I needn’t have worried. Diana doesn’t seem the least bit offended. “I know. I just got off the phone with him. Dr. Harrison says it’s too late for stitches, but he cleaned up Paul’s brow and gave him a shot in the butt. I told him on a handsome face like his, scars add character. Just look at Harrison Ford, for example, or that guy who played Waterman.”

“Aquaman.”

“Whatever.” She reaches for the basket, drags it across the island by the cellophane. “I picked you up a little something.”

Whatever it is, it’s not little. I take in the size of the basket, the thick layer of tissue paper bouquets concealing whatever’s underneath. A normal person shells out a couple of extra bucks for a gift bag from Walmart, but not Diana. Diana shops at the kind of stores where the wrapping is as extravagant as the gift.

“I... You didn’t have to do that.” An unpleasant tightness gathers in my chest at her thoughtfulness.

“I know, but I couldn’t resist.” She grins, claps her hands three rapid-fire times, and her enthusiasm is like a saw against my skin. “Go ahead. Open it.”

I tug on the canary yellow ribbon wound around the top of the cellophane, and the plastic opens up like a flower, the filmy petals floating to the countertop with a soft crinkle. I remove the tissue paper, pretty pastel bouquets arranged in a tight layer to conceal what’s underneath. A rubber giraffe smothered in polka dots. A chenille bath towel with floppy elephant ears hanging from the hood. Pacifiers and rattles and blankets and clothes, a mountain of miniature sweaters and footed pants and onesies as soft as butter. I pull out a knitted hood shaped like a miniature strawberry, tiny enough to fit on my fist, and set it on the marble with the others.

“I know it’s early still,” Diana says, admiring a sweater with a teddy bear embroidered across the front, “but I went in that baby store just to take a little peek, and before I knew it, I’m standing at the cash register with a mountain of stuff. We didn’t have all this when Paul was born. The cribs and the rugs and the changing tables and—Oh my God, the mobiles! So precious. I would have bought you one of those, too, but I couldn’t decide. Have you thought about colors yet? Do you have a theme for the nursery?”

When Chet was born, our mother wrapped him in an old T-shirt and put him in a box on the floor. If he cried in the middle of the night, she’d shove him, box and all, into my room. Of course I don’t have a theme for the nursery. I didn’t know I was supposed to.

“Diana, this is all...”