Chapter 2 - Four Months
"Dad?" The word hit harder than if she'd called him "baby."
I stared at him. "Dad?"
He closed his eyes briefly. Ren looked between us, her expression shifting from pain to confusion. "You're Dana?"
That made it worse. She knew me. I didn't know her.
"My name is Ren," she said carefully. "I'm Marcus's daughter."
The hallway seemed to tilt. When another contraction struck, he guided her into the wheelchair and asked the nurse to take her inside, promising he'd follow shortly. As soon as the double doors closed behind her, I turned to him.
"You told me you were in Denver."
"I know."
"How long have you known about her?"
His answer came too slowly. "Four months."
Four months. Two fake client trips. Three late-night calls in the garage. A Saturday he claimed he was helping his brother move office furniture. Everything rearranged itself.
Marcus explained he'd been eighteen when Ren was born. Her mother, Bianca, ended their relationship during the pregnancy and told him her family had arranged a private adoption. He signed papers he barely understood and spent years believing the baby had been raised elsewhere.
But Ren had never been adopted. Bianca raised her herself. After Bianca died the previous winter, Ren discovered Marcus through an old letter among family records. She contacted him just as I entered the most anxious stage of my own pregnancy.
"So you decided to lie to me?"
"I decided to wait."
"Those are not the same thing."
He lowered his eyes. Then he admitted the part that hurt most. The "business trips" had been visits to Ren. He'd helped with her rent, bought a crib, promised to be there when her baby arrived because the baby's father had disappeared.
That morning, Ren went into labor three weeks early. Marcus drove straight to the hospital. And still never called me.
"I was going to tell you after the baby was born," he said.
I laughed once because otherwise I might have screamed. "You were going to introduce me to your adult daughter after she made you a grandfather?"
He said nothing.
The question was no longer whether Marcus had been cheating. In some ways that would have been simpler. The question was how he could share my bed, plan our nursery, place his hand against my stomach every night, yet build an entire second family relationship behind a locked door.
A nurse emerged and called him. He looked at me. I moved aside. "Go," I said. "She shouldn't pay for what you hid."
May you like
Relief and shame crossed his face. Before he followed the nurse, I added, "But when you come home, don't bring me another explanation. Bring me the whole truth."
Then I sat alone beneath the maternity-ward clock, one hand resting on my baby, wondering whether honesty could still repair something secrecy had already changed.
