"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I couldn't." The journalist disappeared. What was left was just Sloane. Raw. Shaking. "Because when I read about her, about losing her daughter, I couldn't stop thinking about..."
She couldn't finish.
"About what?"
The silence stretched.
"About our baby."
The air left my lungs.
"About the grief I never processed. About what I did to you when I left."
And then it all came out.
Not cleanly. Not in order. In fragments and half-sentences and long pauses where she pressed her face into my shoulder and tried to breathe.
"After the miscarriage, I couldn't—" She stopped. Started again. "You were so good to me. You were so good, Garrett, and I hated it."
The words landed somewhere deep. A place I'd stopped letting myself reach.
"Every time you held me or told me we'd get through it, it made it worse. Because you were still whole. You were grieving but you were functioning, and I was—" A ragged breath. "Drowning."
I closed my eyes.
"I couldn't explain it. I just knew that every time you looked at me with all that love, all I could feel was how broken I was."
I closed my eyes. The dark apartment pressed in around us.
"When you asked about the wedding?—"
"I know." Rough. "I shouldn't have."
"You didn't do anything wrong." She pulled back enough to look at me. "You loved me exactly right. I just couldn't receive it. The depression made everything feel like pressure."
She swallowed.
"Like I was failing at being loved."
Eight years I'd spent turning it over. What I'd done wrong. What I should have said differently.
And she was telling me it was never about what I said.
"Leaving felt like the only thing I could do that wasn't hurting you," she whispered. "I told myself it was temporary. A few weeks. I'd get better and come back."
Her hand was still pressed against my chest. I don't think she realized it.
"Your letters kept coming. And everyone made me feel worse. Because you were keeping your promise and I was this... shell. This empty, broken thing who couldn't even pick up a phone."
Her voice splintered.
"And then your letters stopped."
I remembered the last envelope. Addressed. Sealed. The walk to the mailbox. My hand on the handle, knowing that if I sent it and heard nothing back, I'd have to accept it was over.
I'd sent it. Heard nothing. Accepted it.
