After that night, there was no time to grieve properly.
There was Vicky.
And there was me.
I became her sole guardian.
I had been accepted into my dream college, but I put those plans on hold.
Instead, I took two jobs.
One during the day.
Another in the evenings.
I learned how to make meals a seven-year-old would actually eat.
I learned which teachers she liked, which foods she refused, what time she needed to go to bed, and how to sit beside her when nightmares woke her in the middle of the night.
It wasn’t easy.
Some days, I was exhausted before breakfast.
Other days, I wondered how I was supposed to keep doing this for years.
But Vicky was my sister.
She was the only family I had left.
