I can’t have children.
Not “it might happen someday.”
Not “just keep trying.”
Just… I can’t.
There’s a particular kind of silence that settles into your life after a doctor says those words. It isn’t loud or dramatic. It’s quiet. It’s walking past the baby section in a store and pretending you don’t see it. It’s deleting the ovulation apps. It’s stopping yourself from saying, “when we have kids,” and replacing it with “if,” and then eventually with nothing at all.
My husband, Julian, tried to be hopeful for both of us in the beginning. After the third failed round of treatment, he squeezed my hand in the fertility clinic parking lot and said, “We still have each other. That’s enough.”
I nodded. I even believed him. Mostly.
So when my younger sister, Skye, called me one evening, her voice trembling with excitement, and said, “I’m pregnant,” I felt two emotions collide inside me: grief and joy. And joy won.
I threw myself into her pregnancy as if it were a second chance at something I had lost.
I planned the gender reveal party down to the color of the confetti cannons. I ordered custom cupcakes dusted with edible gold. When she found out she was having a boy, I cried harder than she did.
I bought the crib, the stroller, and the car seat. I picked out soft, neutral nursery paint and helped her tape off the walls. One afternoon, I stood in the baby aisle holding a pair of tiny duck-print pajamas and had to blink back tears before walking to the register.
She hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe. “You’re going to be the best aunt ever, Aria,” she whispered into my shoulder.
I wanted that to be true more than almost anything.
Skye and I had always been complicated.
Growing up, she had a way of bending reality. The lies were small at first. She claimed she had done homework she hadn’t touched. She insisted someone else had broken a lamp she had knocked over. As we got older, the lies became smoother and more strategic. She was fragile when confronted, always on the verge of tears, always somehow the victim.
But I thought a baby would steady her. I thought it would give her something solid, something bigger than her need for attention.
When her son was born, I was at the hospital within an hour.
His name was Max.
He was tiny and red and perfect. Skye stared at him like he was a miracle she had single-handedly delivered into the world.
“Can I hold him?” I asked softly, my heart pounding.
Her arms tightened around him. Her eyes flicked toward my hands.
“Not yet,” she said quickly. “It’s RSV season.”
“I washed,” I said gently. “I can sanitize again.”
“I know. Just… not yet.”
Julian stood behind me and rested a calming hand on my shoulder. “We can wait,” he murmured.
So I waited.
The next time I visited, Max was sleeping.
The time after that, he had just eaten.
I offered to wear a mask. I wore one anyway. I sanitized as if I were preparing for surgery. I brought home-cooked meals. I dropped off diapers, wipes, and formula. I ran errands so she wouldn’t have to take him out.
Three weeks passed.
I had not held my nephew once.
Then one afternoon, I was scrolling mindlessly through social media when I saw a photo that made my stomach drop.
Our cousin Harper was sitting on Skye’s couch, smiling as she cradled Max against her chest. No mask. No hovering. No anxious caption about viruses.
Just baby cuddles.
I had to sit down.
The next day, our mom called, cheerful as ever.
“He’s such a good snuggler,” she said. “He fell asleep on me right away.”
I went very still. “You held him?”
“Well, of course. Skye needed a shower.”
I swallowed. “So everyone’s holding him. Except me.”
There was a pause. “Honey, your sister’s just anxious.”
Anxious with me. Not with anyone else.
I texted Skye.
Why am I the only one you won’t let hold Max?
Her response came quickly.
Don’t start. I’m protecting him.
From me?
You’re around people. It’s different.
I worked from home. I barely left the house. The excuse made no sense.
I stared at my phone, my chest filling with something thick and bitter.
I’m coming by tomorrow. I’m holding him.
Don’t threaten me.
It’s not a threat. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to hold him if you want me in his life?
She left me on read.
The following Thursday, I drove over without texting first.
Her car was in the driveway. I knocked. No answer.
I knocked again.
Still nothing.
Without thinking, I tried the doorknob.
It was unlocked.
The house smelled like baby lotion and laundry that never quite gets folded. I heard the shower running upstairs.
Then I heard Max.
It wasn’t a fussy cry or an irritated whimper. It was a desperate, sharp newborn scream that scraped at something primal in my chest.
“Max?” I called, already moving.
He was alone in his bassinet in the living room, his face flushed purple, fists clenched, crying as if he had been left too long.
I scooped him up instinctively. The second his body pressed against my chest, his cries fractured into hiccups. His tiny fingers clutched my shirt.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered, tears burning behind my eyes. “I’ve got you.”
That’s when I saw it.
A small Band-Aid on his upper thigh.
It wasn’t placed where vaccines are usually given. It didn’t look fresh or medical.
It looked like it was hiding something.
The corner was peeling. Without fully thinking, I lifted it.
My world tilted.
Underneath wasn’t a wound.
It was a birthmark.
Dark. Crescent-shaped.
Identical to the one on Julian’s thigh.
I had traced that mark with my fingers a hundred times over the years.
My hands began to shake.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs.
Skye appeared in the doorway, hair dripping, wrapped in a towel. Her eyes went straight to Max in my arms, then to the lifted Band-Aid.
The color drained from her face.
“Please,” she whispered. “Put him down.”
“What is this?” My voice barely sounded like my own.
“It’s nothing,” she said too quickly.
“It’s not nothing.”
“You weren’t supposed to see it.”
The words hung in the air.
I looked at Max. At the mark. At her.
“Why did you keep me away?” I asked, louder now. “Why me?”
Her hands trembled. “Give him to me.”
I carefully lowered Max back into the bassinet. He made a small, confused sound. She tucked the blanket around him as if she could hide the truth along with his leg.
“I’m leaving,” I said, my heart hammering.
At the door, I turned back. “If you ever leave him screaming like that again, I will call Mom. Or someone else. I don’t care how mad you get.”
“Don’t tell me how to parent,” she snapped, but there was fear behind it.
In my car, my hands shook so badly I could barely start the engine.
I didn’t cry.
I couldn’t.
Because I knew.
Still, knowing and proving are two different things.
When I got home, Julian was in the kitchen, humming as he chopped vegetables.
“How’s the baby?” he asked casually.
“Fine,” I said.
He leaned in to kiss my cheek. I turned my head so his lips brushed the air.
He paused. “You okay?”
“Just tired.”
He studied me for a moment, then shrugged and went back to cooking.
Something in me sharpened.
That night, I didn’t confront him.
I watched.
I noticed how he washed his hands longer than usual when he came home. How he kept his phone face down. How he jumped when it buzzed. How he suddenly had quick errands again, something he hadn’t done in months.
I ordered a DNA test.
Two days later, while he was in the shower, I opened his drawer and pulled strands from his hairbrush. I wrapped them carefully in tissue like evidence.
Because that’s what they were.
The waiting was unbearable.
I played normal. I made dinner. I answered his questions. I smiled when appropriate.
Inside, I was counting down.
The results came in on a Tuesday.
I opened them in my car in a grocery store parking lot. I didn’t want the walls of my house to witness that moment.
Probability of paternity: 99.98%.
The air left my lungs in a sharp, silent rush.
Suddenly everything made sense. The Band-Aid. The panic. The selective paranoia about germs.
That night, I walked into the house and set my keys down carefully.
Julian looked up from the couch. “Hey. What’s for dinner?”
I held out my phone.
His smile faded. “What’s that?”
“I saw the mark under the Band-Aid,” I said calmly. Too calmly. “I know why she wouldn’t let me hold Max.”
His face went gray.
“Aria—”
“Don’t.” My voice cracked for the first time. “How long?”
Silence.
“How long?” I repeated.
His shoulders sagged. “It didn’t mean anything.”
I laughed, a hollow, broken sound. “You don’t get to say that.”
It had been going on for three years. Stolen afternoons. A mistake that kept repeating. They hadn’t planned the baby, he insisted. It just happened.
I made him call her on speaker.
She cried. He cried. They both said it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
But it had.
They had let me throw the baby shower.
Let me buy the crib.
Let me stand there begging to hold a child who was my husband’s son.
They covered a birthmark with a Band-Aid and thought that would be enough.
I filed for divorce the following week.
I cut contact with Skye completely.
The grief came in waves. Not just for my marriage, but for the version of my life I thought I had. For the sister I thought I knew. For the nephew I would likely never see again.
I missed Max in a way that surprised me. He was innocent. He hadn’t asked for any of it.
But staying would have destroyed me.
Months later, sitting in my small new apartment surrounded by half-unpacked boxes, I realized something unexpected.
For years, I had defined myself by what I couldn’t have.
A child.
And in chasing that dream through Skye’s pregnancy and through Max, I had ignored the cracks in my own life.
The betrayal shattered me.
But it also stripped everything down to truth.
I wasn’t the best aunt ever. I wasn’t the supportive sister holding everything together.
I was a woman who deserved honesty.
And I was finally free to rebuild a life that didn’t revolve around someone else’s secrets.
Sometimes, late at night, I still think about Max. I hope he’s loved. I hope he’s safe. I hope no one ever makes him feel like a mistake.
As for Skye and Julian, they made their choices.
I made mine.
And for the first time in years, my future feels like something that belongs to me.
