For the next two days, I forced myself to behave as though nothing had happened.
Max still refused to step inside the nursery.
Whenever I asked him to hand me a diaper while I changed the baby, he quietly walked away.
If relatives smiled and asked, “Don’t you love your baby sister?” he simply lowered his eyes without answering.
On the third night, I woke suddenly at exactly 2:14 a.m.
Daniel wasn’t beside me.
The baby wasn’t crying.
His phone was gone from the charger.
I slipped out of bed and followed a thin strip of light shining from beneath the office door downstairs.
The moment I pushed the door open, Daniel jumped so violently he nearly dropped his phone.
“Who are you talking to?” I asked.
He immediately stood.
“Jeez, Hannah.”
Before he disconnected the call, I clearly heard a woman’s voice.
She wasn’t a coworker discussing business.
She wasn’t family.
She wasn’t elderly.
Something inside me finally broke.
Keeping my voice as calm as possible, I said,
“Give me the phone.”
“No.”
“Give me the phone, Daniel.”
Instead, he slid it into his pocket.
“You’re acting crazy.”
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because screaming felt even worse.
“Your son says he watched you take a baby from a crying woman at the hospital, and now you’re making secret phone calls in the middle of the night—and I’m crazy?”
He rounded the desk so quickly that I instinctively stepped backward.
“Keep your voice down.”
“Why? So the fake baby doesn’t wake up?”
Everything changed in that instant.
His face gave him away.
Once you’ve seen genuine guilt, it’s impossible to mistake it for anything else.
He stared at me for several long seconds before slowly sinking back into his chair as though every ounce of strength had disappeared.
When he finally spoke, his voice sounded completely empty.
“You’re not going to like the truth.”
My fingers dug into the doorframe so hard my nails bent.
Daniel rubbed both hands over his face.
“That baby is mine.”
A ringing filled my ears.
“What?”
He looked at me with lifeless eyes.
“She’s my daughter.”
I stared at him.
“Of course she’s your daughter. She’s our daughter.”
He slowly shook his head.
NEXT PAGE
