My thoughts inevitably linger on all of the conversations I’ve had with Silas about this attempt to have a baby.  At first he was completely against the idea, too worried about the potential for complications during childbirth and the dangers of bringing a young life into this crumbled world.  By the time he had warmed up to the idea and we discussed it with Joseph and Jake to get their blessing, Silas’ excitement at the thought of parenthood almost rivaled my own.

When we realized after the first few months of trying to conceive that we were having difficulties, Silas immediately blamed himself, convinced that this was his punishment for all of his life’s horrible actions.  No matter how much I tried to make him understand that he shouldn’t shoulder all of that blame, he continued to let it affect him every day.  He knew the chances were greater that he had the infertility issues preventing us from conceiving, and he never let me think otherwise.

Or maybe I never let myself think otherwise.  Maybe I wanted a child so much that I was blind to any reality in which I was the cause of our difficulties.

Footsteps approach from down the hall, pulling me from my thoughts and back into reality.  I look and see Jake is about to turn the knob of the door that leads upstairs to the bedroom that Silas and I share, but he stops with surprise when he sees me sitting on the couch in the living room.

He looks at me questioningly.  “There you are.  What are you doing?”  When he steps closer to see me more fully, his eyes widen with concern, and he quickly moves around the couch to sit next to me.  “What’s wrong?  Why are you crying?”

My eyes automatically respond by blinking, and when I feel the drops of tears release from them, I realize that my cheeks are stained with other tears already.

I scramble to wipe them all away as if they were never there, even though Jake has already seen them.  After drawing in a shaky breath, I open my mouth to try to explain myself, but the words don’t seem to want to come out right now.

Jake turns his body directly toward me and takes my hands in his, pulling on them slightly to force me to face him as he asks, “Do you want me to go get Silas?”

“No,” I respond immediately, having no trouble speaking that word in my panic at the thought of explaining myself to Silas right now.

My thoughts naturally turn next to what it will be like to tell Joseph about this.  Will he be relieved?  Will he be disappointed?  Will he continue to hate himself for what he did at my request?

“I don’t think Silas is the reason why I haven’t become pregnant,” I say quietly to Jake.

His brow furrows.  “What makes you say that?”

“We’ve done everything we can to increase the chances of success.”  I wince at my own words, knowing the extreme lengths that we went to in order to conceive a child, even if it wasn’t Silas’ biological child.  “Nothing has worked.”

“Sometimes it just takes time,” Jake says encouragingly.  “You know some couples have a harder time than others.”

I shake my head in disagreement, internally frustrated that I can’t tell him the full truth of why I think he’s wrong.  “I was convinced it worked this time.  I was so confident that I took a pregnancy test just now, but it was negative.”

Something changes in Jake’s expression, as if this situation has suddenly become very real and serious to him.  He lets go of my hands and leans back against the couch, running his fingers through his brown hair with a distressed look on his face.

For some reason, it feels like I have upset him and need to apologize.  “Sorry.  This is probably too much information for a sister to give her brother.”

Jake shakes his head and looks at me with unease still prominent in his expression.  His lips part as he’s about to speak, but nothing comes out.  Now he’s the one having trouble finding the right words to say.

He closes his eyes for a long moment, then reopens them, but he avoids my gaze.  “I’ve watched you and Silas struggle with this for a while now.  I’ve seen how it has affected Silas, and now I’m seeing its impact on you.”

My heart rate quickens automatically at the unknown direction this conversation with my brother is taking.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he informs me guiltily, “something I should have told you a long time ago.”

“Jake,” I say nervously, wishing my brother would spare me any more painful truths today.

He finally meets my gaze with a troubled, but determined look in his eyes.  “Remember when you were in the hospital right after your attack in Boston?” he asks hesitantly, but he doesn’t wait for my response before continuing.  “They gave you a sedative so that they could run tests and perform the initial surgery on your hand.”

My left hand automatically clenches in my lap at the memory of the event that changed the course of my life: the attack by two men that left me with a bruised and battered body and my left palm sliced almost completely through with a knife.

Water builds in Jake’s eyes—the swirling storm of an approaching deluge—before he continues.  “You were still unconscious in the recovery room when the tests and the surgery were over and they finally let me see you.”

He grabs my hands again between us, though maybe just as much for his own support as for mine this time.

“The doctors told me the surgery went well, but that you might never regain full functionality of your left hand.  They gave me the results of the tests, explaining every detail about them and how lucky you were to have no internal bleeding.”

He stops and takes a deep breath, while I remain frozen in terrifying anticipation of what he has to say.

“They found something else on the ultrasound, though: a congenital abnormality in the shape of your womb.  They told me it might affect your ability to have children.”

“No,” I whisper, the single word a desperate plea for Jake’s words to be wrong.  “No one at the hospital said anything to me about that.”

Silent tears stream down my brother’s face, but he continues to hold my gaze.  “I told them not to talk to you about it.  I told them I wanted to be the one to tell you after you left the hospital.”

My head begins to shake back and forth automatically, my desperate continued effort to deny the words spoken to me.  “Why?  Why did you never tell me?”

“You had already lost so much.”  His breath catches, and he has to stop for a moment before he can continue to speak.  “Your dream of becoming a concert violinist was ripped away from you.  I couldn’t burden you with knowing that your hopes for having children someday might have been gone, too.”

I can’t remain in denial anymore.  I can’t will these thoughts and memories away.  They only fester inside me, eating away at the strength I’ve built up over the last two and a half years to get past the horrible things that happened to me during my attack, after the collapse of modern society, and even in my early weeks with Silas when he took me from the forest.

The worst implication of what Jake has just told me suddenly hits me like a bag of bricks to the chest.  I had betrayed my brother for nothing.  I had burdened his partner with a selfish request that never should have been made and the secret that was left behind as a result of that request.  I let someone other than Silas bury himself inside me and fill me with his seed when there was no fertile ground in which it could grow.

What have I done?

I’m only just becoming aware of the painful inhalations racking my body and the lightheadedness threatening to consume my mind.  Jake’s arms are around me and holding me desperately to him.  When his tears are no longer silent, I join him in the expression of pain and guilt, fully knowing that I have committed the greater sin.

Numbness starts to take over my body and mind, calming my heavy draws of breath and rampant racing thoughts until I’m completely still.

That single moment of serenity is quickly shattered at the sound of the back door in the kitchen opening and closing.  Jake and I pull back from each other just as Silas and Joseph appear down the hallway.  The concern on their faces only worsens as they get closer to us.

“What’s wrong?” Silas demands as he looks between me and Jake.  He maneuvers around the coffee table and sits on the other side of me on the couch.

Joseph looks worried as he steps toward Jake and places his hand hesitantly on Jake’s shoulder.  He glances down at me, his eyes searching mine for the answer that he so desperately needs about whether he is going to be a father.

I can’t direct my response to him, though.  I have to give it to the person who is supposed to be the anxious man awaiting this answer, the man who was willing to do whatever was necessary to help me get pregnant.

I close my eyes and turn to Silas, only daring to open them when Silas has connected his hands to mine.  He sweeps his thumb gently across my skin to give me all of the support he knows I need right now.

“I’m not pregnant,” I inform him quietly.  “It’s me.  I’m the reason we can’t conceive.”

Silas stares at me with confusion.  “How can you know that?”

“Jake just told me.  Right after my attack in Boston—” I begin to say, but stop to inhale a shaky breath.  “The doctors found an abnormality during my scans.  It would explain why I haven’t become pregnant.”

Silas stands up with fury, his enraged eyes immediately finding Jake on the other side of me.  “You kept this from her this whole time?” he bellows.  “You didn’t think she deserved to know?”

“Silas!” I cry out, standing up to grab him by the shoulders to calm him down.  “He thought he was doing what was best.”

I glance over my shoulder to check on Jake who is still sitting on the couch.  He looks absolutely defeated as he says, “I thought about telling you before, back when you both first brought up the idea to grow our family.”  He stands up to meet our gazes more directly.  “But I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think there was any harm in letting you try to make a baby.”

My eyes inevitably find Joseph’s where he’s standing right behind my brother.  I’m devastated to see that none of this has brought him relief.  He looks just as troubled as before—if not more so now—and in the end, it feels like my desire to be a mother has destroyed us all.

“It’s okay,” I say quietly, not just to Jake, but to all three of the men around me who make up my family.  “We shouldn’t fight over something that can’t be changed.  I don’t want to ruin Joseph’s birthday any more than I already have.”  Joseph looks ready to disagree with my last statement, but I don’t give him the chance to argue with me.  “Let’s go have dinner.”

I motion them toward the kitchen, overpowering their reluctance to move on from this conversation by giving them the best facade of strength I can muster.  Internally, I know this is nothing more than a ruse on my part.  I’m only putting off having to deal with the thoughts and feelings that I know will consume me when I finally face them.

The four of us quietly move out of the living room and down the hall into the kitchen.  While each of the guys makes their way out of the back door toward the patio, I stop briefly at the black drink cart next to the tall cabinet and take what I need most right now: the first bottle of liquor I see in our diminishing supply.  It will help me push away my troubled thoughts and focus on the celebration ahead.

When I step outside to join my family, I see Silas stopped ahead.  He’s halfway to the patio and watching me.  The bottle in my hand clearly doesn’t go unnoticed as he gives me a look of admonishment mixed with understanding.

In the two years that I’ve been with Silas, I’ve become more adept at reading his expressions and feelings.  I can tell he’s struggling with this development in our relationship just as much as I am, but I know we’ll get through this together.  Tonight, when it’s just me and Silas alone in our bed, we’ll find a way past this.  We’ll fend off the impending darkness and continue to strive toward the light.