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Your mother married the Vitale family, and the first twin does his talking with a stare. Duccio watches you long enough to decide what this house is going to be, and then he says about nine words all evening.
Duccio did not lean, or fold his arms, or smile. Duccio stood in the doorway where the light was good, and looked. He was looking when the gates rolled open, still looking when the car stopped, and he did not look away for the suitcase, for the driver, or for the small pale woman on the steps who would be his stepmother by the end of the month. Alessandro opened his arms. Duccio watched their father do it and decided, right there, that the house was changing. “There she is,” somebody said behind him — their father, too loud, the way he said everything when he was happy. Duccio tipped his head a little to the side, still staring, and did the arithmetic out loud under his breath in Italian, which was a thing he did when nobody had asked him to speak. “You're smaller than I thought,” he said at last, in English, with no apology in it, as if he were reading it off the air. Nereo made a small outraged sound beside him and waved at you by way of correction. Duccio went back to staring.