I Was Injured Struggling With Our 5-Month-Old Twins—My Husband …

The stairs had always been slightly steep.

I had noticed this when we first looked at the house, three years ago, before the twins, before the marriage had become what it had become, in the period when Derek and I were still in the mode of seeing possibilities in everything, including the steepness of stairs in a house we were considering. I had mentioned it then, said something about the angle, and Derek had said we would put a runner on them for traction and we had never put a runner on them and I had stopped thinking about it the way you stop thinking about things in a house you live in, until they become part of the landscape that you stop seeing.

The fall happened on a Tuesday morning.

I was carrying one of the boys, Eli, in my left arm, and a burp cloth and a pacifier in my right hand, and I was also tired in the way I have been tired for five months, which is a kind of tiredness that has its own specific texture, dense and total, the tiredness of a body that has not completed a sleep cycle since before the boys were born.

My foot caught the second step from the top.

Eli was fine.

I did not let go of Eli.

This is the thing I want to say first, before the arm, before Derek, before any of it: I did not let go of Eli. My body made that decision before I could make it consciously, the specific instinctive choice of a mother falling, which is to wrap everything around the child and absorb whatever is coming with the parts of herself that are available.

My right arm hit the stairs.

The rest of me arranged itself around Eli.

We reached the bottom and Eli was crying, startled and unhappy, and I was on my knees on the hallway floor with my right arm doing something that arms do not usually do, something that my mind was slow to process because the processing of physical pain that large requires a moment.

He was fine.

He was crying but he was fine.

I held him with my left arm.

He stopped crying before I did.

My mother-in-law, Sandra, had arrived ten minutes earlier to help with the morning feeding, one of the arrangements I had assembled in the months since the boys came home, the patchwork of help that I had organized because Derek did not organize it and because the twins were two people who needed constant care and I was one person who needed sleep sometimes and who could not be in two places simultaneously.

Sandra came from the kitchen when she heard the fall.

She found me on the hallway floor.

She called the ambulance.

The hospital was two hours of X-rays and waiting and a doctor explaining what a radius fracture meant in terms of what I could and could not do for the next six weeks. He said it as gently as he could, the way doctors have learned to say things to people who are visibly sleep-deprived and holding an infant, but the gentleness did not change what it meant.

No lifting of anything over a few pounds for six weeks.

My sons each weigh approximately sixteen pounds.

Sandra drove us home and helped me settle the boys and made tea and did not say what I could see she was thinking, which was that I needed Derek to step up and that she was not confident he would.

I called Derek at work.

He came home that evening.

I want to be fair about Derek in the early part of this, because fairness is what I owe the story even when the story is painful. When he came home that evening and saw the cast, his face did the thing it sometimes still did, the thing that reminded me of who he had been before we had children, the thing that looked like genuine concern.

He asked if I was okay.

I said I had broken my arm and that the doctor said no heavy lifting for six weeks.

He said that was a lot.

I said yes, it was, and that I needed him to help me with the boys. Not for six weeks of full participation, though I could have asked for that. I asked for a day off work occasionally. An hour earlier a few evenings a week. Working from home on the days Sandra could not come.

He rolled his eyes.

The eye roll arrived before any words, which is its own communication, the specific body language of someone who has decided that a request is unreasonable before they have finished hearing it.

He said he had a job.

He said he was not going to sit around with the kids.

I stayed calm.

I explained that my arm was broken, that I was in a cast, that I was asking for help managing two five-month-old babies with one usable arm.

He said moms don’t get sick days.

He said I had wanted kids and I could take care of them.

He said it was not his problem.

I sat on the couch.

I sat on the couch with my cast in my lap and my son in the other arm and I looked at my husband and I processed, with the specific slowness of someone receiving information that requires significant processing, what had just been said to me.

Derek had wanted children.

This is documented not just in my memory but in actual documentation, the emails and the conversations and the specific evening three years ago when he had brought up having a family for the first time, had been the one to raise it, had said that he imagined himself as a father and that he wanted that with me.

He had also wept when the boys were born.

I was there.

I saw him.

He had held Eli and then Owen and he had wept in the way that new fathers sometimes weep, the overwhelming specific emotion of a person encountering something they had wanted and are now holding, and I had believed in that moment that we were in it together, that the team we had been becoming was going to continue becoming, that the babies were going to be ours in the way that things are ours when both people have invested in them.

The months since had revised this understanding.

He had not gotten up in the night once.

Not once.

He had not changed a diaper without being specifically asked, and when specifically asked had frequently produced a reason why this particular moment was inconvenient. He had not attended a pediatrician appointment. He had not bathed them or dressed them or sat with them through the difficult periods of cluster feeding that lasted two and three hours.

He came home from work and sat on the couch and watched television and expected dinner, which I made, because making dinner had become another item on the list of things that were apparently mine.

I had been managing this.

I want to be honest about why, because the why is important and because I have spent the months since examining it without flinching, and what I found when I examined it was a combination of things: exhaustion that made confrontation feel impossible, the hope that it would change once the boys were older, the specific fear of a woman who has two infants and no income that the confrontation might produce a result she could not manage, and a residue of the love I had for the person Derek had been before the boys arrived, which had made me willing to extend more grace than the situation warranted.

The broken arm removed the capacity for grace.

You cannot extend grace when you have one usable arm and two infants who need to be lifted.

I called my mother.

My mother’s name is Vivienne and she has the specific quality of women of her generation who have done difficult things quietly for a long time and who have therefore developed a practical efficiency that is its own form of love. She arrived the next morning and she did not say anything about Derek that required me to defend him or agree with her, which is one of the specific skills of a good mother, and she helped me through the days when my arm was the worst and the fatigue was the most comprehensive.

For three days she came every morning.

On the fourth day she had a commitment she could not cancel, a medical appointment that had been scheduled for two months.

I called Derek before he left for work.

I told him I needed him to come home by five that evening because the boys needed bathing and I could not bathe two babies with one arm.

He said he was tired.

He said he had come home from work every day this week.

He said that I stayed home and did nothing all day.

I sat very still with the phone in my hand.

I had, over the past four days, while broken-armed and sleep-deprived, managed the following: the feedings, which with five-month-old twins happened every three hours day and night; the diaper changes, which I had developed a one-armed technique for that I would not recommend; the laundry, which had to be done because babies generated laundry in quantities that defied reason; the meals for Derek and for myself; the dishes; the communication with Sandra and my mother about their respective visits; a pediatrician call about Owen’s persistent fussiness; and the management of my own pain, which I was managing with the minimum of painkillers because I was nursing and the doctor had restricted what I could take.

Nothing all day.

I sat very still for a long time after he hung up.

And then something settled in me.

Not anger exactly, though anger was there.

Something colder and more purposeful.

I thought about what I needed Derek to understand.

Not to hear. Hearing was not the problem. I had told him things and he had heard them and had produced, in response, the eye roll and the moms don’t get sick days, which meant that hearing was not equivalent to understanding and that the method of communication I had been using was not capable of producing the result I needed.

I needed a different method.

The specific thing Derek believed was that caring for two infants at home was not work. That it was nothing. That the person doing it was doing nothing, that the time was empty, that the presence of a mother with her children was a form of rest rather than a form of labor.

He needed to understand what the nothing looked like.

He needed to understand it not through my description, which he had already heard and dismissed, but through direct experience.

I called Sandra.

Sandra and I had developed, over five months of her helping me while her son did not, a relationship that was different from the mother-in-law relationship I had expected. She was on my side in a way that she had never stated explicitly but that was evident in every practical action, the showing up, the help that arrived without requiring me to justify the need for it.

I said: I need a favor.

She said: yes.

I said: I need you to come at four tomorrow and take the boys somewhere for the evening. Dinner. A drive. Whatever feels right. I need them out of the house when Derek comes home.

She said: what are you planning?

I said: I’m going to let Derek take care of the boys. By himself. For one evening.

There was a brief silence.

Sandra said: just one evening?

I said: start with one evening.

She said: I’ll be there at four.

Then I called my mother.

I told her the same thing.

She said: what are you going to do?

I said: I’m going to leave.

She said: leave?

I said: just for the evening. Long enough for him to understand.

She said: where will you go?

I said: I’ll come to you. I’ll sleep.

She said: what about the boys?

I said: Sandra will have them for an hour. Then she’ll bring them home. And Derek will be there, because I’ll have texted him to come home on time, and he won’t have any reason to think anything is different.

My mother was quiet.

She said: and then?

I said: and then I won’t be there.

She said: is this a good idea?

I said: I don’t know. But the other ideas haven’t worked.

She said: all right. Come when you’re ready.

I spent the rest of the day in the specific preparation of someone who is leaving a situation temporarily and needs to make sure the necessary things are in place. I made sure the formula was made and ready, because by four o’clock we had supplemented the nursing enough that Derek could manage a feeding. I made sure the diapers were stocked and accessible. I made sure the boys’ pajamas were laid out, clean, where they could be found.

I wrote a note.

The note was not dramatic.

I had considered dramatic but decided against it because dramatic invited a specific kind of response, which was the response of someone who felt attacked, and I did not want to give Derek the opportunity to frame this as an attack he was defending himself against.

The note said: I’ve gone to my mother’s to rest my arm. Sandra will drop the boys home at five-thirty. Everything they need is ready. Formula is in the fridge. Diapers are on the changing table. Pajamas are on the dresser. They’ll need baths tonight. Call me if you have questions.

Just that.

I put it on the kitchen counter.

I kissed both boys.

I told Sandra the plan and she nodded with the expression of someone who had been waiting for this plan or something like it.

I said: you’ll bring them home at five-thirty?

She said: five-thirty on the dot.

I said: he doesn’t know I’m leaving.

She said: I know.

I said: are you okay with this?

She said: my son has been watching you manage two infants alone for five months with a broken arm and he told you it was not his problem. Yes. I’m okay with this.

I went to my mother’s.

I want to tell you about the two and a half hours at my mother’s house, because they were their own kind of significant.

I lay down on the bed in my old room, which my mother still keeps as a room rather than an office, partly I think out of sentiment and partly because she knew before I did that there would be evenings when I needed to come back to it.

I lay down and I slept.

I slept for two hours and twelve minutes, which I know because I woke up to my phone ringing and the first thing I did was look at the time.

It was Derek.

I did not answer.

He called again.

I did not answer.

He texted.

The text said: where are you.

I texted back: resting my arm at Mom’s. Everything you need is there. Call me if you have questions.

He called again.

I did not answer.

He texted: how long are you going to be gone?

I texted: I’ll be home when I’ve rested. How are the boys?

He did not respond for eleven minutes.

Then he said: Owen won’t stop crying. What do I do.

I said: check the diaper first. If it’s not the diaper, he might need to be held. He likes being upright against your shoulder.

Silence for four minutes.

Then: he’s still crying.

I said: have you tried walking with him? He usually calms down when you walk.

Three minutes.

Then: this isn’t working. When are you coming home?

I said: how is Eli?

A long pause.

He said: asleep somehow. But Owen is losing it. This is really hard.

I looked at my phone.

I thought about the eye roll.

I thought about moms don’t get sick days.

I thought about you stay home and do nothing all day.

I said: yes. It is.

He said: what?

I said: it is really hard. What you’re experiencing right now, Derek. This is what I do. Every day. By myself. With a broken arm.

There was no response for a while.

Then: just tell me how to make him stop.

I said: you have to figure some of it out yourself. I believe in you.

My mother appeared in the doorway with a cup of tea.

She looked at me with the expression she had been wearing all evening, which was not quite smug but was in that vicinity.

She said: how is he doing?

I said: one baby is crying and he doesn’t know what to do.

She sat on the edge of the bed.

She said: should you go back?

I said: not yet.

She said: when?

I said: when he has had the experience long enough that it becomes a memory he can refer to.

She said: that’s well put.

I said: I’ve been thinking about it for a while.

My phone rang again.

This time I answered.

Derek said: something is wrong with him. He’s been crying for twenty minutes.

I said: is he hot?

Derek said: what?

I said: feel his forehead. Is he hot?

A pause.

He said: I don’t think so.

I said: have you offered him the bottle?

He said: he won’t take it.

I said: try warming it a little more. He sometimes wants it warmer in the evening.

I could hear Owen in the background, the specific quality of his cry that I knew in the way I knew my own voice.

Derek said: I don’t know how to tell if it’s warm enough.

I said: put a few drops on your wrist. It should feel neutral, not hot or cold.

Pause.

Then: he’s taking it.

Then: okay. He’s eating.

I could hear the specific quality of Derek’s breathing change.

He said, quietly: I didn’t know he needed it warmer.

I said: I found that out at about two in the morning three weeks ago. By trying.

He said: you’re trying to make a point.

I said: I’m resting my arm.

He said: Rachel.

I said: yes.

He said: when are you coming home?

I said: how long do you think you can manage?

He said: that’s not funny.

I said: I’m not trying to be funny.

He said: they’re my kids too.

I said: yes.

He said: I should be able to handle one evening.

I said: you should.

He said: I can.

I said: I know you can. You just have to figure out how.

He said: why won’t you just come home and help me?

I said: because my arm is broken and I’m exhausted and I needed to rest, and you told me moms don’t get sick days.

Silence.

He said: I said that.

I said: you did.

He said: and you’re making a point.

I said: I’m resting my arm. The point is making itself.

He said: is this some kind of punishment?

I said: no. Punishment would be leaving for a week. I’m coming home in a few hours. This is one evening, Derek. Five hours. With your own children. With everything prepared for you. And it’s hard.

He said nothing.

I said: imagine doing it with a broken arm.

He said nothing.

I said: imagine doing it for five months without any acknowledgment that it was labor at all.

He said: Rachel.

I said: I’ll be home by nine.

I put the phone down.

My mother had moved to the chair by the window.

She said: he’s not a bad man.

I said: I know.

She said: he’s a man who didn’t understand something.

I said: he had every opportunity to understand it before tonight. He chose not to.

She said: men of his generation often believe.

I said: he’s thirty-four.

She said: men of his pattern, then. Men who were raised to believe that the home was someone else’s domain and that providing money was the whole of what was required.

I said: we talked about this before the boys were born. He knew what I expected.

She said: knowing and understanding aren’t the same thing.

I said: I know. That’s why I’m doing this instead of talking more.

She said: do you think it will work?

I said: I think he will either understand something tonight, or he won’t, and if he won’t then I’ll have a different set of decisions to make.

She said: what decisions?

I said: the ones I don’t want to think about yet.

She said: Rachel.

I said: I know. I know what you’re going to say.

She said: the boys need their father.

I said: I know.

She said: but they also need you not to be broken.

I said: I know that too.

She said: is the arm the only thing that’s broken?

I looked at her.

She said it gently.

I said: I don’t know yet. I’m trying to find out.

She brought more tea.

We sat in the room that had been my room for eighteen years, in the house where I had grown up, and we did not talk for a while, just sat in the particular comfortable silence of a mother and daughter who have been through enough together that silence is a form of conversation.

At eight-thirty, I drove home.

Derek was in the living room.

He was on the floor.

Both boys were with him, Eli in the bouncy chair that we used for the evenings when we needed hands free, Owen on Derek’s chest, asleep, in the specific arrangement of a baby who has finally settled after an extended period of not settling.

Derek looked up when I came in.

He looked at me for a long moment.

He looked terrible in a specific way, the way people look after a few hours of active infant management without experience or preparation, the dishevelment and the exhaustion and the particular expression of someone who has done something hard and is still in the middle of processing what it required.

He said: Owen had a blowout.

I said: was it a bad one?

He said: it was a very bad one.

I said: he does those sometimes in the evening.

He said: I found the extra clothes. In the bag in the closet.

I said: yes.

He said: it took me three tries to get the new diaper on correctly.

I said: I know. It takes practice.

He said: Rachel.

I said: yes.

He said: I don’t know how you do this.

I sat on the couch.

I said: the same way you drive to work and sit in meetings and manage people and solve problems all day. You do it because you have to. You figure out what you don’t know as you go. You don’t stop.

He said: but you’ve been doing it alone.

I said: yes.

He said: for five months.

I said: plus the pregnancy.

He said: plus the pregnancy.

He looked at Owen on his chest.

He said: he finally stopped crying about twenty minutes ago. We just laid on the floor and I put on that thing you play for them on the speaker, the soft music thing.

I said: it usually works.

He said: how did you know that?

I said: I found it at two in the morning about six weeks ago. By trying things until something worked.

He said: do you figure out a lot of things at two in the morning?

I said: most of what I know about our sons, yes.

He was quiet.

He said: because I’m not awake at two in the morning.

I said: no.

He said: because I’ve never gotten up at night with them.

I said: no.

He said: not once.

I said: not once.

He looked at the ceiling.

He said: Rachel, I said some things.

I said: yes.

He said: moms don’t get sick days.

I said: yes.

He said: you do nothing all day.

I said: yes.

He said: those were.

He stopped.

He said: those were not things I should have said.

I said: no.

He said: they were wrong.

I said: yes.

He said: factually wrong. I know that now in a way I didn’t know it before. Five hours. Five hours and I couldn’t.

He stopped again.

He said: I couldn’t manage a blowout diaper without three tries and I couldn’t make Owen stop crying for forty minutes and I didn’t know the bottle needed to be warmer and I didn’t know about the music.

He said: and you know all of that because you figured it out alone.

I said: yes.

He said: while I was coming home and sitting on the couch.

I said: yes.

He said: and I told you it was nothing.

I said: you did.

He was very still.

Eli made a small sound from the bouncy chair.

Derek looked at him.

He said: can you tell me something?

I said: what?

He said: in those five months. What were the hardest nights?

I looked at him.

He said: I want to know. I’m asking.

I said: the sixth week. When they were both sick and neither of them could keep anything down and I was up from eleven at night until four in the morning changing sheets and washing clothes and trying to keep them hydrated and by the time they were both back to sleep I had forty minutes before they were awake again for the morning feeding.

I said: you slept through all of it.

He said: I didn’t know.

I said: you would have known if you had been awake.

He said: I know.

I said: and then last month, when my milk supply dropped and I was afraid it was going to stop entirely and I spent three days crying every time I nursed because the pressure to keep it going was so much and I was so tired and there was no one to talk to about it at two in the morning except the internet.

He said: I didn’t know about that either.

I said: no.

He said: why didn’t you tell me?

I said: because I had tried telling you things and you responded by rolling your eyes. After a while, you stop trying to explain things to someone who isn’t listening.

He said: I stopped listening.

I said: you were never really listening.

He said: that’s.

He said: that’s hard to hear.

I said: I imagine it is.

He said: but it’s true.

I said: yes.

Owen moved on his chest, making the small sounds of a sleeping baby who is cycling through a lighter phase of sleep, and Derek adjusted his hand automatically, the instinctive response of someone who has spent an evening learning what the sounds meant.

He said: I’ve been an idiot.

I said: you’ve been absent.

He said: that’s a kinder word than what I deserve.

I said: I’m not interested in being unkind. I’m interested in something changing.

He said: what do you need to change?

I said: I need you to get up with them at night. Starting tonight.

He said: okay.

I said: not once, not when it’s convenient. Every other night. We take turns.

He said: okay.

I said: I need you to take them to appointments. Sandra can give you the schedule.

He said: okay.

I said: I need you to come home at a reasonable time and help with the evening routine without being asked. Without treating it as a favor you’re doing me.

He said: okay.

I said: and I need you to understand something.

He said: what?

I said: this is not babysitting. This is parenting. There is no version of this where you are doing me a favor when you take care of your own children. They are yours and they are mine and the work of them is shared. That’s what we agreed to when we decided to have them.

He said: we agreed to that.

I said: we did.

He said: I forgot.

I said: you didn’t forget. You chose to reinterpret.

He said: yes.

I said: I need you not to reinterpret it again.

He said: I won’t.

He said: Rachel.

I said: yes.

He said: I’m sorry.

I said: I hear you.

He said: is that enough?

I said: it’s a start.

He said: what else do I need to do?

I said: the rest of it, I think you already know. You showed some of it tonight.

He said: figuring out the bottle temperature alone isn’t the same as.

I said: no. But it’s the beginning of the figuring out. You do it the same way I did it. By paying attention. By trying things. By not having someone available to just fix it for you.

He said: it’s harder than I thought.

I said: yes.

He said: I thought you were exaggerating.

I said: when?

He said: when you said you were exhausted. I thought. I don’t know. I thought you meant tired in the normal way. I didn’t understand what exhausted actually meant in this context.

I said: and now?

He said: I understand it’s different.

I said: yes.

Eli had fallen asleep in the bouncy chair, his head tilted in the specific way that babies fall asleep, the complete total surrender of an infant to unconsciousness.

Derek said: how do I get Owen upstairs without waking him?

I said: very slowly. Keep him against your shoulder, support his head, don’t stop moving.

He said: will you.

He stopped.

He said: I was going to ask if you could do it.

I said: my arm.

He said: right. I’ll do it.

He stood with the specific careful slowness I had described, keeping Owen against his shoulder, and he moved toward the stairs.

He stopped at the bottom.

He said: the stairs. Should we put a runner on these?

I said: we should definitely put a runner on these.

He said: I’ll get one tomorrow.

He went up the stairs.

I sat on the couch.

I could hear him in the nursery, the sounds of the room at night when someone is in it trying to be quiet, the soft thuds of careful movement.

Then he came back down.

He said: he’s down.

I said: good.

He picked up Eli from the bouncy chair with the beginners’ carefulness of someone who is still learning the correct way to hold this specific person.

He went back upstairs.

I sat on the couch.

I looked at the living room, which had the particular quality of a room that has been used by someone who was not accustomed to using it in this way, the slight disorder of an evening spent managing two infants alone.

He came back down.

He said: they’re both down.

He sat beside me on the couch.

We sat for a while.

He said: how long have you been waiting to do that?

I said: I didn’t plan it until today.

He said: but you’ve been waiting.

I said: I’ve been hoping something else would work first.

He said: nothing else did.

I said: no.

He said: would you have left?

I said: I’m here.

He said: if tonight hadn’t.

He stopped.

He said: if I hadn’t understood. Would you have left?

I looked at him.

I said: I was going to have to make decisions that I don’t want to make.

He said: Rachel.

I said: Derek.

He said: I don’t want you to leave.

I said: I know.

He said: I don’t want them to grow up without.

He stopped.

He said: in that nursery just now. I was putting Owen down and I thought about. I thought about him growing up and not having me there every day. Not knowing how he takes his bottle. Not knowing about the music.

He said: I thought about him not knowing me.

I said: yes.

He said: that was a hard thought.

I said: yes.

He said: I’ve been making it possible.

I said: yes. You’ve been making it possible.

He said: I’m going to stop.

I said: I’m going to need to see that.

He said: I know. I know sorry isn’t enough.

I said: it’s a beginning. What comes after is what matters.

He said: I get up at two?

I said: we’ll divide it. Tonight is mine. Tomorrow night is yours.

He said: okay.

He said: I don’t know what I’m doing.

I said: I know. You’ll figure it out. It only takes a little while to learn the things that matter, if you’re paying attention.

He said: will you. If I have a question.

I said: yes. I’ll answer.

He said: even at two in the morning?

I said: even at two.

He said: thank you.

I said: it’s not a favor. It’s our family.

He said: yes.

He was quiet for a moment.

He said: I want to know the other hard nights.

I said: what?

He said: you told me about the sixth week and about last month. I want to know the others. The ones I slept through.

I looked at him.

He said: I want to know what I missed.

I said: it’ll take a while.

He said: we have time.

I said: the boys will be up in about four hours.

He said: that’s enough time to start.

I said: yes. It’s enough time to start.

The night was quiet in the way that suburban nights are quiet at nine o’clock, the neighborhood settled and the traffic distant and the house holding us the way houses hold families when the families are in the process of becoming something.

I told him about the nights.

Not to punish him.

To let him in.

He listened in a way he had not listened before, with the specific attention of someone who has understood something tonight that they had not understood before, who has held the weight briefly and knows what it is, who is trying to understand the months of it.

He said, at some point: I can hear them.

I said: they make sounds when they’re sleeping sometimes.

He said: I’ve never noticed before.

I said: no.

He said: the monitor’s been on my side of the bed?

I said: yes. I moved it when you started sleeping through it.

He said: I didn’t know you moved it.

I said: there are a lot of things you didn’t know.

He said: yes.

He said: I want to know them.

I said: they’ll keep coming. You’ll start to see them as you pay more attention.

He said: that’s a strange way to put it.

I said: it’s the accurate way. The knowledge of your children arrives through the paying of attention. You can’t shortcut it.

He said: I’ve been trying to shortcut it.

I said: you’ve been trying not to do it at all.

He said: yes.

He said: Rachel.

I said: yes.

He said: I know this is going to take time.

I said: yes.

He said: I know you don’t fully trust that it’s real yet.

I said: no. I don’t fully trust that yet.

He said: that’s fair.

I said: it is.

He said: I’m going to show you.

I said: I know. That’s what I’m waiting for.

In the nursery above us, one of the boys made a sound and then went quiet.

Derek looked at the ceiling.

He said: which one?

I said: Owen. He does that around this time. He settles again on his own.

Derek said: how do you know it’s Owen?

I said: their sounds are slightly different. You’ll start to hear the difference.

He said: you can hear the difference already.

I said: yes.

He said: how long did that take?

I said: a few weeks. Once you’re up with them enough, it just becomes part of how you know them.

He said: I want to know them like that.

I said: you will. It just takes being there.

He said: I’m going to be there.

I said: I know.

He said: starting tomorrow night.

I said: yes.

He said: and every other night after.

I said: yes.

He said: and the appointments.

I said: yes.

He said: and the evenings.

I said: yes.

He said: I have a lot of catching up to do.

I said: yes. But they’re five months old. There’s a lot of time left.

He said: not wasted time.

I said: no. Not wasted. Just time you’re going to have to show up for from now on.

He said: that sounds manageable.

I said: it is. One day and one night at a time.

The house was quiet.

The boys slept.

And for the first time in a long time, I was not alone in the managing of the quiet.

That was enough for tonight.

That was where we started.