She agrees but only after a long minute, and I wonder if we can ever get back on the right track. What that track is. I wonder if she can forgive me because I have made mistakes with her. I applied the rules of The Society to us, to our lives at home, and I forgot that she’s human. That we’re both human. And that humans feel and have their hearts broken far too easily. And only when they're broken do we realize how hard it is to put the pieces back together again.

“The doors and the locks, was that you?” she asks as we eat.

I nod. I had them upgraded. “Your house was too easy to break into.”

Vincent Douglas. We’re both thinking it, but neither of us says it.

“How are things between you and your brother?” I ask.

“Okay, actually. We’re doing well. Ivy and I, too. She’s a little crazy when it comes to shopping for the babies.” She smiles, and I’m glad to see it, glad to hear this.

My phone dings with a message, and I remember all those notifications but ignore it. “I will take care of you. All of you, you know that, right?”

She tilts her head, eyes scrutinizing me. “What makes you think we need taking care of?”

“I’m their father.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t have to do anything. You don’t even have to acknowledge them. I don’t need your money. I don’t need your name. I don’t need anything from you.” I’m not sure if she intends that to cut, but it does. It cuts deep. “Besides…” She sets her fork down, her face closing off, that woman upstairs who was giggling vanished. “I know it would be difficult, what with you being the next councilor of The Tribunal and—”

“I don’t give a fuck about The Tribunal.”

She shrugs one shoulder, gets up, and takes her still full plate to the sink. I follow her, standing behind her as she wipes off the dish.

“Stop,” I say. She elbows me so I take her wrist. “Stop, Mercedes. Talk to me.”

“What do you want?” she asks, not looking at me.

I don’t answer. I’m not sure how.

She turns to face me. “What do you want, Judge? Why did you come? To give me a necklace?” She reaches to unclasp it, but I stop her.

“You keep it on. Always.”

“Why? What the hell does it mean?”

“The house is quiet without you. Lonely without you.”

She snorts. “You can’t have me back halfway. I won’t settle for that.”

“I’m not asking for that.”

“Then what are you asking for?”

My mother’s words repeat in my head. The terror in her eyes when I turned the table over.