The message sat on my phone for six hours before I told Lucian.
Not because I was hiding it. Because the six hours between Daniel's text and the moment I finally showed it to Lucian contained the birth of two sons, the arrival of a family into a hospital room, the specific exhausted joy of a woman who had just done something extraordinary with her body and needed a finite amount of time to simply be in that before the next thing arrived to complicate it.
I held Lucas while Trisha held my hand and explained to him at length the specifications of the motorcycle track that was being built in his honor, a characterization she had decided upon unilaterally and that no one had the energy to dispute. I watched Ava look at Eli in Lucian's arms with the specific, considering attention she brought
