Nyia Crosland's pregnancy with Trey

Nyia Crosland's pregnancy with Trey is the hidden continuity between her broken relationship with Daeshim and the family they eventually begin to recover. Because Nyia did not know she was pregnant when Daeshim left, she could not tell him that he was about to become a father; because he changed his telephone numbers, left school, and disappeared from social media, the pregnancy remained unknown to him for eight years. The concealed pregnancy therefore turns a lovers' separation into a wound carried by three people, with Trey growing up inside the absence created by Daeshim's departure.

Discovery and Circumstances

Nyia and Daeshim met at North Carolina Central University while she was beginning the nursing program and he was two years ahead of her as a forensic science major. Their relationship developed with unusual speed and intimacy. He became her first lover, accompanied her through her mother's terminal illness and death, and spoke with her about marriage. Nyia consequently understood their future as shared, even though Daeshim's hesitation about marriage and reluctance to introduce her to his parents had already suggested that his family might stand between them.

That suspicion proved connected to the pregnancy's later secrecy. Daeshim's parents were a traditional Korean family, and after learning that Nyia was Black and that he wanted to marry her, they forbade him to continue seeing her. They threatened to stop paying his tuition, while his scholarships and loans were insufficient to cover his education. Daeshim left school, transferred, changed all his numbers, and cut off every route by which Nyia might reach him. His decision was presented to her as a break, but the break lasted eight years and began before she knew that she was carrying his child.

Pregnancy and Single Motherhood

The pregnancy placed Nyia in a position she had never chosen but was forced to sustain. She had loved Daeshim, and she later explained that she would have told him if she had known she was pregnant. After learning of the pregnancy, she tried to find him by calling, emailing, and pursuing every conventional avenue available to her. His number had changed, her emails returned error messages, and he could not be found on social media. With no means of communication, she raised Trey without his father's participation.

Nyia's motherhood was not only an act of care but also an effort to preserve Trey's connection to a father he had never met. Trey had Daeshim's mahogany-colored eyes and midnight-black hair, though his hair curled slightly at the ends rather than falling straight. Nyia taught Trey everything she knew about Daeshim and about his Korean heritage. When Trey was old enough to understand, she used both Korean and English at home so that he would become fluent in his father's language. She also hired a tutor to teach Korean to both of them, using extra money earned from additional shifts at Chantel Fifty. The labor of pregnancy thus continued into a deliberate education in the identity Daeshim's absence might otherwise have erased.

Nyia's relationship with her father further shaped the circumstances in which Trey was born and raised. After Nyia's mother died, Julius Crosland sold the childhood home because it held too many memories of her death. He imagined his new home being filled with new memories of Nyia and his grandchild, while Nyia felt sorrow that she could not give him more grandchildren. She had not intended to have children casually, and the fact that Trey was conceived with Daeshim made the loss of their intended future inseparable from the reality of her single motherhood.

Delayed Revelation and Reunion

Daeshim continued to compare every woman with Nyia and remained single, burdened by shame over having obeyed his parents. When he recognized Nyia through the magazine that had finally brought her back into his view, he understood that it might contain the answers he had sought for eight years. He decided to go to her, and when he entered Chantel Fifty, Trey unexpectedly wrapped his arms around Daeshim's legs and called him “daddy.” The child’s immediate claim to him exposed the truth before Nyia could prepare either of them for it.

The reunion makes the pregnancy's belated disclosure physically and emotionally overwhelming. Daeshim struggled to free himself from the boy who looked about eight or nine, then moved toward Nyia and held her while she cried. Trey’s recognition was not based on remembered contact; it was the spontaneous naming of a father whose existence Nyia had kept alive through stories, language, and family memory. The scene converts years of silence into a public revelation, with the diner falling quiet around the broken plates and the song “Baby Love” playing in the background.

Later, Nyia told Daeshim plainly that she had not known she was pregnant when he left and that she had tried to find him after discovering the pregnancy. She had wanted him to know that they had a baby on the way even if he no longer wanted her. Daeshim answered that his departure had never meant he did not want her; the reason, he admitted, was his inability as a young man to resist his parents' demands. The pregnancy therefore corrects the meaning of the original separation: Nyia had interpreted his disappearance as rejection, while Daeshim had allowed family coercion and cowardice to sever him from both his lover and his unborn child.

What the Pregnancy Reveals About Lost Time

The first family dinner Nyia and Daeshim share with Trey gives the hidden pregnancy its fullest historical dimension. Daeshim learns what he missed: Nyia's pregnancy, the first flutters, the baby's heartbeat, the birth, and Trey's earliest attempts to crawl, walk, and speak. Nyia had been alone during the birth because Julius Crosland refused to enter the room, and the ultrasound photographs and videos preserved the milestones Daeshim was denied. She gives him an extra ultrasound picture, which he folds and places in his wallet as a material reminder of the child and the years he never witnessed.

Daeshim's response is not limited to surprise at Trey's existence. He grieves the ordinary experiences that should have made him a father from the beginning, including pregnancy, birth, and the daily development recorded in the videos on Nyia's phone. His regret reaches backward to the decision that created the absence, while Nyia's account makes the costs of that decision concrete rather than abstract. The pregnancy is consequently both a secret and an archive: it contains the missing beginning of Trey's life and the evidence of what Daeshim's obedience to his parents took from him.

Family Reconstruction and Significance

Once the truth is known, the pregnancy becomes the basis for a second chance rather than merely a record of betrayal. Nyia tells Daeshim that the past cannot be changed and asks what he will do with the second chance they are giving him. Their renewed physical intimacy follows this acknowledgment, but the more consequential reunion occurs in the domestic scenes that follow: Daeshim helps care for Trey, takes photographs and videos of family occasions, and introduces Nyia to his best friend and lab partner Ricky and Ricky's wife, Tish.

Daeshim also begins to confront the family authority that had controlled the circumstances of the pregnancy. He sends his parents photographs and video of the life he missed, explicitly connecting their past decision to his lost years with Nyia and Trey. Their response is not avoided indefinitely: they visit to meet their grandson, question Daeshim about the pregnancy, and ask whether he is certain Trey is his. Daeshim answers with certainty that Trey is his son. The visit does not erase the earlier harm, but it places the child at the center of a newly contested family boundary.

The pregnancy's narrative importance lies in how it binds romance, parenthood, cultural inheritance, and delayed accountability. It explains why Nyia's grief endured beyond the loss of a lover, why Daeshim's return carries the possibility of restitution, and why the reunion must include Trey rather than remain a private reconciliation between former partners. Concealed by ignorance and separation, the pregnancy survives through Nyia's labor of remembrance; once revealed, it changes the meaning of the past and makes Daeshim's rebuilding of a family with Nyia and Trey an obligation grounded in the life that began while he was gone.