Turn 109 of 233

Plan the next visit with Sina. Invite both Janet and Samuel as well so all of us can meet for the first time

Lena sits in the truck outside her apartment and the phone is still warm against her ear and Samuel's voice is still in the air — *my daughter is going to be a mother* — and she holds it the way she holds a beam that's been set true, the weight of it settling into something structural. She dials Sina before she goes inside.

"I want you to meet my family," Lena says. "My mother and my brother. I want all of us in the same room."

Sina is quiet for three seconds. The Samoan quiet — the one that isn't empty, the one that holds the weight while the mind works.

"When?"

"Soon. Before I start showing too much. Before the work gets heavy again."

"Come here. Bring them. I'll cook. The kids will be around but they're good. They'll be quiet if I tell them."

Lena hangs up and calls Janet. Janet answers on the second ring and Lena says it plain — there's someone she needs to meet, the father's sister, she's in Gainesville, she's going to be part of the baby's life. Janet listens the way Janet listens — completely, the notebook open, the pen ready. When Lena finishes, Janet says: "I'll be there. Tell me when."

The hard call is Samuel. Not because she thinks he'll refuse — the man on the phone twenty minutes ago was not the man who said *the work is good* with measured distance. That man is gone, at least for now, replaced by someone warmer and closer to the surface. But Lena knows her brother. The warmth is real but the warmth is new and new things in Samuel are fragile things, load-tested once and not yet proven. She calls and he picks up and she tells him about Sina and the bungalow and the invitation.

"I want you there," she says. "All of you. Together."

"I'll be there," Samuel says. No pause. No measurement. The words come fast and she hears something in them that she hasn't heard in years — eagerness, unguarded, the sound of her brother wanting something before he's had time to decide if wanting it is structurally advisable.

They pick a Saturday. Two weeks out. Lena coordinates from the balcony — three calls, two texts, the logistics simple. Janet will drive up from the south. Samuel will drive in from the west. Lena will take the highway north. Three vehicles, one bungalow, one table. Sina texts a single confirmation: *I'll make the laplap.*

Lena doesn't know what laplap is. She looks it up on her phone — taro and coconut milk wrapped in banana leaves, steamed, a Samoan dish, the kind of food made for gatherings. The screen is bright on the balcony and the fan turns above her and the city hums below and the baby is nine weeks old now and growing and the body is five hundred twenty-five pounds and the body is hers and the body is carrying something that belongs to a family she is building one call at a time. She puts the phone down and lies back on the concrete and the stars are out and the concrete is warm and the warm thing in her chest is not the wish. The wish is silent. The warm thing is hers.