And there it is. The pain of a history never actually addressed, a wound left to fester from the unsaid.

I scramble for my thoughts, trying for a steady reply. “Arie, I’d understand if you’re upset about the past—”

“You’re damn right I am,” he seethes in an undertone that somehow makes the words more cutting. “I loved you, Fen—for near half my life. I put my heart out there, giving you everything I had, and you threw it away, you threw me away, all because things got a little too scary for you.”

My tears are instant. They fill my eyes as emotions charge through me, unleashed without warning. “That is not what happened.”

“Yeah? Then what? Tell me what I missed.”

His challenge is searing. Still, I gather the will to straighten, recalling how my every intention was to protect him, so he could find the happiness he deserved.

“You wanted children,” I say, at last confessing. “After the stairwell, the tragedy—seeing those kids and parents, the babies, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t give that to you. And I loved you too much to rob you of that.” I fight fiercely to keep my tears from spilling. As Arie regards me, I await the softening of his bearing, a sign of his grasping a long-veiled truth.

Then a syllable cracks the air. “No.”

I stare at him.

“You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to play the martyr.”

Breath knocked out of me, I feel speared in the heart. I recognize his desire to lash out, even his right, but that doesn’t cushion the impact.

“The sheer fact is you were scared, and that’s it. Sure, about being a mother, but just as much of being with me. About putting yourself out there to risk getting hurt. So you took the coward’s way out. Well, guess what? I was scared too, Fen—terrified actually of something ever happening to you, let alone of being a father and losing my kids. Of being destroyed by that kind of loss…”

Trailing off, he turns his face away, moisture pooling in his eyes. What he’s picturing at this moment couldn’t be clearer. The broken fathers, the procession, the funerals. Visions I should have realized we still shared.

I grapple for what to say. “Arie. I didn’t know…”

He speaks under his breath. “How could you have? You didn’t stick around to find out.” With a half shrug, he angles back. “Who knows, maybe it would’ve been just a little less scary if we’d faced it together. But none of that matters now, does it?” Beyond his wall of bitterness, in the depth of his gaze, I’m struck by the pain I alone caused. A reflection of what I too have worked so hard not to feel.

A merciless quiet stretches between us.