I crouched in front of her before thinking better of it.
Once, I would have taken her hand without hesitation.
Now I didn’t know if I had the right.
So I kept my hands clasped together and forced myself to look at her.
“What happened to your hair?”
Her fingers rose unconsciously to the short strands near her cheek.
“I cut it before it could start falling out unevenly.”
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.”
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.
“Sophie,” he said, firmer this time, “now.”
She nodded.
The nurse moved to help her stand, but before they guided her inside, Sophie looked back at me.
“You should go visit whoever you came here to see,” she said.
The sentence was polite.
Too polite.
It was the voice people used with acquaintances.
“Sophie, I’m not leaving.”
Her eyes darkened.
“You don’t get to come back because you feel bad.”
The words were quiet, but they stopped me cold.
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?”
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to tell her that I understood everything now. That I understood the pain, the fear, the loneliness, the impossible choices.
But I didn’t.
Not yet.
