I tensed immediately.
“It’s not another secret,” he said. “Just the part I should have said sooner. When we stopped treatment, I loved the peace we found after. Not because I stopped wanting a child. Because I couldn’t survive that cycle anymore. I thought silence was the only way to keep us standing.”
A week later, I went into the attic looking for an old lamp and found a taped storage bin shoved behind a suitcase.
I leaned against the car and looked at him.
“Silence kept us standing,” I said. “But it also kept us apart.”
He nodded. “I know that now.”
A week later, I went into the attic looking for an old lamp and found a taped storage bin shoved behind a suitcase. Inside were Christmas ornaments, old tax folders, and a folded baby blanket.
It was cream-colored with a pale green edge.
“I bought it during our second year of trying.”
