Otto stared at Hildegard for a long, stunned moment, still reeling from the revelation.
Pregnant.
Jasmine.
Pregnant.
That was all he could hear in his head.
His breath trembled, but he forced himself to speak.
"What happened?" he whispered. "How… what…. When…. What?"
Hildegard closed her eyes, her jaw tightening with an old pain. "She… lost her first baby."
Otto's face fell. "What? She never told me…. why wasn't I told?"
The more he got informed the darker turn it took.
Hildegard opened her eyes, tired and sharp. "Because you never asked."
Otto clenched his fists, swallowing hard. "Damn it…"
Silence fell between them.
A heavy kind.
The kind that carried ghosts.
And now he wished that he had been kinder to her.
To know that she had been through that?
As he imagined her seated in the cell guilt began to wash over him.
Finally Otto whispered, "How many weeks is she?"
"I don't know," Hildegard admitted. "Her last pregnancy went very fast."
