Push

Tanya’s composure finally breaks. The steady sister-like calm she has always shown you slips, and what comes through is genuine feeling.

“I’m sorry,” she says, voice quieter now. “I really am. Watching you walk around for months thinking the problem was you, while she kept all of this locked down… it hasn’t sat right with me. I kept telling her to be honest. She wouldn’t.”

She looks down at her cup, then back up, and gives you the full truth without softening it.

“I don’t know whose it is for certain. There are three possibilities. Paul and Matthew, both teachers at the school with her. She’s been seeing them regularly for a while. And Jamie. He’s a governor there. The timing could fit any of them. She hasn’t told me which one she’s most sure about, and I don’t think she knows herself. That’s why the dates never lined up with you. That’s why she went cold. She was covering.”

The ordinary sounds of the coffee shop continue around the table. A spoon against a saucer. Distant traffic. Leaves moving in the breeze. None of it touches the weight of what Tanya has just put between you. Three names. Three men from the school where Natasha works. Regular meetings. A pregnancy that cannot be yours. And the long months of rejection now explained in the hardest possible terms.

Tanya watches your face, the earlier ease between you replaced by the quiet solidarity of someone who has known the secret too long and is finally done carrying it alone.