Chapter 5: The Date

The cloud backup still had everything.

At seven the next morning I sat at Bev's kitchen table with her laptop and typed in a password I had not used in two years.

The lab report came up page by page, exactly as I had scanned it five years ago.

Neil Rowan. Azoospermia. Mumps.

I had read it fifty times and never once read the small box in the top corner, because it had never seemed to be about me.

Prior evaluation: yes. Date of prior evaluation: fourteen years ago, age 19.

I read it three times.

Neil had been twenty-eight when he married me.

The month after the wedding he had come home from an appointment and sat on our kitchen floor with the report in his hands.

He had told me he'd just found out, and he cried so hard I held him until it was light.

He had said, "I've never told anyone. You're the only person who knows."

Fourteen years ago, age nineteen.

"Bev," I said.

She came in from the hall with her hair in a towel. "What did he take besides your phone?"

"My whole life, I think."

I turned the screen to her.

She put on her reading glasses, read the box, and sat down very slowly.

"That man cried on you," she said, "about something he'd known since he was nineteen."

"He told me I was the only person who knew."

"He told you what you needed to hear to keep your mouth shut for him."

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