Michelle Horton's 'Dear Sister' offers a look at one sister's fight for her sibling's freedom

Michelle Horton's "Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds" spotlights the devastating and powerful true story of Horton's sister, Nikki Addimando, who in 2019 was convicted of second degree murder in the killing of her partner, Chris Grover, despite photographic evidence documenting years of abuse.

Horton's intimate memoir details how the incarceration upended their family as she took custody of Addimando's children, while advocating for her sister's release.

Addimando's case gained national attention with actress Hilarie Burton advocating for her release, telling ABC News, "Nikki should not move through life as a felon. She's not a felon. She's a criminalized survivor."

Addimando was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 19 years to life in prison. An appellate court later lowered her sentence to seven and a half years.

Grover's mother maintains his innocence. "Everyone is pro-Nikki and no one knows about the truth," she told ABC News.

"I love my grandkids and I get to see my grandkids and I am very grateful for that," she added.

Addimando was released from prison in January after serving nearly five years behind bars.

The sisters now hope to raise awareness around criminalized survivorship and the costs that come with it.

"I thought what I can do is tell the narrative, so that people can feel it from the inside," said Horton.

Read an excerpt from the book below:

***

"Hello, this is a prepaid call from Nicole Addimando, an inmate at Dutchess County Jail. This call is subject to monitoring and recording. To accept charges press 1…"

Nikki was calling. I pressed 1 and put the call on speaker phone, propping up my cell phone at the dining room table, where Ben was intently drawing the Flash in his sketchbook. He briefly looked up through his long eyelashes, his dark, expressive eyebrows crinkled at the sound of the familiar automated voice.

"Mama's calling!" Faye sang from across the room, her eyes brightening. Her hair was growing into longer curls -- matching her bouncy personality. Every day she was looking more like my sister.

Faye climbed onto a chair and perched next to her big brother. Together they watched the phone, waiting to connect, reenacting the daily routine. They knew they'd usually have 15 minutes before another mommy needed the phone to call her babies. They didn't know where their mom lived, we never used the word jail, but they knew she wasn't alone. They could hear the yelling and loud ruckus over the phone.

Sometimes Nikki could talk longer, some days she called more than once. It was an inconsistent connection, a not-enough connection, but it was the only mother-child connection they had.

Most days the three of them took advantage of the short calls, catching up about their day. Ben sent his kindergarten chapter books to Nikki in the mail so they could talk about them. Faye sent photos of her preschool friends so that her mom could know them, too. Nikki would tell them about a new mouse that was living with her, and Faye would excitedly say, "Oh, that's my friend! I sent him to you!" They'd name the mouse, pretending it was a friendly magical messenger rather than what it actually was, one of many rodents in a jail cell eating its way through Nikki's limited stash of food.

Every now and then one of the kids would need "alone time with Mom," which meant taking her off speaker phone and disappearing into a bathroom or closet. She held their secrets, their righteous anger, their unanswerable and consistent question, Mama, when are you coming home?

They knew she couldn't say when, they knew it was being decided by forces bigger than us all, but they asked anyway.

"If I could be anywhere in the world, I'd be right there with you," she told them.

Toward the end of each call, they'd plan where they'd meet in their dreams -- to play in Candy Land, or picnic on the moon, or go back to "the red house," the brick apartment where they'd last lived as a family. Sometimes they'd plan to meet at 560 Together Lane, their future fantasy home, where Ben decided they'd grow a garden and Faye would design a door with plenty of locks to keep them safe. They'd close their eyes and will their dream-selves to find one another.

It was another ordinary conversation that ended with all of us piled on the couch, Nikki on speaker phone in my hand. The call was about to end and Faye could sense it. She slumped her shoulders toward the phone and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Mommy, when I dream, I don't go where we say," she said, as if confessing. "I have nightmares."

The line went quiet for a moment.

Then Nikki said, "Me too. What are your nightmares about?"

"You being taken away," Faye said.

"Yeah, you going away forever," Ben chimed in.

"Me too. I have those dreams, too," Nikki said quietly. "Those are hard dreams."

A silence hung on the phone line. I imagined that the correctional officers monitoring the call could feel the weight. I know I could.

Nikki spoke up, "Here, blow me your bad dreams and I'll hold them for you."

Faye closed her eyes, puffed up her body, and blew straight toward her mom's voice with a determined ferocity, exhaling everything she couldn't bear to hold.

"Sent." Faye nodded confidently and smiled.

"I have them here with me. I'll hold your nightmares," Nikki promised.

I felt Faye's body relax in my arms. "I miss you," she squeaked.

"Oh, I miss you, too, sweet girl, so much. Do you feel that tug on your heart?" Nikki asked, her own voice shrinking.

Faye put her small hand on her heart and closed her eyes. "Yes."

Ben did the same.

"That's our heartstring tugging back and forth. That's the invisible string that connects us."

"You have one minute left," said the robotic voice.

Everyone sighed.

Both kids stretched their arms toward the phone, hands open to catch the kisses they knew she'd blow. Then they sent kisses back in an identical cadence, in a crescendoing melody, mwah-mwah-mwah!! They did this at the end of every phone call, catching and swallowing her kisses, like some kind of emotional nourishment.

"Thank you, babies -- "

Her voice cut off mid-sentence.

I knew that she hung up the phone and cried, knowing that her children would soon be bathed, cuddled, and put to bed by someone else -- by me.

***

Nights were the hardest.

I couldn't continue to spend the time or gas driving Ben and Faye around our neighborhood every night, just to avoid their cries. Cries that were unfixable. Cries that needed to come up and out, and not be stifled by the lull of a car engine.

So I often spent evenings during the early weeks after Nikki's surrender rocking and swaying around in a darkened bedroom, holding toddler-size bodies of raw emotion tucked inside feetsy pajamas, their wet hair pressed against my face. It was as if their baths had washed away their armor, too. I'd hold them while they screamed out into the darkness of their shared bedroom -- I want my ma-ma -- over and over like a beating drum, a primal plea.

I was depleted, yet somehow I still split myself in two, moving between Ben's twin-size bed -- placed in the spot my queen-size mattress used to be -- and Faye's white wooden toddler bed tucked in the corner, a hand-me-down from Noah. And while I comforted the two children screaming, there was another one upstairs, quiet and alone, waiting for me to read him a book.

Noah was about to start fourth grade. He didn't need me to rock him to sleep, like he used to, but our bedtime routine had been the source of some of my most tender and intimate mother-child experiences. We'd read every night, and then he'd ask me to lie down next to him as he drifted off to sleep. It was there, in the safety of the dark, that he could burrow under my arm and ask deep, vulnerable questions: Why are we here? What's the point of being alive? That brief transition from awake to asleep was when the good stuff would spill out -- stories from school, insights into his feelings and fears.

These nights, I sometimes spent hours in Ben and Faye's room -- different arms needed me. And lately I wasn't having sweet conversations or fielding big questions; I was simply enduring piercing screams. There was a sense of panic in the space. I wondered if Ben fought sleep so hard because, one night nine months ago, he had gone to sleep and woken to find his life torn apart. I wondered if his desperation to stay awake was a kind of innate self-protection, to keep everyone where he could see them, alive and well. Ben's cries would trigger Faye's, and it was clear that the only thing they wanted in the entire world was Nikki's physical touch. She was the one they asked for. They never cried for their dad.

By the time Ben and Faye were asleep, I was a shell, hauling myself upstairs to Noah's room. Some nights he was already sleeping. Other times I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to read through a page. Just as the littler ones needed Nikki, Noah needed me. And like Nikki, I was both there and gone -- existing in an in-between, just out of reach.

Excerpted from Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds. Copyright © 2024 by Michelle Horton. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.