Declan returns, tucking his phone into his back pocket, envelope vanished. “Secured,” he says. He’s also straightened the living room at a level that borders on spiritual cleansing. “I put away the extra toothbrushes. We’ll follow your lead, Willow. I’ll speak if it turns to health and they need facts.”
“They will,” Willow says, half-grim. “Mom loves a fact when she can use it for feelings.”
Sean grins. “What a family trait.” She tosses a cracker at him and it crumbles on the ground. “I guess I’ll find out if violence is hereditary too.”
Fifteen minutes disappear in the frantic version of domesticity. Sean fusses with the guest room as if her mother and sister could sleep there—fresh sheets, a candle he swears is “not too sexy.” Declan checks the bathroom like a hotel manager. I help Willow to her side, a small, careful shift, the kind of delicate move you practice on a doll before you try it on a person you love. She clutches my shoulder and exhales. I breathe with her until the world stops seesawing.
We dress the room in a way that will send the message we want—soft light, no chaos. We move like we were born to adjust the environment for a safe landing. I wish I could show past versions of me this exact moment and say,See? It happens. You make a unit. You keep each other alive.
“Clothes,” Willow mutters suddenly, peering down at her oversized sleep shirt. “I look like a laundry basket.”
“You look like the ocean,” I say, and then want to eat my own tongue for coming on too poetic at a time like this.
She smiles anyway. “Find me the blue robe? The one with the white flowers.”
It hangs on her closet door, right where I guessed it would be. I help ease her arms, tie the sash gentle over the highest curve so she looks less like a shipwreck and more like a queen at anchor. Her hair is an argument with humidity; I lose and then I win by giving it a loose braid over one shoulder, leaving wisps where wisps want to live. When I lay my palms briefly over her belly to sayhi, the babies push back. I push back once, lightly, and hope they understand that’s a kind of promise.
“You’re good at this,” she says, voice quiet enough that Sean and Declan won’t hear and make it a joke.
“I want to be,” I say honestly, the easiest response I can come up with.
She watches me a beat longer, seeing something I’m not brave enough to say out loud, and then the doorbell rings. We all freeze like cartoon burglars. Sean recovers first, slapping his hands against his thighs. “Right,” he says to no one. “Showtime.”
“Let them knock again,” Willow says, squeezing my fingers hard enough to hurt in a way I welcome. “I need one second.”
We stand in the quiet. Her breathing evens. The babies shift. Her eyes find mine; I nod. She nods back, captain to first mate. “Okay,” she says. “Let them in.”
From the bed, I watch the tiny slice of front hall I can see through the bedroom door. The bell goes again. Declan opens to voices that fill the house in a wave—bright, familiar, carrying the smell of outside and box bakery.
“Hello,” Declan says, warm. “Come in.”
“Who are you?” the sister asks immediately.
28
WILLOW
There’sa silent beat while Declan thinks of how to answer. The beat is so silent that it’s loud, and I can hear it from the bedroom, followed by a sudden clatter from the porch—a car door, closing hard. Running footsteps on the walk. Cheyenne sounds breathless, ragged, when she gasps, “Hi, Camille. Hi, Nina. What did I miss?”Very natural.
My heart leaps so hard I swear one of the babies kicks in protest. I hear their pleasantries, my mom thanking Cheyenne for keeping her secret, Sean introducing himself. Rowan’s fingers are linked in mine, and he strokes my forehead before I realize all the tension being held there.
Their footsteps seem to move in slow motion through the house, like a scene in a movie with an approaching monster. Just like in those movies, my breathing feels extra loud, juxtaposed against my heart beating.
Camille blinks, halfway through the doorway, clutching a bakery box, her smile fading almost as instantly as she sees me.
“Where’s my girl?” my mom crows, coming in behind her. “There she is!” Her tone is so happy as she pushes her sunglasses up on top of her head, and then she freezes when she sees the bed, my hands on my stomach, my cocoon of pillows.
I receive their shock politely, my hands tangling in Rowan’s even harder. He’s solid beside me, watchful, his fingers intertwined in mine, not letting go. Declan and Sean slip in behind my mom and sister and stand respectfully against the wall of the room. Their energy is restless, electric, and the air is thick with perfume, pastry glaze, and tension.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Camille,” I whisper, my voice coming out a rasp.
Mom’s eyes run over me, my face, shoulders, arms, then down, and there are all these micro-expressions, flickers like lightning behind clouds—worry, relief, calculation, anger, confusion. She makes a small sound I’ve only heard when people see someone they love after a long absence. It breaks me apart as all this guilt comes crashing over me. I realize suddenly that these babies weren’t my secrets to keep. They’re people.
“Oh, sweetpea,” she says, and crosses the room.
Mom’s still scanning the room even as she crosses it to lean down and kiss my forehead. Her eyes land on Declan, move to Sean, linger on Rowan—who looks as unthreatening as a man can look sitting beside her very pregnant daughter—and then back to me.
“This is quite the welcome committee,” she says lightly, though her tone wobbles on the edge of question.
