Then she said something I will remember for the rest of my life.
“I have to raise her to understand that who she is matters more than what other people expect her to be.”
She paused.
“And I couldn’t teach her that while I was still carrying what happened between us.”
My throat tightened.
“You’re right.”
She looked at me.
“I am sorry, Emily. I know saying that isn’t enough. But I’ve spent two years understanding why I was wrong. I’m not the same person who answered that phone call.”
Emily glanced across the room.
At David.
“I know.”
I followed her eyes.
She continued.
“Uncle David told me.”
I stared at him.
“He told me you were sorry. He told me you’d tried to contact me.”
“How long has he been telling you that?”
“Eight months.”
I looked at David.
Then back at Emily.
“That’s why you let him be involved?”
“I asked him.”
She gave a tiny smile.
“When I told him I was pregnant, he came over that same night.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much.”
That sounded exactly like David.
“He brought dinner,” Emily continued. “Then he sat with me.”
She looked toward him.
“He came to every ultrasound.”
I slowly turned my head toward my husband.
“Every ultrasound?”
He nodded.
“You went to every appointment?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t know what to feel.
Anger was there.
Of course it was.
He had kept an enormous secret from me.
But underneath the anger was something else.
I looked at the man I had been married to for thirty-one years and realized that while my niece had been estranged from me and facing an unexpected pregnancy, he had quietly made sure she wasn’t alone.
“You should have told me,” I said.
“I know.”
“But you stayed with her.”
