Someone in the back looked at the floor.
“And here’s the part you left out, Mom. After Dad died, you brought up naming my future son after him. I told you no. I told you I’d never do it. That was years before Mel was even pregnant.”
He let that sit.
“And here’s the part you left out, Mom.”
“You knew before the shower. You knew before you ordered that blanket. You knew before you lied to forty people about OUR baby’s name.”
The room changed again. I could feel it, like a pressure drop.
“He did his best,” Diane said, tight-lipped. “And families shouldn’t air private things in front of everybody.”
“You made it public,” Levi said, “when you wrongly announced my son’s name.”
Cornered, she swung back at me.
“You made it public,”
“This is her. You were never like this. She’s poisoned you. She wants to push me out and erase me from my own grandson’s life.”
There it was. The exact accusation I’d spent months bending myself into knots to avoid.
Levi didn’t even look at me before answering.
“Mel’s the reason I didn’t say anything sooner. I wanted to leave after the belly game. She made us stay. She gave you chance after chance because she wanted our son to have a good relationship with his grandmother.”
“She’s poisoned you.”
