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Bane kisses me while losing arguments with furniture and chasing a dog through the penthouse with two six-year-olds shouting instructions at him.

By the time I reach the hall, Babs is accusing Sprout of being a “baby robber,” Biddy is trying to negotiate the elephant’s release, and Bane is attempting to catch the dog without knocking over a lamp.

I brace one hand beneath my stomach and follow them.

“Emma!” Babs barrels back into the nursery without the elephant.

Biddy follows at a more sensible pace. “Sprout took it in Daddy’s room.”

“Our room,” Bane corrects as he crouches beside the dresser again.

I look at him, but he’s already sorting screws as though he hasn’t said anything worth noticing. Half my clothes are hanging beside his, my toiletries have spread across his bathroom, and I haven’t slept at my apartment in more than a week.

I agreed to move in when Bane asked me, but there was never a dramatic moment when one home became the other. My things simply kept appearing here, and he kept making space for them.

Babs asks whether I’m coming home whenever I leave for work. Bane stopped asking because he already knows I am.

Somewhere along the way, the penthouse stopped feeling like his place and became ours.

Biddy takes my hand and pulls me toward the stack of framed prints. “Can babies like dinosaurs and stars?”

“I think they can.”

She looks relieved before turning toward her sister. “Emma says they can have both.”

Babs folds her arms and studies the pictures. “Even this one?”

She holds up a cartoon T. rex with enormous teeth.

Biddy winces. “He’s scary.”

“He’s smiling.”

“His teeth are too big.”

Babs looks at me. “Will the babies get scared?”

“If they do, we can move him somewhere else.”

She gives the dinosaur another serious look before nodding. “Okay. He can go by the door.”

Biddy picks up a picture of stars. “And this goes by the crib.”

“Other crib,” Babs says, rearranging their plan. “So they both get some.”

The argument that has occupied them for most of the week ends with an arrangement they both appear satisfied with, and Bane looks up from the floor as if he expects somebody to announce a trick.

“That’s it?”

Babs shrugs. “We figured it out.”

He looks at me. “I’ve watched adults negotiate contracts with less difficulty.”

“Your board could probably learn from them.”

Bane notices when I ease myself onto the window seat. “You’re done.”

“I’m sitting.”