I had never forgotten a single word of it.

I want to set that memory down properly, because it is the hinge on which everything in me turned that night.

I had just come through a long labor.

I was holding a perfect, furious, red-faced newborn — my daughter, seven pounds of brand-new person — and I looked up expecting the ordinary human thing, the grandmother’s face softening at a first grandchild.

And instead I watched Priscilla’s expression curdle, and I heard her tell my father-in-law, not even lowering her voice, that it was a shame, that they would simply have to hope the next one was a boy.