No. Yes.

Silence fills the space where my answers should be. “Yes. We’re all fine, Mom. I’m just . . . I’m just trying to get him on a schedule and want to do that before people start coming over.”

I grit my teeth. The lie sounds so foreign coming from my mouth. Like an echo down a tunnel that I recognize but can’t place as my own voice when it comes back to me.

“Because it would be perfectly normal for you to need help, sweetheart. There is no shame in needing your mom when you become a mom.”

“I know.” My voice is barely above a whisper. The only response I can give her.

“You know I’m here for you. Any time. Day or night. To be there with you to help or just to sit on the other end of the phone line.”

“I know.” The emotion in her voice—the swell of love in it as she searches if I’m being truthful—almost undoes me.

Almost.

“Okay, then. I’ll let you get back to my handsome grandson now.”

Silence.

“Mom?” Fear. Hope. Worry. All three crash into each other and manifest in the desperate break in my voice.

Tell her something’s wrong with you. That you don’t feel right.

“Ry?” Searching. Asking. Wanting to know.

No. You’re perfectly fine. You can handle this. Your hormones are just out of whack. This is normal.

“You still there, Rylee? Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine.” A quick response to mask the unease I feel. “I was going to . . . I forgot what I was going to ask. Bye, Mom. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Silence again.

The music from the baby swing where Ace sits floats in from the family room. He begins to cry and yet I sit and stare out to the beach beyond, lost in thought. Convincing myself that I’m fine. Telling myself that empty void I suddenly feel is normal. Wondering if I’m not hardwired correctly to be a mother.

That maybe, just maybe, there was a bigger reason as to why I lost my other two babies.

That’s crap and you know it.

But maybe . . .

“Ry?” Colton calls out to me as the front door slams.

Ace’s cries pick up a pitch at the sound of his dad’s voice, and all I can do is close my eyes from where I’m still sitting, lost in staring at the clouds out the window. I open my mouth to tell him I’m in the living room but nothing comes out.

“Rylee?” Colton’s voice is a little more insistent this time, concern lacing the edges, and it’s just enough to break through the fog that seems to have a hold over me. I put my hands on the arm of the chair to stand but can’t seem to get up.

There is a change in Ace’s cry. It’s garbled at first and then muffled, and I sag in an unnatural relief, knowing Colton has given him his pacifier. And the relief is quickly followed by an intense wave of self-loathing. Why couldn’t I have done that? Pick up Ace. Why did I have to wait for Colton to walk in the front door to take care of him? That’s my job. Why couldn’t I make my legs walk over there to do it myself? I’m failing miserably at the one thing I’ve always wanted and always knew I was born to be: a mother.

The tears well in my eyes and my throat burns as I shake my head to clear it from thoughts I know are ridiculous but feel nonetheless. Snap out of it, Ry. You’re a good mom. You just need a little more time to recover. It’s your hormones. It’s the exhaustion. Possibly a touch of the baby blues. It’s the need to do every little thing for Ace yourself because you don’t think Colton can at this point with everything he’s going through. You’re just trying to step up to the plate and do it all when you can’t and that’s driving your type A, controlling personality batty.

“Rylee?” Colton shouts my name this time, panic pitching his voice.

“Coming,” I say as I force myself to stand up and swallow over the bile rising in my throat. I close the fifty or so feet to the family room to find Colton awkwardly holding Ace, trying to keep the pacifier in his mouth so he stops crying.

I look at the two of them together and know I should feel completely overwhelmed with love but for some reason all I want to do is sit down and close my eyes. So I do just that. And even with them closed, I can feel the weight of Colton’s stare. The silence that is usually comforting between us is suddenly awkward and uneasy. Almost as if he’s passing judgment on me because . . . because I don’t know why but I feel it anyway.

“Everything okay, Ry?”

Is it okay? I open my eyes and stare at him, not certain how to answer him because it sure doesn’t feel okay right now.

“Yes. Yeah. I was just . . . uh . . .” I don’t think even if I could put into words how I feel, he’d understand me. I fumble for something to say as I watch him try to figure out how to undo the onesie to change Ace’s diaper.

Has he even changed a diaper yet? Or have I always jumped up and taken care of it, needing to be the supermom I think is expected of me and I expect of myself? I can’t remember. Five days worth of sleepless nights and endless diaper changes and feedings run together. It’s like my mind and body have been thrown into the washing machine on spin cycle and when the door opens everything is upside down and inside out.

When I come back to myself, his hands have stopped fooling with the snaps between Ace’s legs and his eyes are locked on mine, waiting for me to finish my answer. “Ry?” I hate the sound in his voice—love his concern but hate the question in it. Am I all right? Is everything okay?

NO, IT’S NOT! I want to yell to make him see something feels so off. And yet I say nothing.

And then it hits me. Lost in this haze of hormones and exhaustion, I totally forgot about where he went, what he did today. The whole reason I was lost in thought in the first place was because I was worried about not having heard from him yet.

I cringe at my selfishness. At sitting here feeling sorry for myself when I know the courage it just took for him to come face to face with his dad.

“Sorry. I’m here. Just . . . I was in the office, worried because you hadn’t answered my texts. I was . . .” This time when he looks up from Ace, I can see the stress etched in the lines of his handsome face and know without him saying a word that he did in fact find his biological dad. “You found him?”

He sighs as he looks back down to a fussy Ace with a slow nod of his head. I give him time to find the words to express what he needs to say, watch him reach out and run the back of his hand over Ace’s cheek. The sight of him connecting to Ace like that tugs at my heartstrings. That feeling I felt like I had been missing moments ago—of utter love seeing my two men together—fills me with such a sense of joy that I cling to it, suddenly realizing how absent it was before.

And the thought alone makes me choke back a sob, feel like I’m losing my mind. Keep it together, Ry. Keep. It. Together. Colton needs you right now. It’s not the time to need him because he needs you.

“Did you?” I ask, trying to regain my schizophrenic focus.

“He’s hungry,” he says abruptly as he lifts him off the floor and carries him to me. We’ve been together long enough that I know avoidance when I see it and yet for the life of me when he places Ace in my arms for me to nurse, I blank for a second. My mind and body not clicking together on what I need to do.

And as loud as Ace is crying, the last thing I want to do is nurse so in a move I register as callous but don’t quite understand, I tune Ace out and focus on Colton as he walks across the room and into the kitchen. I hear the cupboard open, close, the clink of glass to glass, and know he’s poured himself a drink. Jack Daniels.

Crap. It must have been really bad.

I wish he had let me go with him today. I wish we didn’t have Ace so I wouldn’t fear leaving my own goddamn house because of the cameras and never-ending intrusion into our privacy. Both of those things prevented me from being there for my husband on a day he needed me the most. Guilt stabs sharply, consumes my state of mind, as I wait for him to return and hopefully talk to me.

Out of nowhere and without a trigger, a sudden wave of sadness bears down on me in a way I’ve never felt before. Oppressive. Suffocating. So stifling it’s significantly worse than the darkest of days after losing Max and both of my babies. And just as my shock ebbs from the onslaught I feel, a ghost of a thought becomes stronger and knocks the wind out of me: I just want our life back to when it was Colton and me and no one else.

Oh my God. Ace.

The unspeakable thought staggers me. Its ludicrousness takes my breath momentarily but is gone as quick as it comes. The acrid taste of it still lingers though but thankfully the rising pitch of Ace’s cries breaks its hold on my psyche.

I try to get a grip on myself, remorse and confusion fueling my actions as I gather him closer to me and kiss his head over and over, begging him to forgive me for a thought he will never even know I had.

But I will remember.

With shaky hands, I go through the motions of getting him latched onto my breast as quickly as possible, needing this moment of bonding to quiet the turmoil I feel within me. When his cries fade as he starts to suckle, I close my eyes and wait for the rush of endorphins to come. I hope for it, beg for it, but before I feel it I hear Colton enter the room and stop in front of me.

I open my eyes to find his and have to fight the urge to look away, fearful if he looks close enough, he’ll see into me and realize the horrible thought I just had. Panic strikes, my nerves sensitive like bare flesh on hot coals. I just need something to ground me right now—either the soothing rush from nursing or to be wrapped in the arms of my husband—to prevent me from feeling like I’m slowly spiraling out of control.

And just as my breath becomes shallow and my pulse starts to race, it hits me. That slow rush of delayed hormones spreads their warmth through my body and dulls the erratic and out-of-control emotions. All of a sudden I have a bit of clarity, can focus, and the person I need to focus on most is right in front of me.

Our eyes hold in the silence of the room, the intensity and confusion in the green of his makes my heart twist from the unmistakable pain I see in their depths. His eyes flicker down to Ace at my breast and hold there for a moment before lifting back up to meet mine with a touch more softness in them, but the hurt still plain as day.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Colton clears his throat and swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I saw what I needed to see, know what I need to know. Curiosity satisfied,” he says as he sits down on the coffee table in front of me.

And I know that sound in his voice—guarded, protective, unaffected. There is a whole storm brewing behind the haunted look in his eyes, yet I’m not sure if I should draw it out of him or leave it be and wait for the eye to pass on its own.

My own curiosity gets the best of me. My innate need to fix and soothe and help him when he’s hurting controls my actions. “Did you get to—?”

“He’s a piece of shit, okay?” he explodes, startling both Ace and myself. “He didn’t give a goddamn flying fuck who I was. All he saw was a nice car, nice clothes, and was totaling up dollar signs in his eyes for how much he could take me for. He reeked of alcohol, had the tats to show he’d earned his prison cred . . .” The words come out in a complete rush of air, the hurricane within him needing to churn. The muscle in his jaw pulses with anger, his muscles visibly taut as he lifts the glass of amber liquid to his lips. He pushes the alcohol around the inside of his mouth trying to figure out what to say next before he swallows it. “I am nothing like him. I will never be anything like him.” He grits the words out with poisoned resolution.

“I never thought you were or would be.” Still unsure of the right thing to say, I take the direct approach with him. He doesn’t need to be coddled right now or treated with kid gloves. That would only diminish the validity of his feelings and what he’s going through.

“Don’t, Ry,” he warns as he shoves up from the table, his anger eating at him. “Don’t give me one of your speeches about what a good man I am because I’m not. I’m the furthest fucking thing from it right now, so thanks . . . but no thanks.”

He turns to face me, eyes daring me to say more, the defensive shield he carries at the ready, up and armed. Our gaze locks, mine asking for more, needing to understand what happened to rock the solid foundation he’s been standing on for so very long.