“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, Claire. Look at her.”
Then she looked around the room. At the empty chair beside my bed. At the hospital bag that nobody had unpacked.
“Where’s Ben?”
I told her everything. My dad stood by the window with his arms crossed and his jaw working back and forth, the way it did when he was trying very hard not to say something.
When I finished, nobody spoke for a long moment.
“He said what?” my dad finally said. Very quietly.
“Frank,” my mom warned.
“No, Linda. I want to hear it again. He looked at his newborn daughter and he said what?”
“That she wasn’t the baby he wanted,” I said. “And that he couldn’t believe I did this to him.”
My dad turned and looked out the window. His knuckles were white on his crossed arms.
“Did what?” my mom asked. “Did what to him? What does that even mean?”
