Evelyn’s very first memory was not magical, not whimsical, not something you’d hear in a Hallmark interview with a nostalgic smile. No, hers was getting a bath in the kitchen sink—water cold enough to give a penguin hypothermia. She was over two years old at the time. Old enough that bathing in a sink was less “cute family moment” and more “why are we waterboarding the toddler in the cutlery department?”

Her second memory wasn’t an upgrade. She was crouched on the carpet in the middle of her Fisher-Price Sesame Street playset when her body betrayed her. Cookie Monster, plastic grin fixed in judgment, watched her lose control of her bowels. And Evelyn, frantic and pantless, scrambled to clean the evidence before her parents noticed. She could still taste the metallic panic decades later.  Cookie Monster stood by, plastic eyes locked on her, silently judging. Which was bold for a guy who wastes cookies by grinding them into his felt like some kind of gluten-based wood chipper.

So no, Evelyn’s early life did not have the glossy edges of a childhood scrapbook. More like a dark comedy series no one admits they binge.

What stuck with her most, though, wasn’t the cold sink baths or bathroom cover-ups. It was her father’s anger—unyielding, theatrical, and always searching for a small target. Dinner was a nightly hostage negotiation. Evelyn hated peas, which seemed reasonable since peas taste like wet gravel with a trust fund. But her father slammed his fist on the table until the silverware rattled. And when she refused to eat, he didn’t just punish her; he performed it. He sat across from her, slowly savoring Oreos, licking the cream, crunching each bite, eyes locked on her like a villain in a low-budget PSA.

Halloween brought no reprieve. One year, for reasons lost to history, her father dumped her entire pillowcase of candy into the kitchen trash. Evelyn stood there crying, forced to stare into the garbage bin at her tiny treasures melting under coffee grounds. Right on top was an Oh Henry! bar—perfect, glorious, full of peanut and caramel. She should have grabbed it, shoved it in her mouth like a prison break. Instead, she froze. Lesson learned: what you love can be taken away while you stand there staring at it, powerless. (Also, they don’t even make Oh Henry! bars anymore. The universe, it turns out, has a flair for callbacks.)

But nothing burned itself into her the way the Loch Ness Incident did. Evelyn was reaching for something on a shelf when she accidentally knocked over her mother’s beloved blown-glass Loch Ness monster. She watched it fall in slow motion, crash against the floor, and shatter into jagged memories. Her mother adored that thing. Evelyn’s life might as well have ended with the sound of breaking glass.

Her father didn’t yell. He didn’t hit. Instead, he went straight for the jugular: he took away her blanket.

Not just any blanket. The Blanket. A gray-blue patchwork quilt edged with a red satin trim, worn smooth by the rhythm of her tiny fingers. It was her anchor, her sanity, her shield. Wrapped in it, she could drift to sleep—one hand sucking on two fingers, the other stroking the satin edge in hypnotic comfort.

Without it, she was raw. Exposed. For a week, she lay awake, staring at the ceiling, bargaining with a God she didn’t believe in. Promising to be good. Promising to never upset anyone ever again. Promising anything, if only she could have the blanket back. She didn’t sleep. She didn’t cry. She just endured.

Eventually, the blanket was returned, but it had changed. Or maybe Evelyn had. She was young, but she wasn’t stupid. Why trust anything that could be taken away? Safer to put her faith in people-pleasing. If she gave everyone what they wanted, they’d have no reason to hurt her. Not the healthiest survival plan, sure.

But it was a plan—and plans, in her house, were currency.

By June 1980, Evelyn was already fluent in dread. That was when her sister arrived. Evelyn campaigned hard for the baby to be named Tinkerbell, which, in hindsight, might have set the poor girl up for a stripper career. Instead, they named her Katherine—Kit. Kit grew into someone who would politely smile at you while plotting your murder if you dared call her anything else.

Her arrival changed the household ecosystem. The toilet was perpetually stuffed with cloth diapers. Their father disappeared further into the basement, tending the coal stove and his sports. Evelyn, meanwhile, obsessed over how Kit would survive with no teeth. She was convinced she herself had been born with a full set. Four-year-old logic: undefeated. Somewhere between diaper pins and mashed carrots, Evelyn made a vow. She would protect her sister. Always.

Spoiler: Evelyn failed.

Not for lack of trying, but because Kit came pre-loaded with a superpower. If Evelyn’s childhood was about avoiding shrapnel, Kit’s was about walking through explosions. Kit was unbreakable.

She plummeted down a full flight of basement stairs in her walker and landed headfirst on the concrete. She was strapped into a car seat—on the roof of the car—forgotten there for an entire drive. She slipped from her carrier onto the floor of the car, hidden under a blanket, while their drunk mother searched the house for the source of her cries. She was dropped into snowbanks, bounced down staircases, misplaced in ways that would have killed weaker babies.

And yet—she lived. Memory-free, maybe, but alive.

Evelyn, meanwhile, learned to survive by appeasement, by apology, by building herself out of bargains. Kit survived by simply refusing to break.

Two sisters, two strategies. One bent, one unbent. Both still standing. For now