Mom.
The floor was cold, unyielding, but I barely felt it. My arms folded around empty air, aching for a weight I hadn’t held in six years. When Caleb and Elijah were born, I had sworn no harm would touch them while I still drew breath. And yet my daughter had been left to bleed in silence. The guilt split me open in ways no blade ever could.
I pressed my forehead to my knees, trembling violently. Images of her bruised body, those raw wrists, her sunken cheeks—all of it merged with a memory I’d buried deep:
I’d searched for her. Gods, I’d searched until my body gave out. Through ruins, smoke, rain-soaked forests while I called her into the dark until my voice shredded to nothing. With newborn twins clutched to my chest, I stumbled barefoot through mud and ash, bleeding from childbirth,
