The oldest aunties—essentially Auntie Ruby who was two years older than God, well, some gods—believed that the family’s identical twins shared a soul. The remaining aunties agreed that was a remnant of the old beliefs and Gale twins were no more likely to be short a soul than non-Gale twins. The rest of the family pretended not to notice that the aunties had hedged their bets with a distinctly nondefinitive statement. Charlie thought of her younger sisters and wasn’t entirely certain Auntie Ruby was wrong.

“Your daddy says you’ll become more individual as you get older.” Charlie grunted as Edward threw himself off the sofa into her arms, squirming free of her grip in time for her to catch Evan who followed the identical flight path. “Your daddy thinks because he’s a boy and you’re boys, he knows what he’s talking about. But your daddy isn’t a Gale, and Gale boys are in a league of their own, aren’t they?”

Evan burbled what Charlie took as agreement. Edward crawled under the coffee table, emerging a moment later holding a stuffed sheep. He stared at it, as though he’d never seen it before, then threw it across the living room. Evan took off after it—four running steps before he fell and decided crawling was faster.

“Dog!” Edward handed her a piece of a wooden train.

“Not even close, kiddo. Train.”

He shrugged, grabbed it back, and threw it. Evan dropped the sheep and beetled after the train.

It was possible that dog had been in reference to his brother who had apparently learned to fetch while Charlie was gone.

Given that most Gale boys had between fifteen and twenty girls on their lists, most Gale girls moved straight from third circle to first without stopping at stretch marks and cracked nipples and that weird let’s be connected to everything second circle got into. Charlie watched Edward run after Evan, bare feet slapping against the floor, plastic cover on his diaper crinkling with every step, and realized, given the impossible place her interest had fallen, that this might be as close to having children of her own as she’d ever get.

She was good with that.

Both boys looked up as the door into the hall opened, then returned to racing the train and the sheep across the floor when they saw it was only Jack.