David hadn’t helped. If anything, David had made him more confused. It was still all questions when it came to Charlie.

The whole time she’d been gone, Jack had kept mental lists of stuff he wanted to tell her when she got back, but he couldn’t remember any of it, so he said, “You’re up early.”

“So are you.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” He kept thinking she’d leave before he saw her. She did that; showed up, did laundry, left. Left without saying good-bye, like by wanting her to stay he’d done something to drive her away. “Allie?”

“Still asleep.”

“Katie’s in your room.” He didn’t bother toasting the two new slices of bread he pulled from the fridge. Charlie’d probably think it was funny to see if she could make him burn them again. “She’s here a lot when you’re not.”

“Katie fills in for the sisters Allie doesn’t have. I’m not her sister.”

“Duh. You know Allie’s going to . . .” He waved at the twins, who turned in unison to stare at him, but when he didn’t burn anything down, they went back to running the train over with the sheep. “You here to have Graham knock you up?”

“What!”

Yeah, that broke the whole too cool for the living room thing she had going. Jack gave himself a mental high five and wished he had a way to record Charlie’s expression. “If Allie’s actually going to produce the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale, you might have come home to help.”

Charlie raised both hands, like she was shoving the idea away. “I didn’t.”

“The aunties think it’d be a good idea.”

“I don’t.”

“Me either.”

“Wasn’t that one too many sevenths?”

He’d mumbled his protest into the cabinet while grabbing the peanut butter, so he wasn’t surprised she hadn’t heard it. Although Charlie usually heard everything. “Graham’s a seventh son of a seventh son,” he said as he turned, “so his seventh son will be the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son. And Allie’s a Gale. So, seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale. Dragons are all about keeping bloodlines straight.” It was one of the nonlethal ways they reminded him of the aunties.

“I thought there only was one bloodline.”