The fifteenth anniversary of their elopement was on a Tuesday.
Eunice's calendar, an AI-assisted marvel that ran her entire life, sent her a notification at 9 a.m. '15 Years. Congratulations!'
She looked at the notification for a full minute, then deleted it.
She was 42. He was 38.
The house was bigger. The glass walls were cleaner. Karlman's company was now a household name. Eunice was one of the most sought-after, and feared, consultants in the country. They were, by every external metric, a staggering success.
And their marriage was a tomb.
They hadn't just stopped trying. They had stopped everything. They hadn't shared a bed in three years. They lived as roommates, two high-functioning, heartbroken ghosts haunting a perfect, sterile house. They hadn't failed at IVF just once. They had failed three times. Twelve embryos, all told. Twelve "positives" for Vesper's.
After the third, Eunice had declared it. "No more. No donors. No surrogates. No adoption. I'm not... I'm not sourcing a child, Karlman. I'm not 'acquiring' a solution to our 'problem.' I'm done. This is our life. The 'curse' won. Let's just... stop fighting it."
So they had. And the silence that had once been a "quiet room" was now a vast, echoing, unbridgeable canyon.
Karlman came home late. He was always late. The house was dark, save for the blue-white glow of the kitchen's under-cabinet lighting. Eunice was sitting at the marble island, a glass of wine in her hand, staring at the blank, black-glass wall.
"You're home," she said. It wasn't a greeting. It was an observation.
"I am," he said. He put his briefcase down. It was scuffed. The one he'd had for a decade. He looked at her. Her beautiful, severe, "A-type" face. She was still the most compelling person he'd ever met. And he hadn't touched her in 1,095 days.
"Happy anniversary," he said. His voice was rough.
She took a sip of her wine. "Don't. Please."
"Eunice..."
"Don't. It's just a date. It's just... Tuesday."
He stood across the island from her. The space between them felt like a mile. "I was... I was looking at our elopement photo. The one Sal the janitor took with his disposable camera. We looked... so... terrified. And so... sure."
"We were kids," she said. "We were stupid."
"No," he said, and there was a strange, new energy in his voice. "We weren't. We were just... we were just at the beginning of the war." He reached into his briefcase and pulled out, not a legal document, but a soft, worn, plush rabbit.
Eunice's eyes, dead for so long, flickered.
"What is that?"
"I... I re-opened the adoption file," he said, his voice quiet. "I've been doing it for a year. Without telling you."
The air crackled. This was a breach. A betrayal. "You what?"
"I couldn't accept it, E," he said, his voice pleading. "I couldn't accept this... mausoleum. This... nothing. You said 'no adoption.' I thought you meant... you didn't want the process. The paperwork, the judgment. So I did it. I took the judgment. I did the interviews. I've been... I've been 'fixing' our profile."
"Fixing it," she repeated, her voice lethally soft. "You've been lying."
"I've been trying! I've been trying to find a door. Any door. Because this... this... is not us! 'Us' was a fight. 'Us' was a war. 'Us' was 'us-against-the-world.' And now... we've just... surrendered."
"We didn't surrender, Karlman!" she stood, her voice finally rising, a volcano of 15 years of pain. "We lost! We lost. It's over. The 'curse' is real. We are the 'A-types' who got an F. And you... you think you can buy a passing grade? You think you can just 'acquire' a child like a subsidiary and fix this?"
"I'm not 'acquiring'!" he roared back, his own pain erupting. "I'm... I'm... they called me. Today. A... a girl. A baby girl. Three days old. She's... available, Eunice. She's at the children's hospital. She... she's ours. If we want her."
He held up the stuffed rabbit. "I bought this. On the way home. I was... I was just going to go. I was going to pick her up. I was going to bring her home. I was going to... show you. That we're not... cursed."
Eunice stared at the rabbit. At his face. His stupid, hopeful, desperate, 38-year-old face. The same face as the 23-year-old boy who had promised her a "dynasty."
He had gone behind her back. He had broken her one, final rule. He had... saved them.
The tears that came were not the hot tears of IVF. They were the scalding, thawing tears of a grief so old she had mistaken it for her own personality.
"A girl?" she whispered.
He nodded, tears streaming down his own face. "A girl. She's... she's waiting."