My mother-in-law named both my daughters in front of thirty people before either girl had taken her first breath.

The garage smelled of lawnmower fuel, dry cedar shavings, and the damp chill of late spring concrete. The heavy door groaned on its hinges behind me, cutting off the gentle hum of our suburban kitchen.

Tim stood near the chest freezer, holding his phone in midair as if he could still shove the words back into the microphone. His mouth stayed slightly open, caught between an excuse and an intake of breath.

"Hang up," I told him. My voice did not sound like mine. It sounded flat, sanded down, devoid of the polite inflections I spent my days using with first-graders who spilled tempera paint.

He fumbled with the screen. His thumb dragged across the glass twice before the red circle registered. In the sudden quiet, the compressor of the refrigerator kicked on, a low, mechanical shudder that rattled the dusty bottles of windshield washer fluid on the shelf above his head.

"Elise," he began, lifting both hands in a universal gesture of innocence that felt obscene. "You're listening to half of a conversation and twisting it into something hostile."

"I heard the entire sentence, Tim. You told your mother she could name one of our daughters. Which one? The one kicking my ribs right now, or the one resting against my pelvis?"

He rubbed his eyes. When his hands dropped, his face had taken on that familiar, beleaguered expression he wore whenever reality asked more of him than a pleasant nod. "She has been mourning Karen for forty years. Forty years, Elise. Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up in a house where half the air is taken up by someone who isn't there anymore? She just wanted Karen back in the family line. She asked for both. I talked her down to one. I thought I was protecting you."

The absurdity of the defense struck me like a physical blow. He actually believed it. In the distorted economy of his childhood, bargaining away fifty percent of our children’s identities was a triumph of diplomacy.

"You don't negotiate my children with your mother," I said. "You don't bargain with our family as if it's a timeshare."

"It's a middle name, at least! That's what I was going to suggest to you tonight! Emma Karen. Or Olivia Linda. What harm does that actually do? It costs us nothing, and it gives her peace."

"It costs us our authority," I said. "It tells her that if she cries loud enough, she gets a deed to our lives. And it wasn't a middle name on those blankets, Tim. You saw the stitching. LINDA. KAREN. She didn't sew middle names. She announced their first names to thirty women who watched me choke on my own water."

He stepped closer, reaching for my elbow, but I stepped back against the doorframe. My lower back ached with a dull, thumping heat. Carrying two seven-pound weights inside your pelvis leaves no margin for grace, no reserve energy to absorb a husband's cowardice.

"You're making this into a war," he whispered, his eyes darting toward the garage window as if our neighbors were pressed against the glass. "It doesn't have to be a battlefield."

"You made it a transaction before we even left her driveway," I replied. "You gave away something that wasn't yours to give. Sleep in the spare room tonight. If you come upstairs, I'll take the car and go to my mother’s."

"Elise, be reasonable—"