On one auburn top-grain leather sofa I sat between Robin and Lily, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder, not a sliver of daylight between us. (I often said we were a three-headed critter with one heart, which made Lily gag.) On the opposite matching sofa were Grant and Owen, an empty down-blend cushion gaping between them. Grant’s legs stretched out under the handcrafted petrified wood coffee table, and one elbow casually rested on the rolled arm of the sofa, fingers rubbing the brass nailhead trim, while the other hand animatedly gestured as he talked about sports that I didn’t follow. Owen, sipping lager from a chilled pilsner glass, wore a bored expression that said kill me now.

“Did Lucas go downstairs like I told him to?” Robin asked the room, glancing over her shoulder. “I hope he’s not annoying Aria to no end with his toy dinosaur collection.”

At age five, Lucas was a budding paleontologist, whose yen for anything dinosaurian put the similarly obsessed boy in Jurassic Park to shame. He could talk your ear off for hours, rattling off facts without taking a breath. The precocious kid was like a walking, talking kindergartener-sized Wikipedia.

“Don’t worry, Aria adores him. I’m sure she doesn’t mind humoring him,” I assured her.

“I think I saw Fizz dragging Willow upstairs,” Grant said. Lucas had earned the nickname Fizz as a baby during his first sip of Sprite at a dinner outing together. The fizz from the carbonation gave him the most shocked expression as soda trickled out of one nostril, sending our entire table and waitstaff into hysterics. It stuck right then and there—Fizz. “I heard him mention something about finding his velociraptor.”

Lucas’s footsteps rumbled above us, followed by Willow’s loud warning to stay out of her room.

“Any moment now I’ll be refereeing whatever argument those two are going to get into.” Robin glanced at the ceiling. Willow’s threats were growing impatient and loud.

“Congratulations, you’ll have your first teenage girl in a couple months.” I patted Robin’s shoulder with a welcome-to-the-club shrug.

Robin returned a weary glare.

“It’s not so bad. They can get mouthy, but Willow’s a sweet girl.” Although Aria rarely got mouthy, and when she did, it was aimed at her father.

“You can’t talk, Mac. You got it easy with Aria. She’s the perfect teen. With the psychotic girls Willow’s been hanging out with from her lacrosse team, I’m scared she’ll become a serial killer. You should hear the hazing these kids do to one another. Twelve years old and throwing water balloons with pebbles in them at the new girls. Then dousing them in syrup and making them roll in feathers. It’s barbaric!”

Maybe Willow wasn’t as sweet as I thought.

“What? No, I’m sure Willow’s not doing that stuff,” Lily interjected.