My husband couldn’t stop smiling when I told him the babysitter would be arriving soon. He looked almost giddy. That smile vanished the instant the doorbell rang and he realized who was standing on our porch. What he didn’t know was that I’d been setting this up for weeks… and his own careless joke was about to come back to him in a way he’d never forget. My name is Rory. I’m thirty-two years old, living in a quiet Illinois neighborhood with my husband, Damon, and our three-year-old twins, Bonnie and Sawyer. From the outside, our life probably looked calm and well-organized. Inside, it was being held together almost entirely by me. Every evening followed the same pattern. Damon came home around dinnertime, lifted Sawyer for a quick laugh, kissed Bonnie’s curls, and then disappeared into his gaming room. The door closed, the blue glow of screens flickered underneath, and I was left with the rest: dinner, tantrums, laundry piles, appointments, groceries, baths, bedtime stories, and n…
