Please excuse any anachronisms or mistakes with current canon. I've been holding onto this for a few weeks and just got up the guts to finish the first part and post it. All reviews are welcome, and please feel free to PM me and let me know what you think.

"Damn it!" I groaned as my cell phone starting ringing just as I managed to heft the last of the groceries into the trunk. I looked down at my four-month-old daughter with mock sternness and shook a finger at her. "Don't swear. It's a bad habit."

Amelia, strapped into her infant car seat, grinned at me and giggled as I dug my phone from the diaper bag. Lifting Amelia's seat into the base and hearing it click into place, I hit 'answer' on my phone and put it to my ear. "Hi, Daddy. Can I call you back a little later? I'm just leaving the supermarket with Amelia –."

"Daphne, sweetheart, this can't wait. I want you to come back to Haven. They're back." My dad's familiar voice, usually comforting, sounded almost frantic. "You need to tell Jason and you need to come back here with Amelia. All three of you."

My heart pounded in my chest at his words, and I began to feel cold and clammy. Had I heard him right?

"Daph? Did you hear me?"

"I heard you, Daddy." I shut the door to my SUV and opened the driver's side door, sliding into the driver's seat. I didn't make a move for my keys, just sat there, the phone to my ear. "Are you sure they're back?"

"Honey, I wouldn't have called you unless it was absolutely positive. Please, you need to be here. You have no idea how to handle it. I can help you. You and Amelia and Jason will be safer here." He was pleading with me, I could hear the worry in his voice.

"Daddy, we can't just leave Atlanta. Jason's job is here, we have a house, a mortgage, we have a life here." I protested. "Can't you come here? You know that you're always welcome here for as long as you want."

I heard him sigh on the other end of the line, a heavy, concerned sigh. "You've never told Jason, have you?"

My face grew hot. My dad knew me well. Too well. And how do you begin that conversation anyway? And when? When you're dating? Engaged? After you're married?

'So, my hometown is kind of…cursed. Some of the people are, too. I'm one of them. Also, it's genetic, so any kids we have will probably be cursed, too. Just thought you'd like to know.'

I'd solved the problem by never taking Jason to Haven. Ever. He'd accepted my explanation, and since my only family had made regular visits, he didn't have a problem not making the trek up to Maine.

"Sweetheart, you have to tell him. You have to tell him everything. And after you do, the three of you need to come to Haven." He paused. "They came back when she did. She's here."

The anxiety that had overtaken me suddenly turned into black hatred so intense that it scared me. I wouldn't set foot in Haven with her there, nor would I ever let my daughter near her. She'd murdered my mother and tried to kill me. The only reason I'd ever return to Haven with her there would be to kill her myself. Rage boiled inside of me, some of it directed at my father's belief that I could ever co-exist in the same town with her.

As if reading my thoughts (a bubble of laughter nearly escaped my mouth at that idea), my dad's next words were softer and carefully chosen. "She wasn't responsible for your mom, Daphne, and she never tried to purposely hurt you. I know you don't want to believe me, but she saved your life."

"Daddy, I can't come back to Haven. I can't." I leaned around the seat to comfort Amelia, who'd begun to fuss. Finding her pacifier, I managed to pop it into her mouth. "Dad, I really need to go. Amelia's getting restless and it's nearly her nap time."

"Promise me you'll tell Jason." My dad was insistent, and it sounded like he was about to break down. "He needs to know about your…your Trouble. He needs to know in case it manifests. And promise me that you will strongly consider coming here. Please, Daph."

I struggled to hold back tears. "I'll call you later, Daddy. I'll talk to Jason and I'll call you later. Okay?" I took a deep breath. "I love you, Daddy."

"I love you, too, sweetheart. More than you could ever know."

The line disconnected and he was gone. I leaned my head on the steering wheel and began to cry. Once the tears were out of my system, I drove home, put an already-sleeping Amelia in her bassinet for a nap, unloaded the groceries, and started on dinner. When Jason came home, I told him nothing, just as I knew my dad would expect.

Two and a half years after that phone call from my dad, Jason and I had our second daughter, Annabelle. In addition to staying home with my daughters, I wrote a weekly column for a popular online parenting website, and supplemented that income with freelance work. We had friends, amazing friends. Jason's parents treated me as they did their own children, his mother especially. I had grown up without a mom and she helped to fill a part of that void, treating me just as she treated her own two daughters.

I loved my life.

So I never told him. My Trouble hadn't manifested at all, and I grew complacent. Another few months and it would all be over anyway. She'd go back in the barn and everything would go back to normal in Haven. And Jason would never have to know.

And then one night, Jason and I had an argument. In our nine years of marriage, we'd rarely argued, and when we did have disagreements, we always resolved them quickly. This time was different. He'd invested in a start-up with some college friends as a silent partner. He hadn't even used our savings, he'd cashed in a CD that his grandmother had left him when she'd passed away a year before. We'd even talked about using it for an investment like this one. Even so, I was furious. Jason was shocked. He'd never seen me so upset before, had no idea where the fury came from. I had no idea myself, but I couldn't control it, which just set both of us on a path of anger that began to feel dangerous.

He decided to spend the night at his mother's house until we both cooled down enough to talk. As he walked out the front door, I made a move to stop him, but my pride held me back. When he backed the car from the driveway, a sudden flash of images flew across my brain, like a silent movie. A semi-truck, driving on the wrong side of the road. Jason rounding a curve on a two-lane highway with no time to react. The semi and the car hitting one another head-on.

I dismissed the scene as my imagination running away with me because I was upset about our fight. It wasn't real, Jason would be at his mother's. Within a half an hour after he'd left, I sat in the armchair in the family room, nursing Annabelle with one arm, and using my free hand to text Jason an apology and an 'I love you'. I kept waiting for a response, praying for the tone that would tell me I had a text, Jason telling me he was safe and he loved me, too, and he'd see me and the girls in the morning.

When the knock came on my front door at 4:30 AM, I knew. My husband, the man I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with, the man whom I'd loved with my entire being…he was dead. Killed in a car accident between him and a semi-truck. I was to blame. I'd killed him as much as if I'd driven that truck myself. My daughters no longer had a father because of me. And I only had one place to turn. I knew that now.

The next few weeks were a blur to me. Close friends and Jason's family helped me sell the house, pack it up, pack our life together into boxes. The house sold quickly. I put most of our possessions into storage, put my daughters into their car seats, and drove north.

When I got there, I parked on the street, lifted out the infant carrier with Annabelle in it, unlatched Amelia from her car seat, and turned to look up at the sign above the storefront. With a deep breath, I opened the door to the Haven Herald and walked in with my daughters.

My dad and my Uncle Dave both looked up from their desks. "Daphne!" They both exclaimed in unison, standing, as if they hadn't been waiting for me, for the girls, as if they didn't know this day would come.

My shoulders began shaking, and I put the infant carrier down. Uncle Dave immediately knelt down in front of Amelia, who grinned at him. "Hi, Unk Day!" She said, showing off the vocabulary that we'd practiced in the car. She'd also learned the words to almost every Laurie Berkner song ever recorded, and although I wasn't proud of the fact, she could belt out a pretty mean rendition of Ani DiFranco's 'Gravel'.

"Daphne." My father held out his arms, and all resolve that I had not to fall apart in front of my daughters left me. I was no longer the woman I'd carefully crafted over the last fourteen years away from Haven – Daphne Porter: wife, mom, writer. I was once again Daphne Teagues: daughter, niece, Haven native.

Troubled.