I went home at the end of my shift and I never called the state, and that was that.

Chapter 4 — The Note I Wrote Back

That first night was the longest of my life, and I have had some long ones.

All three of them cried, in shifts and then in chorus, and I did everything wrong, and the apartment filled up with the smell of formula and my own cold coffee and the particular panic-sweat of a man completely out of his depth.

Around three in the morning, when I had finally gotten all three of them down and stood swaying in the middle of the room too wired to sleep, I did something I have never told anyone about until my daughters told a whole auditorium.

I sat down at the kitchen table with the same pen my brother had used, and I turned over a piece of scrap paper, and I wrote a note back.