Our silence hadn’t been the absence of love. It had been two people each privately convinced they were the flaw, protecting the other from a guilt that had never belonged to either of them.

The house didn’t burn because we stopped loving each other. It burned because neither of us could see the wiring in the walls.

We didn’t speak until we were back in the car. Rain had started again, soft, the wipers keeping a slow time.

“That’s what the letter says,” Sophie said finally, looking straight ahead. “Or most of it. I found out three weeks ago, when they called me in about the mass and pulled the old file.

I’ve known for three weeks that the thing I blamed myself for wasn’t mine to carry.” Her voice didn’t break; it just thinned. “And I wrote it all down for you, because I thought I might not survive the surgery, and I couldn’t stand the idea of you going the rest of your life believing we failed at something we were never actually doing wrong.”

“Sophie.”