He Said I Could Never Give Anyone a Family — Six Months Later I Was Pregnant With Twins, and He Turned White When He Learned Who My Neighbor Really Was

“General?” I said.

“Later,” he said, and there was, for just a second, the ghost of a smile.

“One thing at a time.

Today isn’t about me.”

I did not press it, because at that moment a nurse called my name, and because I had spent three years being lied to about my own body and I was about to find out, one way or another, what the truth of it was.

Whatever Arthur Reed turned out to be — and he was going to turn out to be a great deal more than a neighbor with a cane — it could wait.