The handwriting hit me before the words did.
My knees nearly gave out on the porch.
"To my beautiful daughters. Love, Mom."
For a moment, I could not hear the crickets.
I could not hear the girls upstairs.
I could only hear a hospital monitor from 10 years ago and a doctor saying my name like he was about to break it.
Cleo died the day our daughters were born.
My knees nearly gave out on the porch.
One minute, nurses were telling me I had three healthy baby girls.
The next, someone closed a curtain, lowered his voice, and turned the happiest day of my life into two lives I would spend the next decade trying to hold at once.
Fatherhood.
Grief.
Both screaming.
Those first months were made of bottles, casseroles, sympathy cards, and sleep so thin it barely counted.
One minute, nurses were telling me I had three healthy baby girls.
My mother moved into our guest room.
My sister came before work to help with feedings.
I learned to tell the girls apart by the shapes of their cries before I could tell them apart by their faces.
Chloe cried like she was making a formal complaint.
Linzie cried like her heart had been personally offended.
Ivy barely cried at all. She watched everything, wide-eyed, as if she had arrived knowing more than the rest of us.
