“But I was too afraid to use it.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of confirming I was going to spend the rest of my life waiting for a man who was never coming back.”

She said it plainly, without self-pity, which made it land harder.

I understood, turning that unopened kit over in my hands, what it had cost her to keep it sealed for two and a half years.

The test could only tell her one thing, and she already knew that thing — of course Arabella was mine; she had only ever been with me.