I did not attend. Priya advised against it, and my body still reacted violently at the thought of seeing him. Daniel took Lily to the family visitation center with a bottle of pumped milk and the expression of a man daring the universe to make one wrong move.
When he returned, he looked grim.
“How was it?” I asked.
Daniel set the car seat down gently.
“She slept most of the time. He took pictures.”
“Did he hold her?”
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
“Was he gentle?”
Daniel hesitated just long enough.
“Physically, yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“He kept talking to the supervisor about parental alienation. How this was all unnecessary. How he couldn’t believe you were letting outsiders advise you.”
I closed my eyes.
“Did he talk to Lily?”
“A little. Mostly he talked around her.”
That became the pattern.
Ryan wanted fatherhood as a status, a right, a line on a form that had humiliated him by being questioned. He wanted photos. He wanted legal recognition. He wanted the world to know the paternity test had cleared him of being betrayed.
