I thought I knew the man I’d married, especially when he promised he’d be the kind of father our daughters could always count on. But the days after I gave birth to our triplets showed me just how wrong I was.
Three a.m., the baby monitor lit my face blue while I sat cross-legged on the nursery floor with a half-warm bottle in my hand. Two of my daughters were fussing. The third had finally, mercifully, gone quiet.
I hadn’t slept more than an hour at a stretch in six days.
My phone buzzed on the carpet. A text from my sister, Naomi.
“Are you still up? Send me the shift schedule.”
I hadn’t slept more than an hour.
I typed back with one thumb. “Ava and Mia awake. Zoe sleeping. Send coffee.”
“Coming at seven. Hang on, Layla.”
I set the phone down and looked at the ceiling. Four years married. Three babies. One husband somewhere over the Pacific with a suitcase full of swim trunks.
I kept trying to line it up with the man I remembered from the ultrasound.
One husband somewhere over the Pacific.
***
My husband, Eric, had cried that day. Actually cried in front of the technician, gripping my hand like he was afraid I’d float off the table.
“Triplets,” he’d said. “Three of them. I’m gonna be the world’s best dad! You hear me? The world’s best!”
The tech had smiled, clearly having heard that a hundred times.
I believed him, though. That was the thing. I believed every word.
My husband, Eric, had cried that day.
What you need to understand is that Eric had wanted a big family from the first month we dated. His parents had one kid, him, and he used to say it was too quiet growing up. He wanted noise, saying, “A house must sound like one.”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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