Author's note: This is part of the Second Chances 'verse, co-created by the talented deepandlovelydark (see profile for details). It's basically a bit darker AU of Domestic Adventures. Still Mac and Becky, though!

-Winter, 1987-

Garrison Keillor, Becky's decided, couldn't have made this stuff up if he tried.

(On Saturdays Mom always listened to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio, laughing her head off. She never explained what was so funny about it, though.)

If there's ever a candidate for the real Lake Wobegon, it has to be Mission City. Small town, small minds. People plodding along, with no real ambitions or passions. Gossip as the municipal pastime.

(Of course she's from a smaller city herself, but at least it's the state capitol so that's gotta count for something.)

Even the landscape's dull. Flat land and gently rolling plains to match.

(The highest point in Minnesota's only 2,301 feet above sea level. To call it a mountain is laughable. She's seen real ones before- Mt. Hood's well over 11,000 feet, for crying out loud.)

Still. For now it's home. Has to be, really.

Uncle Mac lives here, after all.

He didn't have to take her in. Becky knows that.

Divorced with only the coffee shop as a reliable source of income, and sometimes not even that. Not even a college degree, though he's one of the most intelligent, creative people she's ever known.

(The stories he used to come up with, when she was younger. A brave princess and her clever knight, having adventures and defending their imaginary realm using no weapons, only their wits. Those were the days.)

Hard enough making a living, in a small town whose main source of income closed over a decade ago, with nothing to fill the void. Surrounding farms haven't been doing so well lately either, due to last year's terrible drought.

And then she has to show up on his doorstep with the social worker and Mr. Malinowski (the family lawyer and her guardian ad Litem), flown in all the way from Oregon at state expense as he couldn't afford the airfare himself. Parents and brother dead in a car accident last May, on the way to Boy Scout summer camp near the coast. The brakes of a logging truck barrelling towards them suddenly gave out; no one survived.

He's struggling so hard and yet he takes her in purely out of love, when he could've easily released her to the vagaries of foster care and group homes, believing that to be a more secure future.

(She still feels guilt over the French Toast Incident. The lowest point in both their lives, and one that'll never be repeated again if she can help it.)

Yet despite everything they still have each other. Whenever she's with Mac she knows without a doubt she's loved and he'll never leave her friendless.

Neither would Jack Dalton, fellow orphan and out-of-towner. Always making her laugh. A wild and crazy guy, she remembers Mom calling him once. Mostly harmless, though. If only he didn't drink so much.

Unc's working himself to death, trying to take care of everything on his own. So Becky's decided to be the brave little trooper, doing what she can to help out. Working at the coffee shop after school and on Saturdays, sewing and knitting the rest of the time, making things to sell at craft fairs.

She's known how to sew when she was eleven, stuck in bed with the flu, bored to tears. Idle hands are the devil's workshop, according to Grandma Ellen.

Mac's even taught her how to whittle; she's been hoping for a Swiss Army Knife of her own, for Christmas.

Every little bit helps, as Mom and Dad always said when she was younger, to get her and Chris to pitch in. (They'd spent their college years living in a commune near Seattle, so they knew what they were talking about.)

So he works hard at the shop and she goes to school then at the end of the day they either read, watch TV or work on projects. But they also always be sure to spend lots of what she calls "quality cuddle time" together.

Everything's fine, really. Four years until she's eighteen. She can make it, here in this crummy Midwestern town so far from the Pacific Ocean.

If only it weren't for the other kids.