The answer stole the breath from me.
“Treatment?”
“Preventive medication first. Then a stronger treatment plan after the next results.”
Her voice was calm, but I knew Sophie’s calm. It was the kind she used when everything inside her was breaking and she didn’t want anyone else to feel responsible for the pieces.
“Why didn’t your mother tell me?” I asked.
Sophie’s expression hardened slightly.
“Because I asked her not to.”
“But why?”
She looked away, toward the gray afternoon pressing against the windows.
“Because when you asked for the divorce, I realized something.”
“What?”
“That you were drowning too.”
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.”
