“You took yourself away from him the moment you walked out of that delivery room.” I kept my voice level.

“My attorney has already served your mother, downstairs.

You have one hour to pack and go.”

He stood in the middle of the nursery, broken, understanding at last that his obsession with a son had cost him everything — his wife, his daughters, his home, and the boy he had prayed for a decade to have.

I turned my back on him and went down to gather my girls in the living room.

And sitting on the sofa with all four of them pressed warm against me and their baby brother asleep in my lap, I felt the cloud that had hung over our house for years finally lift and thin and blow away.