“Try me.”
He rubbed both hands over his face. “That baby is mine.”
My ears rang. “What?”
He looked up at me with dead eyes. “She’s my daughter.”
I said, “Of course she’s your daughter. She’s our daughter.”
He shook his head once.
“No. Not ours.”
I don’t know how long I stood there. Long enough for the silence to become its own living thing.
Then I heard myself ask, “Whose baby is in my nursery?”
He swallowed. “Her name is Ava.”
My voice rose. “Whose. Baby.”
He stared at the desk. “Mine. And Nicole’s.”
Nicole.
I knew the name before he said anything else. A woman from his office. Pretty in a soft, expensive way. The kind of woman men call easy to talk to when what they mean is willing to flatter them.
I almost sat down, but there was nowhere to sit that didn’t feel filthy.
“You had an affair.”
“Yes.”
“And brought the baby here.”
“Yes.”
“While I was in labor?”
He closed his eyes. “Nicole gave birth three days before you.”
I made a sound that didn’t feel human.
He kept talking, maybe because if he stopped, he would have had to hear himself.
“Our baby didn’t make it.”
I stared at him.
He said it again, slower this time, as if I were stupid. “Our daughter was stillborn.”
I shook my head immediately. Hard. Violently. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No, because I held her.”
He said nothing.
And then I knew.
Hospital rooms blur. Pain meds blur. Bleeding and monitors and exhaustion blur. I remembered flashes, not sequences. A nurse laying the baby on my chest. Daniel crying. Me too weak to lift my head all the way.
I remembered thinking she felt cold.
I remembered them taking her quickly because they said she needed checks.
I remembered Daniel saying, “She’s okay. Rest.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
He looked away.
“You switched them.”
He didn’t answer.
I lunged at him then. Not hard enough to hurt him, but hard enough to make us both stumble. “You let me nurse another woman’s baby.”
“Hannah—”
“You let me name her.”
