“I heard what happened,” he said.
My face burned.
“I’m sure everyone did.”
He looked down. “Not everyone understood what they were hearing.”
That was a strange sentence.
“What does that mean?”
Daniel rubbed his thumb along the edge of his coat sleeve. “It means your father tried to explain it afterward. He said you had a history of making emergencies out of inconveniences.”
Of course he had.
Evelyn inhaled sharply, but Richard remained still.
“And you believed him?” I asked.
Daniel met my eyes. “No.”
The answer came without hesitation.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
“I asked Whitney why she didn’t tell me you’d had the baby,” he continued.
My stomach tightened. “She never mentioned Noah?”
“She said you wanted privacy.”
I stared at him.
Whitney had visited once after Noah was born. She stayed thirteen minutes, took one photo she never posted, and said motherhood looked exhausting in a tone that made it sound contagious.
