listed on the hospital paperwork.

June.

Ava.

Claire.

Vanessa had chosen them before leaving.

For a moment, I considered changing them.

Then I realized the names belonged to the babies now.

Not to Vanessa.

So I kept them.

The first year nearly broke me.

Someone was always hungry.

Someone was always crying.

Someone always needed changing.

Sometimes all three cried at once.

Sometimes I joined them.

There were nights when I stood in the kitchen at three in the morning holding a bottle in one hand while bouncing a screaming baby with the other, wondering how anyone survived parenthood with just one child.

I learned to sleep in fragments.

I learned which cry meant hungry and which meant tired.

I learned how to carry two babies at once while keeping the third within sight.

I learned more about diapers than any single man should ever know.

I also learned fear

didn’t disappear simply because you kept going.

I was terrified almost every day.

Terrified one of them would get sick.

Terrified I would fail them.

Terrified that someday someone would decide I wasn’t enough.

But fear had never stopped people from needing me before.

So I stayed.

At night, before sleeping, I checked three cribs.

Always three.

Eventually, bottles became sippy cups.

Diapers became backpacks.

Cribs became beds.

Then suddenly I was sitting through school concerts, parent conferences, braces appointments, stomach bugs, soccer games, broken hearts, and grocery bills large enough to frighten grown men.

June broke her arm at nine.

Claire had pneumonia at twelve.

Ava once called me crying from a sleepover because she was homesick but didn’t want her sisters to know.

Through all of it, Vanessa never called.

Not once.

No birthday cards.

No Christmas presents.

No letter asking whether the girls were healthy.

Nothing.

At