Life wasn’t easy, but it was legible.
“James, you work too much,” Jenna used to say, handing me another vitamin bottle. “I’m proud of you. I just want you to live a long life with me.”
Then my mother, Naomi, was killed in a car accident while buying birthday candles for my ten-year-old twin sisters, Lily and Maya.
And overnight, everything familiar vanished.
I went from brother to guardian. From designer of foundations to becoming one. The wedding plans stalled. The registry was canceled. I moved back into my mother’s house the same night, leaving behind my apartment, my routines, and the illusion that adulthood is something you finish assembling before responsibility arrives.
Our father had disappeared years earlier, the moment he learned my mother was pregnant with twins. There was no safety net. Just three of us standing in the aftermath of loss. Continue reading…
