I stood at the airport with our twin babies, watching families reunite as passengers came through the arrivals doors. But the man I was waiting for never appeared. Instead, a soldier approached me. Where was my husband?
After nine months of deployment, my husband was coming home.
He would finally meet his newborn twin daughters.
I had both of them at the arrivals gate when a soldier tapped my shoulder.
My husband Jeremy had never held our girls.
He'd watched them grow through a laptop screen.
With the sound cutting out.
And their tiny faces freezing whenever he leaned closer.
"The worst part," he told me once, "is that they'll know my voice before they know my face."
Now, finally, that was about to change.
He called on Tuesday morning from an airport overseas.
Nine hours before I expected him home.
"I miss you," he said. "I can't wait to meet my little girls."
"Although apparently they're not little anymore."
And then came the apology.
"I'm sorry I missed their birth."
"I should've been there."
"You're coming home. That's what matters."
He promised to call after his connection.
A little later, he sent a video of himself walking toward the plane.
I watched it three times.
I'd barely slept the night before.
Both girls wore matching outfits his mother had mailed.
Across their tiny chests, pink glitter letters spelled out, "DADDY'S HOME."
I tied three balloons to their stroller.
One for each of us waiting.
At the airport, I tracked his final connecting flight on my phone.
The little airplane crossed the screen.
People rushed toward the doors.
A boy ran into his father's arms.
A woman dropped her flowers to embrace her husband.
I kept looking for Jeremy.
I'd rehearsed this moment a hundred times.
Jeremy would see the girls first.
He would crouch beside their stroller, and I would pretend not to cry while he tried to decide which daughter to pick up.
I had even practiced saying their names together.
So he could tell them apart.
Now the balloons floated above two empty spaces where his hands should have been.
The woman who had dropped her flowers was still holding her husband.
I hated her for one awful second.
One of my girls kicked beneath her blanket.
I tucked it around her and wondered how I could be somebody's mother while feeling so much like a frightened child.
Then someone touched my shoulder.
I turned, already smiling.
A soldier stood behind me.
"He was never on that flight. You should go home immediately."
The soldier's expression changed.
"He's receiving medical care."
The airport seemed to tilt.
"There was a complication."
I bent over the stroller, fumbling for a pacifier.
My hands shook so badly I dropped it.
"I have his children here. Don't make me guess what's happened to their father."
He looked at their outfits.
"I served with Jeremy. My name's Daniel."
Jeremy had spoken about him for months.
"He asked me to meet you."
"He doesn't want you coming to see him yet."
"He wants you to go home."
"He's alive, and he doesn't want his wife?"
"That's not what I meant."
"Then tell me what you mean."
Daniel glanced at the girls.
"Jeremy was injured six weeks ago."
"His back. His legs have been affected."
Jeremy sitting against pillows.
The camera never showing below his shoulders.
Whenever I asked him to stand and show me his room, he'd make a joke.
"He's using a wheelchair," Daniel said.
"He thought he'd be walking again before he came home."
I thought of all the times he'd apologized.
I had believed he meant the birth.
"What happened to his flight?"