The rain wouldn’t stop.

It poured relentlessly over the hospital roof like a thousand apologies coming too late. Lara Ramos sat hunched in a cold plastic chair in the hallway, her nails digging into her palms, her heart beating so hard it hurt. The air smelled of antiseptic and grief. The fluorescent lights above buzzed faintly, casting a sickly glow on the scuffed white floor.

Inside the room just a few feet away, her twin was dying.

Lora. Her mirror. Her other half. Her louder, braver, beautiful sister who once made the world bow with nothing but a smile.

Now she lay still, surrounded by the sound of beeping machines and shallow breaths. The doctors had said it wouldn’t be long. Broken ribs. Collapsed lung. Internal bleeding. And a husband who hadn’t stopped shaking since the news reached him.

Lara stood when the nurse quietly waved her in.

Her legs trembled. She stepped inside.

lora’s skin was pale, her lips cracked. Tubes ran from her arms, machines blinking faintly beside her bed. Andrie Almonte, her brother-in-law, sat by her side, holding her hand like it was already slipping from him. His eyes were red. In his arms, swaddled in a pale blue blanket, was Vrex—just over a year old. Asleep. Oblivious.

“Lar…?” Lora’s voice was soft, barely audible.

“I’m here,” Lara said, rushing to her side, tears streaming down her face. She kneeled, cupping her sister’s hand in both of hers.

“I don’t… I don’t have time,” lora whispered, her eyes flicking toward her husband, her baby. “I need to ask you something. Promise me.”

Lara shook her head, already crying harder. “No, Lora. Don’t ask. Don’t you dare.”

“Please,” Lora rasped. “I need you to be me.”

“What?”

“Raise him. Be his mother. Marry Andrie if you must… don’t let him grow up alone. Don’t let him forget me.”

“No,” Lara sobbed. “Lora, no. You can’t do this to me.”

“I’m not doing it to you,” her sister said, smiling weakly. “I’m… trusting you. Because you’re the only one who could love him like I do. You’re the only one who looks like me. They won’t know the difference.”

Lara gripped her hand tighter. “But I’m not you…”

“You will be.”

Lora turned her gaze to Andrie. He was staring at the floor, his hand still wrapped around hers like he couldn’t feel her slipping away.

“Andrie… say yes,” Lora whispered.

He looked up at her, shocked. “Lora…”

“Say yes,” she pleaded again, her voice breaking. “Let her take my place. Don’t let Vrex forget.”

Andrie’s voice cracked. “Okay. I… I’ll agree.”

Lora smiled. The machines began to whine.

“No—no, no, no—!” Lara cried, pressing her forehead to her sister’s hand.

With a final breath, Lora whispered, “Thank you…”

And then… silence.

A stillness so cruel it strangled the room.

Lara didn’t remember screaming, but she did. She remembered the way her heart broke loud enough to echo off the walls. She remembered how tightly Andrie held Vrex. She remembered how cold lora’s hand became in her own.

She remembered the words.

*Be me.*

---

The rain still hadn’t stopped. Lara stood outside the hospital under a flickering light, soaked and shaking.

Andrie stood beside her, silent.

“I… I didn’t want this,” she whispered. “I didn’t want any of this.”

“I didn’t either,” he said quietly.

They didn’t speak again for a long time.

Then Andrie looked down at the baby in his arms. Vrex stirred, blinking, fussing.

Andrie’s voice was hollow. “He’ll never know she’s gone… if we do this right.”

Lara’s stomach turned. “I can’t lie to him forever.”

“You promised.”

The rain seemed to pour harder, swallowing them whole.

She looked at Vrex—and in his eyes, she saw Lora. The soft eyelashes. The little lips. His whole life was ahead of him, and he would never remember the woman who gave him that life.

Unless Lara lived for her.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

Andrie looked at her.

“But not for you,” she added bitterly. “Only for her.”

He didn’t respond.

She reached for Vrex. He reached back.

---

Later that night, Lara sat alone in her apartment with a suitcase on the bed.

She pulled out an old photograph—her and Lora, both nineteen, wearing identical sundresses and laughing by the lake. The freedom in their eyes was gone now. That lara no longer existed.

She opened the closet, pulled out Lora’s favorite blue cardigan, and wrapped it around her shoulders. It smelled faintly of lavender and formula.

Her phone buzzed. A message from Andrie:

*“The funeral is in two days. They want a closed casket.”*

Of course they did.

They couldn’t bear to see what was left of Lora. Just as no one would notice when lara slowly disappeared.

She pulled her hair into a low ponytail the way Lora always did.

She stood before the mirror.

She stared.

She practiced the smile her sister wore—confident, tender, a little tilted at the end.

She repeated in a whisper: “Hi, I’m Lora Almonte.”

Over and over.

Until she believed it.

Two days later, the house was packed with faces that Lara barely recognized.

The funeral had ended hours ago, but mourners lingered like ghosts, murmuring condolences that never quite reached the heart. Black umbrellas dripped on the front porch. Soggy shoes left marks on the floor. The smell of candles, lilies, and brewed coffee mixed with quiet sobs and whispers behind cupped hands.

Lara stood in the kitchen, numb in a black dress lora once wore to their grandmother’s wake. It clung to her body like memory. Her makeup had been done by one of Andrie's aunts—too heavy, too exact, as if she were being repainted into someone else.

"You look just like her," someone said behind her.

She turned to find Tita Minerva, one of the old Almonte matriarchs, staring at her with narrow eyes and a forced smile. "Sometimes I forget she’s really gone."

lara forced a small nod. "Thank you."

Minerva leaned in. "But no matter how much you resemble her, hija, you are still not Lora. Remember that."

With a brittle smile, Lara excused herself and walked away.

She escaped to the hallway where Vrex’s tiny laughter echoed from the nursery. He had no idea what today was. He only knew he was surrounded by faces, new hands to lift him, new voices to sing to him. She peeked inside.

Andrie sat on the carpet, letting Vrex crawl into his lap. He looked tired—beyond tired. Haunted. His eyes met Elena’s for a second, then dropped to the floor. No words passed. No comfort either.

lara stepped in slowly.

"He hasn't cried for her," Andrie said quietly, as if confessing something ugly. "Not once."

"He's too young."

"Still... I thought he'd feel it."

Lara sat beside them, watching Vrex giggle as he tried to climb onto Andrie’s chest.

"He won’t remember her. Not really," Andrie murmured. "And that scares me more than anything."

Lara reached out and took Vrex’s small hand. "Then we’ll help him remember. In whatever way we can."

Andrie didn’t answer.

---

Later that evening, after the guests had gone and the house fell into a dreadful silence, Andrie knocked on Lara’s bedroom door. She was packing the last of her things. She’d decided to move into the Almonte residence—Lora’s old home—as the final step to fulfilling the promise.

He stepped in without waiting.

"You sure about this?" he asked.

She looked up. "I already said yes."

"They’ll talk. They already are."

"Let them."

He nodded, then walked over to the window. His hands were clenched into fists.

"I don’t expect you to pretend to love me," lara said softly.

He looked back, startled.

"I know why you're doing this. And I’m not asking for anything more than that."

Andrie exhaled sharply. "I wish she didn’t make us promise this."

"Me too. But she did. And we said yes."

He turned to leave, but before he reached the door, he paused. "We’ll do a civil ceremony. No guests. No press. No drama. Just for the records."

lara nodded.

That night, she looked at her reflection once again. She had tucked lora’s favorite cardigan in her suitcase.

“Just for the records,” she whispered to herself. “Not for love.”

---

The wedding was done in a dusty city hall office three days later. Lara wore a pale cream blouse and black skirt. Gabriel wore a pressed gray suit. They stood before a judge with stiff backs and empty hands. No rings. No kiss. Just ink on paper.

“You may now sign,” the judge said.

Lara picked up the pen.

She hesitated.

Then she wrote: *lora Ramos-Almonte.*

Outside, rain fell again.

As they walked to the car, Andrie opened the door for her without looking. Vrex slept in the backseat. His cheeks flushed from a cold he’d picked up from all the hugging at the wake. lara turned back once to glance at the courthouse. It felt like she’d left herself behind on the marble steps.

In the weeks that followed, she began her life as lora.

She moved into lora's room. Wore lora’s clothes. Woke up at 5:00 a.m. like lora used to. Learned the routines by heart—Andrie's morning coffee (no sugar), Vrex’s favorite lullaby, the housekeeper’s schedule. Everything had a rhythm, and she adapted.

Andrie stayed out most nights. Sometimes at work. Sometimes nowhere she could place. They barely spoke beyond co-parenting.

Vrex, however, clung to her like a vine.

“Mommy,” he called her one morning, just before turning two. Her hand froze over the spoon stirring his cereal.

She looked at him, startled.

He smiled at her, dimpled and sweet.

“Mommy,” he said again.

She should have corrected him.

But she didn’t.

She smiled back and whispered, “Yes, baby?”

And in that moment, for the first time, something real flickered in her chest. Something both beautiful and horrifying.

She wasn’t lora. But for Vrex, maybe she had to be.

Even if it meant losing herself completely.

Even if it meant living as a ghost of the woman everyone else loved more.

---

That night, lara stood at the doorway of the master bedroom. Andrie was inside, unbuttoning his shirt.

“I’ll sleep in the guest room,” she said.

He didn’t look at her. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

He didn’t protest.

She turned and left.

In the guest room, she opened lora’s old journals. Her sister had written everything down—Vrex’s milestones, her hopes, her fears, her love for Andrie. Pages and pages of words Lara had no right to read. But she read them anyway, crying silently into the night.

By morning, she had memorized the last line Lara ever wrote:

*"If I die tomorrow, I want Lara to be the one to hold my son."*

And she did.

Every single day after that.

Even when no one else saw her.

Even when she no longer saw herself.

The days blurred into each other like brushstrokes in a watercolor painting left out in the rain.

Lara moved like a shadow through the Almonte household. She rose early, prepared breakfast, dressed Vrex, managed the housekeeper’s schedule, and kept the illusion intact. But no matter how perfect her imitation, she was never Vrex in their eyes.

Especially in the eyes of Andrie's family.

Andrie’s mother, Rosario Almonte, never once called her by name. Every morning at the breakfast table, she would greet Vrex with warmth and her son with pride, but when her eyes landed on Lara, they turned cold.

"You overcooked the eggs," Rosario said one morning, not looking up from her coffee.

lara smiled tightly. "I’ll do better tomorrow."

"lora always made them soft," Rosario muttered.

lara didn’t reply. She simply cleared the table and returned to the kitchen, her shoulders stiff, her chest aching.

That night, she found herself staring at lora’s old photo albums. Smiles frozen in time. Andrie kissing lora’s cheek. Vrex’s baby shower. Beach trips. Laughter. Joy. All of it belonged to her sister—and none of it would ever be hers.

---

It was the eve of what would have been lora and Andrie's fourth anniversary.

lara baked a cake.

She didn’t know why. Maybe because it was something lora would have done. Or maybe because part of her believed that honoring lora meant keeping those traditions alive.

Andrie came home late. His shirt was wrinkled. He reeked of alcohol.

She met him in the foyer.

"You forgot the day," she said quietly.

He blinked at her, confused. "What?"

"Your wedding anniversary."

Andrie let out a dry laugh. "There’s nothing to celebrate."

He walked past her, ignoring the small cake she had placed on the dining table, white frosting carefully piped in cursive: *To S & G. Forever.*

lara stared at the untouched cake for a long time.

Later that night, Andrie knocked on her bedroom door.

She hesitated before opening it.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. The look in his eyes was heavy, desperate, and guilt-ridden.

He stepped inside. She didn’t stop him.

They didn’t make love. It was something colder. Quieter. Like strangers trying to remember a song they once knew.

Afterward, he lay beside her, facing the wall.

"You smell like her," he whispered.

lara’s heart cracked.

She didn’t respond. Because in that moment, she wasn’t herself.

She was lora.

---

Weeks turned into months. Vrex grew. His vocabulary exploded. He started drawing at daycare, his scribbles always including a woman in a blue dress. The teachers praised lara: "You’ve raised such a sweet boy."

But even as Vrex clung to her, even as he began to say "Mommy" with complete confidence, a small part of lara recoiled.

Because she had no idea who she was anymore.

---

Then came the letter.

It arrived in an old box of lora’s belongings, things from their shared childhood bedroom. Their mother had packed them away and forgotten. lara found it while organizing the attic. The box was filled with notebooks, dried flowers, bracelets from summer camp.

And one envelope.

*To Vrex. On your 18th birthday.*

lara froze.

Her fingers trembled as she held it.

Inside was a letter. Written in lora’s looping script. Full of warmth and motherly love. Full of memories she hoped her son would cherish. Alongside it was a tiny blue box containing a matching sundress—the one both she and lara had worn as girls.

"So he never forgets how much I loved him," the letter read. "Give this to him when he’s ready. I want him to know who I was. Not just who he sees."

lara pressed the letter to her chest.

She couldn't breathe.

She hadn’t told Andrie. She didn’t know why.

Maybe because the illusion was the only thing holding them all together.

But the truth waited. Patiently.

And it would not stay buried forever.