“You’re the only one I really should tell, but it’s hardest with you.”

I said I understood—an editor’s the natural confessor for aspiring writers: “It’s a common virus,” I joked, hiding my surprise.

She told her son it was time to sprinkle sugar over the cookies, the last step before they went in the oven.

“I certainly didn’t mean to hold her back, did I, Angioletto?” I told my nephew, his mother’s synecdoche, his sleeping face against my chest looked so intense.

“You didn’t?” She was tilting her head to one side. “So, what do you think then?”

“Let me get this straight—you want to be a mechanic, right?”

She was silent, her back to me, cleaning up.

“No, of course I’m kidding. You want to write a novel, yes?”

“Is that so ridiculous?”

“No, no.”

“What, do you think I should take a creative writing class first?”

“Oh, please. You take those to meet writers who can help you—I can introduce you to whoever.” Daniela went to put the cookies in the oven while I was talking: “No, it’s just—”

She set the teapot on the table and some little homemade butter-free cookies, shaped like letters. She gave me the Z, I, and O, uncle.

“Just what?” she asked, and pressed the button on the medical alert device. They used it to call my mother from next door: Daniela kept it in her dress pocket and could activate it with her elbow, too.

First my mother freed us from Angelo, then Gionata, who at this point was content because he’d been allowed to stay with us longer than his little brother.

Alone with me now, Daniela repeated: “What?”

“Well,” I said, “I respect you—it’s just, I hope it’s because you’re artistically inspired, not because Elena Ferrante’s so hot right now. You know, the desperate housewife with a pseudonym, writing from a woman’s point of view in a sexist society … It just seems like a fantasy, your fantasy of professional success, and I respect you too much to let you waste your time on something as serious as writing a novel, just because you have this revenge fantasy against your in-laws and your husband and your life.”

[God, why did I have to treat her like that?] She went to check on the cookies in the oven, then left and returned carrying the other twin, Giuseppe, with his soft skin and kind, distant expression.

There was daylight out the windows; inside, it was dark.

She changed the subject: “Anyway, how’s it going, this new life, not traveling up to Milan every week. What’s Barbara think? Can she stand having you around all the time?”