“Ben,” she said. “Ben, she won’t understand—”
“No, Mom.” He shook her hand off. He didn’t look away from me. “She has to know. She should have known six years ago. She has to know.”
He took a breath. A long, shaking breath.
“Claire,” he said. “I can’t have children.”
The words didn’t make sense. They just hung in the air.
“What?”
“I’ve known since I was nineteen. I had cancer. Testicular cancer, my sophomore year of college. They caught it early, and I did the chemo, and I beat it. But afterward, the doctor ran tests. And he said…” His voice broke. “He said the chemo had wiped everything out. He said I would never be able to father a child. Not naturally. Not ever.”I reached for the doorframe.
“I never got tested last spring,” he said. “There was no test. I lied to you. I lied to you, Claire. I knew. The whole time. Every month you cried in the bathroom, I knew. Every time you said you were sorry, I knew. Every pill you took, every needle, that dye test, I knew it wasn’t you. I knew it was me. And I let you think it was your body. I let you blame yourself for six years.”
