“Don’t do this. Don’t you dare do this to us.”
Aaron walked toward the door.
He didn’t look at our son.
He didn’t look at me.
Then he left.
And I was alone with a newborn whose father had decided, after one glance, that I was a liar.
Diana shut the front door behind me and took the car seat from my hands without saying anything.
My son was three days old.
I stood in my sister’s hallway with a diaper bag, my hospital bracelet still around my wrist, and a phone full of messages Aaron refused to answer.
The girls were already upstairs.
Lily had asked me twice when Dad was coming to get us.
I didn’t know what to tell her.
“Sit down,” Diana ordered. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Grace had brought the banner they made for the baby.
It sat folded on the stairs now, one corner bent, WELCOME HOME HENRY written in four different colors.
“Should I save it for when Dad comes?” she’d asked.
I told her yes because I couldn’t explain why we weren’t going home.
“He won’t pick up. Look.”
I showed Diana my screen.
Three calls from me.
One message from Aaron:
*’I’ll have my lawyer contact you about the separation.’*
Diana read it twice.
“Elena, stop calling him.”
“He’s my husband. I have to make him listen.”
“He’s not listening. That’s the whole point.” She sat opposite me and placed a hand on my knee. “You keep begging, you keep looking guilty. You’re not guilty. Act like it.”
I looked toward the baby.
“What do I do?”
“You prove it in a language he can’t argue with.”
I ordered a DNA test that afternoon.
Diana returned to our house and brought me Aaron’s toothbrush from the bathroom.
Swabbing my son’s cheek took ten seconds.
Mailing the samples took nearly an hour because I sat shaking in the parking lot with the envelope resting in my lap.
Waiting was the worst part.
I replayed every moment Michael had spent around me.
The pool party.
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