I shook my head. “That doesn’t justify hiding this.”
“No,” she said. “Maybe it doesn’t.”
The honesty disarmed me.
She took a slow breath.
“But I watched you disappear for almost a year, Ethan. After the miscarriages, you couldn’t look at the nursery catalogs. You couldn’t talk about doctors. You couldn’t even say the word baby without going quiet. And every time I tried to reach for you, you pulled farther away.”
I stared at the floor.
She wasn’t wrong.
“I didn’t know how to help you,” she continued. “Then I got the diagnosis, and all I could think was that if I told you, you would stay out of guilt.”
I looked up sharply.
“That’s what you thought of me?”
“No,” she said softly. “That’s what I thought of myself.”
I didn’t understand at first.
Then her eyes met mine.
“I didn’t want to become another tragedy you felt trapped inside.”
Those words cracked something open in me.
For months, I had believed Sophie’s silence meant she didn’t care enough to fight for us. I had mistaken her restraint for acceptance. Her calmness for indifference.
But maybe she had been carrying a terror so large there was no room left for protest.
“Sophie,” I said, “I wouldn’t have stayed out of guilt.”
Her mouth trembled.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Ethan.” She gave a tired, aching laugh. “You left before you even knew.”
I had no answer.
The door opened again, and Dr. Keller returned with a nurse.
