kitchen door holding a cup of coffee.
For one brief second, I remembered another cup of coffee.
Diego sitting at the table.
Me holding a pregnancy test.
I’m pregnant.
That’s impossible.
It felt like another lifetime.
Diego arrived later to spend his scheduled time with the twins.
Our relationship was no longer loving.
But it had become civil.
He had learned, slowly and painfully, that fatherhood wasn’t a right to control me.
It was a responsibility to them.
His mother eventually apologized too.
I accepted the words.
I didn’t forget the behavior.
Paula was raising Lucas.
We weren’t friends.
We never would be.
But sometimes, when Diego picked up all three children for an afternoon, Paula and I exchanged a strange look.
The kind only two women could share after being accused by the same man of carrying someone else’s child.
Life had a cruel
sense of humor.
One evening,
