By morning, I was an orphan and a mother.

The night of the fire is mostly flashes in my mind. Heat pressing against my face. Smoke so thick it felt like trying to breathe through wet cloth. The distant roar of flames. Somewhere through the haze, I heard them — Caleb and Liam — screaming for me.

My little brothers. Six years old. My whole world.

I remember grabbing a shirt, wrapping it around the doorknob so I wouldn’t burn my hand. I remember thinking, I have to get to them. I have to get to them.

After that, it’s blank.

According to the firefighters, I pulled them out myself. I carried one, dragged the other, and somehow got us through the kitchen before the ceiling collapsed behind us. I don’t remember any of it.

What I do remember is standing barefoot in the street, wrapped in a blanket, while the house I grew up in burned to the ground. Caleb and Liam were pressed against me on either side, sobbing into my ribs. I kept telling them it was okay, even though nothing was okay.

Our parents were gone. Our home was gone. Everything familiar, warm, and safe — gone in a single night.

From that moment on, they were my responsibility.

If it hadn’t been for Mark, my fiancé, I don’t know how I would’ve held it together.

Mark didn’t just step in; he rooted himself next to us and refused to move. He went to grief counseling with us. He cooked dinner. He picked the twins up and spun them around when they started crying for Mom and Dad. He sat on the floor and built Lego castles and told them, over and over, “You’re safe. We’re not going anywhere.”