PART 1

I raised my daughter’s triplets after she walked out of the hospital without even looking back. For twenty years, I gave those girls everything I had. Then expensive gifts began arriving with no sender’s name, and I realized the woman who had abandoned them had finally returned.

The first time my granddaughter June called me “Dad,” I was standing in a courtroom, my hands trembling so badly that I nearly dropped the pen. My daughter Lisa stood several feet away, dressed as though she were attending an elegant lunch rather than watching her daughters make the most important decision of their lives.

“You can’t do this,” she said.

Rose, the calmest of the three, hugged the folder against her chest.

“We already have.”

May wiped a tear from her cheek while June moved closer to me. Lisa stared at the girls before turning toward me.

“I gave you life,” she whispered.

June did not look away.

“And he gave us a life. There’s a difference.”

My knees nearly gave out.

But to understand how we reached that courtroom, I have to go back twenty years—to a hospital nursery and three tiny babies wrapped in pink blankets. My name is Tom, and I loved my daughter Lisa more than anything in the world. So when she gave birth to triplets, I stood outside the nursery window with tears running into my gray mustache. Rose was born first, quiet and serious. May arrived next. June came last, already screaming as though she had an argument with the entire world. Three little girls. Three perfect faces. I had not experienced that much happiness since my wife passed away.

I hurried back to Lisa’s room, excited to tell her how beautiful her daughters were. Instead, I found her fully dressed, her handbag hanging from her shoulder.

“Lisa?”

I stopped in the doorway.

“Why are you out of bed?”

She looked at me calmly.

“I’m leaving, Dad.”