“Around eight weeks.”
“And you said nothing.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I fed our son in silence for a moment before answering.
“Because duty is not love. Because your family turns everything into property. Because I would rather raise a child alone than watch him become a project. Because if you came back only because of your name, or your image, or your mother’s opinion, that would destroy me faster than being left did.”
He turned to face me fully. “That’s not fair.”
A laugh escaped me—small, tired, dangerous. “Fair? You want to talk about fair?”
He opened his mouth.
The door burst open before he could answer.
Maya marched in carrying a foil-covered casserole dish and enough fury for three people.
Her dark hair was damp from the rain, her cheeks flushed, her boots wet. She took one look at Ethan in my living room and stopped dead.
“Well,” she said, voice like a blade. “Look what the devil’s intern found time for.”
If I hadn’t been exhausted, I might have laughed.
Ethan straightened. “This is between me and Hannah.”
Maya set the dish on the table with a hard thud. “Then where were you for the last six months? Or did ‘between you and Hannah’ only start mattering once there was a baby involved?”