Duh. But he can’t have broken up with someone like Lily for—
“When he told Peter that we’d split, Peter admitted that he liked me and asked me out.” She spreads her hands, as though she cannot believe her own story. “We got married two months later, and I got pregnant right after.
Can you believe it?”
I smile. “It’s so romantic. I’m so sorry about what happened to Peter.”
“Yeah. It was . . . It’s not easy.” She looks away. “Thank you for what you’re doing for BLINK. I know it’s high security and you can’t talk about it, but when you came on board, Levi mentioned what an asset you’d be. It means a lot, having someone like you carry out Peter’s legacy. And thank you for sharing Levi with us.”
There’s a lump in my throat. “He’s not mine to share.”
“I think he might be, actually. Oh, that little— Penny, you need a hat!
You can’t be in the sun like that!”
“Levi said I could!”
Levi lifts one eyebrow, clearly having said no such thing. Penny sullenly stalks to her mother, only to stop in front of me with a shy, hesitant look.
“Does that hurt?” she asks, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
“What— Oh, my nose piercing. Just a tiny bit when I first got it, many years ago.”
She nods skeptically. “Is your name really Bee?”
“It is.”
“Like the bug?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
Levi and I laugh. Lily covers her eyes with a hand.
“My mom was a poet, and she really liked a set of poems about bees.”
Penny nods. Apparently, it makes as much sense to her as it did to Maria DeLuca-Königswasser. “Where’s your mom?”
“Gone, now.”
“Oh. My daddy’s gone, too.” I can feel the tension in the adults, but there’s something matter-of-fact about the way
Penny talks. “What’s your favorite animal?”
“Will you be disappointed if I don’t say bees?”
She mulls it over. “Depends. Not if it’s a good one.”
“Okay. Are cats good?”
“Yes! They’re Levi’s favorite, too. He has a black kitty!”
“That’s right,” Levi interjects. “And Bee has a kitty, too. A see-through one.” I glare at him.
“My favorite animals are spiders,” Penny informs me.
“Oh, spiders are, um”—I suppress a shudder—“cool, too. My sister’s favorite animals are blobfish. Have you ever seen one?”
Her eyes widen, and she climbs on my lap to look at the picture I’m pulling up on my phone. God, I love children. I love this child. I look up and notice the way Levi’s staring at me with an odd light in his eyes.
“Is your sister a child?” Penny asks after making a face at the blobfish.
“She’s my twin.”
“Really? Does she look like you?”
“Yep.” I scroll to my favorites and tap on a picture of the two of us at fifteen, before I started what Reike calls my “journey of soft-core body modification.” “Wow! Which one is you?”
“On the right.”
“Do you get along?”
“Yeah. Well, we insult each other a lot, too. But yeah.”
“Do you live together?”
I shake my head. “I actually don’t see her in person much. She travels a lot.”
