“They came early,” she said, so quietly I nearly missed it. “Too early. The doctors talked in whispers. There were so many machines. So many wires.” She swallowed. “I named them while I was still afraid none of them would come home.”
My throat closed.
“The boys are Noah and Ellis,” she said. “Noah is stubborn. Ellis pretends he isn’t, but he is too.”
A broken sound escaped me before I could stop it.
Their names.
My sons had names.
“And the third?” I asked.
Megan did not answer.
The porch light buzzed above us.
“Megan, please.”
She looked at me then, and the anger in her face finally surfaced—not wild, not uncontrolled, but clean and earned.
“Her name is Lily.”
Her.
A daughter.
I sat down on the edge of the pavement because my knees no longer trusted me.
Lily.
Noah, Ellis, and Lily.
Megan watched me without sympathy. I was grateful for that. Sympathy would have been more than I deserved.
