Ryan looked away.
“Credit cards.”
My stomach dropped.
“She thinks we still have savings.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
I pulled out a chair and sat down.
Suddenly, some of those strange moments made sense.
The phone during appointments.
The distracted expression.
His refusal to enter the nursery.
The silence after the ultrasound.
“You were applying for jobs during the appointments.”
He nodded.
I felt anger rising again, but this time it was tangled with heartbreak.
“So when the doctors started talking about treatment…”
“All I heard was money.”
His voice broke.
“Bills. Specialists. Surgery. Everything I couldn’t provide.”
I stared at him.
“And that made you abandon your daughter?”
“No.”
He swallowed.
“It made me see a way to escape.”
Those words chilled me.
Ryan looked toward the bassinet.
“I thought if everyone believed I couldn’t accept her condition, Melissa would hate me for that. But she wouldn’t know I’d already failed her months before.”
