I adopted my three younger sisters after our mother abandoned us – 20 years later, I received a letter from her that I should never have seen.
“I knew you, Aaron. I knew that if I left those babies in your arms, you would never let them go.
And if you took them, I could leave knowing they were with someone I trusted without having to stay long enough to fix it myself.
I told myself I just needed time to get over my grief. Then months passed, I met someone, and starting over became easier than admitting what I had done to all of you.
I stopped reading.
For 20 years, I had believed that Mom had left because grief and three newborns had finally broken her.
Now I understood something uglier.
He hadn’t just distanced himself from the triplets.
She had chosen who would replace her.
And he had made sure that I never knew I had another option.
***
For a long time, nobody moved.
I stared at Mom’s sentence.
I knew you, Aaron. I knew that if I left those babies in your arms, you’d never let them go.
Emma’s voice broke.
“Dad?”.
I folded the letter carefully.
Grace was crying openly now.
Sophie looked terrified.
“There were people who would have given us a ride,” she whispered.
“You could have gone to Chicago,” Emma added.
Suddenly he stood up.
His chair squeaked loudly against the floor.
“You lost your whole life because of us.”
I looked at her.
“No”.
“But you could have had it all.”
“What exactly is ‘everything’?”
Silence.
I took my keys.
“Come on.”
Grace wiped her face.
“Where are we going?”
“I need the three of you to see something.”
***
The old apartment was smaller than I remembered.
I pointed towards the window upstairs.
“Three cribs wouldn’t fit in the bedroom, so I slept in the living room.”
Sophie covered her mouth.
“You never told us that.”
“They never asked.”
Emma looked guilty.
I touched his shoulder.
“That’s not an accusation.”
Then I pointed towards the entrance of the building.
“Grace screamed every night for three months.”
Grace frowned.
“It isn’t true”.
“You absolutely did it.”
Sophie snorted.
Emma laughed despite herself.
For a minute, Mom’s letter disappeared.
It was just us.
Again.
***
Our second stop was the grocery store where I once worked nights.
An older employee recognized me immediately.
Then he saw the girls.
“No”.
I smiled.
“Yeah”.
“The babies?”
Emma moaned.
“Apparently we will always be babies.”
The woman chuckled as she took out my three plastic laundry baskets, the ones marked E, G and S, which I dragged everywhere.
They contained diapers, clothes, snacks, and essentially everything for emergencies.
She had kept those ridiculous baskets long after the girls had outgrown them.
Sophie apparently used to mind her own business.
Grace hid cookies in hers.
Emma once fell asleep inside one during a move.
The woman smiled at me.
“Your brother worked himself to exhaustion.”
I corrected it automatically.
“Dad”.
Silence.
The girls looked at me.
I hadn’t even realized I’d said it.
***
We ended up at the old playground where I had spent hundreds of Sundays because free entertainment was the only kind I could reliably afford.
Emma sat next to me.
“Dad… Mom was right.”
Wait.
“You had another option,” she murmured.
“That part is true,” I admitted.
Grace whispered, “Do you wish you had known?”
