That belief, false in ways he did not yet understand, would cost him six years of his children’s lives.

And the person who had planted it, and watered it, and shaped it into the weapon that destroyed his marriage, was his own mother.

Chapter 3 — A Man Needs an Heir

Beatrice Vance conducted her campaign at the Sunday dinners in Beacon Hill, in the grand dining room of the family’s ancestral home, and she conducted it with the patience and precision of a woman who had spent her whole life getting her way.

She asked about grandchildren.