CHAPTER 5 — THE TRUTH I SHOULD HAVE SEEN
Later that night, I was allowed into her room.
Clara was awake.
Weak.
But alive.
I sat beside her carefully.
Neither of us spoke for a long time.
Then I finally said it.
“I’m sorry.”
She turned her head slowly.
“For what?”
I swallowed hard.
“For not trusting you when I walked in.”
Silence.
Then she exhaled.
“I understand why you did.”
That didn’t make it better.
It made it worse.
“I thought I was protecting you,” she said softly.
“But I was just trying to survive it.”
I frowned.
“Survive what?”
She hesitated.
Then whispered:
“The pregnancy was more complicated than they told us.”
That was when I understood something I should have seen earlier.
The blood.
The exhaustion.
The silence.
It wasn’t secrets.
It was sacrifice.
Clara wasn’t hiding another man.
She was hiding fear.
Fear of losing everything.
May you like
Including herself.
And I had mistaken that fear for betrayal.
