But I don’t feel covered. I feel exposed.
Every scream pulls me back to that ICU room. To doctors talking around me like I wasn’t the one losing a universe.
Then Miranda arrives.
Camille’s sister.
She moves through the house like it belongs to her. She wears concern like perfume—heavy, lingering, suffocating.
She says she’s here to help. But she doesn’t ask about feeding schedules or sleep training. She asks about legal guardianship, trust allocations, contingency planning.
“What if you can’t handle this?” she asks gently one afternoon, her fingers resting too long on my arm. “What’s best for the boys?”
When she holds them, her smile never reaches her eyes.
I can’t prove anything. But I feel it: she isn’t circling to protect.
She’s circling to claim.
Then there’s Elena.
Twenty-four. Nursing student. Three part-time jobs stitched into her calendar. She moves quietly. Speaks softly. Never asks for anything except permission to sleep in the nursery so I don’t have to stumble down the hall every hour.
She doesn’t flinch at spit-up or midnight screaming.
She doesn’t perform kindness.
She just works. Steady as a heartbeat.
Miranda hates her instantly.