"You sure you want to do this?" The concern in Jeffrey's voice was touching and unmistakable. He looked at Goldie and the girls uncertainly, blinking his brown eyes as they flicked back and forth. He looked so handsome and worried.

"Of course," Goldie replied airily. Her thick blonde hair was in a ponytail braid, and she was wearing a T-shirt with jogging shorts and running shoes, looking like a teenaged au pair from Scandinavia who might perhaps speak broken English with a delightful accent.

She had the babies in their triplet stroller, which was really just an extra wide one, so they still had access to each other. Jeff and Goldie had agreed that the stacking kind, which were narrower and more convenient, would be too isolating, and keep the girls too far apart from each other.

She was going to go for a jog.

Jeff had objected strenuously at first to her taking the babies, saying he'd just keep them at home so she could jog alone.

"Jeffrey, that's idiotic," Goldie had protested. "I'm here to take care of them, it's my job. But I need to get some exercise, or I start to get all flabby and loose and gah, you know?"

While thinking to himself that she looked anything but loose and flabby, Jeff reiterated that he'd keep the girls.

Jemma, Genie and Pippa watched and listened with interest as their grown ups argued while climbing all over them, poking their fingers into their ears and mouths.

"I'll be fine, people jog with babies all the time," Goldie said. "Why else did we get that snazzy stroller, if not to go out with them?"

"I know," Jeff said lamely. "But it seems like it might be better if I went with you?"

"Have you ever been for a run in your life?" Goldie asked.

Reluctantly, Jeff shook his head.

"I usually run thirty miles a week, just for maintenance," Goldie told him. "You couldn't keep up, you'd stroke out on the first day."

So he'd acquiesced, and Goldie had popped the babies into their stroller, put their little hats on, and gotten them ready to go out.

"Okay, girls, say 'bye-bye' to daddy," Goldie sang, waving to a forlorn Jeff. "Tell him we'll be back in about an hour."

Jeff watched them from the large window that faced the street, most of him worried about his darling babies, but part of him thinking that Goldie's rear end looked really nice in her running shorts, and her breasts looked really pretty as she started jogging.

What in the world was he doing?

He shook his head and turned away from the window, walking resolutely to the piano to see if he could get any writing done while he had the apartment to himself. After ten minutes, though, he admitted that all he could think about was a nap, so he lay down on the sofa and was out cold in five minutes.

Goldie, meanwhile, was hitting her groove after a couple of weeks of not running, really enjoying being outside. It wasn't too hot yet, and the sun and air felt good on her body. She could see the girls' little hands grasping the sides of the stroller and their heads swiveling back and forth as they looked around at the things that made up their world in lower Manhattan, in Tribeca and Greenwich Village.

She turned right on Waverly Place and jogged to Washington Square Park, feeling a little bit of a burn in her legs, realizing that the couple of weeks she'd taken off had made a difference in her stamina already. She jogged around the park and cut in, stopping at a bench to take a break, grabbing her water from the back of the stroller and taking a long drink as she caught her breath.

"Hey, cuties, are you enjoying this?" she asked the girls.

They looked windblown and happy, and looked up at her, chortling and reaching for the crackers she handed out.

Goldie checked her watch and looked around.

"There she is!" she heard. "There they are."

"Mr and Ms. Velasquez, how are you?" she began, but they didn't even hear her as they approached the bench. They only had eyes for the occupants of the stroller. Griffin was with them. He, of course, was dressed in a suit, for work, but the grandparents were dressed much more casually today, as a couple out for a stroll in the city.

Sofia had tears in her eyes as she looked at the girls.

"May we pick them up?" she asked Goldie. "Do you think they'd—they'd be frightened of us?"

"I don't think so." Goldie shook her head.

Goldie picked up the first baby and spoke to her. "Pippa, this is your grandma."

She passed her to the older woman.

Pippa regarded her with deep brown eyes, fingers in her mouth, for a moment before reaching out to grab at the crucifix around Sofia's neck.

Goldie next grabbed Genie and handed her to her grandfather.

"Hello, Genie, it's a pleasure to meet you at last," Hector Velasquez told her, smiling into her blue eyes.

Genie smiled back, showing him her teeth and drooling a little bit.

Hector gestured toward Jemma, who was watching everyone from inside the stroller.

Goldie picked her up and handed her to her grandfather, saying, "Jemma, meet your grandpa."

"And hello to you, too, Jemma," Hector said with a smile as he gathered her into his other arm.

"Blarna babbla," Jemma responded, making everyone laugh.

Griffin took some pictures for them while the proud grandparents posed, turning this way and that.

At one point, Sofia wiped away tears. "You know, they all look like Maggie," she said softly. "Jemma most of all, but they all do."

Hector put an arm around his wife. "I know, Sof," he answered, nodding. "It's amazing to think we're holding these beautiful little ones, and they're actually a part of our daughter."

Sofia let out a breath that had a sob on the end of it. "I think we were wrong, Hector, to be so hard on her. Maybe it didn't really matter that she and that Jeffrey never married? Who's to say that they mightn't have someday? And maybe he would've converted? For the babies' sake?" She looked worriedly at her husband. "And maybe even now, if we could talk to him, make things right with him, he might let us baptize these beautiful girls—?"

Hector's face hardened. "He's not Catholic, Sofia, he doesn't understand the danger their beautiful souls are in."

Griffin spoke up. "And is it worth taking the risk? What if you make overtures, get close to him, develop a relationship, and then he says no? What options will you have then?"

Goldie looked sharply up at him. She was holding Jemma in her lap, and the baby was playing with a colorful rattle her grandparents had brought as a gift.

"Well, I'm sorry to cut this short," Goldie said apologetically, "but I have to be getting back, or Jeff will be suspicious."

Hector and Sofia looked disappointed, but didn't complain, immediately rising to kiss the girls and hand them back, one at a time, so Goldie could buckle them into their stroller.

Goldie handed back the toys they'd brought. "We can't keep them, you understand," she said with regret. "It would be strange if I went out for a jog and came back with toys."

The Velasquezes nodded and gathered the toys back.

"Thank you for bringing them to us," Sofia said sincerely, placing her hand on Goldie's arm. "It really, really, meant so much to us, you can't imagine.

"Yes, thank you, young lady," Hector echoed with a nod.

"We'll do it again, soon," Goldie promised.

The older couple leaned in and kissed every baby, then stood back, arm in arm, and waved as Goldie jogged out of the park.

When she let herself into the apartment, Jeff was fast asleep on the sofa, looking so much like Pippa it was amazing; same brown hair, same arch to the eyebrows, same cheekbones, same angle to the lashes as they lay against the skin, and, Goldie, knew, same brown eyes when they were open. Even the way his arms were thrown up over his head, the way his long legs were crossed, was Pippa.

Just then, one of the girls made a noise, and he opened his eyes.

"Hello, then," he said, smiling as he stretched his long frame.

He was so handsome.

"Enjoy your run?" he asked as he rose and approached the stroller. He quickly and expertly unbuckled them and set them down to roam after first checking their diapers.

"Yeah, it was great to get out and really stretch, though I could tell I'd missed a couple of weeks," Goldie answered, wincing a little. "I can already tell I'm going to feel it tomorrow.

"Gimme a sec to change, and I'll help you get them down for their naps, okay?"

Jeff nodded as he began getting their bottles ready.

Twenty minutes later, all three girls were out cold and in their cribs.

"How does that work?" Goldie asked with a laugh. "I go for a run, and they get pooped out?"

"However it works, I'll take it," Jeff answered, looking at their sleeping forms.

"And it seems like you got a good nap as well," Goldie said, rubbing Jeff's back. She saw what she was doing and stopped abruptly, though he didn't seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

"Yeah, I feel almost human," he commented as they went down to the living room.

"You know, I was wondering about the girls' grandparents," Goldie said casually as they sat with cups of tea. "I know yours live in England, right? Why didn't you ask them for help? Wouldn't they have come?"

"In a second," Jeff answered, taking a sip of his tea. "Dunno, I was feeling stubborn, I suppose. I wanted to do it on my own. We actually took the babies to see them right after they were born, and my parents told me to come and live with them after Maggie died. I said no." He shrugged. "It just would've felt like cheating somehow. I was supposed to be the father, and it would've felt like becoming the son again, something like that."

Goldie nodded. "What about Maggie's parents, are they around?"

"Yeah, they're around," Jeff answered. "They live in Virginia." He sighed.

"Something wrong with them?"

Jeff shook his head. "No, they're very nice people, actually. Catholic. That was the only problem."

"First, they didn't like that I wasn't Catholic. Then, they didn't like that Maggie and I were living together, with no plans to get married. Then, they didn't like the in vitro to get pregnant. Actually, I was quite angry with them over that," Jeff recalled. "They made Mags feel awful. Then, they were very unhappy that Maggie didn't want the girls to be baptized. Oh my god, the rows they had over that!" He took another sip of his tea."

"They?"

Jeff nodded. "I tried to stay out of things, just support her, you know? These were her battles, and if they ever worked them out, I knew they could forgive their daughter, but I didn't think they'd ever forgive me, so yeah.

"So when they started saying that the girls' everlasting souls were in danger if they didn't get baptized, Maggie got furious, said the girls souls were just perfect the way they were or something like that, and that she wouldn't hear of baptizing them, well, that was it, you know? I didn't actually care one way or the other, we christen babies in England all the time, means nothing to me. I was trying to sort of negotiate a peace treaty between them, but nothing was working. So Maggie wasn't speaking to them. And then she died."

Jeff sighed again, a heavy sound.

Goldie reached out and rubbed his shoulder.

"I feel bad to keep the girls from them and vice versa, but I feel like I'd be going against what Maggie wanted if I don't, you know?" Jeff turned an agonized gaze to Goldie. "Sometimes I can't sleep for worrying if I'm doing the right thing. Shit. I don't know." He ran his hand through his hair.

Goldie bit her lips together and said nothing.

"And every day that goes by is another little piece of the girls' babyhood that Hector and Sofia will never get back, you know?"

Goldie nodded.

"My parents FaceTime with them, visit them, get photographs, all of it, and that poor, nice old couple who lost their only child are missing out on knowing the only grandchildren they'll ever have..."

They heard gurgles and laughter coming from the monitor and rose to go to the babies.

"Hello, darlings," Jeff called.

"Dadadada," Genie responded from her crib.

"Oh my god, did she—" Goldie began.

"Good lord, did she—" Jeff said at the same time.