“I would never resent him.”
“You don’t know what you would have done.”
The truth in that sentence silenced him.
Harper adjusted the pale blue blanket around the child’s shoulder.
“You loved me,” she said.
“I knew you did.
That was the worst part.
You loved me and still chose fear.
So I had no reason to believe a pregnancy would suddenly make you brave.”
Ethan lowered himself into the chair.
For perhaps the first time in his adult life, he had no argument prepared.
“What’s his name?”
Harper hesitated.
Then she told him.
Ethan repeated it softly, almost inaudibly, as though testing the existence of his son against his own voice.
The baby stirred at the sound.
His eyes opened.
Gray.
Ethan’s eyes.
The child looked at him with the vague, solemn curiosity of an infant who had no idea that the stranger several feet away had just discovered his entire identity had changed.
Ethan leaned forward unconsciously.
Harper noticed.
“You can look,” she said.
“That’s all for now.”
He nodded immediately.
The old Ethan would have negotiated.
He would have asked what terms would earn him more.
He would have treated access like something measurable.
This time he simply obeyed.
A nurse entered to check Harper’s vitals and examine the bandage on her wrist.
Ethan stepped aside without being asked.
“How’s the little guy?” the nurse said.
“Fine,” Harper answered.
“They checked him twice.
No injuries.”
Ethan’s head snapped up.
“No injuries?”
The nurse glanced between them.
“He was very lucky.
His mother took most of the impact protecting the car seat when the vehicle spun.”
Harper gave the nurse a small look, as if she did not want the detail dramatized.
Ethan looked at the bruising along Harper’s forearm differently now.
On television, he had seen her clutching the baby.
He had not understood that she had already placed her own body between the child and danger.
The nurse checked the monitor, then left.
Ethan remained standing near the wall.
“You should have called me,” he said finally, but there was no accusation left in the words.
Only grief.
Harper’s expression shifted.
“I know.”
He looked at her.
That was the first admission she had given him.
“I almost did more than once,” she continued.
“When I heard the heartbeat.
When I found out he was a boy.
The night he was born.”
