I hoped she would soon realize we were in this together and we would always support each other.
That night, I woke in the chair beside her bed and saw her standing over his bassinet.
Her back was toward me.
One hand hovered above his blanket as if she wanted to touch him but could not make herself do it.
I closed my eyes before she noticed I was awake.
The next morning, she was distant again.
“Could you raise him alone?” she asked.
I thought she meant if something happened to one of us someday.
“I wouldn’t have to,” I said. “He has both of us.”
She began crying.
I reached for her, but she turned away.
Two days later, Goldi told me she wanted a divorce.
I laughed because the idea seemed impossible.
We had been married for four years.
Three weeks earlier, she had been folding baby clothes and arguing with me about whether the nursery needed another lamp.
Now she would not even look me in the eye.
She would not even touch our baby.
“You don’t mean that,” I said.
“I do.”
“Because Leo has Down syndrome?”
She said nothing.
Her silence became the answer I carried for the next 18 years.
Within a week, she signed an agreement giving me sole custody.
She declined visitation, packed one suitcase, and left our apartment.
Before she walked out, she stood beside Leo’s crib.
I watched from the doorway.
For one second, I thought she might pick him up.
Instead, she whispered something I could not hear, pressed her fingers to her lips, and left.
Just like that.
I failed to convince her to stay.
I saw that she genuinely wanted nothing to do with our baby and me anymore.
I was 30 years old, standing in our apartment with a newborn in my arms, wondering how someone could stop loving her own child.
