I picked up my phone and called Dennis. It rang once.
“Em? Neil’s here,” Dennis said.
“Bring him back. His mother is here, and I have something he needs to see. She’s going to explain it in front of both of us.”
“We’re on our way. Twenty minutes.”
I set the phone down. My mother-in-law’s smile had gone thin.
“Honey, you’ve had a terrible day,” she said in her best soothing voice. “Why don’t you rest first? We can sort this out tomorrow.”
“No.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“I am,” I said. “And we’re doing it now.”
Neil came in first, Dennis a step behind. His eyes were red. He stopped when he saw the photographs spread across my blanket.
And my heart leaped. It actually leaped. After hours of wanting him, there he was, and every cell in my body wanted to say you’re here, hold her, look at her. Then I remembered why he hadn’t been there to begin with, and the feeling went sour.
“Look at what your mother sent you.” I held out her cropped photograph. “And look at this.” I turned my mother’s phone toward him. “You were right behind us, holding the birthday cake.”
He leaned in. In the wider picture he was grinning, sparklers burning above the cake, barely two feet from Dennis and me. He looked from the screen to the photograph on my blanket.
Nobody spoke.
“The babies look like…” his mother started.
“You told him you had proof,” I said. “You had a photograph with him cut out of it.”
“I only wanted him to look closely,” she said. “He has a right to ask questions.”
“There’s no affair,” Dennis said, steady and plain. “I swear on my own kids. Never was.”
“I know,” I said. “Thank you, Dennis. I don’t have anything else to ask you.”
Neil faced his mother. “You told me you caught them alone.”
“I was protecting you. After everything you went through to have children…”
“You used that to make him doubt them,” I said. “And you came here to make me defend myself. Leave.”
She put a hand on the bed rail. “Neil, tell her. I’m your mother. I’m not being kept from my grandchildren over a photograph.”
“Let go of my bed,” I said. “You don’t get to decide who stays in this room.”
Neil stepped to the door and opened it. “She asked you to leave, Mom.”
She looked at him, waiting. He held the door. At last she gathered her photographs and walked out. He closed it, then turned back to me.
I kept my eyes on him. There was still one question his mother couldn’t answer for him.
“I’m sorry, Em. She made it sound so convincing, and all I could think of was my numbers, how it was my fault we’d waited so long.”
“Why didn’t you answer my calls?”
He stared at the floor. “I wanted to see Dennis first. I thought I needed an answer I could trust.”
“An answer you could trust,” I repeated. “So you trusted your mother’s accusation enough to walk out on me. But you didn’t trust your own wife enough to pick up the phone.”
He flinched. “I should have answered. I saw your name. I let it ring.”
“I woke up asking for you. Our daughter was crying, and I couldn’t even lift her. The nurse had to help me.”
He glanced toward the bassinet.
“You missed that because you decided I was the one person you couldn’t ask.”
“I want to stay,” he said. “Please. Let me stay. Let me hold them.”
Part of me wanted to say yes so badly it hurt. That was the picture I’d carried all morning: Neil in the chair, the girls in his arms, my chocolate bar on the tray. I could still see it, golden and perfect. He had come back. That didn’t mean I trusted him again.
“I’m going to recover at my mom’s,” I said. “And I’ll decide about us when I’m ready. Not when you are.”
Neil stood very still. Then he nodded, once.
He looked at the girls a long moment, touched one tiny foot with a trembling finger, and went to the door.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know,” I said. It was true, and it wasn’t enough.
He left.
My mother moved the water and the caramel bar within reach, then sat beside me. One of the girls began to fuss.
“Mom, can you help me lift her?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
She slid a hand beneath my daughter’s head, waiting until I had her settled before letting go. I held both girls against me. My mother tucked a pillow beneath my arm.
This time, when my daughter reached out, her little fist closed around my finger.
