Even six years later, I still hear his voice sometimes in my nightmares.
Save the baby.
I don’t need her anymore.
Those words never left me.
Not after the funeral.
Not after the sleepless nights.
Not even after Sophie started calling me Mama.
My twin sister Emily was twenty-nine when she died giving birth.
We had shared everything since the day we were born — birthdays, clothes, secrets, heartbreaks, stupid inside jokes nobody else understood.
People always said twins could feel each other’s pain.
Maybe they were right.
Because when Emily died in that delivery room, it honestly felt like someone had ripped half my soul out with her.
And while I stood there barely able to breathe, holding her newborn daughter against my chest, her husband barely cried.
Daniel stood beside Emily’s coffin in a perfectly tailored black suit, shaking hands and accepting condolences like he was attending some corporate networking event instead of burying his wife.
I hated him for that immediately.
But I had no idea yet how much worse he truly was.
The only thing that mattered to me back then was the tiny baby sleeping in my arms.
Sophie.
Emily’s daughter.
The little girl my sister never got to raise.
Daniel disappeared almost immediately after the funeral.
No fight.
No hesitation.
He signed temporary guardianship papers and vanished to another state with a younger woman people whispered about behind closed doors.
At the time, I thought:
