While holding my son for the first time, a fragile, perfect weight against my chest, my brother pointed a long, accusatory finger at me.
“I wonder where the dad is,” he said, the words slithering out between bursts of laughter.
He didn’t know my husband, Samuel, had died four months ago, his body returned to American soil in a flag-draped casket. He also didn’t know that my father-in-law, a man carved from granite and two decades as a Navy SEAL, was standing in the doorway right behind him, his presence a silent, coiled threat.
My brother, Ethan, had only learned I was pregnant two weeks ago, and he’d been bombarding me with cruel texts ever since.
