The moment Stephanie walked into the house, she knew that it was going to be messy. She could hear Chris and the kids somewhere in the house, and there was screaming, and laughing. She was tired from work today, but hearing her family having fun and being together always lifted her spirits. She put her bags down on the table near the front door, kicked off her shoes in the direction of their front den, and started looking for her family.

If she were in her other life, leaving her bags and kicking her shoes off letting them land wherever would have gotten her a look. Paul just liked things neater, and sometimes she just wasn't all that neat, so it was nice to put stuff down, and not have anyone comment on it. She went into the living room, but there was nobody in there. The television was on however, and the remnants of people being in there were all over the place. She grabbed the remote and turned off the television before grabbing a couple boxes of crackers lying haphazardly on the floor and putting them on the coffee table for now.

She wandered down the hallway towards the playroom, and she could hear the laughing getting louder. She got to the playroom, standing in the doorway to survey the scene. Chris was lying on the ground as Aurora and Murphy tried to tackle him and tickle him. He kept rolling this way and that, just getting out of their reach. Vaughn was sucking on a pacifier near Chris's head, playing with a couple of blocks, banging them together and laughing around the pacifier.

"So this is what you do when I'm not here?" Stephanie asked as four sets of eyes turned towards her.

"Mommy!" Murphy said, running over and jumping up with his arms outstretched. She lifted him easily and he gave her a kiss right on the lips.

"I can tell someone had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich today with strawberry jelly," Stephanie laughed.

"How did you know? Mommy, are you magic?" Murphy asked, his eyes wide at the thought that his mother could be magical.

"No, you've still got jelly on your lips, silly," she told him, hugging him to her and relishing in holding him.

"Mommy, Daddy said that you're gonna get your stitches out, can I see them do it?"

"Why do you want to see that?" she asked.

"Because it'll be gross, and that's cool," he answered and she laughed and blew a raspberry against his cheek.

"So you think me getting hurt is cool, huh?" she asked, pulling away to give him a stern look. On other people, it might be scary, but for her kids, it was always a silly face. Murphy laughed and buried his face against Stephanie's neck in a hug. She brought him over to the couch and sat down, letting herself relax after a long day. Many days she and the rest of her family found themselves in this room more than any other. It was cluttered, toys everywhere, and she always felt sorry for their housekeeper who came in because she probably walked into this room and wanted to kill them for letting it get so messy.

The thing was, though, they were children, and they were going to get things messy. It was unrealistic to expect them to be neat and clean all the time. It took a long time for Paul to understand that. He was better now, but when the girls were younger, he tried to pick up after them every day, even after their maid cleaned. It got to the point where he was going to bed later than she was because he was trying to clean. She had to tell him it was okay for kids to be messy.

"Paul, what are you doing up still?" Stephanie trudged into the room.

"Just cleaning up, it's a mess in here."

Stephanie looked around and didn't see much of a mess. She walked up to him, and wrapped her arms around his left bicep, leaning her head against it. She'd been in bed, turning over to rest her arm on Paul, but the bed was empty, and it didn't seem like he'd even been to bed. It wasn't that late, but with two kids who constantly needed you, and with her pregnant with their third, it made her tire easily, and she tired to be in bed by 11:30 when possible.

"Honey, I don't see any kind of mess," Stephanie told him, glancing at the toys in his hand. "You need to put those down and come to bed. The girls will wake up early tomorrow, and you have to pack still for your flight."

"I know, but I just knew everything in here was a mess—"

"Paul, look at me," Stephanie said, and when he didn't turn, she repeated herself, "Paul, please, look at me."

"What?" he asked, turning his head to look at her.

"Their little kids," she told him slowly, "and I know this is your first time with little kids because you weren't really there to see your niece and nephew grow up because you were traveling, but kids are like this, they're always going to mess things up. The days of a neat house are long gone. I love that you want things clean, but it isn't realistic anymore."

"It just bugs me."

"I know, but you get used to it, so will you please put the dolls down and come to bed."

"Remember my old house, how it was spotless?"

"And everything was white and made of glass. You were living in a fool's paradise," she joked. "You were never going to be able to keep that up and be a married man. So lighten up, the kids are going to be dirty and messy, and someday, they're going to track mud into the house or they're going to throw their clothes on the floor, and you will just have to grin and bear it because they're kids, and that's going to happen."

"Can we make them live in a bubble or something?"

"I'm afraid that kind of technology doesn't exist yet. Come on, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. The second step to recovery is coming to bed with your wife. The third step to recovery is sex with said wife."

"Okay, I think I may be getting better as we speak."

She shook her head free of the memory. The last thing she needed to think about while with one husband was sex with other husband. She owed it to Chris to be in this world when she was here because she knew how much she missed it when she was with Paul. When she was in one world, she tried to commit to it as much as possible because she could wake up tomorrow and be universes away from it.

"No, Mommy, I want you to be okay," Murphy mumbled into her shirt.

"Thank you, I want you to always be okay too," she kissed the top of her head and watched as Chris turned on his stomach to play with Vaughn, who handed him one of the blocks he was holding. Aurora climbed on Chris's back and laid on top of it, curling up into a little ball and holding the doll in her arms like she was about to go to sleep. "Rora, are you using Daddy for a bed?"

"Yup, Daddy's my new bed now," Aurora said.

"What? When did this happen? Do I get any say?"

"Nope," Aurora said, snuggling even further into Chris's back. He just laughed and continued playing around with Vaughn, smashing blocks with him. Stephanie laid her head against her little mama's boy, Murphy, who was content to be around her.

Chris turned his head towards Stephanie when Vaughn decided that he was going to crawl over to one of his ring toys and play with that, "So how was your day?"

"Hectic, wall-to-wall meetings, I barely had time to eat before the next meeting so I'm starving, please tell me that you've already started dinner and that we can eat soon or I may resort to eating my own young like some kind of animal."

"The pork chops are already in the oven, everything else is ready, it should be ready in about 20, can you hold off that long or do I have to bring the children elsewhere?"

"I think I should be good, thank you for making dinner." While the other world was different with their chef always making their meals, it was really nice to have home-cooked meals too. In one world she could feel pampered, and in the other, she could just be a regular person.

"I'm your husband, like I'd let you starve," Chris scoffed. "So, was one of those meetings with the man who had decided he's going to stalk you? If I weren't totally secure in our relationship, I would start to think he has designs on you."

She laughed, and it was a rich one. She knew what Paul was like when he was attracted to someone, she knew what he was like when he was in love with someone, and the Paul in this world couldn't care less about her. Sure, they were friends, but anything romantic was not in their stratosphere. He didn't look at her anything like her Paul did. Her Paul looked at her with a reverence and love this Paul didn't, and she knew that they were two distinct people though they looked like copies of one another. One of them loved her, the other did not. It was the same thing with her Chris and the other Chris.

"I think that's the last thing on his mind, unless I'm suddenly gold and able to be worn around someone's waist."

"You never know, I'll start giving him the stink-eye whenever I see him."

When this life first started, when she first woke up in one world then the other, beyond the fear, past that, she worried that somehow, both men would love her in both worlds, that she would have to keep making the same decisions over and over again. She remembered that one night, the one that changed everything, how one decision seemed to split her life in two, and it all came down to that choice. When she figured out what was going on, she worried that her life would always come down to that one choice.

In a way it did, that one choice broke her world into two, giving her both options, and she felt like maybe it was meant to fracture even further. Sometimes she thought about what would be different if she tried to love one man in both worlds, but it just didn't feel right. The Chris in her other world was happily married with three other children of his own, and the Paul of this world had a girlfriend he adored. It felt wrong to even want to love one man in both worlds because there were differences, glaring ones, ones she couldn't overcome and say, "I want to love this one man."

She feared sometimes it would come to that. That the only way to make one life was to erase another one. "Steph?"

"Hmm?" Stephanie looked over at her husband.

"You were starting to doze there for a second," he told her with a soft smile. "Let's make it an early night tonight?"

"Yeah, that sounds nice," she told him, smiling lazily. The couch in the playroom was an old one Chris brought from Florida when he moved in with her, and so it was old and lumpy, and so comfortable sometimes that she fell asleep here even when she didn't want to.

"How's your head? Is it okay? You weren't overly tired today, right?"

The other Chris never showed her affection like this. He loved someone else, there was no way he could ever be hers. She nodded, "Yeah, barely even bothered me except for the itching, but that's normal, they said. I can't wait to get the stitches out."

Vaughn went back over to Chris and offered him a plastic ring. Chris took it and pretended like it was the best gift in the world. "I'm sure, they're no fun. Is Rora actually asleep on me?"

"No, she's just lying there."

"Rora, get off now, it's time for dinner," Chris shook a little, causing Aurora to fall off his back. She giggled and crawled to him and kissed him. "You're too big for crawling, you weirdo."

"Daddy, I'm not a weirdo, you are."

"We're all weirdos," he told her, giving her an Eskimo kiss. "Okay, I think dinner should be ready, and we're going to eat, bathe, watch a little TV then bed, for all of us."

"Even Mommy?" Murphy asked.

"Especially Mommy," Chris gave Stephanie a stern look. "Got that, Mommy?"

"Got it."

There was no way she could ever just choose one.