Emily appeared first.
She looked thinner.
Paler.
Her hair was pulled back loosely, and faint shadows rested beneath her eyes. But there was something different in her face too. A stillness. Not emptiness. Not coldness.
Strength.
The kind forged by surviving what should have broken her.
“Hi, Mark,” she said.
He could barely answer.
“Hi.”
For a moment, they only looked at each other.
Every apology he had rehearsed crowded his throat, but he remembered the rule.
Not the marriage.
The babies.
Emily shifted the camera.
Three bassinets came into view.
Mark stopped breathing.
Grace slept with her mouth slightly open.
Lily’s tiny hands moved beneath a blanket.
Hope stared upward with dark, unfocused eyes, as if listening to the world before deciding whether to trust it.
“My God,” Mark whispered.
Emily’s eyes flicked back to the screen.
“They’re small,” she said.
“They’re perfect.”
Something softened in her expression, just for a second.
