Chapter 2 - Preston Always Said He Wanted “At Least One Boy”
When Preston and I met, his desire for a son sounded ordinary.
We were twenty-five.
At that age, people ask ridiculous hypothetical questions as though future children are menu options.
“How many kids?”
“Two or three.”
“Boy or girl?”
Preston would say:
“At least one boy.”
I would laugh.
“Ordering from a catalog?”
He laughed too.
That was why I did not hear the deeper meaning.
Preston Mercer grew up inside Mercer Industrial Group, a family-owned manufacturer of commercial refrigeration and food-processing equipment.
His grandfather started the business.
His father, Charles Mercer, expanded it.
Preston became the third generation.
The company employed about eight hundred people across three states.
Successful.
Not a global empire.
Not royalty.
But inside the Mercer family, the business carried enormous emotional weight.
Charles had one daughter and two sons.
Preston was the older son.
Growing up, he heard phrases like:
“carry the name,”
“next generation,”
“future of the company.”
Nobody put in writing that a boy mattered more.
The family trust treated descendants:
equally.
The company bylaws had no male inheritance rule.
The obsession was cultural.
Not legal.
That distinction mattered later.
Preston once told me his father cried when the ultrasound showed:
him.
A boy.
“What if you had been a girl?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Dad already had my sister.”
I remember that sentence.
May you like
I also remember choosing not to examine it.
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