“The truth is, your mom and I found a surrogate,” Adrian finally said, the words breaking loose like something he’d carried too long. I sank into a chair, unable to speak. He gathered the photographs gently, the way you handle something sacred. “Four years ago, before she got sick, your mother came to me. She knew how much the failed treatments were destroying you. She said she couldn’t watch you give up on being a mother.” He set the oldest ultrasound in front of me, the one with the tiny drawn heart. “She used her own savings. She found a woman willing to carry a baby for us, using my genetic material and a donor. She wanted to give you the one thing she couldn’t fix herself.”

My hands were shaking now. “Then where is the baby?” I whispered. Adrian’s face crumpled, and he pressed the second and third photographs flat against the table. “The first three attempts failed. Miscarriages. Your mom made me promise not to tell you, because she couldn’t bear to give you hope and then watch it die again. She wanted to hand you a healthy baby, not another loss.” He wiped his eyes. “Then she got her diagnosis. And she made me swear I would keep trying, no matter what, and that I would never tell you unless it finally worked.” He looked up at me, terrified and hopeful all at once. “It worked, Diana. Nine months ago, it worked.”