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The knot that starts to form in my throat confuses me, but I push through.

“Rest well,” I repeat, and Avery and Luna follow, then surprising all of us, the boys do too.

It’s cute as all hell, but I suspect they still don’t fully understand what any of this means.

“Let’s get out of here,” I murmur, and I’m thankful when no one disagrees.

Everyone gets into their own car with their own security guards, but we all make our way to my home. The brownstone is where I grew up, where my sisters also lived most of their childhoods, certainly their teenage years. It’s the only place besides the ice in Barclay Arena that feels like home to me.

I convinced Jim to let me renovate and live in it last year after I graduated from Columbia, and had to endure months of living with him and number five while the project was underway, but now it’s perfect to have my brothers, sisters, their husbands, and kids here.

Half the ground floor has been converted into a family room that has little sections for every age, and the rest is the entrance with a big closet and a huge kitchen that gets the perfect light from the typical postage-stamp-sized yard.

I had a room designed for my brothers, of course, but there’s one for everyone.

Specifically for them.

I wanted them to feel like they could come here and have a home away from home, since none of them live in Manhattan.

Since I moved here when the project was done a few months ago, my sisters and their families have all been here, all stayed here from time to time, so the chaos of a very full house isn’t new, but it is welcome.

We settle all the kids in the big living room, then in silent agreement, the adults move to the kitchen.

I get out a bottle of white wine from the fridge for Liv and Avery, a bottle of red for Mark, sparkling water for Luna, and a bottle of Scotch for Aaron, Kyle, and me.

Once we’re all sitting around the big island, I finally look at Avery.

“What happened at the end that made you so tense?”

“What did Dan say?” she throws back.

I sigh, but not because she didn’t answer. I know she’ll tell us.

“He’s clearly looking to get into my good graces.” I roll my eyes. “Also insinuated he’d take care of the boys.” I let out a snort and shake my head. “We all know he doesn’t care about them any more than he does about us. He just figures it’s a shot at getting a paycheck without doing shit.”

“Yes,” Avery says, looking down at her wine glass, her voice distant and final. When she looks up, I see she’s not happy about what she’s about to say. “Amanda’s sister came up to me after the service.” She lets that statement lie there for a moment, as if she’s bracing herself for it. “She said she has a lawyer and is going to fight to get custody of the boys.”

As Luna and Liv explode with whispered outrage, with Kyle and Aaron trying their best to comfort them—we met Emma exactly once before today, at Amanda and Jim’s wedding—I try to connect the same dots Avery is.

“If I give an inch, either of them would be happy to take a mile,” I surmise.

Ignoring everyone else for now, with her eyes locked on me, Avery nods slowly.

“You heard the judge. If you say you’re not as suited for them as me . . . then they’d investigate everyone available, and Dan and Emma would happily throw their hats in.”

“Fuck,” I hiss, and reach down to swallow my three fingers of Scotch in one go. It stings, but I welcome it.

“We can’t let the boys grow up with them. Either of them,” Liv says with a vicious look. Her mamma-bear instincts are fine-tuned, and come out at the drop of a hat, and it seems Aaron’s steady presence behind her is the only thing holding her back from leaping off her stool and running out to start attacking.

“They only want the money you’d have to pay them for childcare,” Luna says, instinctively rubbing her barely there belly.

“I know,” I grouse.

“We need to talk to Baron about all this, and if . . .” I trail off, looking away. I’m not sure what they’ll think of my next words. “I’m well aware I’m not the best person to take care of them. We all know it. But if the alternative is having people shlepping them from person to person to see who gets them as if they were some fucking trophy, then I’m not giving them up.”

Weird moment to find a backbone, I think, but I’m not going to budge on this, I realize.

“I don’t want their lives to become a kind of . . .” I wave a hand around. “Popularity contest with child services.”