David hauled the stool he used to wash his hands in the bathroom closer to the crib, curious about the small creature Johnny had placed there only ten minutes earlier.
For months, his parents had been telling him about his little brother. He was going to have a little brother and they were going to call him Alex, and he would be the perfect playmate and companion.
But that day, they'd brought home a tiny baby girl.
Her name was Alexis. She had big blue eyes and had held onto his finger very tightly, and was very small but very heavy in his lap. And he was only four, after all.
"Hello", he said softly, leaning over the crib.
He'd spent months preparing himself to share the nursery with a little brother, so this unexpected sister was… unexpected. That was a word he'd heard his mother say. "An unexpected daughter", she'd said again and again, and David wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
She was so small. So tiny, wrapped up in her pink blanket. She was cute, in a baby way.
His father- their father- had said, as he put Alexis in the crib, that they were going to be best friends. That David had to take care of his baby sister, and protect her when he and Mummy weren't around.
He hoped that having a baby sister would mean that they'd be around more.
She stirred in the crib, and David readied himself to launch off the step stool, to go running for their father or their mother or Adelina. But Alexis simply blinked her big sleepy blue eyes, and David smiled.
He'd prepared himself for a brother, but maybe a sister wouldn't be so bad.