It felt ordinary at first—warm lights spilling across the living room, the smell of grilled meat drifting in through the open back door, laughter rising and falling in uneven waves as relatives filled every corner of the house. It was one of those evenings Connor had grown up believing meant something. Proof, his mother always said, that family was everything.
I was seventeen the summer everything collapsed, and we lived in a quiet suburb outside Boise, Idaho, where neighbors waved politely and kids rode their bikes through looping streets without worry. My family had adopted a shy dark haired girl named Natalia Greene from overseas when she was ten, and I was twelve at the…
