Three days later, I stood at the edge of the same beach. The changing cubicles were still there. My chest tightened, and every part of me wanted to turn around.
Emily took my left hand.
Grace held my right.
Together, we walked across the sand.
Near the dunes, Chris and Andrea were waiting.
“You brought reinforcements?” I asked.
“In case you tried to run,” Emily said.
Grace squeezed my hand.
“They witnessed you choosing us before we were old enough to choose you.”
Chris hugged me.
“I brought you here eighteen years ago because I thought the ocean might keep you alive,” he said.
“It did.”
He looked toward Emily and Grace.
“No, Trent. You did.”
Andrea handed me an old note she had written after one of my early visits with the babies. At first, she had worried I was too broken to raise them. Then she watched me sit beside two newborns and speak to them as though they already mattered.
“They did matter,” I said.
“That is why I believed you could become their father.”
Two beach chairs waited nearby. The white towel had been placed across one of them. Emily set Sarah’s photograph on the towel, and Grace placed a card bearing Ivy’s name beside it.
Then my daughters stood on either side of me.
“Tell us about them,” Emily said.
