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At my twins’ funeral, my mother-in-law spoke words so cruel the room went completely still.

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My husband, Trevor, stood beside her. He looked emptied out, like someone had scooped him hollow. His jaw was locked tight, brittle with tension, and every time his gaze flicked toward me, it was icy. He wasn’t standing with me. He was standing with her. Guarding his mother’s grief while I stood alone in the frozen wasteland of mine.

But I knew. My body knew. My heart knew. The police said SIDS. Every instinct in me screamed murder. I had no proof—only the emptiness in my womb and the memory of Diane insisting, almost pleading, to keep the twins overnight so I could “get some rest.”

Pastor John began the service. His voice droned on about God’s plan and heaven’s newest angels. Each word felt like a serrated blade scraping across my skin. My four-year-old daughter, Emma, sat beside me, swinging her legs anxiously, tugging at the hem of her stiff black dress. She had stayed at Diane’s house that night too. She was the only one who came back.

Then Diane rose to deliver the eulogy.

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