And my relationship with my mother-in-law had been, for nine years, a thing I managed rather than a thing I had.

Part Two: What Gertrude Said in the Room

Nine years before that Wednesday, I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant with a daughter we had already named.

Her name was going to be June.

We had chosen it in the car, on the 8, arguing about it for forty minutes and then both going quiet at the same moment because we had landed on it simultaneously and neither of us wanted to say so first.

I want to be careful here, because this is not the part of the story that people came for, and it is the only part that actually matters.