PART 3

“Diane said you wanted to talk to us.”

“About Brenda?”

“Yes.”

“She told me you had experience and could give us advice.”

Carol went quiet.

Then she said,

“That’s not what Diane asked me.”

My chest tightened.

“What did she ask?”

Carol hesitated.

“She asked whether my husband and I would ever consider raising another child.”

I couldn’t speak.

Carol quickly explained that she initially thought Diane was asking hypothetically.

Then Diane had suggested that Daniel and I might eventually decide we couldn’t handle everything Brenda needed.

Suddenly, everything fit together.

Diane hadn’t simply been worrying about our future.

She had already begun imagining a future where we gave up.

That evening, Daniel called his mother and asked her to come over.

When she arrived, I placed my phone on the table.

“I spoke to Carol.”

Her expression changed immediately.

Daniel saw it.

“Mom, what did you do?”

Diane sat down.

“I was trying to prepare options.”

“Options for what?”

“For when this became too much.”

I stared at her.

“You asked another family whether they would raise Brenda?”

“I asked a question.”

“And then you started waking Brenda at night.”

Diane became defensive.

“Because neither of you was being realistic!”

“Realistic about what?”

“Your life! You already have Ben. He had seven years with you. Now everything revolves around appointments and specialists and therapy—”

I interrupted.

“So you deliberately created harder nights because you wanted us to believe we couldn’t manage?”

“I needed you to understand how difficult this could become.”

“You manufactured the difficulty.”

“Because you weren’t listening!”

Then a small voice came from the doorway.

“But we wanted Brenda.”

Everyone turned.

Ben stood there in his dinosaur pajamas.

Diane fell silent.

He looked directly at his grandmother.

“You keep saying everything changed.”

Nobody answered.

Then Ben repeated,

“But we wanted her.”

Daniel walked to the front door and opened it.

“Mom, you need to leave.”

Diane began crying.

“I was protecting you.”

Daniel shook his head.

“No. Ben was protecting Brenda from you.”

After she left, I sat beside Ben on the stairs.

“I’m sorry.”

He looked confused.

“For what?”

“For not realizing why you kept sleeping beside Brenda.”

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he said something I’ll never forget.

“Grandma’s an adult. I thought adults know what’s right.”

I pulled him close.

“Adults can be wrong too. And if any adult ever tells you to keep something secret because telling me might upset me, you tell me anyway.”

“Even if you get mad?”

“Especially then.”

Almost a year later, Brenda celebrated her first birthday.

Ben no longer slept beneath her crib.

He didn’t need to be her guard anymore.

He could simply be her big brother.

While we were preparing Brenda’s cake, my sister asked him what he had wished for back when I was pregnant.

Ben grinned at Brenda.

“I already got it.”

A moment later, Brenda grabbed a fistful of frosting and smeared it across his shirt.

Ben stared down at the mess.

Then he dipped one finger into the cake and gently dabbed frosting onto his sister’s nose.

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe I should’ve been more specific.”