She had watched her father’s face fall a little at each new sister’s arrival, and she had concluded, in the way children conclude things, that there was a right way to be and she and her sisters were not quite it.

Nicolas never said a cruel word to any of them.

He didn’t have to.

A girl learns that her father wanted a boy from a thousand small silences, from the birthday that’s celebrated a shade less brightly, from the way his eyes drift to other families at the park, from the endless, patient, never-quite-finished waiting for the real prize to arrive.

My daughters were being raised, without a single harsh word, to understand that they were the consolation and not the gift.

That is a slow poison, and I had let it drip into their lives for years because I kept believing the next thing, the boy, would finally satisfy him and let us all rest.