Tina looked down at her plate and her eyes brimmed with tears. “I…uh…I don’t know how to begin it.” Tina looked into Bette’s eyes seeing compassion and strangely she noticed love as well. She nodded to Bette knowing she would say try from the beginning. “My brother was about 19 the time of his death. I was 17 and very rebellious. I didn’t listen to my parents. I’d go out almost every night and get smashed. Because it was the “cool” thing to do.”

Tina rolled her eyes at the last part. “It was a cold January night and I had been at a party drinking. My brother was also at that party and was completely intoxicated. He had no clue I was just as bad. Well he wanted to go home since he had a job interview the next morning. He had told me to drive his car. Of course, I did not refuse since I had driven home many nights before drunk and never had a problem.”

The tears begun to fall down Tina’s cheeks and dripped off her chin. She wiped them away as if she was wiping away the awful memory. Bette grasped Tina’s hand that had been on the table as if encouraging her to continue and that she was there for her.

“We had to drive through the mountains to get to the other side where our home was. It was so icy due to a storm the night before. We were going around a curve when my back end began to fish tail. I tried to correct it but overcorrected causing us to do an 180^o turn. As it was happening I saw a glimpse of headlights heading straight at us.”

Tina was in full-fledged crying mode. “The car had hit my brother’s side causing us to stop spinning. The force threw our car against the side of the mountain. That’s when I blacked out. I woke up groggy and numb in the hospital. They had told me that I was lucky to be alive. All I had was a broken arm and a concussion, with a couple cuts and bruises. I asked how my brother was. All I could remember was my parents’ faces went from hopeful to sadness by the question I asked. They told me that he was pronounced dead at the scene.”