PART 2
“When Amanda was seven, Dad saw symptoms that could have had several explanations. There was also a finding he should have followed more aggressively.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No.”
“He told us not to worry.”
“Yes.”
“And then we lost time.”
Andrew swallowed.
“Yes.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
“How much?”
“I can’t give you a clean number. Her condition was complicated. Nobody can honestly say what every later year would have looked like if she’d been diagnosed sooner.”
At least he wasn’t pretending to know something he couldn’t prove.
“But your father thought he’d made a mistake.”
Andrew nodded.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because he talked about it for years.”
I stepped away from him.
Every night I’d spent beside Amanda’s hospital bed suddenly seemed connected to a question I’d never known to ask.
It wasn’t an explanation.
It was only a possibility.
“Did Amanda know his name?”
“She was seven.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No. She doesn’t remember him.”
“But you remembered for her.”
Andrew said nothing.
“Why didn’t you tell us when you recognized the chart?”
“At first, I didn’t think it would help her treatment. Dad was dead. Amanda was already fighting enough.”
“At first?”
He looked directly at me.
That was exactly the problem.
Initially, I might have understood his decision.
But Amanda recovered.
Andrew stopped treating her.
They crossed paths again.
He asked her out.
They fell in love.
He proposed.
And they married.
With every new milestone, his explanation of “at first” became more difficult to accept.
“I was going to tell her before our first date,” he admitted.
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Before you proposed?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Before the wedding?”
He closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
I carefully straightened the photograph I’d knocked out of place.
“Why?”
“Because every time I waited, telling her became worse.”
“That’s not an answer, Andrew.”
“I was afraid she’d look at me and see him.”
“And?”
“And I love her.”
“That doesn’t make this better.”
“I know.”
From the living room, Amanda called, “Mom, Dad says newborns don’t need socks. Please explain civilization to him.”
Neither of us answered.
She laughed again, and Andrew turned toward the sound of her voice.
“There’s more.”
“No.”
He faced me again.
“What?”
“You don’t get to give me the favorable context first.”
“It’s not favorable.”
“Whatever your father did afterward, Amanda first.”
He understood what I meant.
“Why tonight?” I asked. “You’ve kept this secret through dating, marriage, and almost a year of waking up beside my daughter. Why is tonight suddenly unbearable?”
Andrew’s eyes returned to the tiny booties.
“Because she wants to name our baby after him.”
That was the reason.
Not a new diagnosis.
Not a recurrence of Amanda’s illness.
A baby’s name.
“I can’t let her do that, Christie.”
Something about his choice of words unsettled me.
Then I understood why.
“You can’t let her?”
Andrew looked taken aback.
“Christie, if she knew what Dad did…”
“Then tell her.”
“She may hate the name. She may hate him. She may hate… me.”
“Maybe,” I said.
Tears welled in his eyes.
“You don’t get to decide she can’t use the name either.”
He fell silent.
I gestured toward the living room.
“You tell her.”
Andrew wiped his cheeks.
“What if this changes everything?”
“It might.”
“What am I supposed to tell her it means?”
“Nothing.” He looked bewildered.
“Amanda decides what it means,” I told him.
Amanda called to him from the adjoining room.
He held my gaze for one last moment before turning and walking toward her.
I followed him.
Amanda sensed immediately that something was wrong.
“What happened?”
Andrew sat down across from her.
“Before we talk about the baby again, I need to tell you something I should’ve told you before our first date.”
“Okay,” Amanda said, her brow furrowing. “That’s not a sentence anybody wants to hear from their husband.”
Andrew began to explain.
He told her about his father, the follow-up that never took place, and the time that might have been lost because of it.
Finally, he confessed that he had recognized her medical history before he ever stepped into her hospital room.
Amanda stood up and went outside alone.
None of us followed her.
After some time, the door opened.
“Mom?”
I stepped onto the porch and stood beside her.
She stared out across the yard.
“Was I a project?”
“I can’t answer that for him, sweetheart.”
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I think he loves you.”
She turned to face me.
“And I think loving you didn’t give him the right to decide what you could handle.”
Amanda nodded slightly before asking to speak with Robin.
When I explained what had happened all those years ago, he lowered himself into a chair.
“That doctor told me we were worrying too much.”
“I remember.”
“I told you maybe he was right.”
“You were trying to believe a doctor.”
“I was her father.”
Later, Robin confronted Andrew.
“Did your father ever blame us for not coming back sooner?”
“Never.” Andrew paused. “He blamed himself for making you believe you didn’t need to.”
Robin turned away.
That evening, Amanda eventually asked Andrew to sit beside her.
“When you looked at me in that hospital, who did you see?”
“At first? The girl my father never forgot.”
Amanda visibly recoiled.
“And after?”
Andrew thought carefully before answering.
“The morning you could barely sit up and spent ten minutes arguing that your mother needed a better chair.”
Amanda struggled to hide a smile.
“After that, you were Amanda.”
She studied him closely.
“I believe you love me. I don’t believe you had the right to hide this.”
“I didn’t.”
Andrew explained that his father had later advocated for additional reviews of unresolved pediatric cases.
“Was he a good doctor?” Amanda asked.
“Sometimes.”
“That’s a terrible answer.”
“It’s the only one I trust.”
Amanda glanced toward the knitted booties.
“And the name?”
Andrew started to speak, then thought better of it.
“I don’t know what you’ll want.”
“Good.” She touched one of the booties. “Neither do I.”
“What do you need from me?” he asked.
“Time.”
“Okay.”
Much later, Andrew began collecting the remaining dishes.
When he reached for the booties, he hesitated.
“Where do you want these?”
Amanda pointed toward the windowsill.
“There.”
He carefully set them down where she had indicated.
One of the booties tipped onto its side.
Andrew instinctively reached out to straighten it, but stopped himself.
Amanda noticed.
He drew his hand back and sat down again.
