Page 92 of The Moment I Knew

Everything somehow clicked into place and shattered all at the same time.

“Oh,” I said again.

Dad smiled, relieved. “Yeah. Wow, right? Big news.”

Hilary gave a small, hopeful laugh. “We’re excited. Nervous. But excited.”

I waited for the rest. The apology. The acknowledgment. The “I’m sorry I missed your birthday party because my mistress is having a baby.”

Hilary smiled, tentative but hopeful. “We wanted to tell you properly.”

Dad nodded quickly. “Yeah. In person. I didn’t want you to hear it secondhand.”

My fingers dug into the couch cushion. “Congrats.” The word was rigid, expected. But neither of them clocked the inauthenticity of it.

“Thank you,” she said, relief easing her shoulders.

Dad watched my face closely, like he was waiting for something. When I didn’t say anything else, he kept going.

“We found out the morning of your party,” he said. “There were some complications. A scare. Everything’s okay now, but at the time, it felt… urgent.”

I waited silently. Dad frowned. “You’re… quiet.”

“I’m just processing,” I said, which was true in the most useless way possible.

He nodded, like that made sense. “Of course. I mean, it’s a lot to take in. But you’re going to be a big sister.”

Then it all hit me—he was having another baby. He left Mum, he left us, to be with Hilary and now he got to make a second family with her. He had only just found out about the baby yesterday, but it was clear that this child, this new family with her, would always take precedence.

“You missed my birthday,” I said.

Dad blinked. Once. Twice. “I know. That’s what I’m saying. That day was just—kind of chaos. You understand, right?”

I looked up at him then. Really looked.

“You didn’t call,” I said. “You didn’t text. You didn’t even say happy birthday.”

His forehead creased, genuinely confused. “I thought—I mean, I figured we’d talk after things settled. Which is now.”

My chest felt tight, like there wasn’t enough room to breathe properly. “I waited for you.”

That seemed to catch him off guard. “You… waited?”

“At the party,” I said. “Everyone else was enjoying themselves and I was too busy staring at the door because you promised—” And there was the voice crack.

“Oh,” he said, softer now. “Honey.” His mouth opened, then closed again. “I didn’t know.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” I said quietly.

Hilary shifted beside him. “We didn’t mean to hurt you.”

I looked at her, really looked at her. She seemed genuinely uncomfortable now, her smile gone. “I know.”

“I didn’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “If I’d known it was that big of a deal⁠—”

“That big of a deal?” I repeated. “It was my sixteenth birthday.”

Hilary shifted beside him, uncomfortable. “Maybe we should⁠—”