Chapter 2: What She Was Afraid to Ask
Part 2 ⬇️
The room was full of children.
Not just a few.
Fifteen, maybe twenty kids — some as young as four or five — sitting on folding mats, eating from paper plates.
A long table along the wall was stacked with donated clothes, sorted by size.
Blankets.
Shoes.
Medicine bottles lined up in careful rows.
Maeve was kneeling in the center of it all, pressing a damp cloth to a little girl's forehead.
She was speaking softly, the way she does when she's trying not to scare someone small.
She didn't hear me come in.
One of the other women in the room did.
She touched Maeve's shoulder and nodded toward the door.
Maeve turned around.
When she saw me, her face didn't show guilt.
It showed something closer to exhaustion — and relief.
"How long?" I asked.
My voice came out quieter than I expected.
She stood up slowly.
"Eight months."
"Eight months." I repeated it like I was trying to understand a different language.
"You've been doing this for eight months and you never told me?"
She looked at the children, then back at me.
"I was afraid you'd tell me to stop."
I didn't have an answer for that.
I still don't.
But then the little girl on the mat reached up and grabbed Maeve's hand — and whispered something that made my chest crack completely open.
What that child said changed everything I thought I knew about my wife — and about what she had been quietly carrying alone.
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What Maeve had been hiding goes deeper than one night — and the reason she kept it secret will stay with you.
