The rumors started before I even left the hospital.
Nurses whispered. Visitors stared too long. Someone asked me quietly if I “needed help finding the fathers.”
Plural.
I signed discharge papers alone, wheeling five car seats out to the parking lot with hands that still shook from blood loss and betrayal. No flowers. No congratulations. No husband waiting by the car.
Just me—and five babies the world had already decided to judge.
The first years were brutal.
Strangers felt entitled to ask questions at the grocery store.
“Are they adopted?”
