The radiator in our Pilsen apartment hissed and clanked against the December cold.

Outside, the gray Chicago sky was already bruised with twilight.

I stood in the center of our small living room, my boots still damp from the slush on Blue Island Avenue.

My hands smelled of the oiled metal and copper pipe I had been cutting at the hardware store all afternoon.

My mother sat in the rocking chair by the drafty window, her thick winter coat still buttoned to her chin.

She watched me with quiet, heavy eyes, her hands folded over her leather purse.

Megan lay on the worn green sofa, curled into a tight ball beneath our heavy yellow wool blanket.

She was seven months pregnant, and her belly made a sharp, high mound under the fabric.

“Jake, please,” Megan whispered, her voice barely carrying over the rattle of the windowpane. “Just let me rest.”

“Just tell me the truth, Megan,” I said, my voice tighter than I wanted it to be.

My mother had called me twice at the store, her voice frantic and sharp.

She told me Megan was keeping secrets, hiding in the dark, and talking to people she shouldn’t.

She said Megan was trying to ruin this family before the baby even arrived.

I wanted to believe my wife, but my mother’s warnings had worn a groove into my mind.

“She’s keeping things from you, Jake,” my mother said from the corner, her rocking chair giving a short, dry creak.

“I told you. Look at how she clings to that blanket.”

Megan pulled the yellow wool tighter around her chest, her knuckles turning white.

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” Megan said, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

“Then let me see,” I said, taking a step closer to the sofa.

The air in the room felt thick and cold.

I expected to find a hidden phone, or a letter, or some proof that she was planning to take our child and run.

“Show him,” my mother insisted, leaning forward in her chair. “Stop the lies, Megan.”

I reached down and grabbed the rough edge of the yellow blanket.