This is not about you, Gillian. I remind myself that this was never going to be my baby. It’s not as though this little embryo made it into the wrong body by mistake.

But at the least, at the very least, couldn’t my husband have told me?

I hold it together until they’ve left and Sam’s parked in front of the TV inside. There’s a tremor in my fingers as I close the kitchen door and look around. Oliver glances up from the dishwasher.

“You didn’t tell me?” I say.

He blinks back at me.

“Tell you…?”

“About that, Oliver.” I jab my thumb towards the hallway. “About the pregnancy!”

His eyebrows knit in what looks like real consternation.

“G, I didn’t know. I had no idea.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry…I know how hard that must have been on you. We were kind of put on the spot.”

I search his eyes.

“You didn’t know?” I say skeptically. “You’re telling me you didn’t know that Dinah was pregnant?”

He spreads his arms by his sides in a helpless of course not.

“So those calls from Jeff the other day—they really weren’t about this?”

He looks even more pained; opens his mouth, shuts it.

“No, babe,” he says. “They really weren’t.” He steps into me, pulls me against him. “Gill, I know. I know how much you want this. I do too.”

I repeat his words in my head. He wants this too. Sometimes it does feel like I’m in this alone, and I have to remind myself that I’m not the only one who’s feeling it.

I pull back and Oliver squeezes my hand.

“Go join Sam for a bit. I’ll finish this up.”

Sam looks up from the television as I come in.

“Hey, Aunt G.”

I see something tentative and awkward in his glance, and I’m pretty sure he’s aware of it too, and remembering what I said about those pre-natal vitamins by the stovetop.

I give him my best everything’s fine! smile, which probably reeks of denial, and sink onto the sofa. I try my best to turn my brain off, and just follow the convoluted plot of this action movie Sam’s watching. Later Oliver comes in and joins us in front of the television, and in a while we order pizza for dinner, as nobody wants to do any more cooking. Apparently Oliver’s taking the day off today in lieu of tomorrow, but is planning to spend the afternoon of New Year’s Eve back in the brewery.

I bring the pizza inside when it arrives, and we eat in front of the television, strings of cheese stretching as we tug our slices onto plates.

That stupid 23AndMe ad is playing again, and I close my eyes and do my best to tune it out.