No tenderness. No awe. No relief. No love.
Just impatience.
He was still handsome in the polished, expensive way that made strangers trust him immediately. Dark tailored coat, perfect haircut, the expensive watch I had given him on our second anniversary resting against the wrist he kept flexing whenever he was anxious. Daniel Whitmore always knew how to perform the role of the brilliant, composed surgeon. He knew how to sound reassuring in a crisis, how to smile at donors, how to shake hands with administrators, how to stand in a room and make people believe he belonged at the center of it.
But I had known him long enough to see what other people missed.
That day, standing in my maternity suite, he wasn’t composed.
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