I want to pause on the choice Elena made that night, the hidden test, the silence, because people who hear this story sometimes judge her for it, sometimes say she should have simply told him, that if she had, the whole tragedy might have been averted, that her pride cost her children a father for six years.

And there is a version of that criticism that is fair, and Elena herself would later name it.

But there is also a deep wisdom in what she did, and it deserves to be understood on its own terms.

Because Elena, in that terrible moment, grasped something about love that Alex had entirely lost sight of: that a marriage held together by a baby is not a marriage at all.

If she had pulled out that positive test, if she had announced the pregnancy, Alex would very likely have stayed.