{"id":8535,"date":"2026-09-15T07:35:05","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T07:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/?p=8535"},"modified":"2026-09-15T07:35:05","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T07:35:05","slug":"for-years-my-husband-kept-saying-one-day-ill-have-a-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/?p=8535","title":{"rendered":"For years, my husband kept saying, \u201cOne day, I\u2019ll have a son.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cWhat is?\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n

Instead, he gently pulled the blanket away from Liam\u2019s left shoulder.<\/p>\n

The nurse immediately leaned closer.<\/p>\n

And that was when I saw it.<\/p>\n

A dark reddish birthmark.<\/p>\n

It was small, perhaps the size of a quarter, shaped almost like a crescent.<\/p>\n

I stared at it.<\/p>\n

Then at Daniel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

His face had gone completely pale.<\/p>\n

\u201cDaniel, it\u2019s a birthmark.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen what\u2019s impossible?\u201d<\/p>\n

The nurse looked between us.<\/p>\n

Daniel handed Liam back to her so suddenly that she had to adjust her grip.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need some air.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDaniel?\u201d<\/p>\n

He walked out.<\/p>\n

I was left lying in a hospital bed, exhausted from childbirth, watching the door close behind my husband.<\/p>\n

\n

Daniel didn’t come back for forty minutes.<\/p>\n

When he finally did, his eyes were red.<\/p>\n

I was holding Liam against my chest.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pulled a chair toward the bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just gave birth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd my husband looked at our newborn son like he’d seen a dead person.\u201d<\/p>\n

His face tightened.<\/p>\n

In a way, I would later realize, that was exactly what had happened.<\/p>\n

He sat down.<\/p>\n

Then he whispered:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy brother had that mark.\u201d<\/p>\n

I frowned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat brother?\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel looked at me.<\/p>\n

And everything inside me went still.<\/p>\n

\n

I had known Daniel for eleven years.<\/p>\n

He had never mentioned a brother.<\/p>\n

His parents, Robert and Helen, had always spoken about Daniel as their only son.<\/p>\n

There were no photographs of another boy in their home.<\/p>\n

No stories.<\/p>\n

No name mentioned at Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

Nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat brother?\u201d I repeated.<\/p>\n

Daniel rubbed his hands together.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis name was Michael.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWas?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe died.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel looked toward Liam.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were children.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stared at him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow old were you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Michael?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSix.\u201d<\/p>\n

My anger briefly gave way to confusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou had a six-year-old brother who died when you were nine, and in eleven years you never thought to tell me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel’s voice dropped.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause my parents made me promise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The door opened before I could answer.<\/p>\n

Helen walked in carrying balloons.<\/p>\n

Robert followed with flowers.<\/p>\n

Our four daughters were staying with my sister, so Daniel’s parents had come alone to meet their first grandson.<\/p>\n

Helen was smiling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere is he?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then she saw Daniel.<\/p>\n

Her smile faded.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened?\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel looked at his mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has Michael’s mark.\u201d<\/p>\n

The balloons slipped from Helen’s fingers.<\/p>\n

They floated toward the ceiling.<\/p>\n

Robert froze beside the door.<\/p>\n

I watched all three of them.<\/p>\n

That was the moment I knew this wasn’t simply a painful childhood memory.<\/p>\n

They were afraid of something.<\/p>\n

Helen whispered:<\/p>\n

\u201cDon’t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel stood.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou knew this could happen?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDaniel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert closed the hospital-room door.<\/p>\n

Then looked at me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s something we should have told you years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

I laughed once.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t because anything was funny.<\/p>\n

\u201cApparently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Michael had existed.<\/p>\n

There were photographs.<\/p>\n

Documents.<\/p>\n

A birth certificate.<\/p>\n

Daniel showed them to me later.<\/p>\n

But the story his parents had told everyone about him wasn’t entirely true.<\/p>\n

Michael hadn’t been Daniel’s biological brother.<\/p>\n

He had been his son<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

For several seconds after Robert said it, I thought I’d misunderstood.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel was crying now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was nine when Michael was born.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn’t make any sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn’t,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause I wasn’t his father biologically.\u201d<\/p>\n

My confusion deepened.<\/p>\n

Robert stepped in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe raised Michael as Daniel’s brother. But legally, for a time, the situation was complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen whose child was he?\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobody answered.<\/p>\n

I looked at Helen.<\/p>\n

And suddenly her fear made sense in a way I didn’t want it to.<\/p>\n

\u201cHelen?\u201d<\/p>\n

She sat down.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael was my sister Rebecca’s baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Rebecca was a name I’d heard before.<\/p>\n

Helen’s younger sister.<\/p>\n

She’d died years before I met Daniel.<\/p>\n

According to the story I’d always known, Rebecca had struggled with addiction as a young woman, disappeared for long periods, and died in her thirties.<\/p>\n

But there was more.<\/p>\n

Rebecca became pregnant at twenty-two.<\/p>\n

The father disappeared before the baby was born.<\/p>\n

She wasn’t stable enough to care for him.<\/p>\n

Helen and Robert took the baby.<\/p>\n

Because Daniel was only nine and the family feared gossip and legal complications, they told people the newborn was theirs.<\/p>\n

Daniel was told Michael was his baby brother.<\/p>\n

So why had Robert just called him Daniel’s son?<\/p>\n

Because six months later, Rebecca returned.<\/p>\n

And she made an extraordinary request.<\/p>\n

She wanted Daniel to be listed in private family documents as Michael’s future guardian if anything happened to Helen and Robert.<\/p>\n

Not legally his father.<\/p>\n

Not biologically his father.<\/p>\n

But she repeatedly told Daniel:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re the one he’ll have when we’re gone. You’re his person.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Daniel was a child himself.<\/p>\n

Yet he became fiercely attached to Michael.<\/p>\n

He fed him.<\/p>\n

Carried him.<\/p>\n

Read to him.<\/p>\n

As they grew, Daniel behaved less like an older brother and more like a young parent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s why I said son,\u201d Robert explained quietly. \u201cThat’s what Michael became to him emotionally.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked at Daniel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen why hide him from me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobody answered.<\/p>\n

There was still more.<\/p>\n

\n

Michael died at six years old.<\/p>\n

Not from an accident.<\/p>\n

From a rare inherited heart condition.<\/p>\n

A form of cardiomyopathy ran through Rebecca’s biological family.<\/p>\n

The crescent-shaped birthmark had nothing medically to do with the heart condition.<\/p>\n

It was simply a family trait several relatives happened to share.<\/p>\n

But in Daniel’s nine-year-old mind, and later his grieving memory, the two had fused together.<\/p>\n

The mark meant Michael.<\/p>\n

Michael meant loss.<\/p>\n

And Daniel had spent his adult life terrified of losing another boy.<\/p>\n

I looked at him.<\/p>\n

Then something clicked.<\/p>\n

All those years.<\/p>\n

One day I’ll have a son.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The disappointment after each daughter.<\/p>\n

The obsession.<\/p>\n

The tears when we learned Liam was male.<\/p>\n

It hadn’t only been about carrying on his name.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou weren’t trying to have a son,\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n

Daniel looked at me.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were trying to get Michael back.\u201d<\/p>\n

His face collapsed.<\/p>\n

\n

He denied it at first.<\/p>\n

Then stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, you do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved our girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t say you didn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey’re everything to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen why was it always \u2018finally\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

He covered his face.<\/p>\n

For the first time, I saw the wanting for what it really was.<\/p>\n

Not simple sexism.<\/p>\n

Not entirely, anyway.<\/p>\n

There had certainly been unfairness in the way he romanticized having a boy.<\/p>\n

But beneath it was grief he’d never processed.<\/p>\n

Daniel had spent his childhood being given a responsibility far too large for him.<\/p>\n

Then the child he’d been told to protect died from something Daniel could not prevent.<\/p>\n

His parents responded by doing what their family apparently did best.<\/p>\n

They stopped talking.<\/p>\n

Michael’s photographs disappeared.<\/p>\n

His bedroom was cleared.<\/p>\n

Rebecca spiraled further into addiction.<\/p>\n

Helen couldn’t bear hearing Michael’s name.<\/p>\n

Daniel learned that loving someone and losing them meant you packed them away.<\/p>\n

Then he grew up.<\/p>\n

Married me.<\/p>\n

Had children.<\/p>\n

And began unconsciously trying to recreate the person he’d lost.<\/p>\n

\n

I was furious.<\/p>\n

Not because Daniel had loved Michael.<\/p>\n

Because he had built our family around a wound he refused to let me see.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you keep wanting pregnancies because you thought another boy would fix this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cReally?\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked away.<\/p>\n

That was enough.<\/p>\n

Our fifth pregnancy had been unexpected.<\/p>\n

But after our second and third daughters, Daniel had repeatedly raised the idea of \u201ctrying again.\u201d<\/p>\n

I’d interpreted it as a preference.<\/p>\n

Now I understood the desperation behind it.<\/p>\n

Our daughters had been born into a family where their father loved them deeply while still quietly waiting for someone else.<\/p>\n

That realization hurt more than the secret itself.<\/p>\n

\n

The pediatrician examined Liam.<\/p>\n

Then a pediatric cardiologist became involved because of the newly disclosed family history.<\/p>\n

I want to be clear about what happened next.<\/p>\n

Nobody diagnosed Liam from a birthmark.<\/p>\n

A birthmark is not proof of cardiomyopathy.<\/p>\n

What mattered was that Daniel’s family had withheld a potentially relevant medical history.<\/p>\n

The doctors took a detailed pedigree.<\/p>\n

They requested Michael’s old records where available.<\/p>\n

Genetic counseling was recommended.<\/p>\n

Testing followed.<\/p>\n

And we waited.<\/p>\n

Those were some of the longest weeks of my life.<\/p>\n

\n

During that time, Daniel barely slept.<\/p>\n

Every sound from Liam’s bassinet woke him.<\/p>\n

If Liam breathed strangely, Daniel checked him.<\/p>\n

If he slept too quietly, Daniel touched his chest.<\/p>\n

One night I found Daniel sitting on the nursery floor at three in the morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can’t do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m making sure he’s breathing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’ve checked six times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDaniel.\u201d<\/p>\n

I sat beside him.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiam is not Michael.\u201d<\/p>\n

His eyes filled.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. You know the words. You don’t believe them yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

He began crying.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was holding Michael when he collapsed.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was another detail nobody had told me.<\/p>\n

Daniel had been fifteen.<\/p>\n

Michael had been playing in the yard.<\/p>\n

He complained that his chest hurt.<\/p>\n

Then he collapsed.<\/p>\n

Daniel tried to wake him.<\/p>\n

Robert called 911.<\/p>\n

Paramedics came.<\/p>\n

Michael died at the hospital.<\/p>\n

For years, Daniel believed he’d missed some warning sign.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I’d known\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were fifteen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was supposed to protect him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were fifteen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRebecca told me\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe should never have put that on you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked at me as if nobody had ever said that before.<\/p>\n

\n

Liam’s initial evaluation was reassuring.<\/p>\n

No evidence of active heart disease was found.<\/p>\n

But because family history can matter over time, his doctors recommended appropriate follow-up rather than pretending one normal test guaranteed his future.<\/p>\n

That distinction helped me.<\/p>\n

Daniel struggled with it.<\/p>\n

He wanted certainty.<\/p>\n

Medicine rarely gives that.<\/p>\n

Eventually, he started therapy.<\/p>\n

Not because I threatened divorce.<\/p>\n

Because one morning Sophie found him crying beside Liam’s crib.<\/p>\n

She was seven.<\/p>\n

She hugged him and asked:<\/p>\n

\u201cDaddy, are you sad because Liam is a boy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel told me later that the question shattered him.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he’d said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen why weren’t you this scared when Ava was a baby?\u201d<\/p>\n

He had no answer.<\/p>\n

Children notice the hierarchies adults believe they’re hiding.<\/p>\n

\n

That evening, Daniel gathered all four girls in the living room.<\/p>\n

He apologized.<\/p>\n

Not for having wanted a son.<\/p>\n

For making them feel that a son completed something they hadn’t.<\/p>\n

Sophie understood the most.<\/p>\n

Chloe mostly wanted snacks.<\/p>\n

Olivia asked whether Liam could still sleep in her room when he got bigger.<\/p>\n

Ava climbed into Daniel’s lap halfway through the conversation.<\/p>\n

Daniel cried again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said \u2018finally\u2019 when we found out Liam was a boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked at Sophie.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you already had us?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sophie thought about it.<\/p>\n

Then said:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can still be happy he’s a boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel smiled through tears.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut don’t be extra happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

That became a family joke.<\/p>\n

But there was truth inside it.<\/p>\n

\n

Helen eventually brought us a box.<\/p>\n

Inside were photographs of Michael.<\/p>\n

For the first time, I saw him.<\/p>\n

Dark hair.<\/p>\n

Wide smile.<\/p>\n

Missing front tooth.<\/p>\n

And there, near his left shoulder, the same crescent-shaped birthmark.<\/p>\n

Daniel sat beside me.<\/p>\n

For several minutes, he couldn’t touch the photographs.<\/p>\n

Then he picked one up.<\/p>\n

Michael was sitting on a bicycle.<\/p>\n

Daniel stood behind him, both hands gripping the seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou taught him?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid he fall?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cConstantly.\u201d<\/p>\n

I smiled.<\/p>\n

\u201cSounds like your teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel laughed.<\/p>\n

It was the first time I’d ever heard him laugh while talking about Michael.<\/p>\n

That mattered.<\/p>\n

\n

Rebecca’s story also became more complicated as we learned more.<\/p>\n

She hadn’t simply abandoned her son.<\/p>\n

She had periods of recovery.<\/p>\n

She visited.<\/p>\n

She tried to regain stability.<\/p>\n

She also relapsed repeatedly.<\/p>\n

Helen had erased much of Rebecca from the family story because she believed silence would protect Daniel.<\/p>\n

Instead, silence had left him alone with interpretations a child had created.<\/p>\n

Michael died because Daniel failed.<\/p>\n

Boys could disappear.<\/p>\n

A son might replace what was lost.<\/p>\n

Talking about Michael would destroy his mother.<\/p>\n

None of those beliefs had ever been challenged.<\/p>\n

So they grew up with him.<\/p>\n

\n

Years passed.<\/p>\n

Liam did not become Michael.<\/p>\n

That sounds obvious.<\/p>\n

For Daniel, it was something he had to learn.<\/p>\n

Liam hated football.<\/p>\n

Absolutely hated it.<\/p>\n

At four, Daniel bought him a tiny soccer goal.<\/p>\n

Liam used it as a cage for stuffed animals.<\/p>\n

At six, Daniel tried teaching him how to work on an old motorcycle.<\/p>\n

Liam lasted twelve minutes before asking if he could go inside and draw.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Chloe became obsessed with engines.<\/p>\n

By eleven, she could identify tools faster than Daniel.<\/p>\n

One Saturday, I walked into the garage and found the two of them bent over an old carburetor.<\/p>\n

Daniel looked up.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe’s better at this than I was at her age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chloe grinned.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously.\u201d<\/p>\n

I leaned against the doorway.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo much for needing a son to work on cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel groaned.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that sentence would come back eventually.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, I’m keeping it forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

His relationship with our daughters changed.<\/p>\n

Not overnight.<\/p>\n

But noticeably.<\/p>\n

He stopped imagining activities according to gender.<\/p>\n

Sophie became his football companion.<\/p>\n

Chloe became his mechanic.<\/p>\n

Olivia preferred music and somehow convinced him to learn piano badly.<\/p>\n

Ava remained convinced her father existed primarily to carry her whenever she didn’t feel like walking.<\/p>\n

And Liam?<\/p>\n

Liam drew.<\/p>\n

Then painted.<\/p>\n

Then became obsessed with animals.<\/p>\n

At eight, he announced he wanted to be a veterinarian.<\/p>\n

Daniel said:<\/p>\n

\u201cSounds good.\u201d<\/p>\n

No disappointment.<\/p>\n

No attempt to redirect him toward the son Daniel had once imagined.<\/p>\n

That was when I knew therapy had done more than teach him better words.<\/p>\n

\n

When Liam turned ten, we took all five children to visit Michael’s grave.<\/p>\n

Daniel had avoided it for years.<\/p>\n

He stood there with his children around him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was my brother,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Then he corrected himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy little brother. But sometimes I felt like his dad too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sophie asked:<\/p>\n

\u201cIs he why you wanted Liam?\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel looked at me.<\/p>\n

Then back at her.<\/p>\n

\u201cPartly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you think Liam would be like him?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think maybe I hoped he would.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liam looked horrified.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I don’t even know him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel crouched beside him.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that wasn’t fair to either of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liam considered this.<\/p>\n

Then pointed at the grave.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid he like animals?\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel smiled.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was terrified of your grandmother’s cat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liam shook his head.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, we’re definitely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

We all laughed.<\/p>\n

Even Helen.<\/p>\n

\n

I once believed the frightening moment in the hospital was Daniel saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is impossible.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

It wasn’t.<\/p>\n

The frightening part was everything that sentence represented.<\/p>\n

A dead child nobody discussed.<\/p>\n

A grieving teenager who believed he’d failed him.<\/p>\n

Parents who thought silence was protection.<\/p>\n

A husband who carried that silence into his marriage.<\/p>\n

Four daughters who were loved but still made to feel, however subtly, that someone was missing.<\/p>\n

And a newborn boy who arrived carrying expectations that had been waiting for him long before he existed.<\/p>\n

Liam’s birthmark didn’t reveal a supernatural mystery.<\/p>\n

It didn’t prove he was destined to repeat Michael’s life.<\/p>\n

It didn’t diagnose a disease.<\/p>\n

It simply forced Daniel to look at something he’d spent decades refusing to face.<\/p>\n

His son was not a second chance to save Michael.<\/p>\n

His daughters were not four failed attempts to reach him.<\/p>\n

And Michael wasn’t a secret that needed to disappear for Daniel to survive losing him.<\/p>\n

Years later, the photograph of Michael on the bicycle hangs in our hallway.<\/p>\n

Not hidden in a box.<\/p>\n

Right beside photographs of Sophie, Chloe, Olivia, Ava, and Liam.<\/p>\n

Sometimes visitors ask who the boy is.<\/p>\n

Daniel no longer freezes.<\/p>\n

He simply says:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s my brother Michael. He died when we were young. I loved him very much.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

And then he keeps talking.<\/p>\n

Because that was what his family should have allowed him to do all along.<\/p>\n

Daniel spent years saying that one day he would finally have a son.<\/p>\n

But when that son arrived, the lesson wasn’t that his family was finally complete.<\/p>\n

It was that it had been complete long before Liam was born\u2014and no child should ever be born with the job of replacing someone who died.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhat is?\u201d Daniel didn\u2019t answer. Instead, he gently pulled the blanket away from Liam\u2019s left shoulder. The nurse immediately leaned closer. And that was when I saw it. A dark reddish birthmark. It was small, perhaps the size of a quarter, shaped almost like a crescent. I stared at it. Then at Daniel. \u201cWhat?\u201d His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8536,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8535\/revisions\/8536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}