The silver house key was still beside my plate when Daniel asked, “Did you give my mother a copy?”
I looked at the key, then at him. “No.”
He closed the lunch bag and checked the zipper twice.
“I should have asked you before she asked me,” he said.
“When did she ask you?”
“Yesterday afternoon. She wants one before the babies come.”
I put the mail into three neat stacks, bills, advertisements, and letters that needed an answer. “Why?”
Daniel picked up an apple and turned it in his hand. “She says it would make helping easier.”
“Helping with what?”
He set the apple down.
“The house. The babies. You.”
That answer was too broad for a key.
I slid the silver key away from my plate. “She can help without having access to the house.”
Daniel looked toward the kitchen doorway. “I thought you would say that.”
“Did
you tell her?”
“I told her I would ask.”
He rubbed his wedding ring with his thumb. “I should have.”
At seven ten, the kitchen was still quiet enough that I could hear the paper tear when I opened an envelope.
Daniel lifted his lunch bag. “She thinks we are making this harder than it needs to be.”
“She thinks a key is a family courtesy.”
“Maybe.”
I put the electric bill on top of the stack. “A key is not a courtesy.”
Daniel stood there with his hand on the chair.
“Elena, she is going to be around after the delivery.”
“I know.”
“She wants to bring food. Pick up groceries. Check on you.”
“She can knock.”
He did not answer.
I had let Vivian believe I was unemployed because I wanted one part of our relationship untouched by my title. She could judge my cooking, my housekeeping, my
clothes, or my choices. I wanted to know whether she could simply respect me.
The silver key went into my purse.
“Then I will tell her myself,” I said.
At eleven forty, Vivian was standing on our front porch with a bakery box in one hand and her purse tucked under her arm.
She looked past me through the open door toward the nursery.
“Those shelves are already full,” she said.
“They are.”
She stepped closer without waiting to be invited inside.
I moved a stack of folded onesies from the entry bench. “The babies have enough clothes for now.”
Vivian smiled at the nursery.
“Leo will need more than you think.”
“Luna too.”
She turned back to me. “Of course. I only mean Leo has the Sterling family name to carry.”
I folded a tiny white shirt and set it on the stack.
“Both children have the Sterling name.”
