“And what changed?”
I looked down at my daughters.
“Nothing changed about them.”
Then I looked at Brian.
“Everything changed about what I knew.”
The social worker nodded slowly.
The next several days were the hardest of my life.
I barely slept.
I answered questions from social workers, doctors, counselors, and hospital administrators.
Brian admitted that he had hidden the prenatal information from me.
He kept saying he had done it because he loved me.
Maybe he had.
But love without trust can become its own kind of betrayal.
I told him I didn’t know whether our marriage would survive.
What I did know was that my daughters would not pay the price for the choices we had made.
Three days later, I was finally allowed to hold them both together.
One rested against each side of my chest.
They were warm.
Fragile.
Alive.
And completely unaware of how close I had come to disappearing from their lives.
