My Babies and Me

“Take care.”

“I will. Bye.” She didn’t wait to hear him echo the word. Her heart just couldn’t take it. Wit

h her finger on the disconnect button, she cradled the phone to her chest and bawled like a baby.

SITTING IN AN AIRPORT almost a week after his conversation with Susan, Michael was still thinking about the things she’d said. He knew there was a message in there for him. He just hadn’t figured it out yet. But he would. He wasn’t going to rest until he found for himself the peace he’d heard in Susan’s voice.

A woman with a double-wide stroller was trying to maneuver between the rows of seats at the gate where he was waiting to catch his flight to Atlanta. Michael moved his briefcase and carry-on to make room for her.

“Thanks,” she panted, falling into the seat next to him.

Now that she was closer, he could get a peak at the cargo in her stroller. She had a couple of sleeping babies wrapped in pink blankets.

“How old are they?” he asked quietly.

As she glanced down at her daughters, the exhaustion completely left the woman’s face, to be replaced by a very proud smile. “Three months.”

Michael nodded politely and picked up a newspaper he’d been trying to read earlier.

“You find that stroller preferable to the front-and-back kind?” he asked, peering over the top of his paper. Just in case he talked to Susan again, he’d let her know.

“Yeah.” She really was pretty, Michael thought, taking in her clear skin and unmade-up face, her straight brown hair. Her generic slacks and top. There was just something about her expression, her air of—what? Happiness? “—I just want to be able to see them both at all times,” she was saying and it took him a minute to realize she was still talking about the stroller. “Besides, I want them to be company for each other.”

Sound reasoning. Michael nodded. And returned to his paper.

Until one of the babies whimpered. Everyone knew a baby crying was hard to ignore, so he didn’t even try. He watched, instead, as the woman bent to her child, gently patting her back and cooing her to sleep again.

“You do that well,” he felt compelled to say.

“Thank you.” She grinned at him. “I’ve had practice.”

“They wear you out then, two at once?”

“Only when they get up every other hour during the night, and don’t synchronize their schedules.”

“They get up every other hour at opposite hours?” he asked, appalled.

“Not often,” she laughed, “but sometimes.”

“Doesn’t that get old fast?”

“No.” She glanced down at her babies, that glow lighting her face. “They’re only this little for such a short time, what’s a few hours less sleep in return for more hours with them?”

Sound reasoning, he thought again. Michael told himself to return to his paper. Held it up in front of his eyes. But focused, instead, on the bundles in the stroller beside him.

“You have kids?” the woman asked, noticing his interest.

“I’m expecting twins.”

Michael had no idea where the words came from. He’d had no thought of uttering any such thing. But suddenly, with a stranger babbling excitedly beside him, his way became clear.

Seth had been absolutely right. He’d been searching in all the wrong places.

His ex-brother-in-law had been right about something else, as well. Michael’s entire identity had been wrapped up in his career. He was what he worked. Until this moment.

Suddenly, with one sentence, he’d become something else. A father.

He couldn’t get up fast enough, get out to the Pathfinder, then home to his condo to make some calls.