Vanessa nodded once. "Fair."
Claire studied her. There was something strangely clarifying about Vanessa's willingness to take even that small amount of responsibility. Ethan, by contrast, had spent the last twenty minutes trying to reduce six months of betrayal into a communication problem that had unfortunately become public.
"Did you know about the miscarriage?" Claire asked. Ethan's head came up sharply. "Claire, don't."
Claire ignored him. Vanessa's expression changed. "He told me you lost a baby a few years ago." "Did he tell you when?"
"No." "Did he tell you he held me in our bathroom while I was bleeding and waited with me at the hospital for six hours?" Vanessa looked stricken. "No."
"Did he tell you we spent a year in counseling because I couldn't walk past the nursery without crying?" "Claire," Ethan said.
She whirled on him. "You used our grief as an explanation for why you cheated. I'm allowed to say what that grief actually was."
Ethan fell silent. Claire turned back to Vanessa. "He told you we were broken because of it, didn't he?" Vanessa hesitated, then nodded.
"He said you never really came back from it." Margaret made a soft sound of pain. Claire stared at her husband.
For the first time that evening, Ethan looked ashamed in a way that reached beyond being caught. He had forgotten saying those words to Vanessa. They had come during one of those late-night conversations in her apartment when he was searching for a story that would justify wanting what he wanted. He had taken Claire's grief, a grief they shared, and converted it into evidence against her.
"I didn't mean it the way it sounds," he said. "How does it sound?" Claire asked. "Like I blamed you."
"Did you?" "No." "You told her I never came back from losing our child." "I was trying to explain why things had been hard."
"Things were hard because we lost a baby, Ethan. Not because I failed to perform recovery on your schedule." Thomas looked away from his son.
Margaret's eyes filled with tears. She moved to Claire and put one hand against her back. Claire did not lean into her, but she did not pull away.
Vanessa stood near the doorway with her coat closed now, no longer glamorous so much as exposed. "He told me you didn't want children anymore." Claire's face went blank. Ethan said, "Vanessa, enough."
"No," Claire said. "Let her talk."
Vanessa looked directly at Claire. "He said after what happened, you decided you were done trying. He said you wouldn't discuss it."
Claire's lower lip trembled once. "We started trying again four months ago." Silence spread through the room. Vanessa turned toward Ethan so sharply that her hair swung across her shoulder. "You what?"