My body was tired in a way that sleep no longer touched, and my days had long since blurred into a single endless loop — diapers, school runs, fevers, uniforms, permission slips, the grocery list, the bills.

Four daughters is a full life.

It is a loud, exhausting, wonderful life, and I had wanted it to be enough.

But Matthias dreamed of a son.

His mother called it a legacy, in the voice people use for words they think end arguments.

His father, before he died, used to say it plainly at the dinner table: a boy to carry the family name.