“Dude, will you stop your fucking caterwauling? You’re scaring my daughter.”

My husband’s off-key rendition of “Blue Skies” stopped abruptly, but he smiled good-naturedly at Celia. “Which daughter?” he teased.

“All of them,” she shot back, bouncing baby Carolina on her knee as her gaze wandered across the backyard to the rest of her brood.

I followed her gaze, watching as Jamy sat under a massive acacia tree, rolling a soccer ball a few feet back and forth with Marietta and Valentina. Meanwhile, their two-year-old sister, Alicia, looked on in fascination, her big blue eyes wide as she sucked her thumb.

A squeal caught my attention then, and my head swung around to see Hannah and Brian’s eight-month-old son, Jacob, laying on his tummy under an umbrella in the middle of the lawn, pulling up tufts of grass and giggling like a loon. His uncle Sam was watching him, patiently pulling his hand away whenever the little guy tried to stuff a fistful of the green stuff into his drooly little mouth.

“Watch your language, Cee,” Hannah admonished from her seat next to me. She was lounging in the shade, nursing Jacob’s twin sister, Christina. “I don’t need my kids picking up your potty mouth.”

“Babe!” Brian’s deep baritone boomed across the patio from his station by the grill. He frowned, wiping his forehead as smoke billowed out from the smoker Eric had installed last year. “Where the fuck did you put the mesquite wood we brought over here?”

I snorted. “Yeah, Auntie Celia is such a bad influence.”

“Fucking A,” she replied, leaning over for a fist bump.

I awkwardly shifted the sleeping toddler on my shoulder, extending a hand to meet hers.

“It’s right there by the door,” Hannah replied, sounding exasperated as she pointed at a big, obvious pile of wood about two feet from her husband. “Why I let him man the grill, I don’t fucking know,” she muttered, rising to her feet to go help him. She stopped along the way, pulling a now-sated Christina off and dumping the baby in her brother’s arms, and I laughed. At least she had the decency to give him a burping cloth before she left.

Sam looked a little nonplussed as he stared down at his niece. But then he shrugged, pulling her to his shoulder and patting her little back.

Celia and I watched in amusement as Hannah literally had to turn her husband around and push him in the direction of the mesquite pile. Which I repeat, was right fucking next to him.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the future of sustainable city planning,” I said, making a sardonic sweeping gesture at Brian.

Celia chuckled evilly. “Why is it all the really hot ones are so dumb?”

I glanced at Eric, who was rocking our five-month-old son to sleep, now humming the same song he’d just been hacking to little atonal pieces a moment ago. “Not all of them,” I argued.

Celia’s gaze strayed to her own husband, who was jogging across the lawn to rescue a shrieking Marietta. The five-year-old had gotten bored with the soccer game and tried to play hide-and-seek by herself in Bubbe’s rosebushes. Todd’s biceps flexed as he hefted his daughter, gently lifting her arm and extracting the thorn that had gotten stuck in it.

“Truth,” she sighed.

“I still cannot believe you married that nerd,” Hannah huffed as she flopped back into her seat, her eyes flicking to Eric. She shook her head like she just didn’t get it.

And that was fine with me. “Eh. One woman’s nerd is another woman’s treasure.”

“You guys do know I’m standing right here, don’t you?” my nerd asked, raising a thick brow. But he was grinning, his chocolate eyes crinkling behind his glasses.

I winked at him, then turned back to my cousin. “Besides, everyone-”

“Is a sexual being,” came a chorus from all the adults.

“Gwoss, Auntie Bean,” Valentina complained as she toddled over, hand-in-hand with Auntie Jamy.

“Super gross,” Jamy agreed, her green eyes sparkling at me.

I shrugged. “Well, they are.” My eyes landed on my husband again. “Especially that being.”

Hannah shook her head sadly. “At least tell me you burned the elbow patches,” she pleaded.

I grinned, but made no response. Eric met my eyes, and he gave me a secret smile. One that told me he’d dig out the elbow patches later, once the kids were in bed, for a little costume play. Professor Levy, Antiques Expert, at my service.

I could hardly wait. I was horny all the damn time lately. Probably because of a little something I’d yet to tell Eric, something growing in my womb, planting itself in my life and my heart.

My eyes slid to the acacia tree and the tiny little grave underneath it, the river rocks marking the final resting spot of a most beloved cat. And to the bougainvillea vine a few feet away, which was growing out of the ashes we’d sprinkled on it last year. The ashes of the woman who’d loved her garden and her cat almost as much as she’d loved her family.

Naomi Ruth. I decided that in that moment we would name the new baby Naomi Ruth Levy, in honor of Bubbe’s memory. I only wish she’d gotten to meet her, as she had our other daughter.

And though I was only about six weeks along, I knew it was a girl. I hadn’t been wrong yet. Evangeline Rose and Benjamin Blue had been in my heart long before they appeared in a sonogram. Just like Naomi Ruth was now there, taking up permanent residence already, after just a few weeks.

Because I didn’t have any armor around my heart anymore. I didn’t need it – my heart was too strong now, too full of love. It beat strong and true every moment of every day, pumping out my love into my family and friends, and flowing back into me, augmented by their own, to fortify and nourish me. I loved, and I was loved, day after day, time after time.

And I wouldn’t fucking dare have it any other way.