The night I told Rebecca, I half-hoped she would stop me.
That she would look at me with those sharp eyes of hers, call me a fool, and tear the bargain to pieces before it could take root.
But when the words left my mouth, all she did was stare.
We were sitting in her mother's kitchen, the lantern light flickering across the cracked walls. The smell of cornbread still clung to the air, though neither of us had eaten. Rebecca sat across from me, her hands folded over her belly as though she could already feel the life stirring within her.
"You… what?" she whispered.
I couldn't meet her eyes. I stared at the wood grain in the table instead, tracing the lines with my thumb. "The Wilsons. They've agreed. They'll take the baby."
Silence.
The kind of silence that presses against your chest until you can't breathe.
Her chair scraped back suddenly, the sound loud in the small kitchen. She stood, trembling, her voice breaking. "Daniel, how could you?"
"I'm trying to save us," I shot back, my own voice rougher than I intended. "Do you want the whole town to spit on us? To call our child a mistake before it even breathes?"
Her eyes filled with tears, shining like broken glass. "So your answer is to give it away? To sell our child like—like it's some burden?"
The word sell cut me open. I hadn't said it. I hadn't wanted to. But hearing it from her lips made it real.
I rose to my feet, desperate to make her understand. "Rebecca, think! The Wilsons can give the baby everything—food, clothes, a home without shame. We can't. We have nothing. What kind of life is that for a child?"
Her fists clenched, her tears falling freely now. "But it would be our child, Daniel! Our flesh, our blood. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
Her voice cracked, and it shattered me inside.
I reached for her, but she pulled away. She pressed her palms to her face, sobbing into them, her shoulders shaking as though the weight of my words was too much to bear.
I stood there, helpless. Watching the woman I loved crumble because of me.
And yet, even in her tears, she didn't say no. She didn't forbid me. She wept, but she didn't close the door I had opened.
That was the night I realized the worst kind of sin doesn't force its way in.
It waits.
It whispers.
And it wins when the ones who should fight it are too broken to resist.
Rebecca's tears were my punishment that night. But I told myself they would be temporary. I told myself she would understand in time. But I told myself a lie.