There was nothing more hauntingly surreal than cradling a newborn baby while watching her mother's casket being lowered into the ground.

Lydia was inside that casket.

Val flew down from San Francisco for a few days. She held my hand throughout the entire service. I was grateful to have my best friend beside me, but grief still threatened to overwhelm me. Even as I stood there, watching, hurting, barely breathing, my heart couldn't seem to accept the reality that my sister was... gone.

Lydia was my twin.

The two of us had shared everything with each other since the moment we were conceived—even our faces.

Now, she had left me, abandoned me, and gone somewhere I couldn't follow.

For the past two weeks, life passed me by in this way, in this blindingly horrible stupor.

I was in so much pain.

I realized, then, that Gray didn't hold a candle to Lydia in my heart.

I blamed him partially for her death, for getting her pregnant in the first place. Maybe I was being unreasonable and spiteful. I couldn't say for sure. I simply didn't have the luxury to fully process my innermost thoughts and emotions about this fucked up situation.

Shit needed to get done.

Stevie no longer had a mother to fight for her.

She only had an aunt now.

I needed to be strong for Stevie.

Thus, I couldn't break as doctors and nurses and hospital admin and health insurance reps and the funeral home hounded me night and day to make decisions and pay bills and review and sign document after document—

I couldn't break as I stayed up all night with Little Stevie in my arms because she needed her bottle every two hours with diaper changes in between—

I couldn't break as I called up Gray to tell him about Lydia's passing and convince him to let me adopt their child—

✦

Gray's voice cracked on the line.

"How... could this have happened? I thought... her prenatal visits... showed that mom and baby were... healthy?"

When I responded, my voice sounded cold, distant, and clinical even to me.

"Lydia developed a pulmonary embolism after her C-section. They couldn't save her in time."

I could sense the rising panic in Gray's demeanor.

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. What about the baby? Who's gonna take care of the baby until I can come back?"

"I want to legally adopt her, Gray, and I need your permission to do it."

"What the fuck?"

He sounded completely and utterly shocked.

My heart hardened against him.

"She's all I have left of Lydia, okay? Don't you dare take her away from me, too."

✦

After we hung up on the phone, Gray agreed to let me proceed with the adoption process. We would figure out how to co-parent Stevie together once his deployment ended.

This was good news.

I should've been elated. Yet, an air of defeat clung to me like a dark cloud.

I felt so broken.

I felt like crying.

But I didn't.

I couldn't break because I needed to hold everything together for my family.

My parents were falling to pieces around me.

I couldn't blame them.

Lydia had always been their favorite, after all.

She had been mine, too.