“Get out of the car right now,” my mother ordered while rain hammered the highway and my three-day-old twins cried in their car seats, and when I begged her to stop because the babies were newborns, my father grabbed my hair and pushed me out onto the road while the car was still moving…

By the time our car reached the interstate highway the sky had darkened so suddenly that it felt as if someone had pulled a heavy curtain across the sun, and thick sheets of rain began slamming against the windshield until the road became nothing more than blurred headlights and streaks of water sliding across the glass.

My younger sister Danielle Foster was driving the sedan, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that the knuckles on her fingers looked pale against the black leather as she leaned forward every few seconds trying to see through the storm. I sat in the back seat between two infant carriers that held my newborn twins Audrey and Caleb, both of them only three days old and sleeping peacefully with tiny relaxed faces that knew nothing about the tension building inside that car.

My body still ached from the delivery and every bump in the highway sent dull pain through my abdomen where my stitches pulled sharply, yet none of that discomfort mattered compared to the overwhelming relief I felt knowing my babies were healthy and close enough for me to touch.