The front door opened decisively.
Harriet threw herself toward the entrance in a burst of offended indignation, holding out both palms as if she could prevent the approaching visitors from entering simply by insisting she had the right to do so. “This is a private domestic matter!” she shrieked toward the screened entrance. “You have no legal right to barge into—”
Dad strode inside, filling the doorway with his broad shoulders. His denim jacket was stained with old grease; close-cropped silver hair framed pale eyes that surveyed the room. Stuart, my eldest brother and father of three little girls, followed with his jaw tightly clenched. Felix, my younger brother, came right behind him, carrying an enormous sixty-quart Coleman cooler in one hand and a specially designed travel bassinet in the other.
They ignored both Harriet and Owen.
They focused on me, pale and standing on the rug with my newborn wrapped in pink.
“Vivien,” Stuart said, dropping his car keys onto the entry console with an intentional thump. “Why on God’s earth are you standing up? Sit your tail back down.”
“I’m packed,” I said quietly, gesturing toward the canvas duffel bag sitting by the hallway coat rack. “Clover’s supplies are in the nursery closet. Everything else can stay.”
Felix asked no questions. He moved past Harriet without acknowledging her and headed for the nursery.
Harriet turned crimson. “Owen! Are you going to stand there like a statue while these… these laborers ransack your private residence? Do something! Assert yourself!”
Dad halted three feet from Owen.
Although only five-foot-ten, Dale Simmons seemed immovable. He studied Owen, remembering, as I did, the younger man he had once taught to clean a freshly caught trout and welcomed to the family table on Sundays for half a decade.
“Owen,” my father said. His voice was not loud. It carried the terrifying, measured calm of a man who had pulled drowned piping out of frozen basements in mid-January.
“Your wife had four layers of flesh and muscle severed to bring your bloodline into this world ninety-six hours ago. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me what just transpired in this room.”
Owen stared at his leather shoes. He swallowed nervously. “Mr. Simmons… Dale… it was just a domestic dispute. Voices were raised. Tempers flared because everyone
