“Bug glas Booker is awake,” she said with a sniff. “I think he’s a bad baby, Auntie Flora. He is very cross.”

“Douglas,” said Flora for the nine hundredth time. “His name is Douglas.”

Agot and Fintan gave her a similarly dry look.

“What?” said Flora. “She watches Hey Duggee on TV all the time.”

“Duggee is a very good dog,” said Agot loudly. Then, “I’m not sure about Bug glas.”

She marched over to the retired sheepdog Bramble, and the two of them went outside to examine the vegetable garden. Agot had a very strong resistance to actually eating vegetables, but she liked watching them grow, and there were still a few very late rhubarb stalks.

“She’s doing that on purpose,” said Flora, heading out. “She can speak perfectly well.”

“She is,” said Fintan. “And yet you somehow let it rile you.”

Flora headed toward the back room, even though the baby was barely crying, thinking Agot was ridiculous, and then she realized she was mentally having an argument with her five-year-old niece, which was a waste of time if she’d ever known one, but it didn’t matter, because by the time she got there, Joel was already with him, and Douglas had fallen silent.

He looked so like his father—black eyes and already, at five months, a shock of black curly hair—it was actually hilarious. Almost everyone who met him had felt the urge to put a pair of glasses on him.

She stood in the doorframe for a moment, watching them both. Douglas didn’t smile much—he was not at all a smiley baby; his little face was grave and serious, as if he had been born knowing all the mysteries of the universe, which he would gradually forget as he grew older. He also shared his father’s serious demeanor; he was watchful and careful. For a long time Flora had thought that Joel was like that because of his difficult upbringing—he had been in and out of foster homes since he was very little. She was coming to think, however, that in fact Joel’s demeanor was innate, as never was a baby boy smothered with so much love and affection as Douglas, coming in to a home with three uncles at close quarters and his grandfather Eck, who worshipped him and did much of the babysitting duty. Then there were his adopted American grandparents, Mark and Marsha, who sent giant care packages of ridiculously expensive baby clothes imported from France, via New York, which were frankly a little too good for the muddy farmyard and changeable climate of a small, very northern Scottish island, but Flora made sure he was dutifully photographed in them all anyway. The Bookers were just like that.

Joel didn’t fuss him or sing to him. He just lay down on the bed next to him, and the two of them eyeballed each other. It was the oddest thing, as if something intangible flowed between them through eye contact alone. Joel’s large hand would reach out so Douglas could clasp a finger, and they would commune. Flora didn’t even know how to ask anyone if this was normal behavior. Sometimes Douglas would flap at Joel’s heavy gold watch and Joel would let him. Usually, after fifteen minutes of this, they would both be asleep, the long body gently cradling the tiny one.