When my brother died, I gave up my own future to raise his five-year-old twin sons. For thirteen years, I loved them like my own children. On their eighteenth birthday, after the last guest left, they handed me a legal document that turned my entire world upside down.
Morning light spilled across my kitchen counter as I arranged eighteen candles on the chocolate cake I had baked at dawn.
Thirteen years had passed since my brother died.
Somehow I had carried his two terrified five-year-olds all the way to this day.
