The line went dead.

I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering over the email notification.

I tapped the screen.

The first photo loaded.

It was Megan, wearing pink running shoes and a gray sweatshirt, jogging along a paved path with Lake Michigan in the background.

She was smiling, her cheeks flushed with healthy color.

There was no wheelchair, no cane, no sign of muscle weakness.

The next photo showed her carrying a heavy wooden crate of groceries up the steps of her apartment building.

She lifted it with ease, her back straight and her arms strong.

I sat down on the kitchen chair, the vinyl cold beneath me.

Ten years.

Ten years of working sixty-hour weeks in the Cleveland winter, pulling copper wire through frozen construction sites.

Ten years of eating canned soup and wearing boots with holes in the soles.

I had given up my twenties so my sister could live in comfort while she supposedly died.

I stood up, my knees trembling, and walked to the window.

Outside, the gray Cleveland rain was starting to fall, streaking the glass.

I dialed my father’s number.