Tara stood beside me, silent but coiled like a spring. Eliza didn’t move — she just folded her arms like this was something she’d been rehearsing for.
Norton shifted Evelyn to his hip, but didn’t speak right away. He looked like he was trying to line up a hundred broken pieces in his head.
“It was before us, Chanel,” he said finally. “Before we got married. We’d only been dating a few months when we split for a little while. It wasn’t even long. Just long enough for me to think it wasn’t going anywhere.”
My jaw clenched, but I didn’t interrupt. I remembered that time well.
“There was someone else. It was just one evening, not a relationship. I never heard from her again. Then, almost two years later, I got an email from her.”
Norton’s voice cracked, making our daughter giggle.
“She said she’d had a baby girl. And she’d tried to keep her, but it was too hard. Evelyn had been born with special needs, and she said she’d spent 18 months drowning. Her words. She said it wasn’t fair to carry it all alone.”
He swallowed hard and glanced down at our child.
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