The chair creaked under his weight.
“Failing according to who?”
Emily gave a sad little laugh.
“You sound like you already know the answer.”
“I probably do.”
She drew her knees closer beneath the blanket.
“Daniel.”
“Yes?”
“There’s something I should have told you before today.”
He went still.
Every possibility arrived at once.
Debt.
Another man.
A crime.
Illness.
Something about Henry.
Daniel hated his own imagination.
He forced himself quiet.
Emily continued.
“Every time I tried, I stopped.”
“Why?”
“Because you talked about the ranch.”
“That doesn't narrow anything.”
“You talked about your father.”
“Yes.”
“About how the Mercer land has been in your family for sixty years.”
Daniel understood something was coming.
He still did not understand what.
Emily swallowed.
“And you talked about children.”
The room became very still.
Daniel remembered conversations.
Casual ones.
A neighbor’s little boy helping repair a gate.
Daniel had said he hoped to teach his own son someday.
A church picnic where a toddler fell asleep against Emily’s shoulder.
Daniel had told her she looked natural holding him.
Once he had described the upstairs room he planned to add when they needed space.
Children.
He had talked about them because they existed in his imagined future.
He suddenly hated every one of those conversations.
Emily looked at him.
“A doctor in Baltimore told me I may never be able to have them.”
Daniel said nothing.
Not because he was angry.
Because he wanted to understand every word before responding.
Emily misread the silence immediately.
He watched fear spread across her face.
“There.”
She turned away.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“What?”
“That look.”
“What look?”
“You stopped breathing.”
“I was listening.”
Emily pulled the blanket tighter.
“I should have told you.”
“Yes.”
Her face crumpled again.
Daniel instantly realized how the word sounded.
He corrected himself.
“You should have told me because you shouldn’t have carried this alone.”
Emily looked at him uncertainly.
“Not because it would have changed whether I married you.”
She stared.
Daniel continued.
“How certain was the doctor?”
“That’s not the point.”
“It matters.”
“He said there was damage.”
“From what?”
Emily looked down.
Daniel waited.
Finally:
“The accident.”
He knew she had been injured during her first marriage.
Not details.
“What accident?”
Emily’s hands tightened.
“Henry was driving us back from Richmond.”
“He had been drinking.”
Daniel’s jaw hardened.
“He said he was fine.”
“We overturned near a bridge.”
“I was thrown.”
She touched her lower abdomen unconsciously.
“I was unconscious for a day.”
Daniel stared.
“He walked away with cuts.”
“Of course he did.”
The bitterness escaped before he could stop it.
Emily looked at him.
Daniel shook his head.
“Sorry.”
“No.”
“You’re not wrong.”
She continued.
“I had internal bleeding.”