Chapter 2
“Dad?”
The word hit harder than if Maren had called Adrian “baby.”
I stared at him.
“Dad?”
Adrian closed his eyes briefly.
The pregnant woman looked between us, her expression shifting from pain to confusion.
“You’re Hannah?”
That made it worse.
She knew me.
I didn’t know her.
“My name is Maren,” she said carefully. “I’m Adrian’s daughter.”
The hallway seemed to tilt.
When another contraction struck, Adrian guided her into the wheelchair and asked the nurse to take her inside. He promised he would follow shortly.
As soon as the double doors closed behind her, I turned toward 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.
Suddenly, everything rearranged itself.
Adrian explained that he had been eighteen when Maren was born. Her mother, Tessa, 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 Maren had never been adopted.
Tessa raised her herself.
After Tessa died the previous winter, Maren discovered Adrian 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 Maren.
He had helped with her rent, bought a crib, and promised to be there when her baby arrived because the baby’s father had disappeared.
That morning, Maren went into labor three weeks early.
Adrian 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 Adrian 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 Adrian.
He looked at me.
I moved aside.
“Go,” I said. “She shouldn’t pay for what you hid.”
Relief and shame crossed his face.
May you like
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.
