Throughout my pregnancy, Evelyn had told our relatives that I was “going through a difficult period.” That the father had vanished.

That I would eventually give the baby up, once the reality of motherhood became too overwhelming for a woman as fragile as she believed me to be.

She had never once, in nine months, asked me who my child’s father was.

It did not occur to her that the answer might matter.

Because to my parents, I was still simply Chloe.

The quiet daughter.