It happened on a Tuesday.

We were in the middle of a debrief, going over the last case. I had just finished going over the victimology profile when my phone rang.

I ignored it the first time. But it rang again—persistent. Hotch gave me a look that meant, go ahead. So I did. I stepped into the hallway.

“This is Dr. Spencer Reid.”

“Dr. Reid, this is Officer Gonzalez from Las Vegas CPS. I’m calling in regard to your sister.”

The words were like an iron bar straight to the chest.

My voice faltered. “Is… is something wrong?”

“Your mother has been transferred to long-term psychiatric care,” the woman said, careful and clipped like she’d said this too many times. “Given your sister is a minor, you’ve been granted full custody of her.”

I didn’t speak for a full ten seconds.

“Dr. Reid?”

I blinked. “Yes. I’m here.”

“She’ll be flying out by the end of the week. You’ll receive full documentation and resources, but she’ll need housing, supervision… schooling arrangements. Everything.”

Everything.

———

“I didn’t even know you had a sister,” Morgan said later, once I got off the phone. He wasn’t pushing. Just being him. Present.

“She was born after I started at Caltech. I was fourteen,” I said quietly, trying to recall the last memory I had of you that didn’t involve secondhand updates from my mom or some faded photograph on the fridge. “I wasn’t around much.”

JJ’s hand was on my shoulder before I realized she’d moved. “We’ll help, Spencer. Whatever you need.”

Emily gave a half-smile. “You’re not alone in this.”

But that’s exactly how I felt.

⸻

The apartment changed overnight. I had to reorganize the spare room, order furniture, buy clothes I wasn’t sure would fit. Garcia helped with that part—thank God. She knew what a 15-year-old might like. I… didn’t.

I kept remembering how my mom would talk about you. How she’d say, “She’s a firecracker, your sister. Just like you when you were little, before all the darkness came in.”

And now I was bringing that firecracker into a life where I barely had time to breathe.

⸻

You arrived on a Thursday. Quiet as a shadow.

You didn’t hug me. You looked at me like I was a stranger—which, in many ways, I was. A tall, twitchy guy in a cardigan and messenger bag.

“Your room is this way,” I said, fumbling with my keys. “I got… some books. And clothes. Garcia helped with the decorations. She works with me. You’ll meet her.”

You didn’t respond. Just nodded and walked in with your duffel bag slung over one shoulder. The silence between us was not hostile. It was just… sealed off. Like a door I didn’t have a key to.

⸻

We ate dinner in the living room, because the kitchen table was still buried under case files. I made pasta. You didn’t eat much.

“You can tell me if you don’t like it,” I said.

You shrugged. “It’s fine.”

“Fine” was the most you said for the first week.

Hotch asked how it was going. I said, “It’s… slow.”

“You’ve been through worse,” he reminded me. “So has she.”

The team? They didn’t just help. They became part of the transition.

Garcia brought over muffins and playlists. JJ talked to you about high school. Morgan took us both to a Nationals game. Emily got you a leather journal “for whatever thoughts you don’t want to say out loud.”

Even Rossi called one night and said, “If she likes Italian food, you bring her over. I’ll cook.”

You didn’t say much to them either. But I could see it—these tiny, almost imperceptible signs. You started leaving your door open a crack. You watched the shows I had on. You sat in the same room. You even laughed at something Garcia said once. Just once.

⸻

Being a guardian wasn’t something I trained for. But I show up every day. I leave notes on the fridge. I ask if you’re okay, even when you don’t answer. I buy the weird cereal you like. I call your school. I wait.

Because maybe that’s what family is. Not just biology. But the willingness to wait. To be there. Even when the door’s still shut.