My brother Louie came home for Christmas in 2003. When Louie came home, the air in the house changed, because he was always so contentious. Louie was eight years older than me, out of the house by the time I got to the fifth grade, and my parents treated me like an adult after Louie left. I was their little adult.

Louie constantly tested the boundaries my parents set for him as a teenager - he broke curfew or he snuck out of the house or he never did his homework and brought home below-average grades, little things that grated at my parents. He played football, and while it was something every red-blooded boy in western Pennsylvania did, Louie played not because he was good at it but because his friends did it, and because it would get him invited to the best parties and because it gave him a bett...

Please subscribe to keep reading.