Ford shook his head very slightly. "She doesn't want to raise a baby alone." The way he'd said it suggested it was in answer to Cash's question, and he didn't think that was far off. He'd asked her if she was going to leave the morning after she'd interrupted him and Tycho and she had said no, and that had been before she'd told him about the baby — but she had certainly known about it before she'd told him, and he didn't know exactly when she'd guessed, so he couldn't rule out that had been her original and only reason for agreeing to stay. While he'd sat in the hallway waiting to pluck up the courage to knock on her door, she might have been going through a thousand scenarios for the future and decided this one was the least of all possible evils. Maybe she'd gone so far as to consider what life would be like for their child if she outed him to some kind of authority and used that as leverage to leave him. She hadn't known about the money yet, so she might have thought she could leave and take some security with her if she could prove he was at fault for the upcoming divorce, which she certainly could. But if she'd known she was pregnant already she might have thought ahead to what sort of interactions her child would have with their peers, at Hogwarts and beyond, if it was an established legal fact that their father was...

"She hates me," he said with a sigh. She hadn't said as much explicitly, but he thought there was no way to view the situation that lead to any other conclusion. "And now so does Tycho. And I'm worried about him but I can't — I can't talk to him. If she found out I went to see him —" Ford cut off and shrugged helplessly. He doubted he needed to explain in order for Cash to have a clear picture of what he was trying to say.

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