Gosh, it felt so good to be truly seen that way! Sad to say, Eleanor died when Sadie was three months old. I wondered if things would’ve been different if she’d lived. I bet she would’ve helped, and maybe recognized that I had postpartum depression, because she was a smart one, that Eleanor. She was always kind and wise. Much more so than my own mother, may she rest in peace.

But as it was, both John and I lost our mothers in the span of six months, and right smack in between those deaths, we had a newborn. Seemed like God was laughing at all those years of trying to have Juliet, and then, when Juliet was almost twelve, surprise!

John felt very heroic, taking care of Sadie, changing diapers and getting up in the middle of the night . . . something he’d almost never done with Juliet. He loved to tell me how much he did, as my breasts felt like they were being sliced by knives and turning hard as rocks. When my incision needed to be restitched because I’d had a coughing fit (don’t the doctors just love to tell you how you were responsible for everything that goes wrong?), John told me how he’d brilliantly arranged for Caro to pick up Juliet for Girl Scouts. Not only that, he’d taken a casserole I’d made the month before out of the freezer, so dinner was all set. I’d been saving that casserole for when he went back to work and was traveling, when I’d be alone with our baby and adolescent, when all household and child-related responsibilities would be on me and me alone. “It’s good, isn’t it?” he said at dinner that night. “Who made this?”

He was just so . . . obtuse sometimes. Most times, to be honest.

Just as Juliet and I had our own little world, he had one with Sadie. Juliet loved her little sister, but their time together was limited; she had homework and projects, activities and friends. The sides were pretty clear—Sadie and John, Juliet and me. I couldn’t help resenting his adoration of Sadie, because Juliet had gotten none of that. Sometimes I’d see her face as she watched her father giving horsey rides to Sadie, or drawing with her for an hour after supper, and I knew she was hurt.