A tear rolled down his cheek.
"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."
"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.
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.
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.
The smile fell off her face.
"Ethan?" Sadie said carefully. "Honey. What's happened?"
My MIL's free hand drifted, almost without her noticing, to the outside of her purse. Her fingers pressed there as if she were checking for something.
Her strange movements somehow took me back to a memory.
I thought of the baby shower three weeks ago.
"What's happened?"
***
My MIL had been sitting in the corner going through her purse when I walked over to thank her politely for coming.
There had been an old envelope in her hand. She had folded it shut so quickly that I'd almost missed it.
"Just an old thing from my past," she'd said, laughing lightly. "You know, old woman, clutter."
I hadn't pressed. Ethan didn't like questions about the past.
She had folded it shut so quickly.
My husband had never shown me his baby pictures or told stories about his childhood. And once, when I'd asked about his father, he'd just said, "Dad's a good man," and changed the subject to what we should have for dinner.
***
Now Ethan turned toward his mother, and his face did something I'd never seen it do before. It broke open, all the way, as if he'd been holding a door shut against a whole ocean and finally let go.
