Broken Wings

I was eleven when my parents were killed. I took it really hard but not half so hard as my six-year-old brother. Perhaps it was because he was the baby. Perhaps it was that his genius mind in all its glory couldn't comprehend the fact that our parents weren't with us anymore. Perhaps it was that fact that he had been right there with them in the car when a guy who'd had one too many ran a red light. Whatever the reason, he was affected infinitely more than I and perhaps, in a desperate effort to preserve the one remaining part of his old life against the inevitable tide of change, he clung to me and I in turn sheltered him. I am my brother's keeper. It is a duty that I have committed myself to since that fateful day when a stranger in a blue uniform explained to me why my parents were two hours late picking me up from baseball practice.

You may say I'm paranoid, domineering, overprotective even, in the desperate way in which I watch over my brother, but if you knew how close I came to losing him to his demons forever the one time, the one time I let him out of my sight, you wouldn't be so quick to judge. I have been his caretaker for more than twenty-five years and I ain't about to quit. Just you try and stop me.