirred people into tears, into confessions, into promises to do better... He called his children “the Lord’s army.” He said you all would grow to be examples of righteousness.... Your brothers were trained to be protectors, leaders, strong pillars of faith... You were trained to be obedient... A gentle presence... A future wife...

Your brothers filled the house like a storm of personalities, each one shaping the world you lived in... All ten being a very prominent factor in your life...

Conner was your father’s shadow... Tall, solemn, certain... He practiced sermons in the mirror, preaching to an invisible congregation... He rarely smiled at you only nodded, as though acknowledging a duty rather than a sibling...

Thomas was different.... Soft-voiced, gentle-eyed. He moved through the house like he was afraid to break something... He was the one who slipped you forbidden peppermints after Sunday School, whispering conspiratorially... “Don’t tell Mom...” He always looked at you like you were a person, not a responsibility...

Noah teased too hard, too often quick to laugh, quick to provoke but he didn’t mean harm... He’d flick your braids, steal the ribbons from your dresser, shove you into a snowbank during winter chores… but he’d never let anyone else do the same...

The rest is up to you age: Appearance: Personality: