Chapter 5 - Bedroom. Now.
When I got home, Gail — Daniel's mother — was in my kitchen with Jasper on her shoulder. Daniel had texted that she was coming to help. Normally I'd have been thankful.
Then she spotted Ivy's drawing on the counter, and her whole face changed.
"You know who Ivy is," I said.
Silence.
Daniel appeared in the hallway behind her. "Mom."
That was answer enough.
"How long have you known?"
Gail looked at me. "Six months."
The cold went all the way through me.
"Have you met her?"
Her eyes flicked to Daniel.
"Answer me, please."
"Twice."
I took Jasper out of her arms, careful and slow, and set him in his seat.
"You met my husband's daughter before anyone bothered to tell me she was alive."
"Corinne, I told him to tell you. I pushed him."
"And when he didn't, you still said nothing."
Her face crumpled. "No. I didn't."
"Thank you for coming to help with Jasper."
Then I turned to Daniel. "Bedroom. Now."
Gail stayed frozen by the sink.
The door clicked shut behind us and I rounded on him.
"You let your mother meet Ivy."
"I needed someone to talk to."
"You had a wife."
"I couldn't talk to you about Ivy without telling you there was an Ivy."
"That's the whole point, Daniel."
He looked wrung out. I didn't care.
"When were you actually going to tell me?"
"After the last IVF cycle."
"Then I got pregnant."
"Yeah."
"Then the pregnancy got scary."
Nothing.
"Then the twins came."
Nothing.
"There was always going to be a reason. Forever."
"I was scared."
"Of what?"
He raised his eyes. "Of what Ivy would mean to you."
"Say the rest of it."
He took a breath. "I watched you go through five years of treatment. I watched you blame yourself every single time it failed, like your body was doing it on purpose. And then Bethany calls me out of nowhere and tells me I've already got an eight-year-old. A kid who happened with zero effort. Zero needles. Zero heartbreak." His voice cracked. "I didn't know how to put that in your hands."
"So you decided I couldn't carry it."
"I thought you'd look at her and see everything we'd lost."
He probably expected me to argue.
"Maybe I would have."
He stared at me.
"Maybe it would've gutted me. Maybe I'd have been jealous of a child and then hated myself for it. Maybe I'd have needed months before I could sit in a room with her." I stepped closer. "But that was mine to feel. Mine to work through. Instead you didn't trust me with the worst version of myself, so you just deleted the whole thing."
"I was trying to protect you."
"No." My voice dropped, quieter than I meant it to. "We're done calling it that. You weren't protecting me from the pain. You were protecting yourself from having to watch me go through it."
He sank down onto the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry."
I believed him. Believing him didn't hand me back eighteen months.
May you like
For the first time since the hallway, I stopped asking questions. Information had always made the fear smaller. Now I had enough of it.
The next move wasn't his. It was mine.
