And still, who said she could not feel guilty?
The question rose quietly, stubbornly, because she had felt it. Every day. Every time she thought about the daughter she had lost. If she had been stronger. If she had been more careful. If she had known. Could she have changed it? Could she have given birth to a living child?
The question had no answer. Only repetition. Only the endless loop of what if.
And for Cooper, the one who had lived, she had disappeared. Not all at once. Not in a single moment. But slowly, gradually, grief had hollowed her out until there was nothing left to give, nothing left to hold, nothing left to offer a child who needed more than a shadow. So others had stepped in. Maya. Ethan. They had carried what she could not. They had raised what she had abandoned, not by choice, but by collapse. And she had remained on the outside of her own life, watching, existing, but never fully present.
Her throat tightened again, holding everything in place.
