I told Mom to take them to Little Shop of Stories and buy another copy and any book that Peyton wanted. My treat. As for the laptop, Anna-Claire could go to Google Docs and work from Mom’s old Dell.

But the HOODIE!!!!! my daughter texted.

Okay, I finally texted back. Come get it. But bring your phone to hand me when you arrive because the second you set foot in this house, you’re grounded. Two weeks.

That, finally, ended it. She had always been this willful. Even as a newborn, she’d kept her days and nights reversed for weeks, beating every method for reorienting babies I could find in books or on the Internet.

I was the one who stayed up with her, because I had the breasts. I’d learned to nap when she did, lying on my side in our king-size bed with her in the center, one palm on her chest, feeling the rhythm of her small breaths even in my sleep. One afternoon when she was about two weeks old, I woke to find Trey stretched out on the other side of her, propped up on an elbow, watching us with an odd, small smile on his face.

“What are you thinking?” I asked, sleepy and happy to have him home early.

He smiled wider, as if I’d caught him out, but he answered.

“I was thinking how the shape of us has changed. In ways I didn’t see coming.” I gave him a puzzled look, and he went on. “It’s like she’s this little pink dot, and you’re wrapped around her in a yellow warning circle. Then I’m wrapped around you, red. And nothing can get to you, much less her, unless it comes through me.”

I laughed. “Well, that sounds like a lot of manly bullshit.”

“I know, I know!” He chuckled. “Maybe it’s a mammal thing. Or maybe it’s because she’s so new and you’re so tired. Look, I know you’re not weak. I saw you push her out—you’re a superhero. But I still have this crazy urge to go punch a bear to prove I can protect you. Maybe when she’s older, and when you are up and about, I won’t feel this way. But now? I look at that floppy little thing and your tired eyes, and the shape of us feels like a bull’s-eye. The baby at the center, you around her, then me around you.”

It was manly bullshit, but I also liked it. He could be outermost ring in his shape, I decided, as long as I was the outer ring in mine. I had to be willing to wrap all the way around him and our baby and protect them, just as fierce and true.

I had been willing. Then. Now Robert was gone from our safe concentric circles. We’d been cored.