At thirty-eight, I had learned to recognize the sound of my husband’s car from three streets away.

I knew the difference between his ordinary footsteps and the heavy steps that meant he was angry. I knew how long I could stay in the shower before he began knocking on the door. I even knew how to cry without making a sound.

But there was one thing I had never learned to understand.

Why had my husband spent eighteen years telling me that I was the reason we had never had a child?

And why did he become terrified whenever I suggested seeing a doctor?

My name is Sarah Mitchell. I had been married to Michael for eighteen years, and until the morning I walked into Dr. Emily Wilson’s office, I believed there was something terribly wrong with my body.

I was wrong.

The truth was far more painful than I could have imagined.