“Say it,” I said. My voice sounded strange. Flat. Like someone else’s voice. “Say what you thought. Out loud. I want to hear you say it.”
Ben closed his eyes.
“Claire—”
“Say it.”
“I thought she wasn’t mine.” He opened his eyes. They were full of tears. “When you got pregnant, I told myself it was a miracle. I told myself doctors are wrong sometimes. I read everything I could find. Every article, every study. Some men get their fertility back after chemo, years later. Not many. But some. I told myself that was us. I chose to believe it. I made myself believe it.”
“The laptop,” I said. “At the kitchen table. That night.”
He nodded. “I was reading about it. Again. For the hundredth time.”
“And then she was born.”
“And then she was born, and I looked at her, and she had that hair.” He pressed his hands against his face. “Nobody in my family has red hair, Claire. Nobody in yours that I ever saw. And everything I’d been pushing down for nine months just… exploded. I thought, I’ve been a fool. I thought, of course. Of course it wasn’t a miracle. Of course she found someone else. I couldn’t give her a baby, so she found someone who could.”
