I was ten years old when I found out Mom was pregnant with Maxine. We were still living in the apartment on Comox Street. Mom and Dad were forty. They made a point of saying the pregnancy was not an accident but a pleasant surprise.

I was not amused. I had a good life as an only child. But then, in a weirdly awesome bit of synchronicity, Rachel’s mom got pregnant, too. The babies were due about three months apart. Rachel and I were crafting fiends, and we realized that the crafting possibilities for newborns were endless. We knit blueberry caps and made sock monkeys and sewed soft fleece blankets. Suddenly we couldn’t wait for our siblings to arrive so we could play dress-up.

Maxine Ella was born first. Because Dad got to choose my first name, Mom got to choose hers, and Maxine was as close as she could get to the name Max, from her favorite children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are. Dad chose Ella, after Ella Fitzgerald.

Rachel’s brother Owen was born shortly afterward. We were fiercely proud of being big sisters. Yes, we enjoyed dressing them up. But it went much further and deeper than that.

When she wasn’t screaming like a banshee, Maxine was the sweetest, happiest little girl. Her favorite book was, no surprise, Where the Wild Things Are. She thought it had been written just for her. So, for Maxine’s third birthday, Rachel suggested we make her her very own wolf suit.

We picked out a soft, fawn-colored wool. I knit the suit and the hood, with its two pointy ears. Rachel sewed a soft fleecy lining. I hand-sewed brown buttons down the front.

Max loved that suit. She wanted to wear it all the time. When Mom or Dad insisted that she take it off, she would drag the suit around, like a blanket. She even slept with it, sucking on the fabric like it was a pacifier.

On November eighteenth, just over two years ago, Mom and Dad went shopping. I stayed home with Maxine. Rachel was going to come over with Owen, but she called to say he had a fever.

Max was in a rotten mood. She’d woken at five that morning, and by one o’clock she was overtired and miserable. I told her it was time for her nap.

She threw a tantrum. I put her in her room anyway. I could hear her screams from the kitchen, where I was trying to do homework. After a while she calmed down. I walked past her room at one point and heard her talking to herself, playing happily.

Then it got really quiet. I figured she’d fallen asleep.

My parents came home a while later. Dad went into Maxine’s room to wake her up.

I still have nightmares about his screams.

Maxine had been using the wolf suit as a blanket. She’d been sucking on one of the buttons, and the button came loose. It lodged in her throat.

She couldn’t breathe.

Everyone said it wasn’t my fault. Everyone said it was no one’s fault; it was just a random, horrible accident.

My head tries to believe it, but my heart can’t.

I learned some lessons that day:

1) Life is not fair.

2) Tragedy can strike when you least expect it.

3) Always expect the worst. That way, you might stand a chance of protecting yourself and the ones you love.