There was an unusually amount of noise coming from Daniel's house next door on Saturday. He was generally so quiet that it was hard to keep track of when he was actually home and not away on frequent business trips, so I was shocked. From talking to him a few times about what it was like to be in the sales of medical devices, I got the sense that it was a job he'd picked because he liked the salary, not the work. I didn't blame him, I was a doctor myself and I could hardly work up any enthusaism for tools I might actually use, let alone be in his position of just selling the things.

"Who is next door?" Joey asked me as he bound into the room a minute after I noticed the noise. The fact that he had his coat in his hands suggested that he was about to ask if he and William could go out and play.

"I think Daniel has company," I said, and we both walked to the window. I didn't like being the noisy neighbors, but the racket was getting quite loud. Considering the noise I more than half expected that he had some guys over for a sporting event, something that made me think wistfully of the late gunmen, but there weren't any overly enthusatic drinkers/sports enthusatists in his yard. Instead there was a small boy having a complete meltdown.

"Wow," Joey commented, making me give him a sidelong look. His transition into our household hadn't been the smoothest, but at least I could say that he never caused me public embarassment like the little blond boy throwing a fit in Daniel's driveway was. And the fact that Daniel was being embarassed wasn't conjecture, I could see him standing a few feet from the boy, looking like he was in utter dispair over the child's behavior.

A woman, I had to assume his ex-wife from her equally pained looks, was apparently trying to cajol the boy into behaving. And an older boy looked like he wished that the earth would split open and swallow his brother whole. It was hard not to blame him...

"Hey," I said, getting an idea. "Why don't you get William and go ask him to play with you both?" I asked Joey.

He gave me a look like I was insane. "Un uh, he just kicked his dad!"

Putting a hand on my son's shoulder, I shook my head. "Not that him. That him," I said, pointing at the older boy. I figured he was around ten, and the one throwing a fit six or seven. "He looks like he wishes he was anywhere else, don't he?"

"He does," Joey said with a frown. "Maybe he wants to go sledding."

"He might."

"Will!" Joey bellowed, racing up the stairs towards their bedrooms.

I shook my head. Mulder and I had pretty much given up trying to tame our sons' enthusaism for rapid travel. The house and its five bedrooms, hardly seemed big enough to contain all of their energy some days... Mothers of older boys said that it would eventually level off, but they hadn't seen my husband scaling a tree in his thirties, so I didn't think they knew what they were talking about, even if they meant well.

William and Joey must have went out the back door because I didn't see them leave: they just suddenly appeared in Daniel's yard. William, the less shy by far, took the lead, saying something to the older of the two boys. After a moment of conversation and some shrugging, my boys and one of Daniel's ran off, leaving the couple to deal with the younger boy who had still not stopped yelling.

"Is someone killing a lion next door?" Mulder asked behind me. When I turned I found him with Autumn in his arms and a burping cloth over one shoulder, grinning at his own joke. He'd brought several of the bunny print cloths like the one decorating his shoulder when he realized he was more sentemental about some of his clothes than he thought, and not just his Knicks jersey.

"Looks like it must be Daniel's weekend with his sons," I commented. "Joey and William rescued his older boy from that. I think they're sledding in the backyard."

"I'll check," Mulder told me, passing me both our daughter and the burping cloth.

Unable to tear my eyes away from the spectical next-door, I felt like a vouyer when Daniel finally tired of the caterwhauling, and picked the little boy up. The noise level dropped to a dull roar after Daniel's ex slammed the door behind them.

It sort of made me wonder what kind of woman she was, and my initial impression was fairly positive given she hadn't done anything to indicate that she was making the problem worse. The sad thing was that the temper tantrum might not have anything much to do with either parent, though I'm sure neither of them was feeling overly confident in their parenting skills after all of that.

"Yup, they're having a grand ole time in the backyard," Mulder confirmed a minute later.

"Good. Too bad the same can't be said of Daniel."

"There are worse Daniels to have for neighbors," he said unexpectedly. I had to bite my tongue to keep from asking if he had my ex in mind. Probably. He told me once about taking different paths, and I couldn't help but wonder if William and Joey might have ended up Daniel's if I'd been weak enough to take Daniel back. It wasn't a comfortable thought.

A knock on the door about an hour later hardly came as a surprise, nor did Daniel standing there once I opened it. He looked sheepish, and asked "is it Declan still here?"

As he asked that, I realized that I didn't actually know his sons names. I really didn't see much of Daniel, and his sons had only come up occasionally. I of course hadn't pressed him on that subject because I knew that he missed them, and didn't want him to feel badly about that.

"Boy around nine or ten, dark blonde hair?" I asked, hoping that a joking tone would make him less uncomfortable.

"That's the one," Daniel replied. He looked like he was a little more at ease. "Thank you for rescuing him from Rhys's outburst." I wanted to protest that I hadn't done anything, but I guess it was a little obvious that William and Joey had been given some encouragement.

Declan and Rhys, I thought. And some people thought Autumn was an unusual choice. I wondered who was a fan of European names, though I had to admit I didn't know Daniel will enough to even hazard a guess about that.

"No problem," I said, when I realized I hadn't actually answered him.

Daniel's face began to turn the little red. "Rhys isn't taking the divorce very well," he muttered.

Looking up at him, I asked, "how long ago did you and your ex separate?" I had met Daniel in January, and his divorce seemed to have already been finalized by the then.

Daniel shrugged and said, "December."

"December," I repeated. In December Daniel had been in Florida helping his elderly mother move into her retirement complex and it made me wonder if his mother had driven a wedge between him and his wife. That would have been pretty sad, but it wasn't unheard of. Not when so many people for taking care of both their elderly parents and their own children the same time. The ex and his sons had already been gone by the time we'd moved in back in November, so maybe it had been something else.

"I feel like the worst parent in the world when I think about that," Daniel confided with a grimace. "Can you think of a worse Christmas gift for your children?"

I actually could, and tried to push away the unbidden image of somebody hanging themselves near the Christmas tree. I didn't say that of course. "I'm sorry," I said instead. There really wasn't anything I could say that would make him feel better, so I didn't even try to.

Our conversation came to a natural close when the boys came trooping around the house and appeared behind Daniel. When I smiled, Daniel turned and looked at his oldest son. "Declan. Rhys is in the house, and he's calmed down now a little," Daniel told him, and Declan gave a long-suffering shrug.

This made me raise my eyebrows a little bit. From Declan's expression it was fairly obvious that his little brother wasn't behaving much better for their mother than he had just now for their father. That had to be rough, not that I would know personally; my father never would've put up with behavior like that. He would have sent anyone of us to military school first.

"Come on," Daniel told him. "We're going to order some pizza from Papa John's."

Declan made a face. "Can't we have Pizza Hut instead? It's a lot better."

Before Daniel could even open his mouth, I was sure what his response would be, and I wasn't disappointed. "The promise of Papa John's is the only thing that kept him from opening his mouth and yelling again," Daniel said, his expression saying that there was no room for argument.

Declan just looked resigned. "Okay. Maybe we can get Pizza Hut next time."

I wouldn't bet on it, I thought. Not the way your dad looks like now, he thinks that your little brother is always going to be in need of appeasement. Maybe the next visit. Of course, I said nothing.

Instead, after Daniel and his son left, I turned my own sons. "Did you have fun?"

William nodded. "He seems nice. Really quiet though."

Trying not to look askance at Joey, I asked "how quiet?" I knew that William considered his own brother to be abnormally quiet, so the fact that he thought it was worth mentioning that Declan was quiet made me wonder.

"Pretty quiet," Joey said.

If even Joey thought that he was quiet… I gave my head small shake, and told myself that it wasn't really my problem to fix. Some kids were shy. Still, I was tempted to ask Mulder to talk to the boy at least once during their visit. Sometimes being a former hotshot profiler was handy for him when he came to dealing with children too.

"Do you think you'll invite him over to sled again sometime this weekend?" I asked, finally shutting the door. Daniel and his kid had already returned to their house, so by that point we were just letting in cold air.

"Sure, if that's okay?" Joey asked.

I tried not to cringe. There is nothing like musing over the baggage of other people's children to remind you that yours have their own. I had never even met Mrs. Van de Kamp, and had only met Jonathan once, but I would have liked to ask them what they had done to Joey to make him so nervous about proper decorum. I sensed, perhaps unfairly, that they had put the Captain to shame when it came to strict parenting.

"Oh, that would be fine," I said as lightly as possible. "As long as you let Dad or me know that you're going out to play and who you're playing with you know it's okay as long as we don't have other plans… But don't forget that Declan's dad needs to know where you are going too."

"Yeah," William butted in. "How often do Mom and Dad say no?"

"They said we couldn't get Mr. Pike-" Joey said, referring to their pet fish who lived in the dining room, "-a 100 gallon aquarium."

This made his brother roll his eyes. "I meant about playing outside with other kids."

"Oh."

"'sides, the dinning room isn't big enough for an aquarium that big," William pointed out.

Joey sighed. "I know, but imagine how big he'd get if we could put him in a tank that big. I want to know if fish really grow as big as their tank will let them."

"But Mr. Pike is a grown up. Do grown up fishes still grow?"

They both looked at me expectantly at this point. I made a shooing motion. "You both know how to look on wikipedia," I reminded them. "Go find out."

"Okay, yeah," William agreed before grabbing his brother by the arm when Joey was too slow to suit him.

I made a mental note to ask Mulder how long he thought we should keep the net-nanny software on the computer the boys were allowed to use. It was pretty good at keeping them from accessing questionable sites, but it always made me miss the Gunmen when I thought of it. Not that they would ever have deigned to make some real money by authoring software that actually had a market value. Oh no, they'd always had too much integrity for that, even with empty bank accounts to show for it. You had to grudgingly admire people with principles that strong, even when you worried about the sanity of strictly adhering to them.

An impatient little beeping outside alerted me that the mail truck was in the driveway the next afternoon. After decades in the city I was still trying to get used to having packages show up right at your door with the expectation you'd be there to take them or not mind them being left on the front stoop. A stiff breeze slapped me across the face as soon as I stepped outside wishing I'd grabbed my coat.

"H-hi," I said through chattering teeth as soon as I reached the mailman, who had already gotten out of his truck. Apparently I hadn't gotten there soon enough to suit him so he'd been preparing to abandon the package.

Instead of returning my greeting the mailman just thrust the box at me with a curt "here."

I didn't bother trying to say goodbye as he stomped back to his truck, leaving behind a trail of dirty footprints in the snow. Sighing, I hugged the package to my chest and hurried back inside.

"Mulder, I think our mailman hates us," I complained the second I saw him. He raised an eyebrow and watched me put the package down so I could pull on a fleece top. L.L. Bean was rapidly becoming my favorite source for winterwear.

"Why?" Mulder eventually asked, looking moderately amused.

"Hmm?" I asked, toying with the idea of starting a fire to rid myself of my chill when the fleece didn't cut it. We had plenty of wood but I still couldn't tell if the kids were screwing with me by begging the toast marshmallows every single time we lit a fire. Looking at Mulder I asked, "why do I suspect he hates us, or what do I think accounts for it?"

He shrugged. "Lady's choice."

"I think he resents all the packages has to bring us."

"So it's your mom's fault."

"I wouldn't say that!" I replied, automatically defending her.

Mulder gave me a skeptical look and gestured towards the box. "Who's that from?"

It was hard not to cringe. "Mulder… She's just so excited to finally have a granddaughter."

His expression finally softened. "With every other Scully grandchild being a boy, no wonder."

"Yeah," I agreed, thinking of Bill and Charlie's sons.

He handed me a pair of scissors and I used them to cut the tape holding the box's flaps closed. I shifted a layer of tissue paper to discover a pair of gift cards labeled with William and Joey's names and an exquisite green dress with a matching bonnet. Looking over my shoulder, Mulder said, "Well, no one is ever going to accuse Maggie of not having good taste. But is this a hint about getting more pictures done?"

"Maybe. She's expressed wanting us to do them every three months."

"I hope she doesn't expect the boys to use those gift cards on clothes. They wouldn't be very happy. "

"Doubt she does…" I thought of the mail carrier's attitude again. "But the mailman-"

Mulder shook his head firmly. "If he can't deal with one of his job duties, may be a career with the post office isn't a good fit."

This did give me pause. There were parts of almost any job but didn't thrill you - investigating fertilizer came to mind - but you sucked it up and did it anyway. I still wasn't happy that the mailman so openly resented delivering packages, but Mulder was right. Either he learned to cope with what the job required or he looked for something that suited him better. I resolved on the spot to not let it bother me so much. "You're right."

"Scully! You say the sweetest things."

"Down boy," I retorted with a smirk.

Our banter died an early death when the phone in my pocket rang.

"Probably your mom checking to make sure the mail carrier didn't huck it into a snow bank," he quipped but I waved him off when I saw the number.

"Hello? Dana Scully speaking," I said in my most professional tone… While ignoring the faces my husband was making. I ducked into the dining room in self-defense.

"Doctor Scully, this is Charles Whitcomb. Is now a convenient time to talk?"

"Yes, of course," I said instantly. The man was my new employer, so I wasn't about to blow off his call because I'd rather continue to flirt with Mulder.

"Excellent. I'll actually be quite brief. I was hoping to schedule an in-person meeting with you in the near future."

To my frustration, Charles never said what the meeting we'd scheduled for the following week was to be about. I guessed I'd find out then.

"What are you watching?" a voice over my shoulder asked Wednesday afternoon. It was Mulder, of course. The boys still couldn't look over my shoulder, yet, though they kept telling me that they'd be taller than me one day. Like I didn't know that.

I waved my hand towards the screen. "A Morgan video."

"Ah." Mulder was almost as used to seeing video of Duke Crocker's orange cat as I was. Duke was a nice boy, but had strange ideas about the best way to keep in touch. His friend Audrey Parker wrote actual e-mails, but Duke usually just sent videos of what his cat was up to or updated brochures for his hotel, like anyone who got stranded there was in a hurry to go back. I wondered if he was in touch with the Greens, too... Fortunately, Morgan was pretty cute so I didn't mind. Somehow neither did anyone else: there were videos of Morgan with thousands of hits on Youtube too. "Can I tear you away from that?"

"Of course," I told him, pausing the video so that Morgan Crocker hung in mid-air, front paws inches from a red dot someone - I think Audrey given the smallness of the hand - was projecting on a wall for him. "What's up?"

"I found this writer's workshop I'd like to attend in Dover," Mulder said, handing me a flyer. There was a stamp on the back from the library, so I didn't have to ask where he'd found out about it. Mulder and Autumn took frequent trips to the library, not that she was even old enough to understand that the pictures in the books he read her represented anything. She would in a few months, though, so it was good to acclimate her to the reading process before then. "I've already checked that they're still taking registrations."

"That sounds like a good idea," I told him. Though I had no idea how much he'd actually get out of it, I thought it was a good idea simply because the workshop was bound to leave him enthused about his project. I didn't have a specific deadline for the completion of his book in mind, but I had the distinct impression that he didn't either. Maybe attending a workshop with other writers would help him formulate a timetable for it.

"The only problem is that it's the same day as your meeting with the hospital, so I guess I'll be bringing the squirt with me."

"Mulder, please don't call her that." I sighed.

"Why?" he asked, looking at me like he couldn't fathom my objection.

I waved a hand. "It's vulgar."

"What do you-" He shut his mouth in mid-sentence, obviously having put two and two together. Giving me a wry smile, he said, "Now that I think about it, that is kind of vulgar."

"Yeah. But anyway, are you sure you want to bring a baby with you?" What I wanted to ask was, aren't you supposed to be paying attention during the workshop? But I already knew that he'd just tell me that he was good at multi-tasking. He was, but no one was that good.

"Absolutely."

"Um, okay." It was his event. I wasn't going to stand in his way if he wanted to make things more difficult for himself. Honestly, I think he enjoys challenging himself now and then. It's not like I don't myself.

"I'm sure I won't be the only parent there, there's this photo here with some toddlers in it." He pointed at a tiny picture, and when I squinted, I could just barely make out a couple of babies crawling on the floor. It was hard to be sure given the size of the photo, but it seemed to me like there were a couple of adults who looked frustrated too. Made me wonder if they were the kids' parents, or people annoyed that there were small distractions exploring the room.

"Maybe she'll sleep through a lot of it," I suggested. With a few bottles of expressed milk going with him, it was possible he'd have a full, sleepy baby on his hands for most of the day. Of course, babies seemed to have a sixth sense about when you wanted them to sleep, and then fought sleep with every fiber of their beings.

"I'm sure she will," he said confidently.

I winced, sure that he'd just cursed himself.