The Forbidden Fertility Ritual

I had just managed to pull Juliet's lifeless body from the smoking rubble when Brent Serrano and Madelin Fleming finally arrived, breathless and frantic.

Shocked, Brent reached out toward me, but before his fingers could even brush my shoulder, I swung my arm back and slapped him hard across the face.

Madelin quickly stepped in to steady him, her voice thick with feigned guilt. "This is all my fault, Valerie. Please don't blame Brent."

"It's not your fault." Brent waved her concerns away, looking down at me with heavy sadness. "I got here too late. It's only natural that she's lashing out at me."

But even as the apology left his lips, his body acted on pure muscle memory. He shielded Madelin and her daughter behind his broad shoulders.

He had done it a thousand times before. Except this time, it wasn't over a trivial playground squabble about Juliet sharing her toys, nor was it about Madelin overstaying her welcome in our guest room.

This time, my daughter died.

Ignoring them, I kept wiping the dust and grime from Juliet's pale face, but no matter how hard I tried, her skin refused to come clean. My heart felt as if it were being hacked to pieces by a dull, rusted knife.

Just yesterday, right before she walked into her after-school tutoring class, Juliet had looked up at me with bright, hopeful eyes.

"I'm not sure if Dad is going to skip your birthday again, but I'll save up my allowance to buy a cake," she said. "We can celebrate together."

We had waited the entire day for Brent to come home, never imagining that he was spending the weekend playing the doting family man at an amusement park with Madelin and Zoe.

I had still been holding out hope for that birthday cake. Now, my little girl was never going to wake up.

"Juliet is already gone," Brent said with a frown. "You need to pull yourself together so we can lay her to rest."

He reached down, attempting to pry Juliet from my arms.

"Hands off her!" I rasped.

As we pulled against each other, Juliet's tightly clenched fist slipped open. A small daisy enamel pin escaped her fingers, clattering against the concrete debris.

Both Brent and I froze. It was the birthday gift he had given Juliet when she turned five—the very last present she had received from him.

Everything had shifted the moment Madelin and Zoe moved into our orbit. Just to coddle their fragile egos and ensure they never felt like outsiders, Brent had forced Juliet to play the role of the older sister, demanding she yield every boundary to Zoe—even though Juliet was actually five months younger.

He stopped buying her gifts, skipped every single one of her parent-teacher conferences, and openly held Zoe's hand whenever they walked in public.

Yet, despite the systematic neglect, Juliet still loved him fiercely. She might have sulked and spoken in anger, but as she lay suffocating under the collapsed walls, she had kept holding her breath, waiting for her dad to come save her.

"Brent, how could you do this to your own blood?" I choked out.

He pulled his gaze away from the daisy pin, his jaw tightening defensively. "I didn't want this disaster to happen any more than you did. What good does pointing fingers do now?"

Sensing the tension rising between us again, Madelin took a tentative step forward. I snapped my head up, glaring at her so intensely that she recoiled.

"Valerie, stop trying to shift the blame onto innocent people," Brent said, his voice dropping to a freezing register. "This has nothing to do with Madelin. Weren't you the one who led the rescue team to the wrong side of the plaza? That's the only reason they couldn't reach Juliet in time."

I stared up at him in utter, paralyzing disbelief, my fingernails digging deep into my palms. He had no idea that it was his future self who had called and misled me.

Just as I was about to scream the monstrous truth in his face, Madelin let out a piercing shriek from behind him. "Brent, come over! Zoe's leg is bleeding!"

Brent instantly let go of my arm and spun around, his face twisting with unvarnished panic.

"The living take priority right now," he muttered over his shoulder. "I need to tend to Zoe. Go handle the intake paperwork. I'll find you later."

The words died in my throat as I watched him sprint away. Swallowing the bitterness, I carried Juliet to the casualty registration desk alone.

The clerk took one look at her small, pale form and let out a long sigh. "Please fill out the victim's details, ma'am. We will handle the arrangements for a collective state burial."

I picked up the pen with a heavy heart. In the Immediate Family column, I wrote only my name.

Hours later, as I sat hollowly on a bench outside the hospital's sterile disinfection unit, I mindlessly unlocked my phone. A notification popped up; it was Madelin's latest social media post.

The image featured Brent crouching on the ground, carefully treating a minor scrape on Zoe's shin.

The caption read: [So grateful that you're both safe.]

They looked every bit like a picture-perfect, loving family. I smiled bitterly, ready to block them both, when my phone began to vibrate.

The screen lit up, displaying another call from the future Brent.