“Good point. Thing is, the way I heard it, he believed what he was saying.”

Jack shrugged again. “Belief doesn’t make something true.”

“I know, but . . .”

She waved it off, but Jack could hear her humming, mouth pressed against the top of Evan’s head. Charlie trusted her ears the way most people trusted their eyes, and she couldn’t seem to think without making noise.

“There’s a lot of things up there,” she said after a minute. “A whole bunch of junk, not to mention a space station, and beyond that asteroids, comets . . . You fly high, Jack. What do you see?”

He snorted. Edward reached up for the swirls of smoke. “Nothing falling.”

“If there was a factual basis to Dan’s claim, don’t you think one of the scientists on that space station you listed might have mentioned it?” Graham pointed out, closing the bedroom door behind him. “They’ve got the best view.”

“Daddy!”

Jack grunted as Edward launched himself off his lap.

Charlie stood as Evan joined his brother’s charge across the living room. “Scientists don’t know everything,” she said as Graham lifted his sons into his arms. “They’d struggle to explain either of us and they wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to explain Jack.”

“They’d have a go at explaining all of us,” Graham muttered, “if they could get us onto a dissection table.”

“Dissection!” the twins chorused in unison.

“Oh, sure . . .” Charlie tossed Jack a smile he couldn’t stop himself from returning. “. . . I get Cha Cha, but they can manage dissection.” She leaned between the boys and gave Graham a kiss. Jack bit back a growl. “Maybe Doomsday Dan is just ahead of the curve. Don’t scientists say an asteroid is bound to hit in the next million years or so?”

“In the next million years or so pigs could fly.” Katie hadn’t exactly snuck up on him. Jack had heard her crossing the apartment; he’d just ignored her because she posed no danger. Well, no more danger than most Gale girls.

Jack swatted her hand as she ruffled his hair. “I could do that. Make pigs fly.” Although he wasn’t sure he could get them to fly under their own power or if it would be more of a controlled fall when dropped.

“Jack.”

He looked up in time to catch Evan as Graham dropped him into his arms.

“Don’t make pigs fly.”