I’m so sorry, Alex.

I didn’t know what it meant.

I just did what I was told.” Twins, Lucia had said.

And Alex, holding the phone, thought of the four children on that rug, and understood that when Elena had made that second desperate call, neither she nor anyone else had yet known that the twins were, in fact, quadruplets.

His mother had intercepted the news of two grandchildren.

She had not even known there were four.