“I want to talk about something,” Joseph said that evening, his thumb still scrolling through movie titles as if he were discussing the weather. “Me and Ashley… we talked. She’s just more equipped for what I want from life.”

More equipped. The words were like a physical blow. Seven years of working overtime to pay for his community college degree. Seven years of putting my body through grueling IVF treatments, of injections and hormones and heartbreak. Everything I had given, everything I had sacrificed, he was tossing into the garbage because my own sister had whispered a few sweet words in his ear.