He had held my hand in waiting rooms.

He had sat beside me through the injections, the counting of days, the negative tests, and he had let me believe — he had gently, patiently helped me believe — that the failure was in my body.

The folder told a different story.

I am not going to catalogue what was in it in detail; some cruelties don’t need to be itemized to be understood.

It is enough to say that the records made plain that our inability to have a child had not been nature, and had not been me.

It had been arranged.