He made a sound—half laugh, half gasp—and came around the island so fast he nearly knocked the stool over.
“You’re pregnant?” he said again, like he needed to hear it twice to survive it.
I nodded, crying now.
He cupped my face in both hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was scared,” I whispered. “After last time, I wanted to be sure. I wanted one good appointment before I said it out loud.”
His forehead dropped to mine.
“Oh, baby,” he said.
He held me. He kissed me. He laughed against my hair. For thirty seconds, maybe forty, the world became what it should have been from the beginning.
Then he pulled back and saw that I was still crying.
His smile faded.
“What else?”
I swallowed.
“Your mother was at the clinic the same day.”
He blinked. “What?”
I told him.
Not every detail at first. Just the outline. Eleanor at Magnolia. The ultrasound. The call with Jack. The line in the restroom. The trust clause she’d shown me. The coffee shop meeting. The pregnancy. The possibility that Robert wasn’t his biological father.
I watched the joy drain out of him word by word.
When I finished, he said nothing for so long that I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me at all.
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