I looked at Carson.
Really looked at him. The man I had been married to for four years. The man who had held my hand in every ultrasound, who had wept — actually wept — the first time we heard the heartbeat in a dark little exam room. The man who had spent a whole Saturday painting the nursery a soft, hopeful yellow because we’d decided to be surprised by the sex and yellow worked for anyone.
That man was now looking at the daughter that painting was for, and asking for proof she belonged to him.
“You’re saying this now?” I whispered. “Thirty minutes after I pushed her out of my body?”
His jaw tightened in that stubborn way I knew too well. “I’m saying I deserve to know the truth.”
And something inside me broke.
I want to be precise about this, because it matters. It broke, but it did not collapse. A thing can break and fall to pieces, or it can break the way a fever breaks, the way a long sickness finally lifts, and what’s left underneath is suddenly, terribly clear.
