She gave Alex a clean test, uncontaminated by the news of a baby: would he choose his wife, for herself, when he believed there was no child on the way?

It was, in its way, an act of terrible integrity.

She refused to purchase his return with a pregnancy.

She wanted to be chosen, or not chosen, for who she was.

He did not choose her.

And as devastating as that answer was, it was a true answer, and Elena built the next six years of her life, and the raising of four children, on the solid ground of a truth she had insisted on knowing, rather than the shifting sand of a marriage she could have saved with a secret.

Chapter 5 — I Need to Know