She kept me from freezing.

I kept her from breaking.

And on the far side of it, when the danger was finally over, we could each become a whole person again, because between us, all the way through, we had kept one entirely intact.

That is the thing about being a twin that no one who is not one can fully understand.

In the worst years, when everything else was taken from us — our safety, our father, our uncle, our belief that adults would help — we still had the one thing Roland could never confiscate, because it did not live in a phone or behind a lock.

We had each other.