His family.
For months, that word had meant only her. Her hands over her stomach. Her voice in an empty room. Her body standing for hours at the diner until her ankles swelled. Her alone, always alone.
“The father’s name,” Robert repeated gently.
Joanna looked toward the baby, still cradled in the nurse’s arms.
“Logan,” she said.
Robert closed his eyes.
The nurse’s face went still.
“Logan Wright?” Robert asked.
Joanna’s heart slammed once against her ribs.
She had never told the hospital Logan’s last name. She had refused, not out of pride, but because writing it down felt like giving him a place he had abandoned.
“How do you know that?” she whispered.
Robert opened his eyes.
Because he is my son.
The words should have been simple.
Instead, they came from him like a confession.
Joanna did not move.
For a second, she thought the exhaustion had finally broken something inside her. Perhaps she had misheard. Perhaps there was another Logan Wright somewhere, another man with the same careless hands and the same soft way of leaving.
But Robert’s expression confirmed everything.
“My son,” he said. “Logan is my son.”
The nurse inhaled sharply.
Joanna’s lips parted, but no words came.
Robert took one step closer, then stopped, as if afraid she might tell him to leave. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I swear to you, I did not know about the pregnancy.”
Something inside Joanna, something buried deep beneath months of hunger, rent notices, back pain, fear, and loneliness, lifted its head.
“You didn’t know,” she repeated.
“No.”
“He left me,” she said.
Robert looked as though she had struck him.
“He left when I told him. Seven months ago. He said he needed air. He packed a bag. He told me it was complicated. He said he would call.” Her voice broke, but she refused to let the tears take over. “He never did.”
Robert’s jaw tightened. His eyes lowered to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The apology was soft, sincere, and useless.
Joanna gave a bitter laugh. “You’re sorry?”
He accepted it. He did not defend Logan. Did not ask if she had misunderstood. Did not search for excuses. That, somehow, made her angrier.
“Where is he?” she demanded. “Since you know him. Since he’s your son. Where is Logan?”
Robert’s face drained again, but this time not from shock.
He looked toward the baby.
Then back at Joanna.
“I don’t know.”
The answer landed between them with a strange, hollow sound.
Joanna stared. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I haven’t seen him in seven months.”
The room seemed to shrink.
The nurse finally placed the baby into Joanna’s arms. Instinct overpowered everything else. Joanna pulled him close, inhaling the warm, milky scent of his skin. Her son quieted almost immediately, pressing his tiny mouth against the blanket, his eyelids fluttering.
For one small second, the world became simple.
Then Robert spoke.
“The night he left you,” he said, “he came to me.”
Joanna looked up slowly.
Robert’s eyes remained fixed on the baby’s birthmark.
