His own childhood was a maze of temporary homes and provisional kindnesses. He had been three when the state removed him from his mother after a boyfriend put him through a coffee table for spilling juice. There had been photographs later, in a file he read as an adult: a narrow boy with enormous solemn eyes and a cast on one arm, standing beside a social worker whose smile looked practiced. He remembered almost none of that first apartment, only the smell of cigarettes and bleach and something sour under both. After that came the foster homes—some decent, some chaotic, one quietly cruel, one so tender it broke his heart when it ended. He had learned early that adults could smile and still hurt you, could say they loved you and still leave you, could call punishment discipline and make a child believe he deserved every bruise.
He had promised himself, long before he became a father, that if he ever had a child, that child would know something he never had: safety without conditions.
But promises made in youth did not prepare you for the thousand small compromises of marriage, the negotiations that eroded conviction, the slow normalization of what should have shocked you every time.
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.