Beth laughed, and then, predictably, she started to cry.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Maggie said, her voice soft. “It's okay. Let it out.”
“I don't even know why I'm crying,” Beth managed. “I'm just sitting here. Nothing happened.”
“You're growing two humans. Your body is allowed to have feelings about that.”
Beth wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I talked to Emily today.”
“How is she?”
“Struggling, I think. She's between jobs. Between everything, really. I asked her to come stay with us.”
There was a pause. “That's a generous offer, especially right now.”
“She's family,” Beth said simply. “And I think she needs somewhere to belong.”
“You've always understood her,” Maggie said. “Better than most of us.”
“She's not that hard to understand. You just have to listen to what she actually says instead of what you think she means.”
“Wise words from my youngest.”
“I have my moments.”
They talked for another twenty minutes, about the travel plans, about the Andover house, about the list of preparations that Maggie was checking off with her usual efficiency. By the time they hung up, Beth felt steadier, anchored by her mother's voice.
She looked out the window again. Gabriel had emerged from the workshop and was walking toward the house, his phone pressed to his ear. Even from this distance, she could see him nodding, see the way his free hand gestured as he talked.
He looked up, saw her watching, and waved.
She waved back.
Whatever came next, the babies, the chaos, the sleepless nights, they would figure it out together. And maybe Emilywould be part of that. Maybe this farm would become the place where her half-sister finally found her footing.
Beth rested her hands on her belly and felt the twins stir beneath her palms.
“Welcome to the family,” she whispered. “It's complicated, but you're going to love it.”
CHAPTER 3
Sarah Garrison, known to most of the world as Grandma Sarah and to herself as the most interesting person in any room, stood in the kitchen of her condo at Marina Bluff and stared at her refrigerator like it had personally offended her.
The refrigerator, for its part, simply hummed.
“Walter,” she called out. “Did you eat the last of the key lime pie?”
A pause. Then, from somewhere in the living room, “I thought it was for sharing.”
“Sharing implies asking. Did you ask?”
Another pause. “I'm going to say yes and hope you believe me.”
Grandma Sarah shook her head and closed the refrigerator door. Seventy-nine years she had spent on this earth, and men still thought they could eat the last piece of pie without consequences. Walter was a good man, steady and patient and perfectly capable of backing up the RV without crying, but he had a blind spot when it came to desserts.
She shuffled into the living room, where Walter sat in his recliner with a crossword puzzle balanced on his knee. He was a tall man, thin in the way that older men sometimes got, with a shock of white hair that refused to lie flat no matter how much he combed it. He looked up when she entered, his expression the careful neutrality of a man who knew he was in trouble but wasn't sure how much.
“The pie,” Sarah said, “was not for sharing.”
