“I know. I just…”
“We did it together,” I said again. “And in a few hours, we get to meet them.”
His forehead dropped against mine, and he let out a shaky breath.
I remembered the bathroom floor then, just for a second. The cold tile against my back. The test on the rim of the tub with its one stubborn line. I had cried until I couldn’t breathe, and Kevin had slid down beside me without a word.
He hadn’t said it would be okay. He didn’t have an answer. He just sat there, his shoulder pressed against mine, for an hour.
That was what mattered. He stayed.
At the hospital, the tests took longer than they should have. Then a doctor with kind, tired eyes came in.
“There’s a complication,” he said. “We’ll need general anesthesia.”
My stomach dropped. “So I won’t be awake?”
“No. But you’ll be safe, and so will they.”
I gripped Kevin’s hand until my knuckles went pale. “Promise me you’ll be there when I wake up. Promise.”
“I promise.” He kissed my knuckles. “First face you’ll see.”
They wheeled me down the hall. I watched Kevin until the doors closed, already imagining him holding our daughters when I woke.
The first face I saw was a nurse’s.
“Congratulations, Mom,” she said, smiling. “Two beautiful girls. Both doing great.”
She tucked them into my arms, one at a time, her hand steady under my elbow. They were so small. One of them wrapped her whole fist around my pinky, and I swear the whole world narrowed down to that grip.
Kevin has to see this, I thought.
I turned my head, ready to say look.
The chair by the window was empty.
Okay, I told myself. Bathroom. Coffee. Calling his mother. There were a hundred harmless reasons he might have broken his promise.
I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand and called him. It rang and rang. Voicemail.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said, still smiling. “I’m awake. Come see your daughters.”
I waited a minute, then called again. The smile got harder to hold. He had promised. First face I’d see. Kevin didn’t break promises. He assembled cribs on a schedule, for heaven’s sake.
“Excuse me,” I said to the nurse, trying to keep my voice light. “Have you seen my husband?”
Her smile slid right off her face.
“I’ll get the doctor.”
Nobody gets the doctor over a missing husband. My pulse started to climb.
The doctor came in with his hands folded in front of him, and he looked at me strangely.
“Yes, your husband saw the babies.” He paused. “You really don’t know why he left?”
“Left?” My mouth was dry. “What are you talking about? Where is he?”
He pulled a chair close.
“While you were still asleep after the surgery, Kevin came to talk to me. He told me something I absolutely wasn’t expecting to hear.”
“What did he say?”
He exhaled slowly.
“He said his mother had called. She said she had proof the girls weren’t his.”
“What?” I stared at him. “He knows everything we went through. He was there for every single shot.”
Something hot rose in my chest and pushed the disbelief aside. Kevin hadn’t answered any of my calls, so I scrolled to his mother’s name and hit call, my thumb shaking.
She picked up on the second ring.
“What did you tell him?”
“Oh, I think you know.”
“I really don’t. What did you say to my husband?”
“Don’t raise your voice, dear, it isn’t good for you.” She sounded almost kind, which was worse. “I’ll come and show you, since you’re so confused. Stay right there.”
She hung up.
Stay right there. As if I could go anywhere.
I tried Kevin again. Voicemail.
“Enough!”
I pushed back the blanket and tried to swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The pain hit like a hot wire through my belly. I gasped and nearly folded in half.
“Whoa, whoa, easy.” The nurse was at my side in a second, lowering me back onto the pillows. “You just had major surgery. You can’t go anywhere yet.”
I lay there breathing hard, tears stinging. Was this what it came to? Ten years of fighting, and I couldn’t even chase my own husband down. I couldn’t fetch him and make him look at me. I had two newborns who needed me, in a body that wouldn’t obey.
This was the exact moment I’d planned to lean on Kevin, and he was the one who had walked out.
One of the girls started to cry, a thin, furious wail. I reached for her bassinet, and my stomach screamed.
“Let me,” the nurse said gently.
I hated how badly I wanted to say no. I said, “Thank you,” instead, and watched a stranger settle my daughter against my chest.
Then I called my mother.
“Hi, sweetheart! Are they here? Are they…”
“Mom.” I’d planned to sound calm. I’d practiced it. “Kevin left. He got a call from his mother and he left, and he won’t pick up, and I can’t…”
My voice broke clean in half.
“I’m coming,” my mother said. “Don’t move. I’m getting my coat.”
She arrived in twenty minutes, her hair half pinned. She had barely kissed the girls when the door swung open again.
My mother-in-law walked in. She wore her good pearls and carried a large envelope under her arm.
“Well,” she said, looking at me and not the babies. “Here we are.”
“Show me,” I said. “Whatever you told him.”
She laid out photographs on my blanket, one by one. The first were of the newborns, pictures Kevin must have sent her. She held one up beside her phone.
“Look at that nose. Do you see it?”
“See what?”
“Brian’s nose. Brian’s chin.” She smiled triumphantly. “You’ve obviously been having an affair with him.”
Brian. Our friend of twelve years. Brian, who had cried at our wedding.
“They’re three hours old,” my mother said, and her voice could have frozen soup. “They look like potatoes.”
