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He hands me a bottle of water, and I take it because pregnancy has apparently reduced my moral authority in arguments involving hydration.

Behind us, Babs calls, “I’m adding Cleopatra back.”

Bane opens a cabinet. “I never removed Cleopatra.”

“That means you like it.”

“That isn’t what that means.”

I catch myself smiling as I lean against the counter and listen to the girls argue over the list.

I’d imagined pregnancy before, although never in any concrete way. I pictured appointments and baby clothes, maybe conversations about names somewhere much later.

I didn’t picture Mara knitting before I’ve begun showing, Bane placing crackers throughout Manhattan, or two six-year-olds debating whether their siblings should be named after queens and mythical animals.

Yet this already feels more like family than most things I spent years trying to force into that shape.

Biddy appears in the kitchen doorway holding a green pencil.

She waits until Bane has moved toward the pantry before coming closer to me. “Emma?”

I turn toward her. “What’s up?”

Her eyes move to my stomach. “Will the babies play games with us when they’re bigger?”

The tenderness in her question catches me harder than I expect.

I crouch so we’re closer to eye level. “I think they’ll want to.”

“They won’t know how.”

“You’ll have to teach them.”

She thinks about that. “I can show them the easy games first.”

“That sounds like a good plan.”

Her expression relaxes. “Babs cheats at cards, so I’ll teach them those later.”

The dry response is so perfectly hers that I laugh through the tightness in my throat.

Then she looks back at me. “They’ll like us, right?”

My chest aches.

I reach out and smooth one of her curls behind her ear. “They’re going to be very lucky to have you.”

She wraps her arms around my neck before heading back to the living room.

I rise and catch Bane watching me from beside the pantry. He doesn’t ask why my eyes have filled.

His hand touches my back when I pass him, and that small gesture is enough.

Two days later, Bane and I sit across from Patricia Doyle in the back office of a community outreach center in Queens as she studies one of the photographs from Celeste’s notebook.”

The lead came through New Horizons after a former coordinator recognized Celeste’s name and remembered Patricia running volunteer programs across several shelters during the same years Nora Bell appears in the records.

Patricia adjusts her glasses and brings the photograph closer. “I remember Celeste.”