“It’s a big step.”

“I’ll step it,” she says, and with the burping hand she tousles his hair a little.

“I’ll be back in the afternoon.”

“I could cancel with Nina, if you let me know.”

“I always let you know,” the Vic says, not at all accurately. “So it’s OK?”

“I said it was OK.”

He sighs, a little sweatily. He wants to be sold on this, she can see. He is selling himself on it, and yet isn’t quite sold. “I need to know—”

“Vic,” she prickles. “I’m going to stay in my sweats, read, answer these people, call up television to watch. Shows you don’t like. And when Kitsune cries, I’m going to put food in her diaper and change her mouth. And for lunch I’ll have the rest of the pesto from before.”

“And no wine.”

“On my honor,” Padgett says, “the baby will have two Manhattans and that’s it.”

He squints at her. “Maybe I should find—”

“Find no one. I will do it and yes, I am ready.”

He’s honorable enough, she sees, his gaze already sneaking to the peg with the sweatshirt sprawled on it, to be nervous about this. But not honorable enough to cancel whatever cash flow bicker is due to happen around some well-catered table. “This calls for a new phone,” he says brightly.

“Vic, no. I just learned how to find the restaurants on my new one.”

But he’s already in the pocket of the sweatshirt. “This is your new one. Bryan’s going to call it Fiona when it launches.”

“Hi, Fiona,” Padgett says dully, and reinserts the baby bottle.

“Give me your old one. Play with it today, tell me what you think.”

She takes it, another new device from him. The screen has the three of them, her and the Vic and Kitsune strapped on, on a gray and tiny beach. “OK.”

“If you need to buy something, there’s—”

“I don’t know what babysitters charge nowadays—”

“Har har.”