There were fevers.
Science fairs.
Dance recitals.
Parent meetings.
Three separate heartbreaks during which I had no useful advice, so I made grilled cheese and sat nearby while they cried.
There were also years when all three seemed to dislike me at once.
Maisie was thirteen when she began slamming doors.
Carys was fifteen when she refused to speak to me for nearly a month because I would not let her attend an overnight party.
Liora was seventeen when she shouted:
“You don’t understand anything about us!”
She was right.
I did not understand everything.
But I stayed.
That was the one thing I knew how to do.
I missed things too.
A cousin’s wedding in the fictional city of Evermere because Carys developed the flu.
A fishing trip I had promised myself for ten years.
Promotions that required relocating away from Bramblewick.
And Seraphine.
Seraphine was the woman I loved.
She worked at the bakery across from Finch & Nail Hardware.
We met when the girls were seven.
For six years, she joined us for dinners, birthdays, and school plays.
She loved the triplets, but she also wanted a life that belonged partly to her.
One evening, she stood at my front door holding the sweater she had worn during dinner.
“I’m not asking you to choose between me and the girls,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’m asking whether there is room for me here.”
I looked toward the kitchen.
Three lunchboxes waited on the counter.
Permission slips lay beside the sink.
Carys had a fever.
Liora needed help with a project.
Maisie had fallen asleep on the couch after arguing with me.
“There isn’t,” I said.
Seraphine’s face changed.
“Not the kind of room you deserve.”
She nodded slowly.
“I thought that might be your answer.”
She left a green sweater behind.
I never returned it.
I stayed with the girls.
Not because they demanded it.
Because someone had to.
Callan appeared in fragments.
A birthday card arrived once without a return address.
Then a winter card with a stamp from a place I did not recognize.
He never included money.
Never asked whether the girls were healthy.
Never asked whether they remembered him.
When the triplets were twelve, he called.
I answered the shop telephone.
“Reid?”
I recognized his voice even after all those years.
“Where are you?”
“That’s complicated.”
“No, it isn’t. You are wherever you chose to be.”
He sighed.
“I want to reconnect.”
“With whom?”
“My daughters.”
My hand tightened around the receiver.
“They have names.”
“I know their names.”
“Say them.”
Silence.
“Callan, say their names.”
“I want to be their father.”
“You want to be their father?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking about them does not make you a parent.”
“I made mistakes.”
“You left three six-month-old babies outside my door.”
“Elowen was gone. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“She was their mother. They lost her too.”
He said nothing.
“You want to be their father, get on a plane,” I told him. “Stand in front of them. Explain why you disappeared.”
“I need time.”
“You have already had twelve years.”
Callan never got on a plane.
The cards stopped after that.
The girls never mentioned them.
Sometimes I wondered whether they had noticed.
Of course they had.
Children always notice the empty spaces adults hope they can hide.
At night, I ran numbers through my head.
Not financial numbers.
The other kind.
Had I attended enough school events?
Had I told them I loved them often enough?
Did they remember the nights I read stories, or only the evenings I fell asleep at the table after work?
Did they see me as their parent?
Or only as the uncle who happened to stay?
Beneath every worry was one fear I never admitted aloud.
Perhaps some part of them was still waiting for their real father.
Perhaps I was the man who had raised them, but not the man they truly wanted.
I could not blame them for that.
I simply could not stop fearing it.
The morning of their college graduation, I sat in my truck for twenty minutes before finding the courage to step outside.
I was forty-nine.
My beard had turned gray in uneven patches.
