“Stop lying, Richard,” I said, my voice steadier than I expected. “I saw her. She told me everything.”

He stopped walking, the space between us suddenly feeling like an ocean.

His eyes darted toward the hallway, then back to my face.

“She told you what, exactly?” he asked softly.

“She told me about Claire,” I said.

A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he looked down at his leather shoes.

The hum of the television in the background seemed to grow louder, filling the silence.

“It isn’t what you think,” he whispered.

“We adopted our daughter through an agency, Richard,” I said, my chest tightening. “That’s what you told me. That’s what the papers said.”

He took a deep breath, his shoulders sagging as if a great weight had been placed on them.

“I did it for us,” he said.

He reached out to touch my arm, but I stepped back, pressing my spine against the wooden doorframe.

His hand hovered in the air for a second before he let it fall.

“Do you remember the third round of IVF?” he asked, his voice cracking.