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"A week? What could you have possibly done to get a week's detention?"

Emma winced at the anger in her mother's voice. She had been home for almost two hours before her mom, and hadn't figured out a way to tell her yet. Naturally, Snake had beaten her to it when he'd come in right behind her and asked Spike not to be too hard on her. She hadn't understood, and Emma had been forced to fess up.

"I sort of ... hit someone."

"You hit someone? Why on Earth would you do that? And who was it?" her mother demanded.

"Um ... Peter." she said in a small voice.

"You hit Peter!"

"She did more than just hit him. She broke his nose." Manny said, walking through the kitchen door.

"Emma." Manny, realizing her mistake, made a hasty exit downstairs, throwing an apologetic look over her shoulder at Emma. Turning her attention back to her mother, she wished she could just escape to her room like Manny. The disappointment in Spike's voice was obvious, and for the first time that day Emma felt a twinge of guilt over what she had done. "Why did you hit Peter?"

With a deep breath, she began to tell the story or at least the parts that she could tell her mother about. "He was just saying this stuff about Sean, and about our relationship. I guess I just let my temper get the better of me. That's all. I'm sorry." She kept her eyes on the floor the entire time; she couldn't bear to see the disappointment in her Mom's eyes again.

Sinking down into the chair across the table, Spike reach over and took her daughter's hand. "Em, I'm sure Peter said some things he shouldn't have, but that doesn't give you the right to ..."

Emma's head shot up and she locked eyes with her mother. "It was way more than that Mom. He was way out of line. If you had heard what he said ..." she clamped her mouth shut. There was no way she was going to go into this.

But apparently Spike had gotten the impression that she did want to talk about it.

Eyebrows slightly raised, she asked "What exactly did he say?"

"It was nothing. Just ... stupid stuff."

Snake had been in the living room with Jack, listening carefully in case things began to get out of hand. Emma and Peter's scene had become the hot topic of the day, and he had overheard a few grade eights discussing it. He didn't blame one bit for hitting him. If he had been there, he wasn't so sure he wouldn't have done the same thing.

Spike's voice indicated that things were about o get a little heated. There was no way Emma would tell her what Peter had said, which would only infuriate her further. He found a toy to occupy Jack and headed off to run interference. "Spike, I think Ms. Hatzilakos is just blowing this whole thing out of proportion. Maybe we should just drop it."

"Fine." she agreed reluctantly, seeing that she would get no answers out of either of them.

"So Em," Snake said brightly, relieved to have the potentially volatile situation over with, "you must be pretty excited."

"About what?"

"Sean. Has he found a new place yet?"

Emma froze, sensing the impending explosion. Holding her breath, she watched her mother turn, torturously slow, to face her. "Sean's back?"

"Yeah." Spike's face began to turn red, never a good sign, and Emma barreled on. "Before you say anything, I didn't know. He just showed up at lunch today and announced that he was enrolled."

"Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded.

"You were already so upset that I had detention, I didn't want to make you angrier."

Emma told her, giving her the big puppy eyes that had gotten her out of trouble since she was two.

"And you didn't want me to extend your grounding so you could spend time with him." she finished for her.

It took all of Emma's self-control not to scream. Sometimes her mother knew her so well it scared her. "Sort of."

The sheepish look on her daughter's face was all it took to convince Spike that she had learned her lesson. The thought of losing more time with Sean was causing Emma more fear than an entire year's worth of grounding ever could.

"I understand."

"You do?" Emma's voice, mostly awe, hid an under layer of suspicion. It was almost as if she couldn't quite believe her luck that her mom would give in so easily.

"Of course. I was young once. But no more trouble. Or I'll be forced to reconsider."

"Saturday?" Emma asked hopefully.

"Saturday." Spike confirmed.

With a jubilant squeal, Emma threw her arms around her mother and made a mad dash for her bedroom.

"Hey, where are you going?" Snake called.

"I have to call Sean and let him know." she answered, without even a backwards glance.

Chuckling, Snake and Spike shared a look of sympathy. Life in their house was about to

get a whole lot crazier.

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Emma paced anxiously in front of the living room window, checking her watch for the tenth time. Sean was due any second.

He had found a place in his old building the same night he began looking. His former landlord had also put his stuff into storage after Ellie had moved out. He said he had just had a feeling that either Sean or Tracker would eventually be back. But Sean had most of his things in Wasaga. After explaining that the idea to move back had been on impulse and that he just grabbed a bag and packed quickly, he asked her to come back with him to get the rest of his stuff.

Emma had agreed of course. But she was terrified at the thought of meeting Sean's parents. She had heard so much about them, and his relationship with them, that she had a pretty vivid picture in her mind of what they would be like. And it wasn't pretty.

Sean's car pulled up in front of her house. The same one he had used in the race. He'd confessed that it wasn't even his. He was borrowing it from a friend of Jay's. More good news.

The car ride was long and tense, Sean quiet and Emma fidgety. All too soon they pulled up in front of the white double wide that Emma recognized from their last trip here.

Looked like it was now or never.

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