But there had been a crack, she saw now, if only she’d known to look: he had never once been angry at the hospital.

A husband who believed a surgical team had needlessly destroyed his wife’s fertility would rage, would demand records, would consult lawyers, would want someone held accountable.

Dorian had done none of it.

He had been strangely, completely at peace with the “tragedy,” had discouraged her the one time she’d wondered aloud about a second opinion on what had happened.

She had read his calm as grace.

It had been guilt’s opposite: the serenity of a man who already knew the answer to every question, because he had written it.