I try to shove it away. “Let go. I don’t want Antonia to have to clean it up.”

“She has staff for that.”

“No.” I push my chair back, sliding my hand out from under his to gather the mess on the floor.

“Ivy, stop.”

Mercedes’s words come back to me and I hate that they have the power to hurt me. She’s right. I am in love with him. And she knows her brother better than me. He can never love me.

“Ivy. Goddammit!” His chair scrapes back loudly and he’s behind me, hands on my arms, lifting me out of my seat.

“You’re making it worse,” I say, my voice breaking a little as I step on a piece of toast.

“It doesn’t matter.” He turns me, shifts his hands to my face to make me look at him. “What is it? What the hell has happened between yesterday and today?”

I look up at him and all I can hear is her. I have to think about what’s important now. Whether I love him or not and whether he is capable of loving me back or not can’t matter.

“Are you going to take the baby away from me?” I ask outright, my throat feeling tight to say the words.

“What?”

“Are you? Just tell me. I’m not going to run away. You said yourself I wouldn’t get past the front gates.” I remember when he’d said it. How it had stood out. “I just need to know.”

He exhales, shakes his head like he’s disgusted. He pulls his hands away and wraps one around the back of his neck, shaking his head, lips in a tight line.

“I just want to know. So I’m ready.” Can someone be ready for something like that?

“Is that what she told you? What’s turned you against me?” When I look away from him, he cups my face again to tilt it up, brushes a strand of hair behind my ear. He sighs deeply like he’s very tired. “No, Ivy. I am not going to take our baby away from you. Can we lay this to rest once and for all? Can you trust me and let this go? Because that’s what it comes down to. Trust.”

Before coming down to breakfast I’d walked past my old room. It’s cleaned up, more of a guest room now, the dark panels still there but open. The bed made to welcome someone new. The mask in its glass case gone. The rosary he’d made me wear since our wedding night not on the nightstand where I’d last left it but gone. I’d stood outside the door and thought about how much time I’d spent in there. How easy it would be for him to just put me back in, lock the door and forget all about me.

Trust.