“I didn’t want you to have to leave.” I held him as tightly as my arms could manage, and I did not tell him it was all right, because it was not all right, and he would have known I was lying.

“I’ve heard Grandma say it so many times,” he wept.

“That I wasn’t enough for the Vance name.

That I wasn’t a strong enough boy.” And then he asked me the question that I think broke something in me that has never fully healed, asked in the smallest, most frightened voice, his face buried against my coat.

“Mom — did Dad go find another kid because I came out defective?” I pulled back and I took his wet face in both my hands and I made him look at me, and I said it slowly, so that every word would go all the way in and stay.

“Listen to me.