I held them in my hand, the small precious things my father had given my mother, that my sister had worn like a costume while our mother lay drugged in the basement below.

And I leaned down close, so that only she could hear me.

“You’re not my sister, Valerie,” I whispered.

“A sister does not do this.

Whatever you are, you are not that.” I straightened up, and looked at her one last time.

“You’re just a squatter,” I said, “who picked the wrong house.

I have been asked why I bothered to say it, why, in a room full of police, with my mother being carried up from the basement and everything already won, I took the time to kneel down and speak those words to a handcuffed woman on the floor.

And the honest answer is that it was not really for her.