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My husband spent ten years helping me make peace with being childless.
Then, almost overnight, he became obsessed with giving me a family, and I didn’t understand why until it was almost too late.
I threw myself into my job, he took up fishing, and we learned how to live in our too-quiet house without talking about what was missing.
***
The first time I noticed it, we were passing a playground near our house when Joshua stopped walking.
“Look at them,” he said, watching the kids climb and shout. “Remember when we thought that’d be us?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He kept staring. “Does it still bother you?”
“Remember when we thought that’d be us?”
I looked at him then. There was something hungry in his face I hadn’t seen in years.
A few days later, he slid his phone and an adoption brochure across the breakfast table.
“Our house feels empty, Hanna,” he said. “I can’t pretend it doesn’t. We could do this. We could still have a family.”
“Josh, we made peace with it.”
“Maybe you did.” He leaned forward. “Please, Han. Just try one more time with me.”
“And my job?”
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