My name is Marisol. I was hired six weeks ago to cook for a widowed father and his twin toddlers, in a house so quiet you could hear the clocks.

Mr. Hale worked from seven until midnight. The babies’ nanny had quit after two days. The twins hadn’t laughed since their mother’s funeral, the housekeeper told me, so I stopped trying to be a cook.

Every morning at ten, when the toast was made and the oatmeal cooled, I put on the yellow rubber gloves I used for the dishes and I clapped. Then I sang the little rhyme my abuela sang to me: ‘Tin marin, de do pingue.’ The twins watched me as if I had lost my mind.

On the fourth morning, the smaller twin clapped back.

This morning both of them laughed out loud, and when I looked up Mr. Hale was standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. I saw that he was crying.

I stopped clapping at once. ‘Sir, I’m sorry, it’s only a game.’

‘My wife sang that rhyme,’ he said. ‘Word for word. She was from a village in Michoacán.’

I had been born in the next village over. Our grandmothers had sung the same song.

He crossed the room slowly, sat down on the floor in his suit and let the boys climb into his lap. It was the first time I had seen him touch them since I came.

‘Would you stay?’ he asked. ‘Not as the cook.’

I said I would stay as long as the twins needed me.

That was two years ago. Mr. Hale comes home for lunch now. On Sundays the four of us sing in the kitchen, and the housekeeper pretends not to listen.

The boys say their first sentences in two languages. And both begin with the same words: ‘Tin marin.’

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