Emma started crying.
Sophie joined for solidarity.
I looked at the woman.
“They have me.”
Eventually, the temporary became permanent.
The brother became a tutor.
The guardian became a legal father.
And somehow I became a father.
***
A baby snuggled against my chest while feeding another.
Bottles lined up by initials.
Tables of drugs glued to the refrigerator every time someone got sick because the triplets apparently believed that germs were communal property.
The money stretched out until I screamed.
Dating became complicated.
“Why do you have three children?”
“They’re technically my sisters,” I said.
That phrase never improved anything.
A woman endured three dates before asking, “And when do you get your own life back?”
I went home that night.
Emma had a fever.
Grace was asleep wearing my baseball cap.
Sophie had drawn a purple horse directly in the refrigerator. I stopped breathing.
Clean the marker for 20 minutes.
I changed Emma’s sheets.
I took Grace’s cap.
Then I called the woman and told her we weren’t gonna work.
She had talked about the girls as if it was something that was happening to me.
By then, they were not.
They were mine.
***
Our mother, Reese, never came back.
Not for birthdays.
Not for Christmas.
Not even when Emma broke her arm at the age of nine.
Not even when Grace won a statewide essay contest.
Not even when Sophie graduated as the best in her class and feign that she was not looking for me in the crowd until she saw me standing.
***
Twenty years passed.
Then I got my birthday number 43.
Sophie was usually 20 minutes late with candles that no one needed.
That night, they arrived together.
Quietly.
That was the first warning.
During dinner, Emma barely ate.
Grace’s eyes seemed swollen.
Sophie was not holding my gaze.
I left the fork.
“It’s okay. What happened?”
No one answered.
Grace’s face crumbled.
Emma under her chair reached out of her chair and pulled out an old envelope.
Sophie whispered, “We should have given you this two years ago.”
My heart has accelerated.
“What is that?”
Grace started crying.
“Mom sent it when we turned 18.”
The word “mom” sounded strange in his mouth.
“Mom?”
Emma.
“He sent us a package. This was inside.”
I stared at the envelope.
“Why would I send them a letter addressed to me?”
Sophie finally looked up.
I was terrified.
“He said he had written it years ago but never had the courage to send it.”
