There it was.
Not romantic.
Not tender.
Not the first sentence a father should hear after his daughter’s birth.
A probability.
A statistic.
A number sharp enough to cut through my husband’s suspicion and leave him standing in the wreckage of his own accusation.
Ryan swallowed.
He tried to recover quickly. I watched it happen. The corporate mask lowering over the panic. The jaw tightening. The shoulders straightening. The mind searching for the version of events where he was still the rational one, the wronged one, the one in control.
“Fine,” he said.
Fine.
That was the first word he offered after accusing me of betraying him while I was still bleeding from giving birth to his child.
Fine.
Dana’s eyebrows lifted.
Eli’s face did not move.
Something inside me, something exhausted and cracked and barely alive, went still.
Ryan folded the paper once. “Then we can put this behind us.”
