Chapter 23

GABRIEL

The place was a madhouse. Ma moved everyone over to the main house, and there were more hands than were needed to help with the babies. Lancelot and the twins were already fighting over who got to carry who, but my daughter settled the argument by choosing her uncle.

Since I don't know much about kids, there was a lot that I wasn't sure about, but the kids seemed quieter than I would expect. But it wasn't so much their silence that caught my attention, but their attentiveness. The three of them sometimes seemed to be in a world of their own, and the boys especially kept their mother in their sights at all times.

Gabriella, on the other hand, was like a social butterfly; she had her grandfather wrapped around her little finger in ten seconds flat. I realized after five minutes, when my uncle and his wife came over from next door, that there were a few people missing. "Ma, where are Natalia and Jr.?"

"They'll be here soon. There was an incident, so your grandparents took