“Ruth,” Roger answered after a moment’s hesitation, equally as quietly. “She um, she didn’t want to. But, well, I’d noticed something up even before, and then I couldn’t figure out why you didn’t come back, and I knew you’d have told her. I mean, she was your best friend at school, right? I just sort of, pressed it out of her.”

He hates talking around the barrier of Adam’s shoulder- he’d come down in person because talking on the phone was too impersonal, too distant, but now he felt farther away from her than ever as she stood flanked by the oddest assemblage of people Roger had ever seen.

“She felt terrible about it afterwards,” he added weakly, finding that as an olive branch it fell awfully short. “But I think… I think I have a right to know. It was my baby too.”