“Of course you do.” Shawn thinks back to the day that Katriina told him she was pregnant again. Tommy and Petey had spent the night at Hanna’s, and he and Katriina went out for dinner at a real, grown-up restaurant, not a pancake in sight. The next morning when Hanna dropped off the boys, the first thing out of her mouth was, “So did you tell him?” That’s when Shawn realized that there was never going to be anything about his wife that he would know before her sister did. It was a strange thing for Shawn to have to deal with – he was used to sisters who hated each other.

Hanna eyes him and picks up her phone, presumably dialling Katriina. “I got your text,” Hanna says after a minute. “What’s going on?” She gets up and wanders over towards the kitchen, her phone pressed to her ear.

Shawn leans his head against the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling and zoning Hanna out. Despite his raging hangover, all the anger and sadness from last night is still there, buried somewhere under the pain of his throbbing head. He doesn’t know how he’s going to go back to his life, back to the kids and the restaurant and his marriage. He doesn’t know how he can just pretend nothing has happened.

From the kitchen, he hears Hanna suck in her breath. “Katriina! Of course not.”

“Did she ask you if we slept together?” Shawn calls across the space.

Hanna waves her hand spastically at him. “He showed up after the bar closed. He was drunk, and he didn’t want to go home.”

“Hanna, answer me! Did she really ask if we slept together?”

“He’s worried about you.”

“Hanna!”

“Hang on.” She presses the phone into her shoulder. “What, Shawn? Did you think that wouldn’t be the first thing that crossed her mind?”

Shawn wants to say yes. He wants to say that he has a marriage built on trust, and that his wife knows him to be a deeply loyal person with a strong sense of morality, but lying on his sister-in-law’s couch, hungover after a bender, he knows that these are things he can no longer lay claim to. So he just drinks his coffee and says nothing.

—

What am I going to tell Jean-Marc? This was the only thought Shawn had after Katriina told him about the miscarriage. Not What am I going to tell my family – the family who, just hours ago, he had announced her pregnancy to – but What am I going to tell my employee who I barely know? Jean-Marc had been so happy for him, so happy to have someone to commiserate with about the anticipation and worry of impending fatherhood. Now Shawn was going to have to face the awkward attempt at sympathy, the whole I’m sorry, man thing.