I could see her mental calculations. How much should she pretend to take Fritz’s opinion into consideration? “I haven’t had any kind of clarity about any of this—for over a year. And I feel good about Lucia. You’re going to feel that way too. And if you don’t, then we’ll just let her know that we changed our mind.”

Fritz’s gaze wandered toward me. Was he thinking of our earlier conversation? He picked up his cell phone, apparently to read a text.

“Fritz, please.” Amelia was making a concentrated effort to soften her voice and her face.

“I won’t pretend that I’ve agreed to this,” he said. “I don’t know shit about her, or the father.”

“As long as you have an open mind.” Amelia crossed the room to put her arms around Fritz, who barely reciprocated. “I’ll invite her to come here tomorrow. But I’ll make it clear that you and she need to meet so everyone is fully on board.”

She walked into the kitchen, ostensibly to make the phone call. Fritz followed, as did I. Now that Amelia was safely home, I didn’t have a good reason to stay. I had chills and a headache behind my eyes, as if my body were depleted of oxygen.

Amelia sat down at the small desk in the kitchen, next to the only landline in the house. She seemed mildly oblivious to the anger in Fritz’s eyes.

I heard the sound of the front door opening and slamming shut.

“Natalie doesn’t know that you were missing,” he whispered to Amelia.

“I wasn’t.”

Natalie’s footsteps pattered down the hall. She appeared in the kitchen with her cello. “Hi, Mom.”

Amelia stood and wrapped her arms tightly around Natalie and held her. “I love you so much.”

“You’re back from Texas?”

“Honey, we’ve found our baby. The baby girl who will be your little sister.”

Natalie’s face whitened. Her lips pressed together tightly. She looked down and fumbled with the latch on her cello case, which had come partially open. “Where is she?”

“The woman I met today is pregnant with a baby girl. And I just have a feeling this could be so wonderful for us.”

Natalie tried again to close the latch on her cello case. “Why doesn’t she want her baby?”

“It’s not that she doesn’t want her,” Amelia said. “It’s that she can’t provide for her. And she’s not married.”

“You don’t need to be married to have a baby,” Natalie said.

“It’s hard.”

When Natalie finally succeeded in closing the case, she leaned it against the wall and sat on the floor to pet Itzhak. “I feel sorry for the baby,” she said.

“I’m going to be her mother.”

Fritz raised his voice. “That is not decided.”