I believed my husband when he promised we would raise our triplets together. Six weeks after their birth, I was still recovering, barely sleeping, and doing everything alone. Then he announced that he had earned a two-week vacation, and I decided he wouldn’t leave with his perfect-father image intact.
“You really did this to me?!”
Ethan’s scream burst through my phone at four in the afternoon.
Tara startled against my chest. Timothy kicked inside his bassinet, and Tessa began crying before I’d even finished warming her bottle.
I lowered the volume with sticky fingers.
“You really did this to me?!”
“What did I do, Ethan?” I asked.
“You emptied my suitcase!”
A door slammed behind him.
Then I heard a man ask, “What is all that?”
Ethan had opened the suitcase in front of his friends.
Just as I’d planned.
“What is all that?”
“My clothes are gone, Kyra,” he snapped. “You packed diapers, feeding charts, that stupid shirt, and a baby book.”
“The book you promised to read.”
“You made me look like a liar.”
Tessa’s cries grew louder.
I shifted Tara to my shoulder and reached for the warm bottle.
“My clothes are gone, Kyra.”
“No, Ethan,” I said. “I stopped helping you look like a good husband.”
Six months earlier, I wouldn’t have believed those words could come out of my mouth.
