My stomach tightened.
“Sarah,” he said softly. “We need to do our ritual.”
For eighteen years, I had obeyed him.
But something had changed.
I pulled my hands away.
“No.”
He stared at me.
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
His face twisted with disbelief.
“After everything I’ve done for you?”
I felt the old instinct to apologize.
Instead, I asked the question I had been afraid to ask for eighteen years.
“Michael, have you ever been tested for infertility?”
He went completely still.
I watched the blood drain from his face.
Then he stood up so abruptly that his knee struck the coffee table.
“Who put that idea in your head?”
“Nobody. I’m asking you.”
He began pacing.
“You’re letting that woman destroy our marriage.”
“Did you ever see a doctor?”
“Stop asking questions!”
“Michael, did you?”
He turned toward me.
For one brief moment, I saw something in his eyes that frightened me more than his anger.
