My son sobbed the entire drive to his grandmother’s house. “Daddy, please don’t leave me here.” My wife snapped, “You’re babying him.” I left him anyway. Three hours later, a neighbor called. “Your little boy ran to my house shaking. He’s hiding under my bed and won’t stop crying.”

Marsha adjusted the cuff of her blouse and looked out the window again. “My mother raised me just fine.”

William said nothing. He had met Sue Melton six months into dating Marsha and disliked her instantly with a clarity that bordered on physical revulsion. Sue was a retired military nurse with an upright spine, a hard square jaw, and a style of attention that felt less like interest than inspection. She seemed to treat every interaction as a test someone was failing. The first time William visited her house, she looked him over from shoes to hairline and said, “Too gentle around the edges. Men like that don’t hold families together.”

Marsha had laughed as if it were a joke.

It had not been a joke.