His denial came too quickly, and he looked at me instead of his wife, silently begging me to interrupt her questions.
I knew that look too, because we had once used it across dinner tables when we were teenagers hiding ordinary mistakes.
This was no ordinary mistake, and I refused to become his accomplice merely because we had shared a womb decades earlier.
"Tell us who Sadie is," I said, pulling the baby closer when Julian took an uncertain step toward my bed.
He opened his mouth, but Chloe's phone rang before he could answer, its screen showing an unfamiliar number and three missed calls.
She rejected the call, yet a message appeared immediately beneath it, announcing that the caller had warned Julian already.
Chloe read the message aloud, and the air seemed to leave the room before she reached the second line.
"Ask him about the daughter he abandoned," the message said, followed by a woman's name and a request to call back.
