Charlie was pretty sure that was supposed to be her line, but, hey, he was second circle and she wasn’t, so she managed to make her I know sound not quite so much like and you don’t as usual. “If you need me in the night,” she whispered, leaning close enough to brush her lips over first Edward then Evan’s forehead, “just yell. You know where I am.”

The apartment upstairs over the Emporium only had two bedrooms, so when the twins were old enough to move into Jack’s old room, Jack had moved to a bedroom in the renovated apartment over the coffee shop. Thanks to a Fabergé egg found in a box of ancient Easter decorations down in the basement . . .

“What is that smell?”

Charlie pulled a flattened mass of fur and bone and rattan out of the box. “I don’t think you want to know. The Peeps still look good, though.”

...they’d been able to buy the building next door and gut the second floor, turning a one-bedroom apartment into three bedrooms and a bathroom, now attached to the original apartment by a short hall. Jack had one bedroom, Charlie had the second, although she wasn’t often in it, and she expected that once these new babies were born, Evan and Edward would be moved over to the third. Michael and his husband Brian had designed the renovation and had spent a couple of weeks working on the construction with the cousins—Brian complaining the whole time that they were architects not tradesmen as he took over the tiling in order for it to be done right.

Allie’d hit month seven just before the renovation began and had gotten a little moody. Sure, sometimes Calgary had snow in July. But it didn’t usually need to be shoveled.

The telephone poles leafing out had been new for everyone.

Auntie Trisha had arrived the same day Michael and Brian had. The aunties believed that’s what had settled things down—this sort of hormonal carrying on didn’t happen back east where there were plenty of aunties—but Charlie knew it was Michael. He’d been Allie’s touchstone since they were five.

“And let’s hope Uncle Michael has been banking his vacation time,” Charlie murmured as she tucked the tiny stuffed minotaur, a present from Boris, back under Edward’s chubby arm. “So Mama doesn’t make life quite so interesting for the rest of us while we’re waiting for your new brothers.”

Although, personally, she wouldn’t complain about interesting. Interesting would not only keep her distracted enough to stay around, but keep the family’s focus locked on Allie.

Jack had seen Charlie come home.

He’d been flying too high—high enough to be mistaken for a night bird should anyone look up—for Charlie to have seen him. Except, she hadn’t looked up.

Why hadn’t she looked up?