Ella had never understood the idea about blood and water. When she'd been little, when she'd run down to the creek to swim after church (her momma had thought that was a terrible idea but she wasn't Max and her rebellions were small and mostly involved being comfortable) she'd tripped and cut her knee. Blood had ribboned through water until the blood was nothing and water, water was life. Family was something you built yourself up on, and then you worked out who you were without it.
Gus was a sweetheart, and she smiled in his direction as Elizabeth over-enthusiastically petted the dog. The dog would recover and Gus had taken on board Elizabeth going from his younger cousin to his older (the lines of family smudged a little when blood didn't segregate you into neat lines) and Ella grinned, fond at all that little-kid angularity in Elizabeth's bony elbows.
"She got big," she agreed, with a sip of coffee that tasted as good as it smelled, but she shrugged off the question like it was nothing and she smiled privately at that little raise of eyebrows. Luke was Max's kid where it counted. "Yeah, he is. He and she got on real well so I guess it makes sense." But Thomas was a shadow at the back of Luke's life rather than a presence, and she remembered rain and Seattle and the settled gloom and she said, "Blood doesn't have to do it. Just time, around the right people. Although my mom tried to get baking to stick and it just didn't."