I offered a short visit next week, allowing her to choose an activity and cancel whenever she wanted without any guilt.
Sadie considered the offer seriously before asking if I knew how to build a working model of a solar eclipse.
I admitted that I barely knew how to change a lightbulb, and she laughed for the first time since entering the room.
The sound nearly broke my heart, because it was the ordinary happiness my brother had kept me from hearing for ten years.
Before I left, Mara showed me a drawer filled with letters written in Sadie's careful handwriting and returned unopened.
Several envelopes bore my address, but someone had crossed it out and added a forwarding instruction in Julian's unmistakable script.
Others had been sent directly to Julian's office, where he apparently collected them rather than risk their arrival at our homes.
Mara said she had stopped sending photographs to the family after receiving the forged reply, believing further contact would hurt Sadie.
