No one could have ruined Thanksgiving more than our brother did.

Alan said he was getting clean again.

His time, he really meant it.

He had already checked into rehab and was meeting with his counselor twice a week.

He told us that he loved us.

Everything from the moment he trudged through the front door and struggled, threading his coat

over the lone hanger and the closet, suggested it was just another one of his tall

tails.

Tate had made it very clear in the days leading up to Thanksgiving that he was opposed to inviting

our older brother over.

And deep down, I knew it was a bad idea, too.

Whenever Alan came back telling us that he was trying to turn his life around,

it really meant that he needed us for something.

Alan had been a bad egg for the family since our parents died in a car accident while we were boys.

Our grandparents stepped up to take us in.

You've been pulling the same bullshit throughout his adolescence, with our grandparents too old and beaten down to rain in on him.

So many nights of our teenage years, Tate and I would stay in playing Xbox and watching DVDs only to brace ourselves when he heard footfalls coming up the porch, and Alan stumbled in, fucked up, and always angry.

When our grandparents finally passed, all they had left in their estate was the house to pass down to us.

Hadn't taken long for us to grow so sick of the constant parties,

and Alan strung out junky friends passed out on the couch every night.

We eventually had to kick him out, try to make our own.

One third share of the decaying two-story house smack in the middle of St. Paul's suburbia

...