The preview contained only one sentence, but it was enough.

“Delete everything before she sees it.

I’ll explain after the shower.”

I raised Lisa’s phone.

“Is ‘C’ Callum?”

“Give me that,” she said.

“Answer me.”

Callum stepped between us.

“Not here.”

“Not here?” I looked around at the balloons, gifts, and relatives pretending not to listen.

“You let my family celebrate this baby while the two of you hid paternity results.

Where would you prefer to discuss it?”

Mom moved toward Ellie.

“Let me take her into the kitchen.”

“No.” Ellie wrapped both arms around my waist.

“She stays with me.”

Lisa reached for the phone, but I pulled it back.

“You have no right to read my messages.”

“I had a right to know why my husband was calling himself your baby’s father.”

Callum lowered his voice.

“It happened once.”

A chair scraped behind me.

Lisa stared at him.

“Don’t you dare reduce this to once.”

Callum closed his eyes.

I placed the phone on the gift table.

“How long?”

“Please,” he said.

“Take Ellie home, and I’ll tell you everything privately.”

“How long, Callum?”

Lisa folded her arms over her stomach.

“Fourteen months.”

My knees weakened, but Ellie’s hands tightened around mine.

“We’ve only been married eight years,” I said.

“Did either of you think that mattered?”

“You were always working,” Lisa replied.

“Callum was lonely.”

Mom gasped.

“Lisa!”

“What?” Lisa snapped.

“Everyone is blaming me as though he wasn’t miserable.”

Callum turned on her.

“Stop talking.”

“No, let her talk.” I removed my wedding ring and set it beside the phone.

“Apparently, my sister knows more about my marriage than I do.”

Callum picked up the ring.

“You’re not ending our marriage in front of everyone.”

“You ended it in my house while our daughter watched cartoons.”

Ellie began to cry.

I lifted her into my arms.

“None of this is your fault, sweetheart.”

Callum reached for her.

“Give her to me.”

I stepped away.

“Don’t touch her.”

“I’m her father.”

“Then you should have protected her instead of teaching her to lie.”

Mom stood in front of the door.

“Nobody leaves until we calm down.”

Lisa snatched up her phone.

“I’m not staying here to be judged.”

“You brought this into my home,” Mom said.

“You will answer your sister.”

“There’s nothing left to answer.”

“There is one thing,” I said.

“Did you get the result?”

Lisa’s thumb hovered over the clinic message.

Callum moved closer.

“Don’t open it.”

She looked at him.

“You wanted to know.”

“Not like this.”

Lisa opened the message.

Her eyes moved across the screen, and the anger drained from her face.

“Well?” I asked.

She pressed the phone to her chest.

“It isn’t clear.”

“Read it aloud.”

“No.”

Callum grabbed for the phone.

Lisa twisted away, and her purse overturned across the floor.

A brass key, two receipts, and a folded property brochure slid beneath the table.

I picked up the brochure.

A red circle surrounded a three-bedroom house forty miles away.

Across the top, someone had written: OUR NEW START.

Callum’s handwriting.

“What is this?”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

My own phone vibrated inside my pocket.

I pulled it out and saw a banking alert.

A transfer of $42,000 had just been made from our joint savings account.

The destination was an account I had never seen before.