It’s six a.m. and I’m the first one up. Spotify’s playing that Chainsmokers song I like. If we go down, then we go down together . . . I take an Ativan and chase my morning coffee with a couple of splashes of hundred-proof Captain Morgan. I return the bottle to its hiding place inside the twenty-quart lobster pot we never use, put the lid on, and put it back in the cabinet above the fridge that Emily can’t reach without the step stool. Then I fill the twins’ sippy cups and start making French toast for breakfast. If we go down, then we go down together. I cut the music so I can listen for the kids, but that song’s probably going to play in my head all morning.

Emily’s up now and in the bathroom, getting ready for work. When the shower stops, I hear the twins babbling to each other in the nursery we converted from my studio almost two years ago. My easel, canvases, and paints had been exiled to the space behind the basement stairs. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice. I made my living as a commercial artist and had been struggling after hours and on weekends to make “serious” art, but after the babies were born, the last thing I felt like doing was staring at a blank canvas and waiting for some abstraction to move from my brain down my arm to my brush to see what came out. Maisie was the alpha twin; Niko, who would learn to creep, walk, and say words after his sister did, was the beta. In the developmental race, Niko always came in second, but, as their personalities began to emerge, his sister became our more serious, more driven twin and he was our mischievous little laughing boy. I loved them more deeply every day for who each was becoming. How could some artistic indulgence of mine have competed with what our lovemaking had created? It wasn’t even close.