I had seen her cry only twice in our marriage. Once at her mother’s funeral. Once in our kitchen after our third failed fertility appointment, when the doctor had gently suggested that stress might be making everything harder and Sylvie had broken a mug against the sink because she could not break the universe.
We had wanted children once.
Quietly at first. Then with calendars, specialists, injections hidden behind bathroom mirrors, hope measured in appointments and blood tests. When nothing happened, we stopped speaking of nurseries. Then we stopped speaking of disappointment. Then we stopped speaking of almost everything that mattered.
Seeing her tears now opened a door in me I had nailed shut.
“Sylvie,” I said.
She wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand. “I’m tired.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” She looked back at me, and her voice cracked. “You don’t know what it was like to find out alone.”
I sat slowly in the chair beside the bed.
The rain made silver lines down the window.
“Tell me,” I said.
She studied me as if looking for the trap.
There wasn’t one. That was new enough between us to feel strange.
“I found out six weeks after I left,” she said. “I didn’t believe the first test. Or the second. I went to a clinic in Queens because I didn’t want anyone recognizing my name.”
“Why not call me then?”
“Because the same week, your attorney filed the motion accusing me of misappropriating proprietary data.”
I closed my eyes.
I remembered signing it. I remembered the legal team laying out the evidence: file transfers, encrypted backups, access logs under her credentials. I remembered my anger because betrayal with paperwork looked so convincing.
“I didn’t know you were pregnant,” I said.
“I know. But I knew what you believed about me.”
“That you stole from the company.”
“That I stole from you.”
The distinction mattered.
A knock interrupted us.
A young woman leaned in, wearing a gray cardigan and carrying a folder against her chest. Her hair was damp from rain, and she looked as though she had run all the way from the subway.
“Sylvie?”
Sylvie’s shoulders eased. “Maya.”
The woman stepped inside and stopped when she saw me.
I recognized her after a second. Maya Laurent. Sylvie’s younger half-sister. During our marriage, she had been finishing graduate school in Boston and rarely visited. She had sent polite holiday cards and once spilled red wine on an investor at our anniversary party, which had made Sylvie laugh for three days.
Maya’s eyes moved to the bassinets.
“Oh,” she whispered.
The folder slipped slightly in her hands.
Sylvie held out one arm, and Maya went to her. They embraced awkwardly around wires and blankets, both of them trying not to cry and failing.
“I came as soon as I got your message,” Maya said.