Twenty Minutes
The pacifier was still missing at 11:42 p.m.
I was standing at the kitchen sink with my hands in lukewarm dishwater. The house was silent. The kind of silence that only happens in a home with four children under five between the hours of eleven and five. A fragile, holy silence. One sneeze away from breaking.
I was scrubbing the last pot. The one with the dried mac and cheese crusted on the bottom. I’d made it at five o’clock. The kids ate it. I didn’t. I never eat dinner anymore. I eat whatever’s left on their plates while I’m scraping them into the trash.
My husband had gone to bed at nine-thirty.
Angry.
He didn’t say goodnight. He just walked past the kitchen, flipped off the hallway light while I was still in it, and closed our bedroom door a little harder than he needed to.
I stood at the sink and felt terrible.
I’d ruined his night.
Then I remembered the pacifier.
Theo’s green one. The good one. The only one he’ll actually take at two in the morning when he wakes up screaming. He’d been sucking on it in the playpen during my shower. Sometime in those twenty minutes, it disappeared.
I’d looked everywhere. Under the couch. Under the playpen. In the toy bins. In the cushions.
If I didn’t find it, Theo would wake up at two and scream for an hour. And Brandon would wake up. And he’d be angry again.
I dried my hands on a dish towel.
I took out my phone.
We’d installed a security camera in the living room in the spring. A little white dome in the corner near the ceiling. Wide-angle lens. It sees the whole room. The couch. The recliner. The playpen. The TV. The rug where the girls play.
Brandon’s idea, actually. After Theo learned to climb out of things. He said it would give me peace of mind.
I hadn’t looked at it in weeks.
I opened the app.
I scrolled back to 7:00 p.m.
I thought I’d just find the moment the pacifier fell. Zoom in. See where it rolled.
That’s all I was looking for.
I didn’t find the pacifier.
I found something else.
And in twenty minutes of grainy video on a five-inch screen, standing at my kitchen sink at midnight, I watched my marriage come apart in my hands.
But I need to tell you how we got here.
My name is Erin Callahan. I’m thirty-one years old.
Before I had kids, I was a pediatric occupational therapist. At a children’s hospital in Columbus, Ohio. I helped little kids with cerebral palsy learn to hold a spoon. I helped kids with autism learn to tolerate the feeling of socks. I helped toddlers who’d been in car accidents learn to walk again.
I loved it.
I was good at it.
I haven’t worked in five years.
My husband is Brandon Callahan. He’s thirty-four. He’s a regional sales manager for a medical device company. He has an office in Dublin, Ohio. He works eight-thirty to five-thirty. Monday through Friday. He gets a lunch hour. He gets coffee breaks. He gets a parking spot with his name on it.
We met at a friend’s wedding in 2017. He was funny. Charming. He made everybody at the table laugh. He asked me to dance and actually knew how.
We got married in 2019.
We have four children.
All under the age of five.
Mabel is four. She’ll be five in March. She has my dark hair and Brandon’s green eyes and a way of tilting her head when she’s listening that makes her look like a little bird. She’s in pre-K three mornings a week. She can write her name. She can count to a hundred. She knows every word to every song in Moana.
She’s the most serious four-year-old I’ve ever met.
June and Ivy are three.
Twins. Identical. Blonde curls. Brandon’s dimples. They have their own language. Little words nobody else understands. Bibba means blanket. Nunu means give it back, it’s mine.
They do everything together. They fight together. They cry together. They fall asleep holding hands.
Theo is one. Fourteen months.
Our surprise. Our oops. Our I thought you were on the pill.
He has a full head of red hair from somewhere back in Brandon’s family. Chubby cheeks. Four teeth. He’s just started walking. Mostly, he climbs. Everything. The couch. The bookshelf. The dishwasher door. Me.
Four kids. Under five.
If you’ve never done it, I can’t explain it to you.
If you have, I don’t need to.
I’m a stay-at-home mom.
That’s what it says on forms. Occupation: Homemaker.
That’s not what it is.
What it is, is this.
