“You guys don’t have to take care of me, you know,” Bobby said. “I’m not going to jump off the roof.”

“No one thinks you’re going to jump off the roof,” Charles said.

“No,” Lawrence said. “Not the roof. Maybe an upper window, but not the roof.”

Bobby smiled.

Charles took a moment and rearranged his tiles. In the upper corner of the board, there was an empty double word score, and Charles filled it with SORRY. “Sorry,” he said.

“No, you’re not,” Lawrence said, but then kissed him on the cheek.

The front door opened and Sylvia slunk in, her hair wet in spots and dry in others. “Hey, guys,” she said. “I’m just going to take a shower.” She hurried toward the stairs.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Charles said. “You were out with Joan this whole time?”

Sylvia didn’t blush, but she also didn’t slow down. “Yes. Yes, I was.” And with that, she was up the stairs, in the bathroom, and in the shower. It didn’t matter how cold the water was, or who could hear her. She sang “Moves Like Jagger” until she didn’t know the words, and then she made them up.

“Huh,” Lawrence said.

“Huh,” said Bobby.

“I think we should focus on the game,” Charles said, and they did.

Day Thirteen

LAWRENCE WOKE UP EARLY TO CHECK HIS E-MAIL. Santa Claws would be the death of him, he was sure. The last e-mail he’d received from Toronto was about the lead actor going on strike because of a heat wave, and the suit, and the fur. It was not Lawrence’s problem, except that he had to keep track of every dollar they spent, and the actor’s strike meant that they were spending lots of money on craft services and union lighting rigs when nothing was actually being shot. He carried his laptop into the kitchen and stood with his back to the sink.

There were twenty new e-mails in his inbox. He scrolled through quickly—mostly J.Crew and the like pressuring him to buy more summer clothes—but stopped when he got to an e-mail from the adoption agency. He opened it one finger, pulling the computer closer to his chest. When they’d started, Lawrence thought the whole adoption process would be like the scene in John Waters’s Cry-Baby, with children performing domestic scenes behind glass, like at a museum. You’d pick the one you wanted, take them home, and love them forever. But it wasn’t that simple. Lawrence skimmed the e-mail, reading as fast as he could. The e-mail was short—Call me. She’s made a decision. You’re it.

Lawrence nearly dropped the computer. He didn’t realize he was making any noise until Charles rushed out of their bedroom in his pajamas.

“What happened?” he asked, worried. “What’s wrong?”

Lawrence shook his head vigorously. “We have to go home right now. We need a phone. Where’s the phone?” He spun the computer around so that Charles could read the e-mail. Charles took the reading glasses off Lawrence’s face and put them on his own.

“Oh my God,” Charles said. “Alphonse.”

Lawrence started to cry. “We have a baby boy.”

“A baby!” Charles shouted. “A baby!” He put the computer down on the kitchen table and pulled Lawrence into his arms, dipping him, murmuring names into his ear. Walter. Phillip. Nathaniel. It didn’t matter where Alphonse came from, what the circumstances had been. What mattered was that they were going to take him home.

With all the commotion of booking new flights and helping Charles and Lawrence pack and get out of the house, everyone was awake and alert much earlier than usual. Franny decided that pancakes were in order, as they were a celebratory breakfast food. Jim stayed close to her, cracking eggs when instructed, and searching through cabinets for vanilla extract. Bobby sat at the table alone while Sylvia made the coffee—it had always been her favorite activity, the French press. She timed the brewing on the oven clock, no longer even missing her phone. She could have thrown it down the mountain and watched it crack into a thousand pieces and she wouldn’t have cared. Whenever she closed her eyes, she could feel Joan’s mouth on her body.

“They’re going to be really good, don’t you think?” Bobby was starting to look more like himself—he’d been sleeping better and eating like a teenager.

“I do,” Franny said. “I really do.” She whisked the batter and then slid her finger around the edge of the bowl and stuck it in her mouth, nodding with self-approval. She knifed a small pat of butter and melted it on the hot griddle. “Are you making coffee with your eyes closed for a reason, Syl?”

Sylvia’s eyes flew open. “I was just testing myself,” she said. “Yep, three minutes.” She carried the French press to the table and released the plunger. Bobby held out his cup. “Pour it yourself,” she said. “I’m busy.” Sylvia slid down the bench toward the wall and closed her eyes again, a half-smile on her face.

“You are a weirdo,” Bobby said.

“Oh, yes,” Sylvia said, eyes still shut. “I am.”

That was exactly what his sister had always been good at—being herself. Bobby thought about the slick suits in his closet that he wore when he showed expensive apartments, the hi-tech fabrics he wore to Total Body Power, the faded jeans he’d had since college that he wore when Carmen wasn’t around because she called them “dad pants.”

“You know, I don’t even like real estate that much,” Bobby said. “Or working out. I mean, I like working out because I like to feel healthy, but I don’t really care if I have the best body in the world.” He paused. “I wonder how hard it is to adopt a baby.”

“Let’s just deal with one thing at a time, sweetie, okay?” Franny said, swanning over with a plate stacked high with thick pancakes, some dotted with blueberries.

“Okay,” Bobby said, and forked three of the pancakes onto his plate.

“Okay,” Sylvia said, finally opening her eyes. “These are the best pancakes I have ever seen.” She looked up at her mother. “Thank you, Mom.”

Franny wiped her hands on her skirt, slightly flustered. “You’re welcome, my love.” She turned around to get the syrup, which Jim was already holding.

“I don’t know what happened to our children,” she said. “But I like it.”

Jim kissed Franny on the forehead, which Sylvia and Bobby pretended not to see. All four Posts held their breath simultaneously, each wishing for the moment to last. Families were nothing more than hope cast out in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best. Even the poor souls who had children in an attempt to rescue a dying marriage were doing so out of a misguided hopefulness. Franny and Jim and Bobby and Sylvia did their silent best, and just like that, for a moment, they were all aboard the same ship.

Sylvia had been thinking about Joan every minute since she’d left his company the day before. She wanted to have sex again and again, until she felt like she really knew what she was doing, and Joan seemed like a good partner. He could pick her up, for fuck’s sake. He knew about secluded beaches. Who cared if he listened to terrible music and wore shirts with fleurs-de-lis printed on the shoulder when he went out dancing? At home, Sylvia would never in a million years have been interested in anyone who went out dancing, period, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she needed to figure out a totally natural way to sneak Joan upstairs to her bedroom without her parents noticing.

In the few minutes before he rang the bell, Sylvia opened her laptop at the kitchen counter. There was a message from Brown with her rooming situation—Keeney Quad, what she’d been hoping for, where most of the freshmen lived—and contact information about her new roommate (Molly Krumpler-Jones, of Newton, Massachusetts). It was the e-mail that Sylvia had been waiting months for, but she barely even looked at it, because right above it was an e-mail from Joan.