“Because… I did something wrong,” he said. “Long before today. And I never fixed it in time.”
“Wesley, you’re scaring me.”
He knelt in front of our eldest daughter, Kayla, taking her small hands in his.
“Sweetheart,” he said softly, “do you remember what you asked me this morning?”
“Because… I did something wrong,”
She looked up at him, her lower lip trembling.
But she didn’t speak.
I felt the ground shift beneath my feet.
Something had happened that I knew nothing about, something that had broken my husband’s heart before I ever handed him that box.
But she didn’t speak.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Wesley whispered. “You can say it.”
Kayla swallowed hard.
Before she could answer, Mike scoffed behind us.
“You’re making too much of this. A son carries the family.”
Wesley turned slowly toward his father.
“Say that again,” Wesley said.
Wesley turned slowly toward his father.
Grandpa smiled, spreading his hands.
“You know it’s true. A son carries the family. He upholds the traditions, he passes down his name.”
Wesley took a step toward him.
“Don’t you dare…” he started.
Then he stopped and looked back at our three girls, all in their soft pink dresses, watching us with wide, uncertain eyes.
“Don’t you dare…”
“What’s going on here, Wesley? Tell me!” I snapped, near panic now.
Wesley looked at me.
“This morning, Dad told Kayla that maybe this time I’d finally get the son I’d been waiting for.”
My breath caught somewhere in my chest.
“She came to me after,” Wesley continued, his voice cracking. “She asked me if I was sad that she and her sisters weren’t boys.”
“What’s going on here, Wesley? Tell me!”
I looked at my eldest daughter.
Kayla was staring down at her shoes, her hands twisting the hem of her pink dress.
Suddenly the photoshoot I’d built made a terrible kind of sense.
Three daughters in pink, standing beside their father in blue, handing him the son he’d supposedly been longing for.
I had unknowingly staged the exact wound Mike had already carved.
The son he’d supposedly been longing for.
