He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. I have no excuse.”

“No,” she said. “You don’t.”

She told him the rest. She’d hidden the pregnancy because Katie had threatened to use her money to take the boy through the courts. The thirty thousand dollars had never been a payoff to disappear — it was every cent she had, and it went to a room, a doctor, and food for the baby.

“Sawyer asked about you every single day,” she said. “I told him his father was a great doctor, off saving lives somewhere far away.”

“Why would you tell him that?”

“Because I didn’t want my boy to know his father was a coward.”