“How?”
“Like he is already part of the Sterling family in a way that is different from Luna.”
Daniel straightened in his chair.
I kept my voice even. “What does that mean?”
Karen turned off the water. “She keeps saying there will be a place for him with us. She says the family needs to stay involved.”
“Did she ask you to do anything?”
“Not exactly.”
That answer stayed between us.
“What did she ask you to do?”
Karen gave a short laugh that had no humor in it. “She said there would be a private family discussion after the delivery.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Who is supposed to be there?”
“My mother. Me. You, I guess.”
Karen did not answer.
Daniel reached for a pencil and rolled it between his fingers.
I said, “Karen?”
“She talks as if the babies are already assigned places,” Karen said. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”
I wrote that down on the back of an envelope.
“Did Vivian tell you why she wants this discussion?”
“No.”
The pencil stopped in Daniel’s hand.
I asked, “Did she tell you to bring anything?”
“No.”
“Then please call me if she gives you a time or place.”
“I will.”
I started to thank her, but Karen spoke first.
“Elena, she is not telling me much either.”
That was the first thing she had said that made the call feel less like an interview and more like a warning.
At one in the afternoon, Karen stood at her kitchen sink with a coffee mug under the faucet when I arrived. She set
the mug upside down on a towel and pulled out a chair for me.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I am.”
She sat across from me and picked up the mug again, although it was already clean.
“What exactly did your mother tell you?”
Karen rubbed a thumb around the handle.
“She said she wanted to talk privately after the babies came.”
“About Leo?”
“Mostly Leo.”
“Why him?”
Karen looked toward the sink.
“I don’t know.”
“Did she use the word family?”
