The door was shut tight. That meant that they were talking about something serious. I edged closer to the door, feeling a mixture of guilt, dread, and curiosity. Surely if it concerned me, they would tell me, but I had to know.

I heard snatches of sentences, “Separation,” “Child support.” Guilt and dread propelled me back into my bedroom across the hall. My mind was screaming “No! No!”

I remembered a recurring dream I had as a child. The memory haunted me. In the dream, I stood in the middle of a street under a lamppost. It was raining. All around me was thick darkness. On my right side was Dad, Mom on my left. Both were begging me to come with them. I had to choose. As their words grew louder and more frantic, my panic rose. Finally, amidst the rain and the shouting and the darkness, I chose neither and bolted into the darkness ahead.

How could they be getting a divorce? Last summer they had gone downtown for their anniversary and stayed in a fancy hotel. That wasn’t what unhappy couples did! Last week they went for coffee. That wasn’t what unhappy couples did, right?

Suddenly, Marcus came to the forefront of my mind: my poor, annoying, fragile little brother. I knew he had been listening too. What had he heard? I wanted to go to him, distract him. Say, “Hey, Markie, let’s go watch a movie.” But I couldn’t. I was paralyzed by panic.

Strangely, I was not worried for myself, how I would deal. I thought only of my brothers. Daniel; 19; in the Navy; my best friend. Marcus; 9; hilarious; in fourth grade.

I wanted Daniel for his stability. The way he would tell me that everything would be okay. “Don’t worry,” he’d say, “You, me, and Marcus are going to stick together.” But he was gone. I was the Big Sibling now. I should be there for Marcus, and I felt a terrible amount of responsibility.

All these emotions rose and fell in my mind like an angry sea. Then, the bedroom door opened like a crack of lightning over the water: the Storm was coming

Mom exited first, puffy-eyed, and went into Marcus’s room. I could hear her counseling him. “Everything’s going to be alright. Daddy and I are just having some problems, okay?”

Dad entered my room and sat solemnly on my bed.

“Anna…” he began. I knew it couldn’t be easy to tell your child that everything was falling apart. In that pause I wished my hardest that I had imagined what I’d heard or that it was not their marriage they had been discussing. “Your mother and I are getting a divorce.” The truth I had known all along chilled and numbed me. He went on to tell me “comforting” things. He told me about how It’s not because of you Anna and I know how you must be feeling, honey. I wasn’t listening.

Finally Dad’s speech was over. He closed with one last comment. “Don’t tell your little brother.”

In that moment, I realized that I had become the mortar between the bricks of this family. The Secret Keeper. I felt stretched like jam scraped over to much bread. It was too much. But did I tell him that?

No. I kept quiet.

So, on that sad February evening, I became a bottle of glue. Desperately holding together the seams of normalcy that were so near to breaking. All for the sake of my poor, annoying, fragile, little brother.