That answer caught me off guard.
For ten years, I had assumed Grant had deliberately shut every door. The confusion on his face made me think about something I had not questioned in a very long time.
I looked toward Vanessa.
Grant followed my eyes. “What?”
I thought about the night I discovered I was pregnant and called Grant because I believed he deserved to know. Vanessa answered his phone and told me Grant wanted no more emotional manipulation.
The next morning, I sent Grant a message saying I needed to speak to him about the pregnancy. The reply told me there was nothing left for us to discuss except the divorce.
I had carried that message for a decade as proof that Grant had knowingly rejected the pregnancy. Standing beside his father’s grave, I suddenly needed to know whether that assumption was true.
“Did you ever receive a message from me saying I was pregnant?”
Grant’s face went blank.
“What?”
“I contacted you after we separated. Did you ever receive a message telling you I needed to talk about a pregnancy?”
He stared at the five children standing beside me before looking back at my face. Then he shook his head.
“No.”
Vanessa took one small step backward.
Grant saw it.
I told him that Vanessa had answered his phone the night I called. I also repeated what she had said to me, word for word: that Grant wanted no more emotional manipulation.
Grant immediately looked at her.
“I never told you to say that.”
My stomach tightened.
I looked at Vanessa. “Did you delete the message?”
She shook her head quickly.
Grant stepped closer. “Vanessa.”
She tried to tell him this was not the place for another confrontation, but he did not let her redirect the conversation. He asked again whether she had deleted my message and whether she had ever responded to me using his phone.
Vanessa’s eyes filled with tears.
“I thought it would be better.”
Grant stared at her.
“For who?”
She swallowed. “For everyone.”
I felt anger settle into something colder and steadier. “You knew I was pregnant.”
“I didn’t know there were five.”
“But you knew there was a baby.”
Vanessa looked at me and said she had believed the child might belong to the man from the hotel. That explanation revealed something more important than any confession could have: she had not discovered proof of betrayal, she had simply decided the accusation had to be true and treated every later fact as confirmation.
Grant looked devastated.
“Did you send the reply telling her there was nothing left to discuss?”
Vanessa did not answer immediately.
Then she nodded.
“Yes.”
Grant looked down at the ground.
I remembered reading that message alone ten years earlier and accepting it as the final proof that the father of my unborn children wanted nothing to do with them. Learning Vanessa had written it should have felt like victory, but all I felt was the weight of how easily one lie had become ten missing years.
Grant looked at me again. “How far along were you?”
“About nine weeks when I found out.”
He glanced toward Ethan, Noah, Luke, Rose, and Emma. “Did you know there were five when you tried to contact me?”
“Not yet.”
He swallowed hard.
“Did you ever try again after that?”
