Chapter 1: The Night We Stopped Counting Two
Our daughter's twin sister d\*ed at nine days old and we hid it for 18 years — At her party my husband brought something from the garage and said, "I started it the night she d\*ed."
My daughter had a twin sister who d\*ed nine days after we brought them home, and for eighteen years we let her believe she was born alone.
Rosie was eleven minutes younger.
Six pounds, one ounce.
The coroner wrote SIDS, which means nobody did anything wrong, which turned out to be the hardest part.
I took the second crib apart myself while my husband was at the funeral home.
I had it in pieces against the garage wall before he got back.
We told ourselves Hannah was too little to understand.
Then she was five, and you don't put that on a kindergartner.
Then she was twelve and having a bad year.
Then she was filling out college applications.
There was always a reason, and the reasons kept working.
My mother took the hospital photo down off her hallway wall.
My sister learned not to say the name at Thanksgiving.
Once a year, usually in the car, my husband would say, "She has a right to know."
And I'd say, "Know what?
That she's the one who lived?"
He'd let it go.
He always let it go.
I held two babies for nine days, and I have spent eighteen years being the only person in this house still counting.
Two birthdays every September 9th, one of them silent.
I'd set the table for four once in a while and not notice until I was halfway through.
Every September 9th he went out to the garage after dinner and stayed about an hour.
I never asked.
I assumed he needed the quiet, the way I needed the laundry room.
The party was thirty people.
Folding tables in the backyard, a sheet cake from the grocery store with her name in blue, my brother still at the grill.
Hannah opened her gifts.
She held up the car keys and screamed and hugged her father around the neck.
Then he asked everyone to give us a minute, and people drifted toward the house with their plates.
He came back from the garage carrying something.
I had never seen it before in my life.
Eighteen years in that house, and I had never once seen it.
He set it down in front of her and told her she hadn't been born by herself.
He told her the name.
Hannah didn't cry and she didn't ask a single question.
"I started it the night she d\*ed," he said.
She reached out and put both hands on it.
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What did he carry out of that garage — and what happens when Hannah finally speaks?
Comment **"ROSIE"** if you want Part 2.
