“The left corner is the reading nook,” she informed everyone the first week they were allowed inside without adult supervision. “The right corner is secret planning.”
“What kind of planning?” Theodore asked.
Margot lowered her voice. “The kind Grandma does.”
Dorothy heard that from the kitchen window and nearly dropped a dish towel from laughing.
At five, the triplets were no longer only the small, vulnerable babies Colleen had died saving. They were people. Distinct, opinionated, impossible people.
Margot had Dorothy’s stubbornness and Colleen’s instinct to question every instruction that arrived without logic attached.
Bridget observed first, acted second, and remembered everything. She was the child who noticed when a photo frame on the mantel had been turned slightly or when Dorothy skipped one line in a bedtime story she’d read a hundred times.
Theodore had the deepest softness. He loved bugs, clouds, and any creature wounded enough to need mending. He cried when a squirrel got hit by a car and asked where sadness went when animals didn’t have pockets to carry it.
Dorothy answered that question as best she could.
She answered many questions as best she could.