I didn’t see the text until early this morning; it was sent to me yesterday at 2:27 p.m. There was no message attached, just a photo of a dog I recognized as my sister’s dog, Daphne; Jane sends me a picture of Daphne every few months.

I didn’t realize until yesterday that she wanted me to post the photo on my blog.

She is proud of Daphne, a Pyrenees/Anatolian Shepherd bred to guard livestock. Daphne didn’t pass the toughness test, and that’s how my sister got her. Her new life is watching over Jane in her new home living with friends the way up New York State. I don’t know the address.

Jane is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known and one of the most gentle and vulnerable. I spent years of my young life trying to help her, and the truth is, I never could.

Whenever I watch all these sappy movies about family, my heart sinks a bit when everyone ends happily.

The message is always the same – family is more important than anything else; it is the place you go when no one will take you in and you have no place to go. Every story must end happily, even in the most troubled families, with a dramatic and teary reconciliation.

That is not my family’s story, or I suspect many others.

Family is a painful and insoluble puzzle for many, including Maria and me.

Those people never get their story told. Sad family stories make for a bad box office and poor ratings. In that world, no matter what, the family has to win in the end.

My sister and I were always close and powerfully connected to the witness we bore to one another’s lives and childhoods. We are bound closely together as we are the only ones who witnessed the struggles and pain of the other. We are each other’s memory and truth.

But our relationship is never simple; we often each trigger for the other, so we speak rarely and carefully. I don’t know how to talk to her, and she has the same trouble. But we never give up. We keep trying.

I haven’t seen Jane in years and don’t expect to see her again in my life or hers. She is happy now, safe and content, living with friends who built a room for her and watched over her closely and lovingly.

I was not a part of that move, but when I talked to Jane, I was thrilled to learn how happy and safe she was.

She got to where she needed to be and wanted to be with people who loved her and cared for her.

She deserves every ounce of happiness that she can find, and my only regret is that I could never help her as much as I wanted.

I think we feel that way about each other. Jane was the person I always ran away with, and we always ended up at the same place, my grandmother’s house.

We ran away in protest but never really had any place to go. We never got as far as we wished to go.

Jane and I would whisper to one another in our rooms as we heard the shouts and screams of my parent’s ferocious arguments downstairs.

Jane and I don’t know all that much about each other anymore. She points out that she doesn’t ever read the blog because she doesn’t want to know me “that way,” although I don’t know what that means. She is busy and never calls; sometimes, she texts. But it turns out she does care about the blog, at least for Daphne.

People who want to know nothing about my blog and my writing aren’t going to know me all that well. So the space between us feels wide.

Our most significant trouble is that talking to each other is often just too painful. It just stirs up old things we both are eager to leave behind.

That’s where we are, and that, I think, is where we shall stay.

This is a hard thing to write for me. But it’s essential.

I call Jane every month, and we talk while driving until I get to the market or a doctor’s appointment. We catch up and then hang up. I know she is pleased and proud of her dog Daphne.

When I asked her today why she was texting me photos of Daphne when I never heard from her otherwise, she said she wanted me to put Daphne up on her blog.

The blog is a sacred thing to me; it also connects me to my daughter. It connects me to my sister in different ways. It is a part of me now.

An unbearable but inseparable life binds Jane and me. We will never abandon one another.

Despite our troubles, then and now, we love each other dearly and always will. We both know that.

That is never on the table.

She loves Daphne very much.

So here she is, a beautiful dog who keeps good on my sister, something I could never do.

Hey, Jane.