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was
almost
right. It’s almost my birthday.”
    “Cheer up,” Bee told him. “There’s always the next one.”
    “Next one! Good grief.”
    The next one of Claudia’s, they both meant. It never occurred to them that
Lucy’s
baby might arrive on his birthday. But that was what happened.
    He had spent the evening at Cicely’s, where she and his friends threw him a party. When he got home he found his mother waiting up for him. “Guess what!” she said. “Lucy had her baby.”
    “What, so soon?”
    “A little girl: Daphne. She’s small but healthy, breathing on her own … Danny called about an hour ago and he was so excited he could hardly talk.”
    “After this he won’t be fit to live with,” Ian said gloomily.
    “And Lucy’s doing fine. Oh, won’t the neighbors tease us? They’ll be counting on their fingers, except in this case it’s obvious that … you want to go with me to the hospital tomorrow?”
    “I have school tomorrow,” Ian said.
    Besides, he had never been much interested in infants.
    He didn’t see the new baby for a week, in fact, whatwith one thing and another. Neither did Claudia, who was stuck at home with her own baby. So on Sunday, when everyone gathered at the Bedloes’ for dinner, Danny made a big production of introducing his daughter. “Ta-da!” he trumpeted, and he entered the house bearing her high in both hands—a tiny cluster of crochet work. “Here she is, folks! Miss Daphne Bedloe.” Lucy looked paler than usual, but she laughed as she bent to unbutton Thomas’s jacket.
    “Let’s see her,” Claudia commanded from the couch. She had constructed a kind of nest there and was nursing Franny. Ian had retreated to the other side of the room as soon as he saw Claudia fumbling under her blouse, and he made no move now to come closer. All newborns looked more or less alike, he figured. And this one might still be sort of … fetus-shaped. He hung back and dug his hands in his pockets and traced an arc in the rug with one sneaker.
    But Danny said, “Don’t you want to see too, Ian?” and he sounded so hurt that Ian had to say, “Huh? Oh. Sure.” He took his hands from his pockets and approached.
    Danny set her on the couch next to Claudia and started peeling off layers. First the crocheted blanket, then an inner blanket, then a bonnet. His fingers seemed too thick for the task, but finally he said, “There!” and straightened up, grinning.
    What was that fairy tale? “Sleeping Beauty,” maybe, or “Snow White.” Skin as white as snow and hair as black as coal and lips as red as roses. So she was prettier than most other babies, yes, but still not all that interesting. Until she opened her eyes.
    She opened her eyes and fixed Ian with a thoughtful, considering stare, and Ian felt a sudden loosening in his chest. It seemed she had reached out and pulled a stringfrom somewhere deep inside him. It seemed she
knew
him. He blinked.
    “Your birthday-mate,” Danny was saying. “Or birthmate, or whatever they call it. Isn’t she something?”
    To regain his distance, Ian let his eyes slide over to Claudia. He found her looking directly into his face, meaningfully, narrowly. He couldn’t think what she wanted to convey; he didn’t understand her intensity. Then it came to him, as clearly as if she had spoken.
    This is not a premature baby
.
    He was so astonished that he let his eyes slide back again, forgetting why he had glanced away in the first place. And it was true: she might be small but her cheeks were round, and her little fists were dimpled. She looked nothing like those “Life Before Birth” photos in
Life
magazine.
    “Isn’t she a love?” Bee asked. “Two loves,” she added, blowing a kiss toward Franny. And Claudia said, “She’s a beauty, Lucy.”
    Ian turned to study Claudia. She was smiling now. Her face—a younger, smoother version of Bee’s—seemed relaxed and peaceful. The hitch had been smoothed over. Not a trace of it remained.