Anne spun around and spotted her baby sister at the far end of the dining table. Akemi looked half awake, but she was already tapping away at her laptop.
“When did you come down?”
Akemi shrugged and yawned. “A few minutes ago.”
Anne scraped the last of the steak and eggs into a bowl and brought it to her sister.
“I’m not hungry yet,” Akemi protested.
“That baby is, though. Feed him breakfast, or he’ll eat your bones.”
Zoe snorted a laugh. “That’s pretty gruesome.”
“It’s true!” Anne pulled a half-gallon jar of goat milk from the fridge and poured a tall glass for her sister. “If you don’t get enough nutrition, your body will pull the minerals it needs from your bones and teeth to build a healthy baby.”
“Reason two-fifty-six why I will never reproduce,” Zoe muttered.
“Never say never,” Akemi said as Anne set the glass of milk down in front of her. “I didn’t think motherhood was in the cards for me either, but look at me now.”
“Never,” Zoe muttered rebelliously.
“You’re not old,” Anne said at the same time.
Akemi rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty old. It’s literally a geriatric pregnancy.”
“That’s such a stupid term,” Anne said with a laugh.
“Younger doctors say ‘advanced maternal age’ instead. Same difference, though.”
“You’re healthy, and so is your baby. Anyway, you basically won the genetic lottery as far as aging is concerned. You don’t look a day over twenty-five.”
“Tell that to these eggs I’ve been carrying around for forty years.”
“Gross,” Zoe muttered.
“You’re not even forty yet!” Anne protested.
“Yes, but those eggs are older than I am,” Akemi said primly.
“What are you talking about?”
She typed something into the search bar on her laptop and then read aloud, “In a baby girl in utero, eggs begin to form around eight to twenty weeks of gestation. By the time the baby is born, all the egg cells that will be released during her reproductive years are already present in her ovaries.”
“Barf,” Zoe said under her breath.
“It’s the miracle of life,” Akemi told her. “The egg that you came from formed when Anne was still in Dawn’s belly.”
Zoe poked listlessly at her scrambled eggs. “You’re ruining my breakfast.”
“Okay, change of subject,” Anne said. “I’m going to wake the kids up in a minute and drive down to the hot ponds for sunrise. Come with us?”
“I have to work.”
“This early?” When Zoe looked uncertain, Anne pushed a bit harder. “We don’t want to hang out at the hot ponds in the heat of the day. We’ll just take a quick dip while it’s cool and then head home.”
“I guess I could go.”
That small concession felt like a major victory to Anne.
