He lowered his eyes.
“I thought… if the babies weren’t mine…”
“No decent man leaves his wife and babies on a porch.”
“You thought I had cheated on you?” I interrupted. “After everything we’d been through?”
“I didn’t know what to think.”
“You weren’t asked to know,” I said. “You were asked to wait. Twelve days. That’s all they asked of you.”
Walter opened his mouth, then closed it again.
My father spoke for the first time. “She came home seven days after giving birth, carrying three newborns. Whatever you believed, no decent man leaves his wife and babies on a porch.”
“Can I at least see them?”
Walter stared at the floor, unable to answer.
“Elena… I can explain.”
His eyes drifted toward the nursery.
“Can I at least see them? Just once?”
I held his gaze.
“You already did,” I said quietly. “On the porch.”
“You chose who you wanted to be.”
His jaw went slack.
“That was the moment you chose who you wanted to be.”
My attorney handed him the divorce papers. I stood and walked to the front door, opening it wide onto the stacks he had just walked past.
Without another word, he picked up the first box and carried it to his car. By sunset, every one of his belongings was gone.
A few months later, our divorce was final. The court ruled that Walter had wrongfully locked me out of our jointly owned home, and I was awarded the house.
Walter was the biological father.
The fertility clinic’s investigation was completed that same month.
The original DNA report had been the result of a laboratory mix-up. A second test confirmed what I had known from the beginning.
Walter was the biological father of all three babies.
He tried to apologize more than once. I never answered.
“No one will ever make you feel unwanted again.”
