I open a packet of Swedish Fish and pop one into my mouth.
My babies are both asleep in the double stroller. At three months old, they are already developing personalities, little individual characteristics that set them apart from each other.
Aislinn gurgles when she sees her daddies, plump arms and legs trembling with excitement until they lift her out of her crib and cradle her in their arms. Her curls are like spun gold, transforming the sunlight into a glowing halo around her head. She looks like them, but she has a tiny, barely perceptible pattern of freckles at the corner of her left eye.
Aiden is the serious twin. Conservative with his smiles, he waits until he is in our arms and can survey his surroundings before deciding whether a smile is appropriate or not. His curls are golden too but with a coppery tint. He’ll be a heartbreaker my mom said the first time she saw him.
I hope he isn’t.
I wish for them both to grow up and find happiness wherever they look. I don’t want them to break hearts. I want them to gluehearts back together again, to fill them with love and joy and laughter.
My little boy stirs, the gentle breeze catching his curls and tugging them away as if to steal them. I rock the stroller and tilt my face towards the sky.
The sun is high, burning through the hazy blue, and warming my face. I always find peace here in the graveyard, but today feels different, as though I brought peace with me this time and am sharing it with my sister, rather than waiting for her to show me where to look for it.
“I brought the twins to meet you, Dan. They’re asleep, so you can take your time before they wake up for a feed.”
I smile upward. I know she can see me but today it feels as though she has something to say. My eyes fly open. Wispy clouds are floating by; I see the white trail of an airplane fading into the horizon, the glass towers clawing for supremacy, gulls soaring on the current and scanning the ground for food.
“What is it, Dan?”
Nothing.
I smile to myself. What did I expect, a spectral vision to float down and tell me that she misses me?
“I miss you too. Every single day.”
I gaze at my beautiful babies, at their plump lips with the tiny heart shape in the center, the veins crisscrossing their delicate eyelids, the fine curls touching their ears. They staked their claim on my heart before I even met them. I knew the moment I held them in my arms that my love for them would surpassanything else I’d ever felt, including what I feel for Cash and Bash. But there will always be room for my sister.
The breeze tugs a strand of my hair into my eyes, and I brush it away as the twins both stir at the same time.
“Hey, baby,” I murmur. “You want to come and meet your Auntie Danielle?”
Tears sting my eyes. She’ll never get to hold them, or spoil them at Christmas, or teach them to ride a bike, but it doesn’t mean that she can’t be a part of their lives.
I lift them out of the stroller and settle them both on my lap, one head on each arm. I was afraid I wouldn’t know what to do with two babies, but the most surprising thing about being a mom is how maternal instinct kicks in and you run with it. It’s tough. I’m so tired most of the time that I can’t function without coffee. But I wouldn’t change a thing.
Aislinn scrunches up her face when she stares at the sky, squirming to be set free. This isn’t the daddy cuddle she was expecting, and she’ll let me know exactly how miffed she is before long. Unlike his sister, Aiden stares at me as if he can see right through to my core. His perfect little face is serious, bottom lip rolled out because he hasn’t yet learned how to express his emotions.
“Danielle Jones, a star that will continue to shine.” I read my sister’s epitaph out loud. “That’s your auntie I’m talking about. She would’ve loved you both.”
There was a time before my sister discovered chemically induced highs, when she wanted to work with children. She used to babysit our neighbors’ little kids, and whenever they saw her, she was the one they ran to. She was on their wave level andalways knew how to make them smile. Until she didn’t. Until she forgot how to smile herself.
“When you’re older, I’ll show you photographs of your auntie Danielle. She was so beautiful.” My voice snags in my throat. “I don’t think she ever knew how beautiful she was. I won’t let that happen to either of you. I’m going to keep reminding you how special you are until you cover your ears and tell me to shut up. And I still won’t stop. Not even then.”
Aiden seems to hang on my every word, but Aislinn kicks her little feet, and her body goes stiff as though she has been kept waiting far too long for daddy’s affection. Her foot catches the bag of candy and scatters it across the grass covering Danielle’s grave.
I try to pick up the gummy fish, but it’s virtually impossible with a baby resting on each arm, so I quickly put them back into the stroller, murmuring, “It’s only for a couple of minutes, just while I pick up Auntie Danielle’s candy.”
Aislinn is whimpering. It isn’t full-on bawling because she’s hungry, or tired, or needs a clean diaper, it’s more a testing-the-water complaint because she escalates it to the next level. Aiden, silent, follows me with his eyes as I crawl around the grass collecting pink fish and stuffing them back into the packet.
I won’t eat them. I don’t even like them. But I can’t leave Danielle’s grave covered in litter, even if there is a chance that the insects and birds will have picked them up and carried them away by nightfall. It feels wrong.
Something sparkly catches my eye amongst the daisies and grass. I part the stalks and pinch it between two fingernails, holding it close to my face and examining it.
It’s a tiny star, the kind that you get in Christmas confetti or inside a snow globe. I guess it must’ve been floating in the air and landed here when the wind dropped, but it makes me smile anyway.
“Perhaps you were looking for a star and found my sister,” I say out loud.
