He had wanted a son—not just a child, but a mirror he could polish clean. A boy to lift from the wreckage of his own bruised childhood, to raise with gentleness where he’d known rage. But instead, he’d been swallowed by a life he never imagined: tea parties, frilly socks, a chorus of little voices that seemed to irritate him. Somewhere between the second and fifth pregnancy, the dream had curdled.
What scared him most wasn’t the noise or the bills—it was the terrifying clarity that this was it. That he’d spend the rest of his life working himself into dust for a life he hadn’t chosen. And so, at twenty-nine, he chose himself instead.