In March, Antonia is watching Robbie and Julia. They are napping: faces utterly slack; hair plastered against their foreheads. Robbie is as enamored of Julia as Antonia was of Sofia but he is messier than Antonia was; he is more sensitive; he bruises easily. And Julia, too, seems messier than her mother, less focused, but just as big, just as loud, just as hot. She digs her hands into every patch of dirt she finds. Antonia is thankful they are sleeping.

Earlier that day Antonia had walked in on a wrestling match on the floor of her bedroom. What exactly is happening in here? She had hissed. I’m a Fianzo! Robbie had said to her. His face had been bright and upturned; he loved to tell her things, to bring her into his world. His arms were always reaching out for her. A what? Antonia had asked. Cold dread. Robbie drew himself up to his full height and raised his arms. Wooooouuurrrghhh! he growled. I’ll get you, Fianzo, shouted Julia. She tackled him. Legs went everywhere. A water glass fell off of a bedside table and shattered. Enough, enough! said Antonia. She lifted Robbie and Julia away from the glass one by one. Go, now! And Robbie had gone: dejected, worried. He never wants Antonia to be upset.

Antonia had breathed a shaky exhale and shut the door. She lives in constant fear of becoming her own mother—they killed your grandfather! she imagines saying in a moment of panic—but then she wouldn’t be the parent anymore; she would be making decisions for her own self-satisfaction. Antonia has made her peace with the mother her mother is able to be. But she does not want to become her.

She thinks, also, of the Fianzos themselves: their putrid cigars; the slick of their shoes and hair. She is grateful that her son thinks of them as monsters, and she is deeply disappointed: since he was born, Antonia has done her best to shelter him from the tragedy and terror in her own childhood. You’ve failed, she thinks.

Antonia is rarely surprised, any longer, by the depth and fierceness of her love for Julia. It’s not true what they say about blood being thicker than water. So she is grateful to have Julia sleeping soundly in her son’s bedroom, and she tries not to dwell on Sofia, who showed up earlier and begged Antonia to take Julia, just for a couple hours. And Antonia always opens the door. She always kisses Sofia’s cheeks and tells her to go, and she puts a hand on Julia’s hair, and she tries to focus on the absolute ocean of her love for both of them, rather than on Julia’s face, which crumples just slightly as Sofia leaves, like the top of a cake falling as it cools.