Five years after the divorce, I returned to the country with my fiancée and found my ex-wife cleaning the floor at the airport. I was about to approach her to say hello when my fiancée went pale and whispered, “What is she doing here?” I said nothing, but hours later I opened an old family folder and discovered that our encounter had not been a simple coincidence.

For several seconds, I could not hear anything except the refrigerator humming behind me.

My mother stood beside the kitchen table.

Aunt Rebecca sat completely still.

Vanessa was upstairs getting dressed.

And one sentence had just rearranged five years of my life.

“Elena was pregnant?”

My mother looked toward the window.

“Yes.”

“With my child?”

“I assumed so.”

“You assumed?”

Her mouth tightened.

“She said the baby was yours.”

I pushed my chair backward.

The legs scraped against the tile.

“When?”

“Three weeks after the divorce.”

“And you sent her away?”

Patricia folded her arms.