Chapter 7: The House that Raised Me

I have pictures from the girls’ first Christmas.

Well — Anna has pictures. She was the only one who thought to document anything that wasn’t a staged family portrait, which means I have access to approximately forty-seven photos of babies in matching velvet dresses and exactly three of me looking like I’d just discovered what “displacement” meant in real time.

December 1992. Kitty was two months old. Zoe was three months. I was five and a half, which is that perfect age where you’re old enough to notice when the world shifts under your feet but not old enough to understand why.

The photos tell most of the story.

There’s one of Grandpapa holding Kitty like she’s made of spun sugar, his face doing that rare soft thing it only did for babies and prize cattle. There’s Mother in cream and pearls, positioned just-so next to the tree, Kitty in her arms, performing Madonna-and-child for whoever was holding the camera. Father stands behind her with his hand on her shoulder, looking like a man who’d just won something.

Nana’s in most of the photos, settled in her chair near the tree with her teacup, watching the chaos with that quiet amusement she had. The help moved between rooms doing the actual work. Nana just presided, adjusting a blanket here, offering a soft word there, the still center everyone orbited around.

Anna and Adam are on the couch in one photo, Zoe bundled between them in a snowflake onesie, Anna laughing at something off-camera. She looks exhausted. Happy-exhausted, the kind that comes from choosing your chaos instead of inheriting it.

And then there’s me.

Sitting on the floor in a sweater that’s too big, surrounded by opened presents I don’t remember caring about. A book about trains. Socks. Something practical and beige that I’ve already forgotten.

In the photo, I’m looking at the pile of baby gifts in the corner — stuffed animals, blankets, rattles, an entire corner of the parlor dedicated to two people who couldn’t even hold their own heads up yet — and my face has this expression I’ve spent years trying to describe.

It’s not anger. It’s not sadness.

It’s confusion.

Like I’d just realized the game had changed and no one had told me the new rules.

What I remember — what the pictures can’t show — is how I kept calling for people. Nana. Grandpapa. Mama. My voice getting louder each time, competing with the cooing and the laughter and the general euphoria of Two Babies At Christmas, until I realized no one was listening because no one needed to.

I remember trying to show Grandpapa my train book and getting waved off mid-sentence.

I remember saying “Mama” and being told to hush because I was interrupting the Important Business of Adults Cooing Over Babies.

I wasn’t hurt, exactly. I was just ... confused. The attention I’d spent five years learning to navigate had been redistributed without warning, and I didn’t understand the math.

So I did what any rational five-year-old would do: I picked up one of Kitty’s toys.

A plush rabbit. Soft, blue, floppy-eared. Still sitting in its nest of tissue paper.

I just wanted to hold it. To see what made it so special that it got wrapped in satin ribbon while I got socks.

“Gabriel.” Mother’s voice could’ve cut glass. “Put that down. It’s not yours.”

“I just wanted to—”

“It’s for your sister. Put it down.”

I set it back carefully, like it might explode.

“He’s being jealous,” Mother said to the room, her voice carrying that particular tone she used when she wanted everyone to agree with her. “Mean-spirited. He can’t stand that his sister is getting attention.”

Anna’s voice cut across the room before anyone could respond. “He’s being five, Maggie. Maybe try remembering what that’s like.”

The room went quiet.

Mother’s mouth tightened. She turned back to Kitty, adjusting the baby’s dress with more force than necessary.

Anna looked at me and patted the couch cushion. “Gabriel, sweetheart. Come here.”

I hesitated — you learn to hesitate in that house — but she patted the cushion again and I climbed up.

“You want to hold her?” she asked, already shifting Zoe in her arms.

I nodded.

She guided Zoe into my lap, adjusting my arms, showing me how to support her head. “Just like that. Perfect.”

Zoe was warm. Heavier than I expected. She smelled like powder and milk and something I couldn’t name then but recognize now as new — that specific scent of a person who hasn’t learned to be afraid of the world yet.

Her eyes were open, unfocused, staring up at me like I was the most important thing in the room.

“She likes you,” Anna said.

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s not screaming.” Anna grinned. “That’s the bar, kid. You’ve cleared it.”

I looked down at Zoe. At her tiny fingers curled against my chest. At the way her mouth moved slightly, like she was practicing words she didn’t know yet.

The knot in my chest — the one that had been tightening all morning — loosened.

“She’s really small,” I whispered.

“She is,” Anna agreed. “But she’s going to get bigger. And when she does, she’s going to need someone to look out for her. Someone smart. Someone kind.” She nudged me. “Someone like you.”

“Really?”

“Really. You’re going to be the best big cousin she’s ever had.”

“I’m her only cousin.”

“Exactly. Low bar. You’ll crush it.”

I smiled.

Anna stayed exactly where she was. Her hand on my shoulder. Letting me hold Zoe as long as I wanted.

There’s a photo of that moment, too.

Me on the couch, Zoe in my arms, Anna beside me. I’m looking down at Zoe with this expression that’s half-awe, half-terror — the face of someone who’s just been handed something fragile and told it matters.

Anna’s looking at me.

Not at the camera. At me.

Like she saw exactly what was happening and decided to stay.

That Christmas — sitting on that couch, holding Zoe, feeling like I mattered to at least two people in that room — was the best one I can remember.

Not because of the gifts.

Not because of the tree or the food or the carefully staged family photos.

Because for a few perfect hours, I wasn’t invisible.

I wasn’t the problem.

I was just a kid holding his baby cousin, and that was enough.

I didn’t know it then, but I was learning something that would take me years to name: love, when it’s real, doesn’t require you to disappear.

It just lets you be.

It was early summer when everything finally crystallized.

June, maybe July — one of those weeks when Georgia decides to remind you that weather is a form of violence. The sky had been threatening storms all day, the kind that make the air thick and electric, and by evening the first rumbles were rolling in from the west.

I hated storms. Not for myself — for Kitty.

She was six months old by then, just starting to sit up on her own, just beginning to look like a person instead of a very serious potato. And she hated thunder. The first crack would send her into hysterics, and no amount of rocking or shushing would calm her until it passed.

So when the storm started that night — when I heard the low growl building in the distance — I did what I’d been doing for weeks.

I snuck into the nursery to check on her.

The routine was always the same. I’d slip out of bed, pad down the hallway in bare feet, ease the door open just wide enough to slide through. I’d stand by her crib and watch her breathe, making sure she was still asleep, making sure the thunder hadn’t woken her yet. And if it did — when it did — I’d be there. I’d hum one of Nana’s mangled Irish lullabies until she settled, until her little fists unclenched and her face smoothed out again.

I never told anyone I was doing this.

I didn’t need permission. She was my sister.

That night, she was asleep when I came in. The nightlight cast her crib in a soft glow — all smooth cheeks and the faint flutter of eyelids dreaming. I stood there, watching the rise and fall of her chest, counting the seconds between thunder and lightning to see if the storm was getting closer.

Then the thunder cracked.

Loud. Close.

Kitty’s eyes flew open.

For a second, she just stared at the ceiling, processing. Then her face crumpled and she started crying — not the building kind, just instant, full-throated baby panic.

I reached for her.

Not rough. Not grabbing. Just reaching, the way I always did, ready to scoop her up and hum until she felt safe again.

That’s when the door slammed open.

Mother stood in the doorway, backlit by the hallway light, and the look on her face — I’d seen it before. At Christmas. In the weeks after. Every time I got too close to Kitty, every time I asked to help, every time I existed in the same room as my sister for longer than Mother deemed appropriate.

Suspicion. Vindication. Certainty.

“What are you doing?” she said, her voice sharp enough to cut.

“She’s scared of the thunder,” I said quickly. “I was just going to—”

“You were standing over her crib in the dark.” She crossed the room in three strides and snatched Kitty up, cradling her against her chest like I’d been caught mid-kidnapping. “What did you do to her?”