“He’s my husband, Romina.” “No,” she said.

“Right now he’s a man who abandoned his wife and his newborn because he liked his own paranoid suspicion better than nine years of knowing you.

Don’t you dare chase him for the privilege of being believed.” It stung, the way the truest things sting. Let’s keep this quiet. Not is our son all right. Not what have I done. His first instinct, once the joy curdled, had not been the baby or me or even his own grief.

It had been reputation.

Containment.

The quiet management of an inconvenience.