My legs went weak.
“Seriously? You’re fine with your mom talking like our daughters aren’t enough?”
He shrugged. “I’m thirty-five, Claire. I need a son.”
Something in me cracked.
After that, Patricia started leaving empty boxes in the hallway.
“Just getting ready,” she’d say. “No point waiting until the last minute.”
She’d stroll into our room and tell Derek: “When she’s gone, we’ll make this blue. A real boy’s room.”
If I cried, Derek sneered: “Maybe all that estrogen made you weak.”
I cried in the shower. Whispered to my belly: “I’m trying. I’m sorry.”
The only person who didn’t throw jabs was Michael, my father-in-law. He wasn’t warm, but he was decent. He carried groceries, asked my girls about school, listened. He saw more than he said.
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