A/N: First weekend update of a few, I think. I hope you enjoy, even though everybody in the story is still sad. As always, I really appreciate you reading and reviewing.
"Morning," a bathrobe-donning Michelle smiled as Emma walked into the sunny kitchen.
"Hey," she replied quietly.
"You came home early last night," she commented, taking a sip of her coffee.
"Yeah," Emma responded shortly, avoiding eye contact with her sister as she grabbed her car keys.
"Where are you headed?" she asked with a curious frown, noticing that Emma was wearing trousers, high heels, and button-up shirt.
"Work," she replied. "I've got a meeting with the NSA at eleven."
"I thought one of the perks of working for the government was that you got weekends off," she said sassily. "You can't at least stay for breakfast?"
"I wanna get there early," she murmured.
"You gotta slow down, Emma," she reprimanded.
Emma ignored her as she poured some coffee into a thermos.
Michelle sighed. "Oh!" she exclaimed, changing the topic. "You got a piece of mail yesterday." She got up, picked it up the letter and handed it to Emma. "Says it's from the Air Force."
"God, what do they want now?" she growled, taking the letter from her sister and dropping it into the trash.
"Whoa," her sister scolded. "You didn't even read it!"
"Don't need to," she said tersely, "I don't work for them anymore."
"Well what if it's a pay stub or a tax document or something?" her sister reasoned, fishing in the trash and pulling it back out.
Emma sighed loudly.
"I'll open it for you," she offered, tearing apart the envelope.
"Wait!" Emma interrupted, "It could be confidential," she said, taking the letter from her again.
"It didn't say confidential on it," Michelle mumbled. "And I doubt they would send something top secret by the ever-reliable US Postal Service."
Emma grabbed an orange from the counter and then sat down at the kitchen table to open the letter.
"You certainly have been popular with the Air Force lately," Michelle ruminated. "Those guys find you last night?" she asked.
Emma looked over at her sister. "Yeah," she answered lowly before returning to open the letter. She tore the seal of the envelope and pulled a few pieces of paper from it.
"Did you know them?" Michelle asked curiously, reaching into the fridge to find more cream to add to her coffee. When Emma didn't reply, she turned back around to look at her.
Emma was bent over the table, holding the letter in a shaking hand while the other covered her mouth, her breathing jagged.
"Emmy?" her sister breathed, putting everything down and rushing over to her.
Emma sniffed loudly, folded the piece of paper quickly, stuffed it back in the envelope, and wiped her eye with the back of her hand. She stood up abruptly and pushed past Michelle to head out. Michelle intercepted her and snatched the letter out of Emma's hand, pulled it out of the envelope again and started reading.
"Michelle!" she screeched, trying to take the letter back from her.
"'Products of conception testing,'" her sister read in a hushed voice. She looked up at her sister. "Are you –?"
Emma stared at Michelle for a moment and then finally shook her head.
Michelle gasped quietly in comprehension. "Oh Emma," she breathed, wrapping her arms tightly around her little sister. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.
Emma broke down into body-shaking sobs, supported in her sister's arms.
"This is why you came back," Michelle stated, rubbing Emma's back in an effort to calm her down.
She nodded against Michelle's shoulder. "I needed to be with her," she confessed, breaking their embrace so that she could look at Michelle.
Michelle knew that by "her," she meant her daughter.
"It just...brought back so many emotions and I couldn't stop thinking about how I gave her up," she wept.
Michelle nodded. "I never realized how hard it was for you to give her to us," she said quietly. "You never talked about it and…well...you seriously considered terminating the pregnancy early on –"
"You know I don't like it when you bring that up," Emma interrupted, tears shining in her eyes.
"I know," Michelle said kindly, searching her sister's face. "I'm just saying that because of that and because you never brought anything up with me, I never really understood how hard this must be for you."
Emma looked down at the floor. "That's because I never actually dealt with it," she murmured bitterly. "And losing this baby," she held up the letter in her hand, "is making me finally deal with it." Another sob racked her body.
"I don't know, Emma, all this working and translating and interpreting without a break sure makes it seem like you're still trying to avoid dealing with it," she tried to delicately say.
"I'm just really confused," she cried, bringing a hand to her forehead. "I can't tell what I'm feeling for Allie, I can't tell what I'm feeling for him…" she shook her head.
"It was a boy?" Michelle asked gently.
"That's what this says," Emma replied, dropping the letter on the table. She subconsciously brought her hand to her stomach.
Michelle noticed the intimate and maternal gesture. "You wanted him, didn't you?" she asked, her eyes wide.
Emma looked directly into Michelle's eyes and nodded.
"Oh sugar," she breathed, placing a comforting hand on Emma's cheek. She paused before asking her next question, almost afraid of the answer. "Did the father know?"
Emma tore her gaze away from Michelle's and once again nodded.
Michelle stared at her for a few moments. "Those men last night," she thought out loud.
Emma tensed, crossing her arms across her chest and continuing to avoid Michelle's gaze.
"The one who wasn't military…the tall one," she recalled, "I wondered why he stopped to look at our family photos in the hall before they left," she mused.
Emma's eyes shifted nervously from one spot on the floor to another.
"Come to think of it... he did give Allie a really weird look, too, when he saw her."
"He saw Allie?" Emma finally asked.
Michelle nodded.
Emma took a deep breath in. "He didn't want it," she said quietly.
Michelle looked nervously down at Emma's abdomen. "What did he do to you?" she asked protectively, the tone of her voice abruptly harsh.
"What?" Emma asked, her brow furrowed. "Oh no," she quickly exclaimed, wide-eyed with comprehension. "No, he didn't do anything to me."
"Emma, we've talked about how you have to stop hiding these things from us when they happen," she reproached.
"He didn't do anything to me!" she restated with more conviction. "He's not like that. He would have never laid a finger on me."
Michelle was now the one to cross her arms over her chest.
Emma's voice fell again. "I lost the baby and then he told me he didn't want it anyway," she explained, "And then he ended things."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Michelle whispered.
"Because I remember how hard it was for you before you and Mark found out you couldn't –"
"You should have told me," she said softly.
"I just didn't want to bring back painful memories for you," Emma said, shaking her head.
"You didn't need to worry about me," she began, "You know that of all people, I would have understood. I could have been there for you. You shouldn't have had to deal with that alone."
Emma nodded as Michelle pulled her once again into a tight embrace.
"You're sure he didn't want it?" Michelle quietly asked after a moment of silence.
Emma nodded.
"I don't know, Emma…" she sighed, "the way he looked at those photos…"
"He told me he didn't," she said firmly.
"Yeah, well…people say stupid things all the time."
