She was living in the basement apartment behind the laundromat outside Dayton.
That’s what the woman at the front counter told me when I asked if my sister still lived there.
Not dead.
Not successful.
Not “too good to call me back.”
Just tired.
The woman pointed toward a narrow side door beside the dryers and said my sister was probably asleep because she worked nights cleaning offices downtown.
I remember standing there in my suit holding coffee from the expensive place across town feeling sick all of a sudden.
Because my sister used to stay up all night helping me study for finals when I was in high school.
I knocked anyway.
No answer.
Then the laundromat woman looked at me funny and said, “You must be Trey.”
That hit immediately because I never said my name.
She told me my sister talked about me constantly. Bragged every time I got a new job. Kept screenshots of the law firm website on her phone like proud-parent stuff.
I honestly didn’t know what to do with that information.
Then the woman added, “She said you stopped talking to her after she borrowed money from you.”
Borrowed money.
That’s what my sister told people.
Not that I stood at graduation and called her a nobody in front of half the family.
The woman finally unlocked the basement door with a spare key because my sister’s alarm had apparently been going off for hours.
She was inside.
Curled up on the couch in her work clothes with a towel under her cheek because one of her wisdom teeth had cracked and swollen half her face.
No insurance.
No dentist.
Just painkillers from the dollar store sitting on the coffee table beside three overdue electric bills with my name handwritten on the envelopes because she still kept meaning to call me back.