I wish I trusted my husband so perfectly that standing outside a maternity room with a newborn girl inside didn’t make one thought punch straight through me.
His baby.
Someone else’s baby with him.
I looked through the glass again.
Pink blanket.
Tiny hand.
My stomach dropped.
“Is she yours?”
James looked genuinely shocked.
“What?”
“Don’t make me ask twice.”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
“No. God, no.”
I stared
at him.
“Then whose is she?”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“Do you remember I told you about Anna?”
The name meant something.
Barely.
He’d said it once, maybe twice, years ago.
Before me.
Before us.
First love.
They’d been 22.
They’d talked about a house, children, and all the things people that age believe they’ve already planned.
Then life happened.
They separated.
Anna married someone else.
James eventually met me.
That was all I knew.
“I remember.”
“I haven’t spoken to her in 11 years.”
I didn’t
say anything.
“Eleven years,” he repeated. “Not a call, not a message, nothing. I want you to know that before I say anything else.”
My heart started beating faster.
“Why is she here?”
James looked toward the room.
“She was.”
Was.
I heard it.
“Was?”
He nodded.
And then he told me the rest badly.
Out of order.
The way people do when the story still feels impossible coming from their own mouths.
Anna had been pregnant.
Seven months along when her husband left.
No warning, apparently. No reconciliation.
