I sat there in that hospital bed, holding my niece against my chest, watching my twin brother fall apart in real time in a way I’d genuinely never once seen from him, not even during the actual week our mother died.
“You don’t get to just hand her back to me and walk away, Desmond,” I said, my own voice steadier than I expected it to come out. “Not because I don’t understand the fear. I do understand it, more than almost anyone else in this room could. She was my mother too. I sat in that same hospice room. But Nora isn’t Mom, and a birthmark isn’t a diagnosis, and you have exactly one chance to decide, right now, whether you’re going to let five-year-old grief make a decision for you that you’re going to regret for the rest of your life.”
Desmond looked up at me, his eyes red, something breaking open in his expression that looked less like fear now and more like genuine shame.
“I know,” he said. “I know that, Mara. I think some part of me has known it since the second the words came out of my mouth. I just don’t know how to undo saying it in front of both of you.”
“You undo it,” Renee said, quiet but firm, “by picking her back up. Right now. And by telling her, out loud, even though she can’t understand the words yet, that you’re not going anywhere.”
