I blinked slowly. “Baby? What baby?”
Amber stared at me. “You didn’t know?”
My mouth went dry.
“She was pregnant, Nat,” Amber whispered. “She was pregnant with your child.”
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. My child?
“She—” I started, but my voice cracked. “She was pregnant?”
Amber nodded weakly. “She lost it last night.”
“That… that doesn’t make sense.” My voice was unsteady, almost foreign to my own ears. “She couldn’t have been. She would’ve said something. She—she can’t hide something like that from me.”
But she had.
A sharp pressure pressed into my chest—confusion first, then disbelief, then something sour and burning that I couldn’t name.
“How?” I demanded hoarsely, more to myself than to Amber. “How could she be pregnant and I didn’t see it? I lived with her. I slept beside her. I—”
The words tangled in my throat. “How is that possible?”
My hand unconsciously pressed to my forehead. “Why didn’t the doctors tell me? Why didn’t anyone—”
Amber’s voice softened. “You weren’t at the hospital, Nat… you never stayed. You always left before the doctors could update you.”
Her words struck deeper than I expected, twisting something inside me.
I didn’t know. Because I wasn’t there.