“Tell you what? Ethan, you’re scaring me.”
“Look at this child.” His voice cracked mid-sentence as he walked over and placed her in my arms. “Don’t you see it? Don’t you understand what you’ve done?”
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I couldn’t breathe.
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“You’re scaring me.”
The room felt narrow, and every ugly thought I’d ever pushed away came rushing in at once.
Did he think Lily wasn’t his? Did he see something wrong with her, some sign the doctors had missed?
Our baby’s skin was warm and pink, her breathing soft and steady. She was completely normal.
“She’s your daughter!” I choked out. My arms tightened around her so instinctively that she squirmed and made a soft, complaining sound. “Ethan, what are you accusing me of? Look at me.”
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Every ugly thought I’d ever pushed away came rushing in at once.
A tear rolled down his cheek, then another, and he didn’t wipe them away. He just stood there, staring at our baby as if she’d rearranged the entire world.
“No,” my husband said, shaking his head. “No, that isn’t what I mean. God. Eloise, I’m sorry.”
He dropped into the chair beside my bed as though the truth had knocked the strength from his legs. He pressed both hands against his face for a long moment. When he lowered them, he looked 10 years older!
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A tear rolled down his cheek.
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“That came out so wrong. I’m so sorry.”
“Then say the right thing,” I whispered. My voice was shaking. “Because I just gave birth to our daughter, and you’re sitting there looking at her like she’s a ghost.”
“There’s something you need to know,” he whispered, reaching for my hand and missing. Ethan tried again and caught my fingers. His grip was cold. “Something about me. Something I should’ve told you a long time ago, and I kept telling myself it didn’t matter until now.”
“There’s something you need to know.”
My husband looked at Lily again, and his whole face crumpled.
“Now it matters.”
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“Ethan, please. Just tell me.”
“I was afraid to tell you,” he said. “I’ve been afraid for four years. But I can’t hide it anymore, not after seeing her. Not after…”
He stopped and took a shaky breath, as if he were gathering himself for something enormous. I braced for whatever was coming.
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But I didn’t get to hear it.
“I was afraid to tell you.”
The delivery room door swung open behind him with a soft rush of hallway air. I looked up, expecting Nurse Stella with another chart or a blood pressure cuff.
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It wasn’t her.
My blood turned to ice when I saw who came in because we barely got along. We weren’t enemies or anything like that, just not close.
It was my mother-in-law (MIL), Sadie.
The delivery room door swung open.
My MIL stood in the doorway with a pale pink gift bag looped over her wrist and a tissue crumpled in her other hand. She’d clearly been smiling all the way down the corridor, ready to meet her granddaughter for the first time.
The smile fell off her face the second she saw us.
Her eyes went to Ethan, sitting slumped in the chair with tears on his cheeks, then to me, wide-eyed and clutching Lily as if someone might take her. Then to the bassinet, empty and forgotten, and back to her son.
