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“How far along are you?”
***
For ten years, I’d believed we had a happy family. I believed it through five years of treatments, failed procedures, injections, and disappointment.
Byron had held my hand through it all. When I finally became pregnant, he’d pressed his face to my stomach.
“Our family,” he’d whispered. “Finally.”
***
Now Duncan was an hour old, and Byron had brought another pregnant woman to meet my newborn son.
“Finally.”
“Our marriage had problems,” Byron said.
“What problems?”
“Everything became about the appointments and injections. Then the pregnancy took over. You stopped being my wife.”
“I was trying to become the mother of your child.”
“You stopped caring about us, Shay. And what did you expect me to do? Be lonely?”
“Our marriage had problems.”
Thomas stared at him. “Do you hear yourself?”
Byron ignored him.
“You let yourself go, Shay. You weren’t the same woman anymore.”
Mary turned toward him.
“You said that you two were just living together because she was pregnant, but that there wasn’t a relationship.”
His jaw tightened. “Mary, enough.”
“You let yourself go, Shay.”
“You told me you and Shay had already separated.”
I looked at her.
She’d known he was married. That much was clear.
But Byron had handed each of us a different version of his life.
He stepped closer to my bed.
“I’m going to be with Mary,” he said. “It’s time she met the family and my son. We’re expecting another addition, as you can see, Shay.”
She’d known he was married.
Duncan shifted against me.
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