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.”
My husband even bought matching onesies in three sizes before I hit the second trimester. Three little purple ones that said “Sister 1, Sister 2, Sister 3.”
But he never opened a single parenting book. I bought four.
They sat on his nightstand under a stack of golf magazines.
My husband even bought matching onesies.
When it was time to assemble the cribs, Eric told his friends in the group chat that he was “in the trenches, building nurseries,” but he ended up at the driving range with Luke. I put together all three cribs myself.
Naomi noticed. Naomi always did.
“He gets excited about the idea of things, Lay,” she’d told me once, drying a wine glass at my sink. “That’s not the same as showing up for the work.”
He ended up at the driving range.
“He’ll show up,” I’d said.
“I hope so.”
“He will.”
She’d let it drop. She was good like that. My sister said her piece once and then loved you through whatever you decided.
***
At the baby shower, Eric stood in the middle of the living room, telling everyone he was going to be a girl dad, three times over, the luckiest man in the tri-state area.
“He’ll show up.”
His mother, Deborah, had watched him from the doorway with a look I couldn’t read.
Later, she pulled me aside near the coat rack.
“Layla, honey. You can call me anytime. Day, night. I don’t care.”
“Deborah, that’s so sweet, but…”
“Especially,” she said and paused. “Especially if Eric disappears into himself. You call me.”
She pulled me aside.
I laughed a little because what else do you do?
“He’s not gonna disappear,” I said. “He’s over the moon.”
My mother-in-law (MIL) squeezed my elbow and said nothing else.
I hadn’t thought about that moment in months.
It came back to me now, on the nursery floor, with the monitor humming.
“He’s not gonna disappear.”
***
I lifted Ava out of her crib and settled her against my chest. Mia was working her way up to a real cry, and I bounced them both slowly.
“Your dad loves you,” I whispered. “He does. He’s going to come home and love you.”
I said it aloud, the way you say a prayer you’re not sure you believe anymore.
