I did not need a laboratory to tell me who had fathered the child I had carried and delivered.

But I let them draw my blood and swab my son’s cheek without a word of protest, because I understood that the result would matter later, in rooms Nicolas wasn’t imagining yet — in a custody hearing, in front of a judge, in the record of who had said what and done what in these two days.

Let it be documented.

Let there be an official paper, stamped and dated, establishing that I had submitted to my own husband’s degrading suspicion with perfect dignity while he stood by the window unable to look at his son.

I was not enduring the test.

I was building a record.