Daphne’s POV
I've been putting this conversation off for weeks. Three weeks, two days, if I'm counting—and I am, because avoidance requires precise accounting of exactly how long you can maintain a lie before it collapses under its own weight.
I invented excuses. Told myself they were too young to understand, told myself we needed to wait until after the next appointment, until we had better news, until the odds shifted in our favor.
Told myself I was protecting them from worry they didn't need to carry.
But my belly is too obvious now—twenty-four weeks, round and undeniable beneath every shirt I own.
Yesterday, Nina asked if I'd eaten too much pasta at dinner. Lisa counted how many times I touched my stomach during breakfast—seventeen, apparently, though I hadn't noticed I was doing it at all.
The lie window has closed. We're out of time.
Xander and I sit the twins down after breakfast, the dishes still in the sink, the morning light streaming through the living room windows in ways that feel too cheerful for what we're about to do.
He settles beside me on the couch, his thigh pressed against mine, anchoring me. His hand finds mine between our bodies, fingers threading together, holding on.
"Nina, Lisa." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Come sit with us. We need to talk about something important."
The girls climb onto the cushions across from us. Nina bounces slightly, her legs swinging, unable to keep completely still even for serious conversations.
Lisa settles with perfect stillness, her dark eyes watching us with the kind of attention that always makes me feel like she's cataloging every micro-expression, every hesitation, filing it away for later analysis.
God, they're beautiful. Both of them. Nina with her wild enthusiasm and questions that never end.
Lisa with her careful observation and need to count, to measure, to make sense of a world that often doesn't make sense.
I try to make my voice sound happy, normal. The way you're supposed to sound when announcing a pregnancy, when telling your children they're going to be big sisters.
"You're going to have a baby sister. That's why Mommy's belly is getting bigger. There's a baby growing inside."
Nina explodes immediately, exactly as predicted. "A sister?! A real baby sister?!"
She bounces harder, nearly falling off the couch in her excitement.
"When is she coming? What are we going to name her? Can she sleep in our room? Will she like dragons? Because I can teach her about dragons. Lisa can teach her to count. When, Mommy? When will she come?"
I open my mouth to answer, but Lisa's voice cuts through Nina's excitement with surgical precision.
"Why do you cry so much if babies are supposed to be happy things?"
The question lands like a physical blow. My breath catches in my throat.
The air leaves the room, sucked out by five words from my five-year-old daughter who sees everything, misses nothing, counts the tears I thought I'd hidden.
I exchange a look with Xander—his face has gone pale. We thought we'd been hiding it better, thought the closed bedroom doors and whispered conversations and tears saved for late nights were enough. Thought we were protecting them from the weight we're carrying.
We were wrong.
Xander's hand squeezes mine, then releases. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, making himself level with the girls. His voice is gentle when he speaks, gentler than I've heard it in weeks.
"The baby might be sick when she's born."
Each word is carefully chosen, stripped of medical jargon, simplified into truth a child can hold.
"The doctors are worried about her heart. It's not growing the way it should. So we're hoping very hard that she'll be okay, that the doctors will be able to help her when she arrives."
Nina's face crumples. I watch it happen in real time—the excitement draining away like water through a sieve, replaced by something too adult for a five-year-old to wear.
Understanding that sometimes wanting something with your whole heart isn't enough. That hope and reality don't always align.
"But... but what if the doctors can't help?" Her voice is small now, scared. "What if she doesn't get better?"
"Then we'll love her anyway." The words come from somewhere deeper than thought. "For however long we have her, we'll love her with everything we've got."
Nina nods, but tears are tracking down her cheeks now, and I want to reach for her but I can't move, only watch my daughter's innocence crack under the weight of reality.
Lisa's response is somehow worse.
"Hope isn't a strategy." Her voice is flat, matter-of-fact, stating an observation rather than making an accusation.
"Daddy always says you make decisions with data, not wishes. You told Harrison that during the conference call last week, I heard you."
The words echo Xander's own business philosophy back at him with perfect five-year-old clarity.
I watch my husband freeze, watch the color drain completely from his face, watch him realize that our daughter has been absorbing everything.
Not just the tears and the tension, but his language, his stress, his fear disguised as pragmatism.
"Lisa..." His voice cracks on her name.
"You said hope without planning is just wishful thinking." She's not done, her small face serious, her fingers still counting something I can't see.
"You said it to Archie. And to Grandma Eleanor. You said we plan for outcomes we can control."
"Baby…" I try to interrupt, but she keeps going.
"So what's the plan? What outcomes can we control? Because if the doctors are worried, that means the data isn't good. Right?"
The silence that follows is crushing. Nina is crying openly now, and Lisa is staring at us with eyes that hold too much understanding, and Xander looks like he's been gutted, and I'm sitting here realizing we've been protecting the twins from nothing.
They've been watching, counting, cataloging every tear and tense conversation. My five-year-olds understand exactly how fragile their sister's life is.
They've been living with this knowledge right alongside us, carrying weight we didn't give them permission to carry, processing fear we thought we'd hidden.
They just wanted their parents to trust them enough to say it out loud.
I open my arms. "Come here. Both of you."
They come. Nina scrambles across the coffee table, Lisa moves more carefully, but they both end up pressed against my sides, small bodies tucking into spaces that feel designed to hold them.
Xander shifts closer, wrapping his arms around all of us, creating a circle of bodies, of family, of love that's supposed to be strong enough to weather anything.
"You're right," I tell Lisa, my voice breaking. "Hope isn't a strategy. But it's what we have right now. Hope and love and doctors who are very good at their jobs. And yes, the data isn't perfect. Yes, we're scared. But we're also fighting for her. Every day, every appointment, every choice we make."
"Is she going to die?" Nina's voice is muffled against my side, but the question is clear.
‘God, how do you answer that?’ How do you tell your child that you don't know, that forty percent says maybe, that hope and statistics wage war in your head every single moment?
"We don't know." Xander's voice is rough. "We're doing everything we can to make sure she doesn't. But we can't promise. And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry we can't promise that."
Lisa pulls back slightly, looking up at me with those too-old eyes. "What's her name?"
"Hope." The word comes out before I can stop it. "We're calling her Hope."
"That's ironic," Lisa says quietly. "Naming her after something that isn't a strategy."
Despite everything, I laugh. It's half sob, but it's also real laughter. "Yeah, baby. It really is."
We sit there together, tangled on the couch, morning light painting everything gold. The conversation we've been dreading is over. The truth is out.
Our daughters know their baby sister might die, understand that wanting her to live isn't enough, carry the same fear we've been trying to shield them from.
But they're still here, still choosing to love her, even knowing they might lose her.
Just like us.