Eight years after I became my little brother’s guardian, I thought the hardest days were behind us. Then, on his eighteenth birthday, he placed our mother’s old jewelry box in my hands and whispered, “There’s one thing Mom never wanted you to find out.” Suddenly, everything I believed unraveled.
The kitchen light flickered above the sink as I scrubbed the last of the breakfast dishes.
My back ached from another double shift.
Eight years had passed since I’d become Lucas’s guardian, and mornings like this still felt like a small miracle.
My younger brother was safe, fed, and about to graduate from high school.
“You’re going to be late again,” Lucas said from the doorway, holding out my travel mug.
I’d become Lucas’s guardian.
“I know, I know.”
I took the coffee and squeezed his shoulder.
At eighteen, he was taller than me now, but his eyes still held that same softness from when he was ten.
“Aunt called,” he added quietly. “She wants to come to the birthday dinner next week.”
My stomach tightened.
“She wants to come to the birthday dinner next week.”
“Did you tell her yes?”
“I didn’t tell her anything. I wanted to ask you first.”
That was Lucas. Always careful, always considerate.
Unlike our aunt, who had spent the last eight years reminding me of everything I wasn’t.
“She’ll come anyway,” I said. “She always does.”
I remembered the first year after the accident that killed our parents.
“She’ll come anyway,”
She’d showed up at our tiny apartment and looked around like she was inspecting a crime scene.
Lucas had been coloring at the kitchen table, oblivious.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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