When the seasons turned and no pregnancy occurred, Hannah began to worry with every passing month.

She spent long afternoons sitting in waiting rooms, followed strict medical guidelines, and endured round after round of invasive exams.

I remember one evening when she returned from an appointment with a folder of test results balanced on her knees.

She sat at the kitchen table while I took a conference call in the next room.

When I came back, her eyes were red.

“They still can’t explain it,” she said. I put my phone face down and told her not to worry.

I told her we had time. Those were easy words to say when I knew I had secretly removed the possibility she was grieving.

I had undergone a vasectomy at a private clinic nearly two years earlier.

A follow-up test had shown no sperm in the sample at that time.

I treated that result as a lifelong guarantee and never told Hannah. It is difficult for me now to describe my behavior without making it sound more complicated than it was.

I lied by omission, and I allowed the person who trusted me most to blame her own body. The morning she mentioned another appointment, I said, “Maybe we should stop obsessing about this.”

She stared at me across the breakfast table. “You said we could try,” she answered.

“I said perhaps one day.” For the first time, she looked at me as if she were searching for a stranger beneath my face.

A week later, I met Vivienne Hart at an investment reception.