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taking the girls?”
    “I was planning to.” She sucked in a long breath. Managed to force out, “I guess I don’t have to.” She wondered if she could possibly go two weeks without having her babies with her. “If you think you can take off work so you could be with them…”
    “I could cut back a little, but I can’t take the time off completely right now.”
    She nodded resignedly. “Then I’ll take them with me.”
    “So, after being away from them for a month, I won’t be able to see them for two more weeks?” His voice was cold again—but she knew it was prompted by pain.
    “No. Of course, you can see them. We won’t be far away. You can come down as often as you like to spend time with them. I hope you do . They need you. They’re your daughters, Seth. I’m never going to try to take them away from you. They’ll always be in your life.”
    Seth slowly raised his eyes to meet hers, as if they’d been too heavy to lift. He murmured hoarsely, “And you?”
    Erin started sobbing again, her present pain coupled with pain that was years old. Hated herself for being so weak, but she couldn’t possibly stop. “I just need a couple of weeks. Then we’ll go from there.”
    He lowered his head again, as if he were accepting the stroke of his doom. And Erin saw he wasn’t going to argue anymore.
    So, still sobbing, she went back into the closet to get her shoes.
    She had been wrong. She’d thought Seth had done all the arguing and pleading he was willing to do. He'd always been a proud man, and there was only so far he would lower himself. But when she returned to the bedroom, he was waiting for her. He reached out to grip her upper arms. “Erin,” he said thickly. “Baby, please don’t leave me.”
    “I’m not leaving for good,” she gasped, the tears overflowing in her eyes again so that his urgent face blurred in front of her. “Just for a couple of weeks.”
    “That’s what always happens,” he insisted, his eyes as naked as she’d ever seen them. “You’ll leave for a week or two. Then you’ll want a trial separation. Then you’ll be calling your divorce attorney. Erin, I don’t deserve you. And I haven’t treated you and the girls as I should. But please don’t leave me.”
    Her sobs were loud and raspy now, and it felt like they were tearing her apart. She exerted all the control she had remaining to subdue the sound so she wouldn’t wake up the girls. “Seth, I don’t want a divorce. I promise. I just want a couple of weeks.”
    He didn’t say anything. Just held onto her arms in a grip of silent desperation and stared at her pleadingly.
    Finally, Erin couldn’t stand it anymore. She loved this man so much, and she was starting to wonder why she had ever wanted to leave him.
    Gently, she pulled out of his grasp. “We’ll leave in the morning. Please, come down to see the girls at my dad’s as often as you can. And—if necessary—we’ll work out a way to get them back up here, maybe next weekend.”
    “How long—”
    “I don’t know. A couple of weeks. Long enough for me to figure things out.”
    Seth’s expression broke for just a moment. “Erin, are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”
    She shook her head. Wiped the rest of her tears away. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I have no idea if this is right. Maybe this is the worst thing I could do. But it’s the only thing I can think of.”
    ***
    The next morning, Erin sat on Mackenzie’s bed and Seth on Anna’s, as they told them they were going to visit their grandfather with their mommy for a week or two.
    Anna had been excited when she heard she was going to visit Grandpa, and she’d scrambled off her bed with her favorite stuffed puppy so she could go and start packing her toys.
    She must have taken her pajama bottoms off during the night, because she was wearing just the blue and white top and her pink panties.
    Seth, who was fully dressed in a suit and tie, grabbed Anna before she could