“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
The rental was a small yellow house with a shaded porch.
Emily chose it because the kitchen received morning sunlight.
Mark assembled three cribs there.
Claire stocked the freezer.
Margaret brought curtains.
Emily’s mother, who lived three states away, visited for two weeks and filled every available surface with casseroles.
Nobody treated the rental as a failure.
That mattered to Emily.
It was not the place she had gone because her marriage had ended.
It was the place she chose because she needed to hear her own thoughts again.
For the first time in years, Emily made decisions without first calculating Mark’s reaction.
She joined a Saturday morning book club.
She began working remotely two afternoons each week for the nonprofit where she had been a project coordinator before the pregnancy.
She took long walks with the triple stroller and became locally famous at the neighborhood coffee shop.
“Three?” strangers constantly asked.
Emily learned to smile.
“Three.”
“You must have your hands full.”
“I do.”
But increasingly, full did not feel the same as overwhelmed.
Her life was full.
Full of bottles.
Full of laundry.
Full of sisters and grandmothers and neighbors dropping off soup.
Full of three babies who had begun recognizing one another.
And, cautiously, full of Mark.
Mark never received a key to the rental.
He never asked.
On his scheduled evenings, he knocked.
Emily noticed.
Six months earlier, he would have assumed he could enter.
Now he waited.
One evening she opened the door and found him holding three tiny pumpkin costumes.
Emily stared.
“No.”
“They were on sale.”
“No.”
“Grace is a pumpkin.”
“She is not.”
“Look at her. Spiritually, she is clearly a pumpkin.”
Emily tried not to laugh.
Mark lifted another costume.
“Lily also appears to be a pumpkin.”
“And Faith?”
“More complicated.”
He revealed a third identical costume.
Emily laughed so hard she had to hold the doorframe.
For a moment, neither of them thought about the hospital.
Or Madison.
Or the apartment.
They were simply two exhausted parents standing on a porch arguing about pumpkins.
