Chapter 4

The first thing I did when we got home was walk into the study and pull open the bottom drawer.

Nathan trailed behind me, trying to speak, but the sharp slam of cabinet doors cut him off every time.

From the back of the drawer, I pulled out a gray file box.

A thin layer of dust covered the lid, concealing the past eleven years of heartbreak I had spent years trying to forget.

The first paper was an appointment confirmation from a fertility clinic.

Two years after Nathan finished chemotherapy, I suggested looking into IVF options.

The night before the consultation, he sat on the bathroom floor, pale and trembling, saying he couldn't bear the thought of another doctor dissecting his body.

I canceled the appointment.

The second document was an adoption application.

We had passed our preliminary interview and were even discussing nursery paint colors.

A month later, Nathan told the case worker we weren't emotionally ready.

He came home and held me, apologizing through tears, saying that hearing a child call him Daddy would only remind him of what cancer had taken from us.

I withdrew the application.

The third document was a foster parent training notice.

The fourth was a job offer from a museum in London, which included comprehensive fertility preservation benefits.

When I turned down the position to stay by his side, Nathan kissed me in the kitchen.

He told me, "I don't know what I'd do without you."

Back then, I thought staying was an act of devotion to our marriage.

Now I realized it was just the trap he designed for me.

Nathan stood on the other side of the desk, watching me spread the four documents out in a line.

"I never asked you to give all of that up."

"No, but every time I tried to move forward, you got sick, lost sleep, or claimed you couldn't handle the emotional weight."

"Those reactions were real," he said, his eyes rimmed with red. "I was terrified that if you knew I had frozen samples, you'd ask why I wasn't willing to try with you."

"And I'm asking you right now: why?"

He hung his head, bracing his hands against the desk.

"Because we had already been through so much. I couldn't guarantee it would work. If we tried and failed, I was terrified you'd end up hating me."

"So you picked Celeste instead?"

"She wasn't asking for a marriage. She didn't need me around every day. She just wanted a baby."

I locked eyes with him. "I wanted a family too."

Nathan looked up, as if the distinction between those two things had finally struck him.

"At first, I genuinely thought I was only providing the sample. But once the kids were born, everything changed."

He rounded the desk, trying to close the distance between us. "The first time I held them in my arms, I couldn't just walk away."

I remembered that supposed business trip to Zurich.

He came home with bloodshot eyes and refused to let me touch his luggage.

When I asked if something went wrong, he buried his face in my neck and told me he just missed me too much.

In reality, he had just watched his children come into the world.

"When you were lying next to me in bed, did it ever cross your mind to tell me?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you? Why keep lying to me?"

"Because I saw the dinner you cooked. I knew the second I opened my mouth, our marriage would be over."

He said it softly, like a man confessing to an unavoidable tragedy.

This wasn't one mistake. It was five years of choices.

The next day, the following Wednesday, the first time the kids called him Daddy—he had hundreds of chances to come home and tell the truth.

He never took a single one.

I snapped the file box shut, walked into the bedroom, and hauled out my suitcase.

Nathan rushed to the doorway. "Where are you going?"

"The museum has a short-term staff apartment."

"It's late. We can talk about this in the morning."

"You had five years to talk about this, and you never said a word."

He caught the handle of my suitcase, not pulling hard, but refusing to let go. "Eve, I love you."

I looked down at his hands.

These hands had held me through illness, and they had spent five years enjoying Wednesday night dinners with another woman and their children.

"Let go."

His grip finally slipped.

As I wheeled my luggage toward the foyer, his voice drifted after me. "I'll fix this. I'll make it right."

I didn't turn back.

To Nathan, the truth was just an unexpected complication to be managed.

To me, it was eleven years of my life stolen away, with no way to get them back.