He was born in January, fourteen months after June — a big, furious, entirely healthy boy with Paul’s ears, and my sister looked at him with an expression I had never once seen on our mother’s face looking at either of us.

I want to say the obvious thing: Chelsea is a completely different mother than we were raised by.

She is tired and imperfect and she lets him eat things off the floor and she has never in eight months commented on his shape.

She had something to tell me.

I could read it on her from the door, because reading that family is my first language and Chelsea is fluent in the same dialect I am.

“Mom offered me the shop,” she said.