Our daughter's twin di3d at nine days old and we let her believe she was born alone — at her eighteenth my husband carried something out of the garage and said he had started it the night her sister died.

And then we did not tell her.

She was too small. Then she was five, and you do not put that on a five-year-old. Then she was twelve and having a bad year. Then she was doing her applications.

There was always a reason, and the reasons worked, every single time, for eighteen years.

My mother took the hospital photograph off her hall wall.

My sister Dinah learned not to say the name at Christmas.

And about once a year, usually in a car, Russ would say: "She's got a right to know."

And I'd say: "Know what? That she's the one who lived?"

And he would 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 ninth of September, and one of them silent.

I have set that table for four more times than I am going to admit, and not noticed until I was halfway down it.