When I opened my door to my young, pregnant sister-in-law, I thought kindness might help me heal after my stillbirth. Instead, I watched my husband turn our home into her sanctuary and me into a ghost — until one moment made me choose between my sanity and my marriage.
My name is Ruby. I’m 31, and a few months ago I gave birth to a baby who never took a breath.
Thirty-one weeks. My fourth loss.
Whenever anyone asked, I lied and called it a “miscarriage.” As if changing the word made it any less brutal than delivering a silent child and leaving the hospital with empty arms.
There is no language soft enough to cushion that kind of grief. And everything I’m about to tell you is tangled around that emptiness.
My husband, Victor, and I had barely started breathing again when his little sister, Violet, showed up at our door. Twenty-one years old. Eyes swollen, mascara streaked, clutching a duffel bag like a life raft.
“He left,” she whispered. “The second I told Ben I was pregnant, he walked out. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
I hadn’t realized Victor was standing behind me. He didn’t hesitate.
“Of course you do,” he said, pulling her into the house. “You can stay here. You’re family.”
I nodded along, even as my own grief pulsed under my skin. How was I supposed to say no? She was terrified, abandoned, and pregnant. She needed compassion.
At first, it almost felt like fate. We stayed up late watching sitcoms, laughing until we were crying for different reasons. We shared bowls of ice cream with bizarre pregnancy toppings — olives one night, peanut butter the next.
More than once, I held her while she sobbed.
“I don’t know how I’m going to do this alone,” she whispered.
“You’re not alone, Vi,” I promised. “You’ve got me. You’ve got us.”
For a moment, I believed that helping her might help me heal.
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