But Nicolas’s determination only grew, and I began to wonder, in the dark, how many children he would ask me to carry before he gave up on the one he actually wanted.

That was the question that had started to frighten me, in the year before Leander.

Not will the next one be a boy, but what if it isn’t, and the one after that isn’t, and there is no number of daughters that will ever be enough. Because I had come to see that the wanting was bottomless.

A normal wish for a son is satisfiable — you have the boy, or you make peace with not having one, and either way the wanting ends.

Nicolas’s was not like that.

It did not behave like a wish.