Grace’s birth did not break my brother’s marriage.

His secret was already breaking it, silently, from the inside, and would have gone on breaking it in the dark for years.

What Grace did, what her arrival did — was drag the breakage into the light, where, at last, it could be looked at, and named, and worked on.

I gave them a child.

And the child, without knowing it, gave them the one thing that might actually save them, which was the end of the lie.

I do not think Ethan and Lauren would have made it, in the long run, carrying a secret that large between them.