“Is she sick again?”
“No.”
“Andrew, don’t protect me. Is Amanda getting worse?”
“No. Her condition is stable.”
“Is something wrong with the baby?”
“God… no.”
“Then what?”
He led me into the hallway.
His chin trembled.
“I should have told you years ago.”
“Told me what? Andrew, look at me.”
“I hid a terrible truth from your daughter,” he whispered. “And now I can’t let Amanda make this horrible mistake.”
I stared at him.
“What mistake?”
His eyes moved toward the dining room.
The booties were still beside my plate.
“Thomas.”
I didn’t understand.
“Thomas?”
“The name.”
“What about it?”
Andrew rubbed both hands over his face.
“This isn’t about anything that happened after I met Amanda.” He lowered his voice. “It’s about when she was seven.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
Seven.
I remembered seven.
The fevers.
The exhaustion.
Amanda crying because her legs hurt.
