After Leandra was born, and the shadow crossed his face, I told myself it was natural — that a man is allowed a moment of adjustment.

After Noelia, the shadow lasted longer, and his mother started saying the word legacy at Sunday dinners, letting it sit in the air over the pot roast.

After Belen, Matthias stopped even trying to hide his disappointment in the delivery room, and I remember lying there with a perfect, furious, red-faced daughter on my chest and watching my husband’s face fall, and understanding, with a clarity I immediately buried, that the child I had just made was being received as a failure before she had drawn her third breath.

And after Anita — after Anita I said no.

I said my body was done, that I could not do it again, that four was a family and a good one.

And he did not argue with me, exactly.