Seven of us were still eating dessert when my brother excused himself from the table. As I took a bite of ice cream, the friend who sat across from me caught my eye. "What the hell are you going to do about his smoking?" she snapped.

My brother has been smoking since he was 11 and I was 6. I found out one summer afternoon when he walked off the basketball court to ask me a favor. "I forgot to hide my cigarettes," he confided, "and Mom'll be home soon. I can't leave the game now, so could you run home and hide them under the bed?" He added, "There's an ashtray with water in it that needs to go under there, too."

My brother wore his dark hair slicked back and had a smile my mother said you could die for. Before I was big enough to ride a bike, I sat on the bar of his Schwinn and traveled sidesaddle between his strong, skinny arms. My brother taught me how to hold my cards so the faces didn't show, how to add the numbers without moving my lips and not to ask for a hit if I was holding 16 or more. Sometimes when he and his friends dealt the cards, he saved me a place. "She's in the game," he'd say.