“Is that,” I asked, my voice barely working, “why her stomach was swelling?”

He nodded with a kindness I did not feel I deserved.

“It’s called ascites.

It’s a common complication as these cancers advance.”

And there it was.

The swelling I had watched grow for weeks, the roundness I had accused of being a pregnancy, a lover’s child, a shameful secret — it had never been new life at all.

It had been fluid.

It had been the disease itself, advancing, filling the spaces inside her, while I looked at the outside of her and imagined a scandal.