Outdoor play.
I did everything I was supposed to do.
But I kept watching them.
Noticing things I shouldn’t have noticed.
The way the shorter one tilted her head when she thought.
The way the taller one pressed her lips together before speaking.
Small habits.
Identical.
Unmistakable.
And then… their eyes.
Both of them.
One blue. One brown.
My hands started shaking.
Because my eyes are like that.
Always have been.
A rare heterochromia so distinct my mother once told me I looked like I had been “assembled from two different skies.”
I locked myself in the bathroom.
Gripped the sink.
Stared at my reflection.
And tried not to fall apart.
Because memories don’t ask permission before they come back.
They invade.
Eighteen hours of labor.
The chaos at the end.
The panic. The emergency.
Then darkness.
And when I woke up…
A doctor I had never seen before stood over me and said both my daughters had died.
I never saw them.
Not once.
I was told my husband, Pete, had handled everything.
The funeral.
The paperwork.
The signatures.
All of it.
