Nobody had ever stopped to ask Joanna whether she wanted to take on the crushing weight of that responsibility.

Their mother, Dorothy, simply said the family needed to support one another through hard times, while their father, George, murmured that Denise just needed a little time to find herself.

That vague promise of “time” had quietly stretched into nineteen grueling years.

Joanna had been twenty-two, holding a prestigious scholarship to study social work at a university one state over, her whole future finally starting to bloom.

That fateful night, she’d tucked her acceptance letter into the back of a drawer, wiped her eyes, and held the wailing infant until he finally drifted off to sleep in her arms.

From that moment on, she was the one who memorized the pattern of his colic, the schedule of his vaccines, the hidden reality of his allergies, and the endless stream of homework and nighttime terrors.

Denise drifted in and out of their lives whenever it suited her, armed with expensive, flashy gifts and photos designed to make her look like the perfect mother for her social media followers.

“My precious son, my heart,” she’d write in her captions, even though she had no idea what medication Simon took for his asthma or what his favorite meal was when he was feeling low.

Joanna never said a word in protest, because she refused to poison the boy’s heart with the bitter taste of resentment.

But on this day, Denise swept into the auditorium as if she were the star of the show.

She was draped in an emerald silk dress, balanced on towering designer heels, clinging to the arm of a wealthy investor named Jonathan.