Alexander's Mother's POV
Bella called me on a Thursday and said only, "Can we talk? Just us. Not about Kai."
I knew what that meant before I hung up the phone. It meant Ronan had finally told her about the conversation I'd always known would surface eventually, the one I'd been quietly preparing myself to have for five years.
She came to the house that evening, after Kai's bedtime, sitting across from me at the same kitchen table Alexander had sat at weeks earlier, hollow-eyed and asking questions he'd waited far too long to ask.
"Ronan told me you two spoke," she said, no preamble, the directness of a woman who'd learned, somewhere in the last five years, that she didn't need to soften herself before saying hard things. "Not long after Kai was born."
"He did."
"I want to hear it fro
