15.

The rest of the day goes on without disruption. But the calmness over the group of us as we each take turns cooing over baby Elizabeth and how cute she is, doesn't reach that knot in my stomach.

Though Heidi is being pleasant and making idle conversations with me, making me feel included in their family stories and smiling at me as if she never said any of the stuff from before, I can still feel her.

I can feel her watching me as I change Elizabeth's diaper. I can feel her watching me as Elizabeth sleeps in my arms. I feel her as I feed Elizabeth her bottle and I feel her every time Ben laughs at something I say.

Her eyes on me are like a heavy blanket I can't seem to wriggle free from.

It's suffocating.

Ben may have said to forget what she'd said, and her smile at me may seem to convey that everything is all Gucci now, but I can still hear her words.

I can still see and feel the distrust behind her smiling eyes.

I try to empathize with her. I try putting myself into her position and understand that she is only trying to protect her son and her new granddaughter. I do believe her intentions are true, and I can get where she is coming from.

My sister, my own flesh and blood, is the one who put us all into this new messy situation. Her actions uprooted all of our lives. And despite the love we have for Elizabeth, we all know it was my wreck of a sister who brought us all into this room together.

I'm used to the distrust that comes with being the twin of an addict. My loyalty will always be questioned. It isn't fair, but it's something I've grown to understand.

Knowing how Heidi sees me though, makes it so hard to continue to play nice with her.

When she looks at me she sees trouble. She sees a person who could pose a threat to her son and this baby.

No matter what she says or does now, I already know the truth.

The only reprieve the day holds is Ellie. Ben's grandmother is hilariously funny without even trying or realizing it.

She continues to tell me all sorts of stories.

One about the time she and her brother decided to skip school one day and decided to hide from the bus in a patch of woods behind their family home.

"My brother, he was always into trouble." She'd said. "The whole thing was his idea after all. You'd think I'd have learned not to go along with his shenanigans, but I never did." She'd laughed to herself and I watched Ben and Heidi grin along like this was a story they'd heard dozens of times before.

"I, being the good child, had brought a book to read." She patted my leg as she'd spoken. "But my brother," she'd shaken her head. "He had a magnifying glass to look for bugs. What he hadn't accounted for was how sunny it was that day. He'd accidentally started a small fire with the magnifying glass. My brother wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, you see. So he didn't have the brain cells to think what was going to happen next."

"This doesn't sound good." I'd said, passing a sleeping Elizabeth to Ben to take upstairs to lay down.

"Oh just wait." Ellie shook her head. "The little fire turned into a big one in a matter of minutes. So large in fact that someone called the fire department. The fire was getting dangerously close to our house when the firemen arrived. I ran and hid back at the house, but my brother went out with the men and helped them put the fire out. One of the firemen ended up paying my brother twenty whole dollars for his heroic help with saving the neighborhood, never knowing it was that same idiot kid who had started the whole mess in the first place."

By the time night fell, I felt like I knew this family on such a personal level. Where Ellie had grown up, how her parents were fabulously wealthy in creating one of the first home security companies.

She'd told me how she'd run away to New York for an entire summer convinced she was going to make it onto Broadway before she came to realize her singing was subpar and she had been blessed with two left feet when it came to dancing.

The true story of how she came to meet Harold and how they fell in love and married and started their family.

All kinds of stories of Heidi as a child, which only made it even more difficult for me to look at her and see anything more than just a desperate mother trying to protect her child she'd struggled and fought so hard to have.

The hours had flown by, just me, a bystander to this walk down memory lane for these three people who meant so much to each other.

As the room went quiet finally, the three of us women out of stories to tell, I excused myself to the kitchen to hide the tears brimming my eyes.

I've been standing in this kitchen, slowly petting the cat I still try so hard not to like, staring at the refrigerator door.

It's all so unfair.

But how can I even be mad? How can I be jealous? It's not right for me to feel like this just because they're all so happy. What kind of person does it make me to wallow due to the full lives of others?

"What are you doing?"

I turn, blinking the tears from my blurry vision, as Ben walks into the kitchen.

He's changed into a pair of sweats and a plain black t-shirt, his hair damp from the shower he must have just taken.

"Nothing." I say. It's not entirely untrue. I am, in fact, doing nothing.

"Ok." Ben runs a hand through his wet hair and comes over to me, pulling out a stool beside me and motioning for me to sit in it. Reluctantly, I do. "Why are you doing nothing?" He asks, then looks at me harder. "And why is your face like that?"

I glance up at him. "Like what?" I ask, trying my hardest to school my expression into one of happiness.

"Don't do that." Ben crosses his long arms over his chest and looks down on me even harder, his brows furrowing over his eyes full of concern. My fake bravado fails and my shoulders slump forward. "Did she say something?" Ben demands. "I knew I shouldn't have left y'all alone, but it seemed like you were all getting—."

"—No." I cut him off. "It wasn't anything like that." I shake my head, avoiding his eyes. "Everything is fine, I swear."

"I don't like it when you do that."

"Do what?"

"Hide what you're actually thinking when I can see in your eyes that something is bothering you."

I peer up at him under my lashes and immediately regret doing it.

He can.

He can one hundred percent read my face and how I'm feeling and I don't know how that makes me feel at all.

"I'm just a little sad." I finally admit after a few seconds, looking away.

Ben leans in, resting his elbows on the counter in front of us. "Tell me why." He says and I shrug. "Hayden, you're never at a loss for words, and you aren't afraid to say what you're thinking. You're only afraid of everything else." He jokes, knocking a shoulder into mine. "What's going on in there." He sits up to poke the side of my head.

"It sounds selfish." I say, still looking away, watching as Fancy jumps off of the counter and leaves the room, her little bell tinking as she goes.

"I don't think you have a selfish bone in your body, Hayden."

"Everyone does." I disagree. "No one person can truly be selfless. We all have our flaws and envies and selfish thoughts or motives at some point or another." I say. "I mean, look at me," I lean over to lay my head down on the counter. "Sitting in here feeling sorry for myself because you have such an amazing family."

"Ah." Ben says. "You're missing your parents." It's not a question, but an understanding.

"It's just hard, you know?" I say into the counter. "Being around people with their families and seeing them share all these stories and being so happy together when I don't have that." Once I start talking, I find it hard to stop. Finding some sort of solace spilling my inward thoughts into the countertop. "Like, I'm never going to have this. There won't ever be a moment for me where I get to introduce anyone to my parents. I won't get to hear them tell anyone about what I was like as a kid. I don't get to hear them talk about their lives when they were young or how they fell in love. I was too young to ask about stuff like that, and now they're gone, and so is everyone else, and I don't get to know anything new or funny about them. Their stories just ended and I'm still here." I don't realize I'm crying until a sob shakes my shoulders. "I won't get to introduce them to my own kid. If I have a baby of my own, they'll never know their grandparents. I'll never get to see their faces the first time they hold them. I won't have a mom to go wedding dress shopping with or a dad to walk me down any aisle or...or...or anything."

Ben pulls me up from the counter and turns my stool to face him. He looks down at my tear and snot streaked face and he reaches out to put his hands on either side of my face.

"Hayden." He whispers my name and it makes my whole body stiffen.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I don't know where all of that came from. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." He says just as gently as he'd said my name. "That all makes sense. Of course you'd have big feelings about all of that. It's not selfish to miss what you never got to have." He surprises me by taking my hand and placing it on the center of his chest, his firm heartbeat thrumming beneath my palm. "My heart breaks for what you lost." He says to me, watching the tears leak from my eyes. "But I can say this with outmost confidence, Hayden. Your parents would be so proud of who you are. So fucking proud."

I stand up and collapse into his arms, letting him hold me together.

I don't think I've ever felt more seen than I do right here and right now. Not even with my friends who know me on such a deep and personal level. I've let them hold me while I cry so many times over the years. They've seen me in every phase of my life and I've still never felt this level of comfort as I do in Ben's embrace.

And it scares the living shit out of me.

I pull back quickly, wiping the tears from my eyes and I leave the kitchen, making a hasty exit up the stairs and into the bathroom.

I lock the door behind me and stare at my reflection in the mirror over the sink.

My eyes are red rimmed and puffy, and the tip of my nose is bright Rudolph red. Mascara streaks my cheeks and as I look at myself right now, I see the girl the day she lost everything.

How can so many years have gone by, and when I look into the mirror and see the heartbreak on my face, I still look the exact same as the night I returned to a hotel room all alone after leaving a police station.

No matter how many people I have around me, this feeling of utter aloneness, will never seem to fade.

I wash my face with warm water and then turn to busy my hands with collecting all of my things I'd left in the bathroom earlier before I quietly exit to find my other things.

I stuff everything into my suitcase and zip it closed.

I leave the suitcase in the hallway and creep into Elizabeth's room.

I stand over her crib and look down at her tiny little body, wrapped in a fluffy pink onesie as she dreams.

Her tiny chest rises and falls and her pink lips are parted in a little O shape. I've never loved anyone as much as I love this child. This little girl who didn't ask to be brought into this cold world, and who was given every obstacle just to make it. This tiny fighter who holds my whole entire heart in the palm of her impossibly small warm hands.

The thought of leaving her behind feels like leaving an entire piece of me, my own heart, in this place while my body goes on to live somewhere else.

But I can't stay.

I don't belong here.

This isn't my family.

This isn't my home.

These people here are not mine.

Maybe Heidi is right about me.

Maybe I am dangerous.

Because the truth is, I don't want to leave. I don't want to loose Elizabeth. I don't want to miss a single moment of her life.

But she is not mine.

She is Ben's and Alice's.

Alice isn't here, but that doesn't mean I can just step into my twin's place and take over.

I'm a mess.

I'm no better for Elizabeth or for Ben than Alice is.

She and I, my twin and me, are not so different at our cores.

We both always leave.

What do I even have to offer here? Like Heidi pointed out, I don't make any money. I can't even live on my own. I hardly can care for myself. I'm always the problem everyone else in my life has to step up to manage.

I came here to make sure that my niece would be taken care of, and I've done that. My job is done. I hold no further purpose imposing on the lives of these people.

I have to step back and let them figure out what life looks like for them now.

I take one last long glance at my sleeping niece and then I turn and leave the room, grabbing my bag on my way down the stairs.

When I stop at the front door, Ben and Heidi both look up at me.

I swear I see a grin tugging at the corners of her lips.

But not Ben's.

He jumps from his spot on the couch next to his mother and rushes over to me.

"Woah, what are you doing?" He asks me, reaching out to take my bag but I pull it back.

"I've got to go." I tell him, avoiding looking into those brown eyes.

"Go?" Ben asks, confused. "Go where?"

"Your mom is here now and can help you out with whatever you need." I say. "Besides, there isn't enough room for us to all be staying here now."

"Yeah, but I mean, we could make it work." Ben rushes to say, though I'm not sure what his plan would be?

"It's fine." I say, shrugging it off. "I don't want to inconvenience anyone."

"You're not an inconvenience, Hayden." He argues, reaching out to touch my shoulder. "You don't have to leave right now," he says, then lower. "I don't want you to go."

I take the risk of looking into his eyes and I see it.

I see exactly what I don't want to see.

Those feelings his mom was talking about before....they're right there on his face.

"Hey," I nudge his shoulder playfully. "It's all good. I don't mind at all." I tell him. "I'll text you, ok?" I say, but I don't wait for his response.

I turn on my heel and leave, closing the door behind me.

I pull out my phone and text my friends.

Hayden: I'm coming home