Her mother, to her credit, came to me afterward with tears in her eyes and apologized, then crouched down to the girls’ level and told them they had a brave big brother.
The wedding, of course, never happened.
The lease on the version of my life that had Jenna in it ended that night, and I have never once mourned it.
What came after was quieter, and harder, and so much better than anything I’d lost.
It turns out being a twenty-five-year-old father of ten-year-old twins is the most exhausting, terrifying, wonderful thing I will ever do.
I stopped trying to be perfect at it.
I stopped trying to replace my mother, and started trying to just be their brother who stayed.
We made new rules, our own rules.
Pancakes for dinner on Fridays, because we can.
A rule that homework can wait twenty minutes if someone needs a hug first.
