The phone rang while my newborn daughter slept on my chest, her tiny fist clutching the edge of my hospital gown.
On the screen was a name I had erased half a year ago but never truly left behind: Daniel.
I picked up without thinking.
“Emily,” he said, voice smooth and self-satisfied. “Hope this isn’t a bad time.”
I glanced at my daughter’s rosy face. “It is.”
He laughed softly. “Still dramatic. Anyway, I’m getting married tomorrow.”
For a second, the hospital room seemed to close in on me. The monitors kept beeping. Rain traced lines down the window. My stitches stung with every breath.
“Congratulations,” I said, flat and steady.
“To Vanessa,” he added, lingering on the name like a blade. “You remember her.”
Of course I did. His “new business consultant.” The woman whose perfume lingered on his shirts. The same woman who sat across from me during mediation, acting shocked while Daniel painted me as unstable, lazy, and “financially dependent.”
“She wanted me to invite you,” Daniel said. “Closure, you know? We’re mature adults.”
I almost laughed. He had drained our joint account three days before filing. Told everyone I faked a pregnancy to trap him. When I miscarried two years earlier, he said my grief was “bad for his image.”
And now he wanted me sitting in a church while he smiled for cameras.
“I just gave birth,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Silence followed.
Then his voice cracked. “What?”
“My daughter was born this morning.”
“Your… daughter?” His breathing sharpened. “Emily, whose child is that?”
I stared at the rain. “Mine.”
“Don’t play games.”
