My sister wouldn’t let me hold her newborn for three weeks, while everyone else got baby cuddles. Then I walked in unannounced, heard Mason screaming alone, and picked him up. The Band-Aid on his thigh was peeling, and the second I lifted the corner, my sister came running, begging me to stop.
I can’t have kids.
Not “maybe someday.” Not “keep trying.”
Just… can’t.
“You’re going to be the best aunt ever.”
After years of infertility, I stopped letting myself picture a nursery. I stopped pausing in the baby aisle. I stopped saying “when.”
So when my little sister got pregnant, I poured everything I had into her. I threw the gender reveal. I bought the crib. The stroller. The tiny duck pajamas that made me tear up in a store aisle like an idiot.
She hugged me so tight I could barely breathe. “You’re going to be the best aunt ever.”
I wanted that to be true more than I wanted almost anything.
I thought a baby would straighten her out.
My sister and I have always been… complicated.
She’s always had a talent for bending reality until it suited her. Little lies as a kid, bigger ones as a teen, and by adulthood, it was just her personality: fragile, dramatic, always the victim, always needing attention.
But I thought a baby would straighten her out.
Then Mason was born.
And everything flipped like a switch.
“Can I hold him?”
At the hospital, I stood next to her bed with flowers and food.
“He’s perfect,” she said, staring at him like he was a miracle.
I smiled, heart pounding. “Can I hold him?”
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