After Four Daughters, My Husband Finally Got the Son He’d Been Begging For – But When He Held Our Newborn Boy for the First Time, His Words Made My Stomach Drop
Part Four: The Bear on the Porch
On the fourth day, the doorbell rang.
Dorian stood out on Paulina’s porch holding a stuffed bear, looking more uncertain than I’d ever really seen him look before, in all the years I’d known him.
For one unbidden second, a memory surfaced — Dorian at Grayson’s father’s funeral, standing several feet back from the immediate family while everyone else filed past the open casket one by one. I’d thought it strange at the time, honestly. He’d stayed behind until almost everyone else had already left the room, just staring down at the closed lid without moving.
When I’d gently asked, that day, whether he was doing all right, he’d only told me, “I’ve known him a long time,” and I’d assumed, reasonably enough at the time, that he simply meant through his lifelong friendship with Grayson.
“Teresa, what’s actually going on?” he asked now, standing awkwardly on the porch. “Grayson blocked my number entirely. Did I do something wrong?”
I gripped the doorframe hard, genuinely unsure how much to say to him in that moment.
“I can’t talk about any of this right now,” I told him honestly.
Worry crept visibly across his face. “Is it the baby? Is something actually wrong?”
“We’re fine,” I said. “Just — give us some time, Dorian. Please.”
He set the bear down carefully on the porch step and left without pushing any further, though I could tell it cost him something.
Paulina watched him walk slowly back to his car through the front window. “You didn’t tell him anything.”
“He deserves to hear it from Grayson,” I said. “Not from me. Not like this.”
