I kept the triplets, not because they asked me to, but because someone had to.
“I’m asking if there’s room.”
***
Daniel appeared as the weather does.
A birthday card once, with no return address.
A Christmas card with a stamp from somewhere that had never been.
When the girls were 12 years old, he called.
“I want to reconnect, Noah. I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking about what, exactly?”
“On them and being a father.”
I held the phone so hard that my hand squeezed.
When the girls were 12 years old, he called.
“You want to be a father, get on a plane. You don’t think about it on my phone bill.”
My brother didn’t get on a plane. He never did.
The letters stopped after that. Sometimes I wondered if the girls noticed. They never said.
***
I would sleep up for a few nights and run the numbers in my head, like you do when you’ve broken long enough. Not money. The other guy.
- Did I do enough?
- Did I say the right things at the right time?
- Did you know that I loved them, or did they just know I was tired?
I was wondering if the girls noticed.
There was a fear under all that I never said out loud. That somewhere in the back of their hearts, the triplets were still waiting for their real father.
That I was the man who had been there, but not the man they wanted.
I didn’t blame them for it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
There was a fear under everything.
***
The morning of the triplet graduation, I sat in my van in the parking lot for 20 minutes before I could leave.
I was 49 years old. My beard had turned gray in patches. My knee hurt from a ladder fall two summers before and it had never healed.
I had brought a cheap camera, which I didn’t fully know how to use, and I was shaking in my hand.
And in my wallet, behind the expired insurance card and a food receipt, I had saved Daniel’s original note. It was discolored, but still legible.
I brought a cheap camera.
I deployed it with both hands.
I was wondering if the girls would mention Daniel today. I was wondering, worse, if you wished him would come in his place.
