Chapter 24: Come In, You're Expected

Lydia's POV

The twins were six weeks old on the Sunday that Gideon's whole family came to dinner.

Our daughter was asleep in the sling against my chest.

Our son was awake in the crook of Gideon's arm, studying the ceiling fan with great suspicion.

"He gets that from you," I said.

"He gets the suspicion from you. I'm only tall."

Margo was in the kitchen, being told by Gideon's sister that she was cutting the onions wrong.

Margo had answered that she had been cutting onions since before his sister was born.

Two small girls in matching overalls, Gideon's nieces, were under the table with a flashlight.

They were working out whose turn it was to hold a baby.

The house smelled like garlic and bread.

It was our house, with Gideon's porch and my piano shoved against the wall beside his old upright.

I had a record deal in a drawer that my lawyer had read three times.

My calendar held six dates, all under my own name.

I had signed nothing yet that I hadn't written myself.

At four the doorbell rang, twice, a polite and careful ring.

"That's him," Gideon said, and gave the baby to his sister, and went to the door.

I went too, with our daughter asleep on my chest.

Brandon stood on the porch in a clean shirt and work boots, with a paper bag in one hand.

He was thinner than he'd been, and calmer.

His first payment toward the publisher had reached my lawyer on the first of every month since October.

It always came on time, and never with a note.

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