“After I gave birth, I brought my baby to meet the grandpa who raised me — but the moment he saw her face, he burst into tears and said, “This is impossible. You have no idea what you’ve done.” My grandpa was the only father I ever had after my parents died in a car crash. So when I got pregnant at 27 and the man I loved disappeared the same night I told him, Grandpa was the one who held me together. He had never met Caleb. I had kept putting off introducing them, telling …

“A man yelling at Mom in a doorway.”

“That was William. I confronted him once. Caleb was there, holding onto the banister and watching us.”

Tears burned my eyes.

“I forgot all of this. I forgot everything.”

“Your mother packed you into the car that week. We never spoke about that family in this house again.”

“But Caleb is not William.”

“He is William’s son.”

Grandpa’s voice hardened.

“After what his father did to your mother, I didn’t care to find out whether Caleb was any different.”

I looked down at my daughter.

“Then he disappeared the second you told him about the baby,” Grandpa added more softly. “Emily, sweetheart, I thought that proved me right.”

I stared at Nora.

“If he was just cruel… why did he stay two years?”

Grandpa had no answer.

I slowly stood.

My knees still hurt from weeks spent sitting beside an incubator.