“Hi, Noah.”
Behind her, Ethan went perfectly still.
Noah.
The name hit him strangely.
Hannah leaned toward the second incubator.
“And you, little fighter…”
Her daughter moved weakly beneath the blanket.
“Stay with me, Lily.”
Ethan’s chest tightened again.
Noah and Lily.
Names Hannah had once joked about years ago.
Not for children.
For a pair of fictional characters in a ridiculous novel she had tried writing during college.
He remembered teasing her.
“If we ever have twins, you’ll probably steal those names.”
She had thrown a pillow at him.
“Don’t tempt me.”
The memory unsettled him.
But five years still made the possibility absurd.
These infants were not his.
They couldn’t be.
He stepped away.
At the nurses’ station, he opened the medical record again.
Hannah Mercer.
Age twenty-nine.
Address in Cicero.
Insurance status: temporary employer plan.
Obstetric history—
He stopped.
G2P0.
Second pregnancy.
