I became an adult the day after I buried my parents. Not because I had turned eighteen—but because someone tried to take away the only family I had left. And I wasn’t going to let that happen.
At eighteen, I never imagined I would be facing the hardest chapter of my life: burying both of my parents while trying to care for my six-year-old brother, Max—who still believed Mommy was just on a long trip.
To make everything even more surreal, the funeral fell on my birthday.
People said, “Happy 18th,” as if it meant something.
It didn’t.
I didn’t want cake. I didn’t want gifts. All I wanted was for Max to stop asking, “When’s Mommy coming back?”
We were still dressed in black when I knelt beside the grave and whispered a promise to him: “I won’t let anyone take you. Ever.”
But not everyone seemed to agree with that promise.
“It’s for the best, Ryan,” Aunt Diane said, her voice wrapped in fake concern as she handed me a mug of cocoa I hadn’t asked for.
A week after the funeral, she and Uncle Gary had invited us over. We sat at their pristine kitchen table while Max quietly played with his dinosaur stickers. Across from me, they watched with matching expressions of pity.
“You’re still a kid,” Diane continued, reaching out to touch my arm like we were close. “You don’t have a job. You’re still in school. Max needs routine, guidance… a home.”
“A real home,” Uncle Gary added, as if they had rehearsed it.
I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood.
These were the same people who had forgotten Max’s birthday three years in a row. The same ones who skipped Thanksgiving for a “cruise.”
And now they suddenly wanted to be parents?