Nicolas had spent eight years waiting for a son to make his life complete.

Looking at my five children in the afternoon light, I understood that our family had been complete for a long time already — that it had been complete at four daughters, complete without any boy at all, complete in every way that counted long before Leander arrived to prove it.

The only thing that had ever been missing from our family was the freedom to stop performing for the one person who couldn’t see how whole we already were.

And now, at last, we had that too.

THE END.