“I made scones,” she said, her defeat tangible even over FaceTime. “I can’t bring them over, because I can’t leave the house, because he won’t wear pants, and if I let him out of the house without pants, he’ll never wear pants again.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “We’ll come to you.”

“No, no. You were just in the hospital,” she said to me. Then to Scarlett, “And you’re pregnant.”

“Yes, and thus incapable of leaving my house.”

“I just meant I should be the one coming to you guys,” Ash said.

“We’ll see you in fifteen,” Scarlett said. She hung up and turned to me. “I really resent the implication.”

I didn’t say anything, just nodded and went to put on my shoes.

She’s still annoyed. I get it. I also don’t like to be treated like I’m fragile, even when I am fragile. Like now.

I did a shitty job taping my gauze. It’s pinching my skin. Also, I can feel the stickiness underneath. The seepage. I adjust my seat belt.

The wound was, unfortunately, not better this morning. In fact, it was somehow significantly worse. Absurdly oozy.

“Luca is intense,” Scarlett says, breaking the silence. “Shades of Damien.”

“You think?” I ask, yawning.

We both slept in late and then Ash called before I could make coffee. I’m too wary of my sister’s mood to request a stop at Starbucks.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if my kid is like that.”

“I think a frank discussion. Sit it down and say, ‘Listen. This isn’t going to work for me.’ ”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I,” I say. “It is your kid. It’s of you. You respond well to candor. So do I. So will it.”

I don’t like referring to Scarlett’s baby as “it,” but she doesn’t have a name picked out.

“He’s just a lot,” she says. “I like to think I’m patient, but I don’t know if I’m that patient. I don’t know how Ash does it.”

“I don’t think Luca is Satan spawn,” I say. “He’s just testing the limits. To be fair, I also hate wearing pants.”

That cracks her. She laughs.

“Fair,” she says. “Fair.”

We pull up to Ashley’s. Her lawn is a cemetery. There are plastic skeletons everywhere, foam headstones, fake spiderwebs. There’s a giant jack-o’-lantern inflatable, and beside it a friendly ghost.

“Subtle,” I say.

“Wait until Christmas.”

We walk up the path, which is lined with petite pumpkins. Zombie hands reach up from the shrubbery.

“Nothing better jump out at me,” I say, the exact moment a witch’s cackle rings out from somewhere above me.

A wart-covered green face glares down from the front door, half hidden inside an ugly Halloween wreath.

“I hate it,” I say. “Hate it.”

Ash opens the door.

“Hello, hello! Come in,” she says.

Luca, wearing a pair of Batman underwear, bursts between her legs with a throaty bellow.

Scarlett takes my hand and squeezes it.

“Luca,” Ash says. “Can we please say hello to Aunt Scarlett and Aunt Rory?”