POV: Olivia

Ayla and Rose were eight weeks old and had developed, in that time, the ability to make faces, smiling faces especially. Rose, true to the emphatic hand gesture of her ultrasound appearances, communicated her requirements with a directness and volume that suggested she had considered subtlety and rejected it on principle. Ayla was quieter in her demands but more persistent, she would wait, with a patience that felt faintly tactical, and then make her requirements known at the precise moment when everyone believed the situation was resolved.

Meanwhile, their sister, their devoted, occasionally overbearing, deeply invested sister, spent every available moment in their vicinity. She had appointed herself...