That might not sound like much, but in our house, 15 minutes mattered. It was long enough for the girls to be hungry, long enough for Jyll to text me, “Where are you?” and long enough for bedtime to start slipping.

That was the first thing I noticed — how still everything was.

The driveway was too neat: no backpacks dumped on the steps, no chalk scribbles, no jump rope tangled on the grass. And the porch light wasn’t on, even though Jyll always flipped it at six.

I checked my phone. No missed calls. No angry texts. Nothing.

I paused with my hand on the doorknob, the weight of the day sitting somewhere behind my eyes.

My shirt collar was still damp from the rain, and the only sound I heard was the soft hum of a neighbor’s lawnmower three doors down.

When I stepped inside, it wasn’t “quiet.” It was wrong.

The TV was off. The kitchen lights were off. And dinner — mac and cheese, still in the pot — was sitting on the stove like someone had walked away mid-step.

“Hello?” I called out. My keys hit the table hard. “Jyll? Girls?”

I kicked off my shoes and rounded the corner into the living room, already halfway toward calling Jyll’s cell.

But someone was there, in the living room already — it was Mikayla, the babysitter. She stood awkwardly by the armchair, phone in hand, her expression somewhere between concerned and apologetic.

She looked up as I entered.

“Zach, I was about to call you,” she said.

“Why?” I asked, taking two steps forward. “Where’s Jyll?”

She nodded toward the couch. Emma and Lily, our six-year-old twins, were curled up beside each other. Their shoes were still on, their backpacks were strewn onto the floor beside them.

“Jyll called me around four,” Mikayla said. “She asked if I could come by because she said she needed to take care of something. I thought it was just errands or something…”

“Emma, Lily, what’s going on?”

I knelt in front of the girls.

“Mom said goodbye, Daddy,” Emma said, blinking slowly. “She said goodbye forever.”

Lily nodded, not looking at me, but her eyebrows were furrowed.

“She took her suitcases.”

“And she hugged us, Daddy. For a long time. And she cried.”

“And she said you’d explain it to us,” Lily added. “What does that mean?”

I looked up at Mikayla. Her lips were trembling.

“I didn’t know what to do. They’ve been like this since I got here. I tried to talk to them, but… Look, Jyll was already out the door when I walked in. So, I don’t know —”

I stood, heart pounding now, and walked to the bedroom.

The closet told me everything. Jyll’s side was bare. Her favorite sweater — the fluffy pale blue one she wore when she was down with a cold — was gone.

And so was her makeup bag, her laptop, and the small framed photo of the four of us at the beach last summer.

Then, I went to the kitchen. There, on the counter beside my coffee mug, was a folded piece of paper.

“Zach,

I think you deserve a new beginning with the girls.

Don’t blame yourself, please. Just… don’t.

But if you want answers… I think it’s best you ask your mom.

All my love,

Jyll.”

It went straight to voicemail: “Office hours are 7:30 to 4:00…”

I hung up, then called the aftercare number Jyll kept saved in my phone.

“Aftercare,” a woman’s tired voice answered.

“This is Zach,” I said. “Did my wife pick up the twins today? Can you check the records?”

There was a pause.

“No, sir. Your wife called earlier and confirmed the babysitter. But… your mother came in yesterday.”

“She asked about changing pickup permissions and wanted copies of records. We told her we can’t do that without a parent. It didn’t feel appropriate.”

I stared back down at Jyll’s note. Ask your mom.

I stared at the words, reading them again and again as if more time would translate them into something else — something reversible. I didn’t have time to fall apart.

I just helped the girls into their jackets, grabbed their backpacks, and led them to the car.

“I can stay with the twins if you’d like?” Mikayla offered. “I can do bath time and order pizza or —”

“No, thank you, though, Mikayla. I need to talk to my mom, and I think the girls just need to be with me. Thank you for everything.”

The drive to my mother’s house was quiet. Lily hummed a few off-key notes before going silent, and Emma kept tapping her fingers against the window. I kept checking the rearview mirror.

They weren’t crying — they weren’t asking questions. They were just… there.

“You girls okay back there?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

Emma shrugged her little shoulders. “Is Mommy mad?”

“No, sweetheart,” I said, swallowing the knot in my throat. “She’s just… figuring some things out.”

“Are we going to Grandma Carol’s?”

“Does Grandma know where Mommy went?” Emma asked, her eyes meeting mine in the mirror.

“We’re going to find out,” I said.

But I already knew part of it.

My mother didn’t “help.” She hovered, corrected, and kept score. She called Jyll selfish for going back to work. And when Jyll finally tried therapy, my mom found a way to sit in, steer it, and kill it.

I thought Jyll was okay. Tired, sure. Quiet sometimes. But who wouldn’t be, juggling newborn twins?

I folded a onesie one night and told her that she was doing a great job as a mom to twins. She looked at me like I’d thrown something at her.

I pulled into the driveway. The porch light was still off.

When my mother opened the door, she looked surprised to see me.

“Zach?” she blinked. “What’s going on? Shouldn’t you be at home?”

“What did you do?” I asked, holding up the note.

“Are the twins with you?” she asked, looking past me, toward the car.

“What did you do, Mom?”

“Come in,” she said. “I’ll get the girls, and then we can talk.”

My aunt Diane was in the kitchen, wiping down the counter like she’d been there a while. She looked up, took in my face, and went still.

Inside, the girls sat at the kitchen table with juice boxes. I followed my mother into the den and sat two cushions away, my heart pounding.

“Jyll is gone,” I said. “And she left me this.”

My mother inhaled sharply, like she’d been bracing for this day.

“I always worried that she might run, Zach,” she began, smoothing her robe like she was fixing something that wasn’t broken.

“You know why, son. She was fragile, Zach. After the twins —”

“That was nearly six years ago,” I cut in. “You think she stayed fragile forever?”

“She never truly got better. She played the part, I’ll give her that. But you saw it too, the blank stares, the mood swings… She was slipping.”

“You used to say that she was nothing but ungrateful.”

“She was that too,” my mother continued. “But more than that, she needed help. She needed structure. And I gave it to her.”

“She needed control, Zach! Someone had to hold things together. You were working 12-hour days and she —”

“She was doing her best!”

“She was spiraling.”

“No, Mom,” I said, leaning forward. “You were spiraling. You just dragged her down with you.”

Her jaw clenched, but she didn’t speak.

“Jyll told me everything,” I said. “About your threats over custody. And everything else… Why do you think that I’ve kept my kids away from you as much as possible?”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said with a dismissive wave. “I never —”

“Don’t lie to me,” I snapped.

She stood when I did, trying to block me as I pushed past her and yanked the desk drawer open.

Inside was a set of manila files; the one on top made my insides turn cold. “Emergency Custody Protocol.”

I flipped it open, my heart thudding

There it was: My name, Jyll’s name on notarized pages. There was a signed contingency plan for guardianship “in the event of emotional instability.”

She drew in a sharp breath.

“It was a precaution, Zach. Surely, you can understand that.”

“For what?! In case you finally pushed my wife too far?”

“She wasn’t fit, Zach. I did what I had to do.”

I didn’t answer. I grabbed the file, turned on my heel, and walked out.

That night, I lay between my daughters, both curled into me like they could feel something final had happened. Emma clutched the photo that I’d thought Jyll had taken.

But I’d found it in our bathroom, next to a box of tissues.