He first got arrested at 16, for bringing meth to school. Brian was in and out, too, between stints in juvenile detention facilities and drug rehabs across the country. “My family unit is like, ‘If you’re blood, you’re family, and if you’re family, anyone can live in this house,’” Rachael says. Home, by contrast, was chaos: a revolving door of half-siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles.

Her older brother, Brian, was at Pelican Bay State Prison, doing time for residential burglary and manufacturing weapons-crimes he committed, in part, to feed his heroin addiction. Her father, Jim, was already asleep, to be up at 5 a.m. Rachael’s mother, Denise, was nearing the end of her shift at Jack’s Bar & Grill, the steakhouse in town where she’d waited tables for 22 years. With recurring injuries came recurring opioid prescriptions. Rachael, meanwhile, spent her days in physical rehab, her nights in a fog of painkillers. Her twin sister, Megan, had been drafted by the Chicago Red Stars, in the Women’s Professional Soccer league, and was living large more than 2,000 miles away. She was at her parents’ home in Redding, California, recovering from yet another surgery. As the sweet, nutty fragrance of bananas Foster filled the kitchen, Rachael’s loneliness began to melt away. Rachael added cinnamon, brown sugar, and brandy, stirring the mixture slowly over low heat. The pat morphed into a puddle and began to bubble. She sliced a banana in half, placed a pint of vanilla ice cream on the counter to thaw, and scooped a pat of butter into a saute pan. Rachael Rapinoe walked into the kitchen and turned on the light.

Megan rapinoe memoir