Roman and I were sisters, though we shared no blood.

  She was my father’s child from his first marriage. His first wife had died young. I was born ter, to my father and his second wife—my mother, an Englishwoman. Not long after they remarried, when Roman was two years old, I came into the world.

  My sister’s real name was Romane. For reasons I never understood, she disliked being called by her full name. Everyone—family and friends alike—called her Roman instead.

  Roman had light brown curls and sepia-colored eyes, unlike my own red hair. There was kindness in those eyes, and something fragile, too. She was exquisitely sensitive to the moods and words of others, always watching faces, always listening for what went unsaid.

  While I pyed house and dolls like other girls my age, Roman preferred model trains and jigsaw puzzles. When she finished pying on her own, she would read picture books to me or join my games. She was gentle, endlessly patient with me. If I said I was hungry, she brought me pie from the refrigerator. If I threw a tantrum and upset our parents, she would calm me with quiet words. When she held my hand, I felt safe.

  I wanted Roman all to myself.

  At some point—without my noticing—that feeling took root.

  When Roman became absorbed in her py and failed to look at me, irritation fred inside me. I would stomp both feet onto a puzzle she had nearly finished, crushing it into chaos. Roman would tremble, tears filling her eyes as she stared at the ruined pieces. Yet she never told our parents. Later, when I apologized, she always said, It’s fine, and forgave me.

  After we started elementary school, Roman began taking my hand and leading me to the nearby park or to her friends’ houses. But before long, I couldn’t bear to see her with anyone else. I disrupted their py, clung to her, demanded her attention. Her friends scolded her—Don’t bring your little sister anymore—and Roman stopped taking me with her. Even now, I remember the troubled look on her face as she watched me cry and beg to go along.

  At home, though, she was mine alone. I often went to Roman’s room, where we read together, watched movies, and pyed video games. Those hours were the fullest, happiest moments of my life.

  As I grew older—and as Roman continued to be kind to me—my behavior worsened. Everything I did was driven by the same desire: to draw her attention to myself alone, to possess her completely.

  In the summer of my second year of middle school, my family went to Sunday Mass together. Half-asleep, I failed to notice when Roman slipped away from my side. When I realized she was gone, I quietly left the church to look for her.

  Behind the building, on a patch of vivid green grass, Roman was kissing another girl—one of her cssmates from high school. The moment I saw them, pain tore through me so sharply I thought I might scream. I turned and ran all the way home, threw myself onto my bed, and cried until my throat burned.

  When Roman returned, I told her I had seen everything and demanded that she break up with the girl. Roman neither agreed nor argued. As I shouted and accused her, she said only one thing, very softly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  On impulse, I ran away from home, taking a bus to my grandparents’ house in the neighboring town. The thought of my sister belonging to someone else was unbearable. It felt as though a bde were pressed constantly against my throat, the image of that kiss repying again and again in my mind like a silent bck-and-white film.

  At first, my phone rang every five minutes—calls from my parents, from Roman. My parents came almost daily to bring me home, but I refused. Confused yet kind, my grandparents treated my behavior as a temporary rebellion. Thanks especially to my indulgent grandfather, I lived freely and selfishly—until my grandmother finally urged my mother to come and take me back.

  I returned home a month ter, after hearing rumors at school that Roman had broken up with her girlfriend.

  The sister I saw then looked pale and worn, her cheeks hollow with exhaustion. When she saw me after a month apart, she smiled as if she were about to cry, wrapped me in her arms, and whispered, Welcome home. I remember how her trembling body, her fragile voice, her familiar warmth filled me—not with joy, but with an overwhelming sense of guilt.