“Three girls… poor thing,” she’d say, shaking her head.
When I was pregnant the first time, she warned, “Don’t ruin the family name.”
After Ava was born, she sighed, “Well. Maybe next time.”
With baby number two, she said, “Some women just can’t produce sons.”
By the third, she stopped pretending to be polite. She’d pat their heads and mutter, “Three girls. What a shame.”
Ryan never corrected her. Not once.
When I got pregnant again, Eleanor started calling the baby “the heir” before I was even out of my first trimester. She sent Ryan articles about conceiving boys, blue nursery ideas, and supplements—like I was a broken machine.
Then she’d look at me and say, “If you can’t give my son what he needs, maybe you should step aside.”
At dinner, Ryan joked, “Fourth try. Don’t mess it up.”
When I asked him to stop, he laughed. “You’re hormonal. Relax.”
I begged him privately to shut his mother down. “She talks like our daughters are mistakes. They hear her.”
He shrugged. “Every man needs a son.”
“And if this baby’s a girl?” I asked.
His smile chilled me. “Then we’ve got a problem.”
Eleanor made sure the girls heard everything.
“Girls are sweet,” she’d say loudly. “But boys carry the name.”
One night Ava whispered, “Mom… is Daddy upset we’re not boys?”
My heart shattered.
The threat became real one morning in the kitchen.
Eleanor announced it calmly while I chopped vegetables.
“If this baby’s another girl, you’re gone. I won’t let my son be trapped in a house full of females.”
I looked at Ryan.
He didn’t object.
“Yeah,” he said. “So… start packing.”
After that, Eleanor left empty boxes in the hallway “just in case.” She talked about repainting the nursery blue once “the problem” was gone.
I cried in the shower. Apologized to the baby growing inside me.
The only person who didn’t attack me was Thomas, my father-in-law. He wasn’t affectionate—but he was observant.
Then one morning, everything exploded.
Eleanor walked in holding black trash bags.
She started throwing my clothes into them. Then the girls’. Jackets. Backpacks. Pajamas.
“Stop,” I said. “You can’t do this.”
She smiled. “Watch me.”
