And I made a choice.
I came home and told them the baby was a girl.
Henrietta’s face fell.
She said:
“A girl? Are you sure?”
I said:
“Yes.”
And after that, everything they had been holding back came loose.
Jurgen said a girl was a burden, not an heir.
Henrietta said:
“Girls just marry out and belong to another family anyway.”
“What good is that to us?”
Tim, who never cared about the pregnancy anyway, suddenly had permission to do what they all wanted.
He said:
“We should divorce.”
He said:
“We want different things. My parents are right. This is not working.”
He did not even look up when he said it.
I did not fight it.
I let them have exactly what they were rushing toward.
I asked for full custody, and they gave it without a second thought because to them a girl was not worth keeping.
Tim signed everything.
Henrietta said:
“Take the child. We do not need a granddaughter.”
She said it the way you tell a delivery driver to keep the change.
They were glad to hand over all rights.
Glad to close the door so Tim could marry the rich woman with nothing tying him to me.
The divorce was final within months.
Tim married Temperance almost right after.
A big wedding paid for by her family.
Exactly what his parents had been arranging.
Then I gave birth.
It was a boy.
It was always going to be a boy.
There was never a girl.
I knew from the scan, and I told them the one thing that would make them let go of me and the baby without a fight.
Because I did not want my son raised by people who would only love him for what he was born as.
By people who traded his father to a richer bride like a car with low mileage.
By the time he was born, the divorce was done.
Tim was married to someone else, and I had full custody signed over freely by a family that thought they were only giving up a girl.
They had signed away the grandson they wanted more than anything.
And they did it themselves, eagerly, to get to the rich woman faster.
I named him Barnaby.