**“This is the happiest day of my life.”**
Then he turned toward Lily.
He was still smiling when he leaned over the bassinet.
Suddenly, he froze.
I watched his eyes move across our daughter’s tiny face before stopping just behind her ear.
The bouquet tilted.
Then the roses slipped from his fingers and scattered across the floor.
“Ethan?”
He didn’t answer.
“What’s wrong?”
When he finally looked at me, there was something in his expression I had never seen before.
Shock.
Confusion.
Almost disbelief.
Then he asked,
**“Why didn’t you tell me before?”**
My stomach tightened.
“Tell you what?”
He carefully picked Lily up and brought her toward me.
“Look at her.”
“I am looking at her.”
“Don’t you see it?”
His reaction frightened me.
For one awful moment, I wondered whether he thought Lily wasn’t his.
Or whether he had noticed something the doctors hadn’t mentioned.
“She’s your daughter, Ethan. What are you talking about?”
Then tears appeared in his eyes.
“No. Eloise, that isn’t what I mean.”
He dropped into the chair beside my bed and covered his face.
When he finally looked at me again, he seemed exhausted.
“That came out completely wrong. I’m sorry.”
“Then tell me what you mean.”
Ethan looked toward Lily.
**“There’s something you need to know about me.”**
I stared at him.
“Something I should have told you a long time ago.”
“How long?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
“I kept convincing myself it didn’t matter.”
Then he looked at our daughter again.
**“Now it matters.”**
“Ethan, please. Just tell me.”
“I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
He took a shaky breath.
“I’ve been afraid to tell you for four years. But after seeing Lily, I can’t keep pretending this part of my past doesn’t exist.”
Before he could explain, the hospital-room door opened.
I expected Nurse Stella.
Instead, my mother-in-law, Sadie, walked in carrying a pale pink gift bag.
Sadie and I had never been particularly close.
She entered smiling, obviously excited to meet her granddaughter.
Then she saw Ethan’s face.
Her smile vanished.
“Ethan? What happened?”
Her eyes moved from her son to me.
Then to Lily.
Something about her reaction immediately reminded me of the baby shower three weeks earlier.
I had caught Sadie looking at an old envelope inside her purse.
She had quickly folded it closed.
When I asked about it, she laughed.
