He realized the mistake and tried to recover. "I mean, it's not that simple." "It is tonight." "You don't know what it felt like for me."
"Then tell me." "After we lost the baby, everything changed." Claire's jaw set.
"I know," he said quickly. "I know it changed for both of us. I'm not blaming you. But you disappeared into work. Every conversation was appointments or grief or whether we should try again or whether we shouldn't. I didn't know how to reach you."
"I begged you to talk to me." "And I didn't know how." "So you found someone who didn't require you to know how." Ethan looked at Vanessa.
That was exactly what he had done.
Vanessa saw the answer too. Her anger softened for one second into something like humiliation. She had believed Ethan chose her because she understood him uniquely. Now she saw that much of what he valued was the absence of shared history. She had never met his grief at three in the morning, never negotiated medical bills, never sat beside him at a fertility appointment, never asked him to confront anything he wanted to avoid. She had known the polished version of his unhappiness, edited for romance.
"I feel stupid," she said quietly.
Claire looked at her. "You shouldn't feel stupid for believing the parts you couldn't verify. You should feel responsible for the part you could."
Vanessa nodded. "I do." Ethan frowned. "Can both of you stop acting like I'm some kind of monster?"
Natalie stood from the sofa. "Nobody used that word." "You're all looking at me like I'm not a person." "You're a person who made choices," she said. "That's why we're angry."
"You think I don't know I screwed up?" "You keep saying screwed up like you backed into a mailbox." "I know what I did." Natalie stared at him. "Then why are you still trying to make yourself the most uncomfortable person in the room?"
Ethan looked at his younger sister and, for once, had nothing to say. The argument might have ended there if Claire had not noticed the keys in Vanessa's hand. "How many times have you been here?" she asked.
Vanessa looked confused. "What?" "My house. How many times?"
Ethan immediately said, "Claire." That was enough. Claire's eyes moved to him. "How many?"
"Don't do this to yourself." "You don't get to decide what information hurts me. How many times?" Vanessa's face became cautious. "Tonight is the first time I've been inside."
Claire watched her closely. "Inside?" Vanessa's eyes shifted. Ethan stepped in. "Nothing happened here before tonight."
Claire turned toward him. "That isn't what I asked."
Vanessa sighed. "He met me outside once. In the driveway."