"How did you do it?"
She blinks up at him, absently thumbing through the latest Lancet, and makes a little moue of surprise. "Do what, dearest?"
His heart aching for her, he eases himself down beside her on the bed, and she tilts her head to rest on his shoulder. His hand comes up to stroke her hair, and he exhales softly into the blonde curls, his gut twisting with words he cannot say.
"Keep faith with me," he says at last. "When I failed so badly to keep faith with you."
From down the hall, a baby's giggles echo, followed by a half-grown teenager's richer, deeper laugh, and he prays that, once again, he can say what he must without words.
Her eyes are all the confirmation he needs that he can.
"Oh, Patrick," she whispers at last, and tilts her head so her eyes meet his. "You didn't fail me. You failed yourself. But do you honestly believe that no one else ever has? That Sister Julienne has never faced her doubts, her weaknesses, on her knees at night, too reserved to speak of her pain even when it's slowly killing her inside? That Sister Evangelina hasn't looked into the mirror of her own faults and wished with all her strength that she could erase what she sees there?"
Trembling, she takes a deep breath, and continues.
"That I didn't hide from my own destiny and drive us both nearly to breaking because I was afraid to even look out a window, let alone open it? Patrick, I fell in love with a man. With you. I married you knowing that in too many ways we hardly knew each other at all, and I married you anyway because in all the most important ways, I knew you better than I knew myself. If you failed to speak, then I failed you too - because I failed to ask. I failed to listen. You're right - we started out in silence, not able to speak. And when we finally could, I don't think we knew how."
Silently, tears rolling down his cheeks, he presses his lips to her hair.
"I was hurt," she goes on, shaking now. "A part of me still is. I thought, if he can't speak to me about this, do we have any foundation at all?"
"It wasn't that I couldn't tell you," he says at last, his voice hoarse. "It was that I couldn't bear to let you down. And in the end, I did that anyway."
"Of course you did," she says, with surprising bluntness. "We're human, Patrick. Only one man on this earth has ever lived without letting anybody down, and he died on a cross two thousand years ago. But tell me this: what did you learn?"
He thinks about that for a moment, really thinks about it, and can come to only one conclusion. "That you're my best self," he says at last. "And that the only way I can let you down is to not show you every part of me."
"And I learned," she says softly, "that as your wife - as your lover, as your partner in life - the burden of speaking is on me, too. I learned to ask. To reach out, instead of waiting for you to come to me. I should have asked, Patrick. And for that, I am as much to blame as you. For better or for worse, darling. Til death do us part. I don't think I really understood what that meant before all this. But I do now."
"You forgive me, then?" he whispers, and holds on to her for all he is worth.
"Oh, my love," she says, and everything he needs is in her eyes. "I forgave you before you even began to forgive yourself."