I shook my head. “Then why did you hand him to me?”
“Because you walked in before I could explain,” Daniel said. “You came in crying and smiling, and I hadn’t slept in two days, and I just… I didn’t stop you.”
Nora covered her mouth.
I stared at them. “Then where was your baby?”
Nora looked at the papers. “With Elise.”
Daniel’s voice dropped. “She carried our son for nine months. Then, three weeks before delivery, her husband died in a car accident.”
The anger in me faltered.
He kept going. “She still wanted to go through with it. She said she needed to. But after she gave birth, she panicked. She held him and begged for one last day before saying goodbye.”
Nora was crying now. “She kept saying, ‘I know he isn’t mine. I know. I just need one day. Please. Just one day.'”
I looked down at the handwritten note again.
Daniel swallowed hard. “Legally, we probably could have forced it. But she wasn’t trying to take him. She was grieving. She had just lost her husband, and then she had to hand over the baby she’d carried for us. We couldn’t do that to her.”
“So you said yes,” I whispered.
He nodded. “We said yes.”
The room was silent except for Nora crying.
I sank into the chair.
“The nurse saw me leave with the neighbor’s baby,” Daniel said. “Then she saw me come back later, and the next day I finally left with our son. She thought something was wrong. Maybe she only knew enough to be scared.”
“And you didn’t tell me because… what?” I asked.
Nora answered this time. “Because it wasn’t just our story. Elise wanted privacy. We promised her we wouldn’t make her into family gossip while everything was still being finalized.”
I looked at her. “So you let me think the worst.”
Nora closed her eyes. “Yes.”
Daniel said, “I was trying to protect everyone.”
“No,” I said. “You were trying to control the story.”
That hit him. He flinched.
After a long silence, Nora said, “You’re right.”
I turned to her.
She wiped her face. “We were so focused on getting through this and protecting Elise that we forgot what it would do to you.”
That was the first thing either of them said that let my anger loosen its grip.
I sat down again.
After a while, I asked, “Did she bring him back?”
Nora nodded, tears starting fresh. “The next day.”
“How?”
Daniel stared at the floor. “She came into the room looking like she’d aged ten years overnight. She kissed his forehead, put him in Nora’s arms, and said, ‘Thank you for letting me love him long enough to let him go.'”
I covered my mouth.
No one spoke for a while.
Then I asked the question underneath all the others. “Why didn’t you trust me?”
Daniel looked up. “Because grief makes people possessive. And after everything we’d lost, I was terrified somebody would turn this into a debate or a judgment or another disaster before our son was fully ours. I couldn’t bear one more thing going wrong.”
