Chapter 7: The Days of Waiting
The five days before the results felt longer than the three weeks since the twins had been born.
Ryan messaged each morning with a variation of the same themes: he was complying, he was sorry, he wanted a chance to explain the full context once the test confirmed what he already feared. I answered only when the message concerned logistics—the next supervised visit, a question about the boys’ feeding schedule, a request to drop off a package of diapers at Rachel’s door. Everything else went unread or received a single line: After the results.
Rachel adjusted her work shifts and slept in the room next to the boys so I could recover in fragments. My body was still bleeding, still aching, still producing milk on a schedule that did not care about marital collapse. I moved through the feeds and changes with a mechanical focus that kept the larger free fall at bay for hours at a time. When the focus slipped, the kitchen-counter screen lit up again behind my eyes—Ashley’s sentence, the Colonel’s medals, Ryan’s silence when asked to swear on his sons’ lives.
Colonel Carter did not visit again. He sent one message through his attorney confirming that the temporary financial channel was active and that Ryan had been instructed not to interfere with it. The tone remained procedural. I preferred it that way. Emotional support from the man who had stripped his own son of a name in my entryway would have complicated a situation that was already dense enough.
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On the third day Ryan’s mother called. I let it go to voicemail, then listened to her cry through a careful defense of her son’s character and a plea not to let “one mistake” define the boys’ family. I did not call back. One mistake was a category error. A promised divorce, a resumed relationship after the twins’ birth, and an inability to swear on their lives were a pattern. Patterns required different tools than forgiveness offered on someone else’s timeline.
The supervised visits continued in Rachel’s living room. Twenty minutes. Rachel present. Ryan held each boy, spoke softly, and left when the time ended. He looked worse each time—thinner, less polished, the charm that had once smoothed over smaller failures no longer fully operational. I watched him the way I had once watched the location of his late meetings: for evidence of the real route underneath the stated one. The evidence was still incomplete. The test would supply the next piece.
