The first call after four years of silence did not begin with an apology. It began with panic, hospital noise, and my mother saying my brother’s name as if it were the only name our family had ever learned to protect. My name is Lillian Moore. For most of my life, I believed families were imperfect but dependable. My parents, Richard and Evelyn Moore, were not warm people, but they were practical, present, and proud of how stable they looked from the outside. Daniel was my younger brother, though nobody in our house ever treated him as younger. He was the son. The investment.
