When my mother died, I didn’t just lose a parent. I inherited a life I hadn’t planned for—and two fragile hearts that suddenly depended on mine.
Six months earlier, I was a 25-year-old structural engineer with spreadsheets, deadlines, and a future neatly arranged. A wedding was coming. A honeymoon in Maui was half-paid. Jenna, my fiancée, had started talking about baby names and paint colors for a nursery that didn’t exist yet. Life was messy, yes—but manageable.
Then my mother, Naomi, was killed in a car accident while buying birthday candles for my ten-year-old twin sisters, Lily and Maya. Overnight, everything familiar vanished.
I went from brother to guardian. From designing foundations to being one. The wedding stalled. The registry vanished. I moved back into my mother’s house, leaving my routines, my apartment, and the illusion that adulthood comes with a manual.
Jenna seemed perfect at first. Two weeks after the funeral, she was cooking, braiding hair, finding lullabies online. Maya scribbled her name as an emergency contact, and Jenna cried with joy. I thought I’d found grace in human form.
I didn’t know I was watching a performance.
Then came the day I arrived home early. The house smelled like cinnamon and glue. I heard her voice, sharp and low:
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