He simply grew quiet and sad and a little distant for the better part of a year, until the quiet and the sadness and the distance did the work an argument couldn’t, and I found myself, one night, saying the words I had sworn I would not say: all right.

One more. That is how the fifth pregnancy happened.

Not by force.

By erosion.

By a good woman slowly agreeing to sand herself down to fit the shape of what her husband wanted, and calling the sanding devotion.

The daughters felt it.