Nothing else there 3

* Ten years ago *

No matter how much he wanted a son, we have a daughter.

I know the science. I’ve read it in medical journals during the long nights when Lily was colicky and Dominic was sleeping in the guest room because her crying disrupted his schedule.

The sex of a child is determined by the father’s chromosome.

I know this. But Dominic does not care to know this.

When Lily was born and the nurse said “a girl,” something behind his eyes closed like a shutter. He held her once — for the photograph. His fingers were stiff under her skull, spaced too wide. The moment the camera lowered he passed her back to me like returning a coat he’d tried on and decided against.

Two years since he talks about my failure to produce a son like it’s a defect in machinery he invested in.

The week I came home from the hospital, still stitched and swollen, he sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand. Told me I should stay home. Full time. With the baby.

I had an internship lined up — marketing, entry level, a woman named Dana who’d said she liked my thinking. But Dominic tilted his head and half-smiled and said he made more in a month than I’d make in two years.

Said ‘let me take care of you, that’s my job, your job is her.’

So I called Dana. Left a voicemail about priorities shifting. The credit cards were joint, which meant they were his. My name wasn’t on the house. The car was leased under the company.

Within a year I couldn’t have bought a bus ticket without money he’d notice missing. Within two, I’d stopped thinking about it. I couldn’t tell you the exact month it happened. I just looked up one day and there was nothing with my name on it.

My mother visits on a Sunday while Lily naps upstairs.

I pour the black tea she brought in a ziplock because she doesn’t trust my loose-leaf. “My back’s been awful,” she says. “The cold gets into it now.”

“You should see someone about that.”

“With what insurance?” She waves it off and sips her tea, looking at me over the rim the way she looks at me when she’s deciding whether to ask. “How’s Dominic?”

My hands go still around my mug and I don’t dare to look at her.

“As usual. Always late at work, mostly getting in bed while I’m already asleep and ignoring our own daughter. He doesn’t even get up when she cries, Mom. Not once. 3AM, Lily screams, and he rolls over and says ‘handle your child, I have work in the morning.’”

“Handle your…” her eyes widened.

My fingers tighten around my mug. I don’t look up. “Your child. That’s what he says.”

She sets her cup down. The porcelain clicks against the marble.

“Well, some men just take a bit longer with daughters. When the boy comes, he’ll…”

“When she walks to him with her arms up, wanting to be picked up, he looks at me like I should intercept her.” The baby monitor crackles between us. Lily shifting in her crib. “Last week I asked him to hold her so I could shower. Five minutes. He called the nanny. On a Sunday.”

“Honey.” She reaches across the table. Squeezes my hand. “Some men are different with sons. When the boy—”

“There is no boy, Mom.” Her fingers stop. “We tried. Three times. I lost all of them.”

She stares at me and I watch the color go out of her face.

“The first time, he asked me what I did wrong. Those words. What did you do. Was I lifting things. Was I exercising too much.” My voice stays flat. “The second time I was in the ER at two in the morning alone while he sat in the waiting room on his phone for forty minutes before a nurse went and got him.”

“Dear God, Aria…”

“The third…” I stop for a moment, backing the tears. “I was in the bathroom, bleeding, when I told him.” My mother is sitting very still across from me, her tea forgotten. “He said, maybe we should stop trying at all.”

She’s crying now quietly and reaches for the tissue in her sleeve, pressing it under each eye. “I’m so sorry to hear that, my dear.”

He hasn’t touched me in months. Comes home late. Smells different. His phone is face-down on every surface now. And then I found a receipt from dinner for two. A restaurant I’ve never heard of. On a Tuesday he told me he was in a board meeting.

Her thumb moves across my knuckles back and forth. The motion she used when I was small and couldn’t sleep.

“I think there’s someone else,” I say. “Again.”

“Again?” She pulls back. “What do you mean, again?”

“Before Lily was born, I already caught him once. In his office.” My mouth is dry. “He promised it wouldn’t happen again.”

She withdraws her hand. Wraps both hands around her mug and her eyes travel the kitchen — the marble island, the brass pendant lights, the Sub-Zero fridge with Lily’s drawings held up by strawberry magnets. I can see her counting.

She’s always counting. The rent she paid versus the square footage of this room.

“Men make mistakes,” she says. Her voice has changed, harder and settled. “That doesn’t mean you tear apart a family.”

“He tore it apart, Mom. Not me.”

“You have a roof over your head. Lily has the best schools. The best doctors. A father who comes home every night.” She leans forward, elbows on the table, her face close to mine. “Do you know how many women would kill for this? How many nights I lay awake wishing anyone would help carry the weight?”

“A roof isn’t love.”

“A roof is more than love ever gave me.” Fast. Like she’d been holding it loaded. “Love doesn’t pay rent. Love doesn’t keep the lights on. Love didn’t stop your father from walking out when you were eight months old.”

I open my mouth.

Close it.

“You don’t leave a man who gives your child everything just because he doesn’t give you enough.” She’s not crying anymore, jaw is set. “Every marriage has a price. Mine cost me everything because I had a man who gave me nothing. Yours costs you some pride. That’s a good deal, Aria. That’s a damn good deal.”

She cups my face with both hands. Palms warm, smelling of dish soap and the lavender cream she’s used since I was eight. I used to fall asleep to that smell.

“Give it time,” she says. “He’ll come around. Don’t throw this away.”

I nod because my throat won’t open.

I think about everything. The house is big and expensive and beautiful. The neighborhood is safe and quiet. My daughter is more than well fed and wearing clothes that fit and will never stand in a grocery store watching her mother count coins.

Maybe my mother is right. Maybe love isn’t the thing that matters most in marriage.

Maybe a good provider isn’t the same as a good man. But a good provider is enough when the alternative is nothing.