Twins.

I had rehearsed my speech for days.

I expected a hurricane — plates thrown, screaming, a woman on her knees.

I had prepared myself to be the cold realist explaining that a drowning man cannot carry two infants and a fragile woman to shore.

But Coraline did not scream.

She sat in a silence so complete I could hear the bathroom faucet dripping, and when she finally looked up, there were no tears.

Her eyes, usually so bright, had gone the color of cold ash, and she looked at me not as a lover, not even as an enemy, but as a stranger.