“It’s okay, Claire. I know about your . . . memory, okay? You don’t have to hide it from me.” His voice is warm and smooth.

I shake my head. What bothers me isn’t my memory but something else entirely, and I should tell him because he deserves to know—he’s always deserved to know—but I don’t know how, and my throat is closing, making it impossible to speak anyway.

“Are you okay, Claire?” He touches my arm, and it loosens something in me.

It all spills out, pent up inside me for longer than I can remember. “I was pregnant.”

Saying it to him is sweet relief mixed with a deep sadness. He might never forgive me for keeping it from him. “It, oh, um . . .” I pull at my fingers. “She, no, Mirabelle.” Her name feels foreign in my mouth, but I inhale and keep going. “I was pregnant and the baby was yours. Her name was Mirabelle.” Tate isn’t reacting and I look down, unable to imagine what he must be feeling inside. Dad’s face looms in the air between us. He’d never believed my story about the grad student and read the journal I’d kept when I was younger, hoping to find what he was looking for. The night he confronted me, he’d held the journal in his hands, and I can still feel the anger from his intrusion. You need to tell Tate. He’s a good man, Claire. I’d snatched it from his hands and slammed the door in his face, refusing to speak to him for nearly an entire week. But I never listened, never called Tate, and Dad had respected my wishes, even if he didn’t agree with me.

“I lost her before she got the chance to live.” Only a few words, but they fill the room, and my heart aches with yearning, my arms empty. I never got the chance to hold her. “I’m so sorry, Tate.” Still not looking at him, I reach for my pen, quickly write down that I’ve seen him and told him, because I can’t forget this. The ridges of the pen dig into the pads of my fingers when I write.

He clears his throat and I look up, notice that his cheeks aren’t pale with shock, his eyes aren’t darkened with anger; in fact, he looks like I’ve just given him the weather report. I roll my shoulders. He already knows. Of course he does. My grip on the notebook loosens, and it falls to the floor. Tate picks it up and puts it into my hands, which are shaking.

“Claire, listen, I—”

“Dad told you, didn’t he?” I can’t think straight, am losing information while I stand here. “When?” I’m an idiot. Of course Dad told him. “Before or after I lost her?”