At thirty-five weeks pregnant, I believed I finally understood endurance. Years of infertility had trained me to live with patience, with measured hope, with disappointment folded carefully into routine. Michael and I had learned to speak in quiet reassurances, to sit in waiting rooms holding hands without words, to celebrate small medical victories as if they were miracles. When the pregnancy finally took hold, it felt like the reward for everything we had survived together. Our marriage had always been calm rather than passionate, steady rather than dramatic, and I took comfort in that.

As my body grew heavier and sleep became elusive, I told myself that any distance I sensed in Michael was just fear—the understandable anxiety of a man standing on the edge of fatherhood after years of uncertainty. I ignored the subtle changes: the way his questions became less curious and more guarded, how he lingered on his phone late at night, how laughter felt slightly forced. I kept telling myself that joy would return once our daughter arrived, that the long road we’d walked together had earned us that happiness. I didn’t realize how fragile trust can become when fear is allowed to speak louder than shared history.