“Ethan, please. Just tell me.”
“I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
He took a shaky breath.
“I’ve been afraid to tell you for four years. But after seeing Lily, I can’t keep pretending this part of my past doesn’t exist.”
Before he could explain, the hospital-room door opened.
I expected Nurse Stella.
Instead, my mother-in-law, Sadie, walked in carrying a pale pink gift bag.
Sadie and I had never been particularly close.
She entered smiling, obviously excited to meet her granddaughter.
Then she saw Ethan’s face.
Her smile vanished.
“Ethan? What happened?”
Her eyes moved from her son to me.
Then to Lily.
Something about her reaction immediately reminded me of the baby shower three weeks earlier.
I had caught Sadie looking at an old envelope inside her purse.
She had quickly folded it closed.
When I asked about it, she laughed.
**“Just an old thing from my past.”**
I hadn’t questioned her further.
Ethan rarely spoke about his childhood either.
He never showed me baby photographs.
Whenever I asked about his father, Levi, he would simply say,
**“Dad’s a good man.”**
