Michael's POV
The drive home from the hospital was silent, the weight of what we'd done pressing down on us like a physical thing. Sarah sat in the back seat with Olivia, her eyes fixed on our daughter's sleeping face. I kept checking the rearview mirror, watching them, trying to focus on who we still had rather than who we'd lost.
But Emma's absence was like a ghost between us. The empty car seat we'd installed next to Olivia's,the one we'd removed before leaving the hospital parking lot, had left an open space that seemed to mock us. We'd prepared for two babies and come home with one. The math didn't add up, and my brain kept trying to solve an equation that had no solution.
Our apartment looked exactly as we'd left it three days ago when Sarah's water broke. Dishes in the sink. A pile of clothes waiting to be washed. The single crib in the corner of our bedroom, assembled with borrowed tools and secondhand parts. Nothing had changed, but everything felt different.
"Welcome home," I said as I unlocked the door, trying to inject some warmth into my voice. Sarah didn't respond. She just walked past me, still cradling Olivia, and sat down on our threadbare couch.
I brought in the few bags from the hospital; Sarah's clothes, the diaper bag, the paperwork we'd need for Olivia's birth certificate. So many reminders of what should have been a joyous occasion, now tainted by loss.
"Are you hungry?" I asked. "I could make some toast."
Sarah shook her head, her eyes never leaving Olivia's face. "I'm just tired."
"Why don't you lie down? I can take her."
She hesitated before passing Olivia to me, as if afraid to let go. I understood. I felt it too, this irrational fear that if we didn't hold onto her tightly enough, she might disappear like her sister.
I settled Olivia in the crook of my arm, marveling at how small she was, how perfectly formed. Her tiny fingers curled against my shirt, and I felt that surge of love again, fierce and protective. But beneath it was a current of guilt so strong it nearly took my breath away.
Had we made the right choice? The question had been haunting me since we signed those papers. Since I carried Emma to that car and placed her in the arms of strangers.
Sarah disappeared into our bedroom while I sat with Olivia, speaking softly to her, letting her know she was safe, she was loved. I heard the shower start, and I knew Sarah was trying to wash away the hospital, the memories, the pain, as if it could be that simple.
When Olivia began to fuss, I warmed a bottle of the formula the hospital had sent home with us. I'd never fed a baby before, and my hands trembled as I tested the temperature on my wrist. Too hot. I ran the bottle under cool water, tested again. Better.
Olivia took to the bottle eagerly, her blue eyes, so like Sarah's, looking up at me with complete trust. I felt a sob building in my chest and swallowed it down hard. I had to be strong. For Olivia. For Sarah. Someone had to hold it together.
When Sarah emerged from the bedroom, her hair was wet and she was wearing her oldest, most comfortable pajamas. Her eyes were red and swollen, but her face was set in a determined expression I recognized. It was the same look she'd had when we decided to go ahead with the pregnancy despite the doctors' warnings about complications. The same look when we'd made the decision about Emma.
"Give her to me," she said, holding out her arms. "She needs to be fed."
"I already gave her a bottle," I said, immediately regretting my words as I saw the flash of pain across Sarah's face.
"Oh." Her arms fell to her sides. "I thought... I wanted to nurse her."
"I'm sorry, I didn't think…"
"It's fine." She cut me off, turning away. "I'm going to lie down. Wake me when she needs to eat again."
The bedroom door closed behind her with a quiet click, and I was left alone with Olivia and the heavy silence of our apartment.
The first week was the hardest. Sarah barely slept, insisting on being the one to get up every time Olivia cried, as if she was trying to prove something. To herself, to me, to the ghost of Emma that seemed to hover just at the edges of our consciousness. During the day, she went through the motions of caring for Olivia with mechanical precision,; feeding, changing, bathing, but the joy that should have accompanied these moments was absent. When she wasn't actively tending to Olivia, she stared into space, her thoughts clearly miles away.
I had to return to work at the factory after just three days. We couldn't afford for me to take more time off, especially now with medical bills piling up. The foreman had been reluctant to give me even those three days, reminding me of how many men would gladly take my spot on the line if I couldn't hack it.
"How's the baby?" he asked when I returned, not looking up from his clipboard.
"She's good," I said, keeping my voice neutral. "Healthy."
He nodded, apparently satisfied with my answer. "That's good. Start on station three today."
No one at work knew about the twins. When Sarah was pregnant, I'd told my coworkers we were expecting "a baby," singular. It had seemed simpler that way. Now it felt like another betrayal of Emma, erasing her existence from yet another part of our lives.
As the days passed, the routine became our armor. I would get up at five, make coffee, kiss Sarah and Olivia goodbye, and head to the factory for my shift. After work, I'd pick up whatever groceries we needed, using the dwindling cash from our emergency fund. When I got home, I'd take Olivia while Sarah showered or napped or simply sat in silence, staring at nothing. We would eat dinner, usually something simple and cheap, and then I would clean up while Sarah got Olivia ready for bed. We would collapse into our own bed around nine, both of us exhausted beyond words, only to do it all again the next day.
But beneath the routine, something was wrong with Sarah. I could see it in the way her smiles never reached her eyes, in the way she would sometimes hold Olivia and weep quietly, in the way she seemed to be fading a little more each day. The doctor had warned us about postpartum depression at her discharge, had given us a pamphlet with symptoms to watch for, but we didn't have insurance for therapy, and the free clinic had a three-month waiting list for mental health services.
Two weeks after we brought Olivia home, I came back from work to find Sarah sitting on the floor of the nursery, really just a corner of our bedroom with the crib and a changing table we'd found at a garage sale, surrounded by baby clothes. Half of them were still in the shopping bags they'd come in, gifts from Sarah's coworkers at the diner, from our neighbors, from the church Sarah sometimes attended when her shifts allowed.
"There's so much," she said when she saw me standing in the doorway. "Too much for one baby."
I knelt beside her, putting my arm around her shoulders. "It's good that people were generous. It means we won't have to buy clothes for a while."
She held up a tiny pink sock, rubbing the soft material between her fingers. "These came in a set of two. Everything came in pairs. Two onesies. Two hats. Two socks." Her voice broke. "Because that's how baby things come. In pairs."
I didn't know what to say, so I just held her as she cried, her tears soaking into my work shirt. Olivia began to fuss in her crib, and I started to get up, but Sarah clutched at my arm.
"I'll get her," she insisted, wiping at her tears with the back of her hand. "I'm fine."
But she wasn't fine. Neither of us was.
That night, after Sarah had fallen into an exhausted sleep, Olivia woke up hungry. I got to her before her cries could wake Sarah, warming a bottle and taking her into the living room so her mother could rest. As I fed her, I found myself talking to her in whispers, telling her about her sister, about how much we loved them both, about how sorry I was that we couldn't keep them together.
"Your mama and I thought we were doing the right thing," I murmured as Olivia's eyelids grew heavy. "I hope we were right. I hope someday you'll understand."
When I returned to the bedroom to put Olivia back in her crib, I found Sarah awake, clutching that little pink sock to her chest. She looked up at me with eyes so full of pain that it stole my breath.
"I dreamed about her," she said. "I dreamed she was crying and I couldn't find her."
I settled Olivia in her crib and then sat on the edge of the bed, taking Sarah's hand in mine. "It was just a dream. The Phillips will take good care of her."
"How do we know that? How do we know they're not hurting her or neglecting her? How do we know she's not crying right now, wanting her real parents?"
"Sarah..." I began, but she cut me off.
"Don't tell me it was the right choice. Don't tell me it was for the best. I don't want to hear that right now."
I nodded, squeezing her hand. "Okay. I won't say that."
"I want her back," Sarah whispered, her voice so small I could barely hear it. "I want both my babies."
"I know," I said, and I did know. The same thought had been haunting me since the moment I placed Emma in that car seat. "I know."
But wanting didn't change anything. The adoption was final. Emma was gone, and no amount of regret could bring her back to us.
The next morning, Sarah announced she was going back to work. Her maternity leave, unpaid, of course, wasn't supposed to end for another four weeks, but she insisted we needed the money. She wasn't wrong. Our savings were nearly gone, and my next paycheck was already spoken for; rent, electricity, the payment plan we'd set up for the hospital bills.
"What about Olivia?" I asked, watching as Sarah applied makeup to hide the dark circles under her eyes. "Who will watch her?"
"Mrs. Delgado downstairs said she'd help out. She raised five kids of her own; she knows what she's doing."
I hesitated. Mrs. Delgado was a kind woman, but she was in her seventies and lived on a fixed income. "Are we paying her?"
Sarah's hands stilled on her mascara wand. "I thought maybe we could work something out. I could bring her groceries at cost from the store, or help clean her apartment on my days off."
It wasn't ideal, but it was the best option we had. Daycare would cost more than Sarah would make at the diner. At least this way, Olivia would be with someone who cared about her, and we might be able to start digging ourselves out of the financial hole we were in.
So our new routine began. Sarah would drop Olivia off with Mrs. Delgado before her morning shift at the diner, then pick her up before heading to her evening job stocking shelves at the grocery store. I would get home from the factory around the same time Sarah left for the store, taking over Olivia's care until Sarah returned around midnight. We passed like ships in the night, exchanging brief updates about Olivia's day, about bills that needed to be paid, about groceries we were running low on. We rarely had a real conversation anymore, both of us too exhausted, too wrapped up in our own guilt and grief.
The only time we seemed to connect was at night, when the apartment was quiet and Olivia was asleep. Sarah would curl against me, and we would hold each other, sometimes making love with a desperate intensity, as if we could fill the emptiness inside us with each other. Afterward, Sarah would often cry silently, tears sliding down her cheeks as she stared at the ceiling. And sometimes, when she finally fell asleep, I would find her clutching that little pink sock, the one memento we had of Emma.
One evening, about a month after we brought Olivia home, I arrived at the apartment to find Mrs. Delgado waiting outside our door, Olivia fussing in her arms.
"Sarah didn't come to pick her up," she explained, concern evident in her weathered face. "I called the diner, and they said she left hours ago. I thought maybe she was sick, but..." She gestured to the locked door.
A cold fear gripped me. "Let me take her," I said, reaching for Olivia. "Thank you for waiting."
"Of course, dear. Is everything okay with Sarah?"
"I'm sure it is," I lied, fumbling with my keys. "She probably just got held up somewhere. Traffic or something."
Mrs. Delgado didn't look convinced, but she nodded and headed back to her own apartment as I let myself in. The apartment was dark and silent. No sign of Sarah.
I checked my phone. No messages. I called her cell, but it went straight to voicemail. I fed Olivia, changed her, and put her down in her crib, all the while fighting back the rising panic. Where was Sarah? Had something happened to her? Or had the weight of everything finally become too much?
Just as I was about to call the police, I heard a key in the lock. Relief washed over me, quickly followed by anger as Sarah stumbled into the apartment, her eyes red-rimmed and glassy.
"Where have you been?" I demanded, keeping my voice low so as not to wake Olivia. "Mrs. Delgado was waiting with the baby. I was about to call the cops."
Sarah blinked at me, as if struggling to focus. "I went to see her."
My anger dissolved into confusion. "See who?"
"Emma." She said the name like a prayer. "I went to see Emma."
I guided her to the couch, sitting beside her. "Sarah, that's not possible. You know that. The adoption was closed. We don't even know where the Phillips live."
"I know," she said, her voice eerily calm. "I didn't actually see her. But I drove to that nice neighborhood the social worker mentioned. The one with the good schools. I just wanted to be close to her."
My heart broke a little more at the desperation in her voice. "Oh, Sarah."
"I sat in the park there, watching the mothers with their babies. I kept thinking I might see her. That somehow I'd know my own daughter if she was right in front of me." She laughed, a brittle sound that held no joy. "Isn't that stupid? She's only a month old. And there are probably dozens of babies in that neighborhood."
I pulled her close, feeling her body shake with silent sobs. "It's not stupid. I think about her all the time too."
"I miss her so much," Sarah whispered. "And I feel so guilty for missing her when I have Olivia. Like I'm being ungrateful. Like I don't appreciate what we have."
"It's not ungrateful to miss her," I said, stroking her hair. "She's our daughter too. We're allowed to love her and miss her."
Sarah looked up at me, her eyes swimming with tears. "Do you think we made a mistake? Giving her up?"
It was the question that had been haunting me for weeks, the one I'd been afraid to voice aloud. Had we made the right choice? Or had we taken the easy way out, giving up one of our children because we were too afraid to try to make it work with both?
"I don't know," I admitted, the truth painful on my tongue. "I thought we were doing what was best for both of them. But now..."
"Now we're barely surviving anyway," Sarah finished for me. "I'm working two jobs. You're picking up every extra shift they'll give you. We're still behind on bills. And for what? We lost our daughter, and we're still drowning."
She was right. Despite our sacrifice, despite giving up Emma to give both girls a better life, we were still struggling. The medical bills from the twin pregnancy and delivery were overwhelming. The time Sarah had taken off work had set us back on rent. We were barely keeping our heads above water.
"Maybe we should have tried harder," I said, voicing the thought that had been nagging at me. "Maybe we should have looked for more help, more resources."
"Or maybe we should have given them both up," Sarah said, her voice hollow. "Given them both a chance at a better life than we can provide."
The suggestion hit me like a physical blow. "You don't mean that."
"Don't I?" She pulled away from me, her eyes suddenly fierce. "Look at us, Michael. Look at this place." She gestured around our small apartment, at the water stains on the ceiling, at the secondhand furniture, at the pile of bills on the counter. "What kind of life is this for a child? Maybe Emma is the lucky one."
"Stop it," I said, more sharply than I intended. "Just stop. Olivia is lucky to have us, to be loved by us. And we are going to make this work. Somehow."
Sarah stared at me for a long moment, then her face crumpled. "I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me. I love Olivia so much it hurts. I wouldn't give her up for anything. I just... I feel like I'm being torn in two. Part of me is here with you and Olivia, but part of me is out there somewhere with Emma."
I gathered her in my arms again, holding her as she cried. I understood exactly how she felt. Every time I looked at Olivia, I saw Emma too. Every milestone we celebrated with Olivia came with the shadow of knowing we were missing the same milestone with Emma. It was like living with a phantom limb, the constant awareness of something that should be there but wasn't.
"We're going to get through this," I promised, though I had no idea how. "One day at a time, we'll figure it out. For Olivia. And for Emma, we'll make sure her sacrifice wasn't in vain."
Sarah nodded against my chest, her tears gradually subsiding. "I should feed Olivia," she said after a while. "Is she asleep?"
"Yes. She went down about an hour ago."
"I'll pump then. So there's milk for tomorrow."
I watched as she moved to the bedroom to get her breast pump, her movements slow and heavy, as if she was carrying an invisible weight. In that moment, I made a silent vow to both my daughters. To the one under our roof and the one who lived in our hearts.
I would find a way to make things better. I would work harder, save more, create the stable home we'd dreamed of providing. And maybe someday, when the time was right, when we had more to offer, we might find Emma again. Explain why we'd made the choice we did. Ask for her forgiveness.
Until then, we would love Olivia enough for two. We would pour all our hopes and dreams into her. We would give her the best life we possibly could, even if it wasn't the life we'd imagined.
As Sarah returned with her pump and settled on the couch, her face set in determined lines, I knew she was thinking the same thing. We had made a choice, right or wrong, and now we had to live with it. For Olivia's sake, we had to find a way forward through our grief. We had to become the parents she deserved.
But later that night, when Sarah thought I was asleep, I watched her take out that little pink sock again, press it to her lips, and whisper a goodnight to the daughter who wasn't there. And after she had finally drifted off, I reached over and carefully removed the sock from her fingers, placing it in the drawer of her nightstand where she kept it.
My hand lingered on the drawer for a moment before I closed it. "Goodnight, Emma," I whispered. "Wherever you are, I hope you're happy. I hope you're loved."
Then I turned back to my wife and my daughter, the two pieces of my heart that remained within reach, and promised myself that somehow, someday, I would make this all right.