But Marshall had saved Robbie’s life. He and Bree had come through those long two days together, and in the end he’d pulled the baby from that horseshoe of explosives and set him in his mother’s arms. Perhaps it had been a kind of birth.

Marshall was the only father Robbie would know; Robbie was the only son he’d have. He and Bree had decided it would be hard enough to blend the kids they had, especially since some people, Bree’s in-laws, for example, thought their quiet wedding came a little soon.

Marshall had been pretty absolute and medical about it. The day of the procedure, he’d thought, I am a man who will have one kid. He’d been okay with it. Robbie had snuck up on him, and Cara had confided that Robbie didn’t feel like a step. For as much as he looked like Trey’s small clone, thick and sturdy, with that same round face and snub nose, Robbie belonged to all of them.

A-C had moved her float to the center, and now she and Cara started singing. Harmonizing. Peyton, he knew without looking, would be rolling her eyes. The song was a Roxie-Velma duet from the upcoming show, which meant they would practice it over and over until Peyton lost her mind. The two songbirds were really wailing, Cara’s dusky brown leg hooked over A-C’s longer, paler leg as they sang, asking each other again and again if things were good, or great, or swell. And then they sang the kicker, a repeated line about how nothing could ever stay the same.

No shit, ladies.

Cara and A-C sat up tall, wobbling on their floats, so they could hoist invisible prop Gatling guns and spray the pool with invisible bullets as they sang. All very Chicago. Peyton took advantage of their concentration to slip into the water and tip A-C’s float over.

The locked legs got Cara, too. They came up sputtering and growling, and then all three were giggling and pushing and shrieking, fighting to dunk one another. They’d gone from two juniors and a sophomore to preschoolers like Robbie in a heartbeat. It made Marshall smile.

Bree watched them, smiling, too, but Peyton’s crafty crocodile slide to tip A-C, that was a move straight out of Trey’s playbook. And Peyton had her father’s face, same as her brother. He saw the hollow sorrow in Bree’s eyes.

She was happy, though, he thought. Most of the time. She loved him deeply. She liked that he was a cop. She liked that he had a nose for liars and could almost smell bad intentions. That he understood fighting and violence and guns.