And so, when I finally said those two words to Kris, I knew he must have heard something else.

“You are turning out just like our father.”

That was not what I meant – but how could he have understood my words any other way?

Kris stood up unsteadily. He shoved his chair back. It wobbled precariously for a moment, as though it were as drunk as my brother. It fell over, cracking the tiles of the kitchen floor.

“Bad things,” he said. “You think I do bad things.” He leaned against the wall, and started to laugh. “Bad things, bad things, bad things,” he chanted mockingly. “My baby sister thinks I do bad things.”

I just sat there, holding his stare, his stare that slowly hardened. He crossed his arms. “What do you know? What the hell do you know? What did they tell you?”

“They didn’t tell me anything. I don’t know anything. But I know something’s going on. And I’m not going to just sit here again and pretend like everything’s fine anymore. It isn’t fair that you have to deal with all this on your own.”

Even I cringed at the way my words came out. I had never been good at expressing my emotions. I didn’t talk much to begin with and I was uncomfortable with sentiment. At best, I sounded detached – mechanically insincere, as though I were delivering a speech that had been rehearsed to death. At worst, I sounded like a little girl trying too hard to sound grown-up.

Either way, Kris didn’t take me seriously. “I’m going out. Go to bed.”

“You’re drunk.” I was grasping at straws, trying to keep the conversation going.

“I can take care of myself. Just go to bed. You just – you just worry about your grades.”

He stumbled toward the door. In that moment, with his back to me, Kris seemed like a shadow of our father. Stumbling to get into his shoes. Stumbling out of the house. Stumbling out of my life.

All my life, I had waited for undesirable situations to resolve themselves and come to a natural end. In the aftermath of my father’s death, when everything had seemed uncertain, time had been the only constant. The days, months, and years all passed by stoically, in perfect order. I had first put my trust in money, but never in my father. And after my father died and the money went away, I had put my trust not in Kris, but in time.

Time dulls the hurt, blurs the faces you would sooner forget. I had depended on the passing time to change my life, to smooth over the creases and painful edges as water wears down stone.

I stepped toward Kris, but I hesitated. I could not say “I love you” to his rigid back. Kris didn't need – didn’t want – to hear that. Our father had loved, and so our father had destroyed. Love was useless to us now.

I said something else instead.

“I trust you.”

For the first time in years, I hugged my older brother. 

And then, when his back softened and his body stopped shaking,

                  I said,

                            "I love you."

Because love was useless, but how could we live without love?