Nostalgia
As the fourth child in the Hamilton family, Francis had always hated being the baby until Lenny came along, and then still regarded as the youngest for the eight years that Lenny remained in the box. Being the youngest Hamilton and the smallest male meant that he got more than his fair share of hand-me-downs, that he got stricter rules due to his siblings' mistakes and bad behavior, that he got less TV time, earlier bed times, and less of an allowance. Because David was the oldest and the most "responsible," he thought he knew better than Francis in everything Francis ever said or did. He was often allowed to be in charge and tell him what to do, and Francis could tell even when he was young that David took this task very, very seriously from the way he corrected and lectured him over anything he could think to. Sharing a room with David meant that he got fussed at every day for not being neat enough for David's exacting preference, and David snored and talked in his sleep.
But nothing David could have done to anger or annoy him came anywhere close to matching the twins. Francis's brother Wendell and Wendell's twin Darlene seemed to make it their goal in life to make David as miserable as they possibly could, and they delighted in the fact that they were bigger, stronger, and older than he was, taking advantage of it every moment that was possible. Francis's homework and toys often went mysteriously missing, turning up again with missing heads or buried under piles of snotty tissues in the trashcan. Wendell took pleasure in hitting, knocking, and throwing him around so often that Francis almost always remained bruised. Darlene was more subtle in her torment, preferring to lie in such a way as to get Francis in trouble or to make him upset enough to cry, and on more occasions than Francis could remember she had locked him into the basement or any closet she could manage, just so she could stand on the other side and listen to him scream. At the time of his childhood, it had seemed to Francis that there was nothing good about being the youngest at all, and he had hated his brothers and his sisters more often than not.
But now that his parents are gone, and everything in their lives is left for them to figure out alone, as miserable and angry as his siblings still make him, Francis can't bring himself to hate them anymore, no matter what they do or how ruthlessly they exploit their power over him. His siblings are all he has left, and when he thinks back to their childhood now, what he remembers is the times their parents had made them sing together in the car, how they had all sat together, excited, exchanging smiles instead of punches, on Christmas mornings. He remembers how on Monday mornings his mom would make them all sit down together and talk about what they would do to have a good week, how all of them had squirmed and sighed and rolled their eyes, but how it had made Francis feel as he left for school with them like maybe they would come true, just because they had talked about it. He remembered playing in the sprinklers on summer afternoons, playing board games on rainy days, and even knowing that the twins had always cheated, that the games always ended with them fighting with David when David noticed and protested, he couldn't help but think back to all of it with a sense of loss.
It was bad enough that they all had to grow up, something that David and the twins had always seemed so impatient and eager to get to, that Francis had always thought of with foreboding and dread. But those memories of their childhood were now tainted with memories too of their parents, always on the outskirts in each, and it was hard to think back to that time without wishing it had never passed.