At least now I knew exactly what I was dealing with, and I could stop wasting my strength wondering whether it was fair to want more.

So much of my energy for so long had gone into that particular doubt, the endless self-interrogation of a woman who has been quietly taught to distrust her own sense of fairness.

Was I asking too much?

Were other wives just as tired and better at bearing it?

Was I selfish to want my husband to take a night feeding, ungrateful to want him beside me in a crisis rather than asleep at his mother’s?

Brenda’s sentence, cruel as it was, cut that whole exhausting knot in a single stroke, because once she said it out loud, once the imbalance was stated as policy rather than accident, there was nothing left to wonder about.