“Yes, I did.”
“When?”
“The night after I found out. You didn’t answer.”
“I never got a call.”
“I left a voicemail.”
He stared at me.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
I could still remember sitting on the bathroom floor, the pregnancy test wrapped in toilet paper beside me as if hiding it would make my life less real.
“I said I needed to talk to you. I said it was important. I said…” My voice faltered. “I said please.”
Ethan looked ill.
“I never heard it.”
“Maybe you deleted it.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“You were angry.”
“I was devastated,” he said. “Not angry.”
I looked at him then.
Really looked.
In all the months after the divorce, I had built him into someone simple because it hurt less. Ethan the coward. Ethan the son. Ethan the man who chose his mother.
All true, maybe.
But not complete.
“You handed me papers,” I said.
“My mother’s lawyer drew them up.”
The words landed like a match in dry grass.
“What?”
He closed his eyes.
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“I do now.”
“Your mother’s lawyer?”
“I was staying with her after I left. I was angry, confused. She kept saying we needed a clean break before we hurt each other more. She said she knew someone who could help.”
I stared at him.
“You let your mother arrange our divorce?”
His silence answered.
A tired anger moved through me, not explosive, not sharp. Just heavy.
“I thought we were in a bad cycle,” he said. “I thought maybe space would force us to see clearly.”
“You don’t file for divorce to get space.”
“I know that now.”
“You didn’t even ask me to go to counseling.”
“I did,” he said quietly. “Once.”
“You mentioned it during an argument while your mother was waiting outside in the car.”
His face tightened with shame.
“That doesn’t count,” I said.
“No,” he admitted. “It doesn’t.”
Maya made a tiny sound in his arms, and both of us froze.
She settled again.
