Why the Sky Is Blue by Susan Meissner

she doesn’t have trouble?”
    Dan was quiet for a moment and then he shared something from the depths of his aching heart that I hoped Katie and Spencer would always remember.
    “Kate, you and Spencer mean the world to me,” he began. “I would walk through fire for you. I would do anything to keep you safe. That’s how much I love you both. I have loved you like this since before you were born, since the day Mom and I knew she was expecting. Every child deserves a love like that from his or her father. Every child.”
    He was close to tears, and Katie was crying freely. Spencer had climbed into my lap, and as he rested his head on my shoulder, my own tears fell onto his blond curls.
    “But why can’t you love this baby?” Katie said, her voice softening. “I could.”
    I think I could too , floated across my brain, but I did not say it.
    Dan wiped his eyes and cleared his throat.
    “Do you remember the night when the policeman came to our house?” he said. Katie and Spencer both nodded their heads.
    “I told you when I left for the hospital that Mommy had been hurt but that she was going to be okay. Do you remember that?”
    They nodded their heads, but I was hearing this for the first time.
    “But I didn’t know if she was going to be okay,” he said, and his eyes filled with fresh tears, his voice beginning to tremble. “The policeman wouldn’t tell me. I kept asking, ‘Is she okay? Is she okay?’ but he wouldn’t answer me. He kept saying I would need to ask the doctor at the hospital. He wouldn’t answer me.”
    Dan wiped his eyes again, and we all did the same.
    “So when I got to the hospital, I thought they were going to tell me Mommy was...that she was in heaven,” he continued, acutely aware of Spencer’s wide-eyed stare. “Nobody would tell me anything. So I thought, that’s it. She’s gone. I don’t have my best friend anymore. I don’t have my wife. My kids don’t have their mother.”
    I could hardly bear to hear this. I had no idea this had happened to Dan. I felt so bad about all the times I had been short with him the past few months. No wonder he acted and felt the way he did. It was all making sense.
    “When the doctor finally came out to talk to me, he didn’t smile. He didn’t look happy. And I was so scared,” Dan said, choking back a sob. “He made me sit down and he wouldn’t say right away if Mommy was still alive. He started telling me where she had been hurt and how badly, and it seemed like a long time before he said she wasn’t dead.”
    Dan stopped for a moment and gathered his thoughts. There wasn’t a sound in the room except an occasional snap from the wood in the fireplace and the wind outside.
    “So when I think of how scared I was,” he finally said, “and how close I was to losing Mommy, how much I already had begun to miss her, I know I cannot love a baby given to her by a man who hurt her so badly she almost died.”
    He was completely spent, and I don’t think he could have uttered another word if he had wanted to.
    Katie said nothing, but her face was wet with tears, and she no longer looked angry. Spencer put his arms around me.
    The four of us huddled together on the couch for what seemed like hours. The fire dwindled away to nothing, and the swirling wind threw yesterday’s snowfall against the window-panes, but nobody seemed to notice or care.

 
    11
     
    After we told Katie and Spencer about the baby, the circle of those who knew the truth widened further to include my brother Matt, Dan’s parents, his sister Karin, and her husband, Kent.
    None of them knew quite what to say to me or to Dan, and since we told them by phone, I couldn’t judge their reactions by their faces. It was silly of me to think this, but I felt like I had brought a sense of disgrace to Dan’s side of the family. I was itching to have the whole thing behind me.
    About a week later, Becky came by the house with a big cardboard box. She had gathered maternity