Chapter 2 - The Envelope
Karen shut the front door behind me and took the car seat out of my hands without a word.
My son was three days old.
I stood in my sister's hallway with a diaper bag over one shoulder, my hospital bracelet still cutting into my wrist, and a phone full of messages Nathan wasn't answering.
The girls were already upstairs. Ella had asked me twice when Dad was coming to get them. I didn't have an answer that wouldn't make her cry.
"Sit down," Karen ordered. "You look like you're about to hit the floor."
Hannah had brought the banner they'd made for the baby. It sat folded on the stairs now, one corner bent, WELCOME HOME WYATT written across it in four different colors of marker.
"Should I save it for when Dad comes?" she'd asked me.
I'd told her yes, because I couldn't explain why we weren't going home.
"He won't pick up. Look." I turned my phone toward Karen. Three missed calls from me. One message from Nathan:
I'll have my lawyer contact you about the separation.
Karen read it twice, her jaw tightening more each time.
"Sofia. Stop calling him."
"He's my husband. I have to make him listen to me."
"He's not listening. That's the entire point." She sat across from me and put a hand on my knee. "You keep calling, you keep chasing him, you start looking guilty whether you are or not. You are not guilty. Stop acting like it."
I looked down at the bassinet. "So what do I do?"
"You prove it. In a language he can't twist around and argue with."
I ordered the DNA test that same afternoon. Karen went back to the house and came back with Nathan's toothbrush from the bathroom cabinet.
Swabbing my son's cheek took ten seconds. Mailing the samples took almost an hour, because I sat shaking in the parking lot with the envelope in my lap, unable to make myself get out of the car.
Waiting was the worst part of all of it. I replayed every single moment Ryan had spent around me — the pool party, the school pickups, the coffee at my kitchen table on afternoons Nathan worked late — turning each one over, looking for something I might have missed.
On the fourth day, the doorbell rang.
Ryan stood on Karen's porch holding a stuffed bear.
For a second, my mind jumped somewhere else entirely — to Nathan's father's funeral, months back. Ryan had stood several feet behind the family as people filed past the casket. At the time I'd thought it was strange. He'd stayed until almost everyone else had left, just staring at the closed lid. When I'd asked if he was okay, he'd only said, "I've known him a long time."
I'd assumed he meant because of Nathan.
"Sofia, what's going on?" Ryan's voice pulled me back. "Nathan blocked my number. Did I do something?"
I gripped the doorframe. "I can't talk about this right now."
His face shifted. "Is it the baby? Is something wrong with him?"
"We're fine. Just — give us some time, Ryan."
He set the bear down on the porch and walked back to his car without pushing further. Karen watched him go from behind me.
"You didn't tell him anything."
"He deserves to hear it from Nathan. Not from me."
One week after I mailed the samples, the results landed in my inbox. I opened the PDF at Karen's kitchen table, and my hands were steadier than I expected them to be.
Probability of paternity: 99.99%.
I read it twice.
For one stupid second, relief came first. Then anger swallowed it whole.
A week earlier, I would've called Nathan the moment I saw those numbers. I would have cried and begged him to come home and tried to erase every second of what had happened in that hospital room.
My thumb hovered over his name in my contacts.
Then I remembered him yanking his hand out of mine. I remembered begging him to just look at me while he walked straight out the door.
I wasn't going to beg this time.
I forwarded him the result. No message. No subject line. Just the attachment.
Less than an hour later, he was standing on Karen's porch.
I opened the door but stayed inside the frame. I didn't invite him in.
"Sofia." His voice broke on my name. "I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry."
"You saw the file."
"I read it four times."
"Good."
"Please. Please let me hold him. Let me come home."
Nathan was crying openly now, right there on the porch.
I looked at him for a long moment. "One question, Nathan. Answer it honestly, or don't bother saying anything else to me."
"Anything. Ask me anything."
"Then why does our son have Ryan's birthmark?"
His face went completely blank. Whatever apology he'd rehearsed on the drive over evaporated on the spot.
"Call him."
"What?"
"You heard me. Call Ryan. Right now."
"Sofia, I don't even know what I'm asking him."
"Then start with the birthmark and see where it goes."
He stood frozen for a second. I held out my hand, palm up.
"Give me the phone, then. I'll ask him myself."
That finally got him moving. Nathan pulled out his phone and called Ryan. It rang three times before he picked up.
"Nathan?"
"That birthmark," Nathan said, voice shaking. "On your back. Where'd you get it?"
Silence stretched out long enough that I thought the call had dropped.
Then Ryan exhaled, slow and heavy. "Is the baby there? Is Sofia there?"
Nathan looked at me. I nodded once.
May you like
"Yeah," he said. "She's here."
Another pause. Then Ryan said, quiet and final, "You need to come over. Both of you. Now."
