Part 1

My mother humiliated me at my own baby shower. Then she turned toward the cameras and smiled as if she hadn’t just shattered me in front of thirty guests.

The room became so silent I could hear the ice shifting inside the punch bowl. I was twenty-six years old, five months pregnant, and standing beside a cake shaped like a sleeping baby. My husband, Daniel, had died only six weeks earlier in a construction accident, and his mother had arranged the gathering to give me one peaceful afternoon before grief swallowed me again.

Then my mother, Marlene, walked in wearing black silk and bright red lipstick, with three unfamiliar men following behind her.

“This is Jonah,” she said, touching the youngest man’s arm. “And Victor. And Paul.”

Three strangers. Three eager smiles. At first, I thought they were business partners. I was wrong.

When Daniel’s aunt asked why I looked so pale, my mother laughed softly.