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“Jax,” Preston says slowly. “You bought us a Billy Bass.”

“The bookcases have a cousin now.”

“I begged him,” Max says. “I showed him catalogues. I made a shortlist of appropriate gifts.”

“Every home needs one thing that makes no sense,” Jax says. “Otherwise you start taking yourselves too seriously.”

Catherine looks at the fish the way she looked at the single shoe on the second-floor landing of our old building. Preston hangs it by the garden door immediately, with ceremony, at the exact height Max objects to.

Alistair and Miguel aren’t coming, which we learned this morning when a courier delivered six feet of gilt-framed oil painting to the front stoop. It’s the portrait. Captain Beaky, in oils, rendered like a feathered Caesar – wings half-spread, eyes ablaze, posed against a storm-dark sky that suggests imperial ambitions. The note, in Alistair’s handwriting, reads: So he may watch over the house while he cannot attend it. Explanation to follow. Courage.

The call comes at 18:20, on speaker. With Alistair, every call is on speaker eventually.

“Boys.” His voice is grave in a way I’ve never heard it. “I’ll be brief. Captain Beaky is in the hospital.”

“The avian centre in Miami!” Miguel calls from the background, thick with grief. “The best one! They flew in a specialist!”

“A respiratory episode,” Alistair says. “Wednesday. One moment he was fine – vibrant, profane, fully himself – and the next, Preston, the silence. He hasn’t said ‘Mierda’ in two days. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Two days. The doctors say the prognosis is excellent. And yet, the doctors did not have to sit beside that oxygen tent listening to that silence.”

“There’s a tiny tent,” Miguel weeps. “It’s so small, Preston.”

“We won’t leave him. York men have our faults – God knows the catalogue is extensive–”

“The catalogue has appendices,” Catherine says, to her wine.

“Catherine! Is that Catherine? Marvellous, you’re all together. She would know – she curated the first edition. As I was saying: we do not abandon family in the hospital, and that bird is family. Enjoy the housewarming. Toast the house. Water the garden. Govern yourselves accordingly.”

And then, faint but unmistakable, from somewhere behind the line – a small, raspy, defiant “Mierda.”

Miguel shrieks. Alistair’s voice cracks on “He’s BACK–” and the call cuts off, presumably so they can celebrate at his tentside, and the portrait gets propped against the wall pending a decision no-one is ready to make. Catherine has not looked directly at it once.

We eat. It’s loud – Elena and Catherine deep in offshore holdings discussions, Mamá refilling plates without consent, Max re-measuring the fish’s placement with disgust in his eyes, Jax working through the tostones like it’s his sole mission in life, Preston conducting all of it like the world’s most theatrical air-traffic controller. The house takes the noise and holds it easily with room to spare. The table is long enough to need a far end, which Catherine has claimed by natural law. Preston, beside me, tips his glass two inches off the wood toward mine, just for me, and I understand the toast without hearing it.

Then Catherine sets down her fork.

“Now that the housing matter is resolved,” she says, in the tone of a board meeting moving to the next agenda item, “we should discuss the nursery.”

“Mother–”

“The bedroom across from yours is empty, Preston. Empty bedrooms are a provocation. And since the Foundation’s legacy planning requires a timeline, let me simplify the finances, which I understand are the modern obstacle.” She touches her napkin to the corner of her mouth. “I would happily pay one million dollars to anyone willing to be your surrogate.”

She says it the way other people say pass the salt.

The table goes silent. Mamá’s serving spoon stops mid-air. Preston’s mouth opens and produces nothing, which is likely a first.

Elena folds her napkin and sets it beside her plate.

She looks at Catherine, then me, then, finally, Preston. And I watch it happen – the same fifteen seconds of mental-math she ran on Frederick’s net worth, and every mental alarm I own starts going off before she says a word.

“I’ll do it,” Elena says.

The table explodes.

I choke on rice. Preston’s wine glass hits the table and rolls, bleeding red across the wood, and he doesn’t even look at it, which is how I know the world has ended. Jax stops chewing – actually stops, mid-tostón, the first pause in his intake since he sat down at the table. Max makes a sound like a kettle reaching temperature. Mamá stands up so fast her chair scrapes loudly across the new floor. Catherine looks genuinely surprised, both eyebrows raised.

“Elena,” I say. “No.”

“Absolutely not,” Preston says. “No. Thank you, obviously – but no.”