Emily had decided that she wasn't going to push Paige to propose to her - not just yet, at least. She would give it a few months. But that didn't mean that she had to put the rest of her life on hold. She had a couple of major steps in mind.

At some point, she wanted to go back to work. It had been a few years since she completed her Criminal Justice degree, and she knew that she would need to take some courses to refresh and update her certifications. She figured she could take her time; allow herself a couple of years to finish the coursework, and, by that time, Michelle would be weaned and eligible for daycare.

And Emily also wanted to start trying for another child. She didn't want the kids to be too far apart in age. She wanted them to grow up together as friends, not as a couple of older kids with younger kids to babysit - or older kids who were too cool to have their younger siblings tagging along.

She needed to talk to Paige. She was sure that Paige wouldn't have any objections; they had talked about both things informally before, and they were in agreement that that was where they were headed. She would also need to let Wayne and Anna know. The child wouldn't be a problem; they would both be excited about that. But neither one of them had ever known Emily with a job.


Paige did her best to keep calm, with a straight face, when Emily mentioned that they needed to talk about their future. She knew that Emily wanted to get married - and she wanted that, too - but she wasn't quite ready to propose. She didn't want the proposal to come as a result of a discussion - "Hey, I want to marry you. Do you want to marry me?" She had envisioned something more romantic. At the same time, she knew that Emily wanted to get married. Emily may have gotten tired of waiting and decided to give Paige an ultimatum.

Paige didn't want to give her plans away, but she didn't want to string Emily along or lie to her. But this was all speculation. Paige decided not to jump to conclusions about what Emily wanted to talk to her about. Don't panic, she told herself, before you get all the facts.

"So, you know how I've been talking about wanting to start working again..." Paige nodded, quite relieved that this was what Emily wanted to talk about. "Well, I've been thinking that I need to take some refresher courses, and in order to do that without too much disruption to the family, I'd probably stretch it out over a couple of years."

"We can handle some disruption," Paige assured her. "We'll all pitch in, if you want to go back full-time, or whatever."

"Well," Emily explained, "I was thinking, two years might be good, because, you know; Michelle will be potty trained, and it would be easier to get her into daycare at that point."

Paige shrugged. "Makes sense."

"Yeah." Emily's voice was a little tentative. It made Paige nervous. "On the other hand..."

"Hoo boy..."

"What?" Emily smiled nervously.

"It's always that other hand! That's the one that gets people into trouble!"

Emily squeezed Paige's shoulder. "Don't panic," Emily said, as if sensing that Paige worried that she was going to bring up marriage. "I was just going to say, we've also talked about, you know, me trying for another baby."

Paige's whole face lit up. "Emily, that's a GREAT idea!"

Emily chuckled nervously. "It is?"

"Of course!"

"Yeah, but, talk about disruption... I mean, I remember what my coach told me, when I asked whether she and her husband were going to try for a third child: 'Don't let them outnumber you!'"

"Okay, but, we're already outnumbered," Paige pointed out.

"Yeah. It's already a juggling act with three. Can you imagine juggling four?"

"Hmm..." Paige took a moment to come up with a response. "Well, there are only two of us, but we've got four hands." Her face took a mischievous turn. "We'd be like the Walrus and the Carpenter." Emily wasn't getting the reference. "You know? In the poem by Lewis Carroll? 'We couldn't do with more than four, to give a hand to each." Paige took Emily's hand. "Of course, I guess if all of our hands are holding their hands, we couldn't do this anymore," she said, squeezing Emily's hand to show what she was talking about.

"Bread and Butter," Emily said with a sigh. This time, it was Paige who was confused. "You never did that when you were a kid?" Emily asked, reading her confusion. "When you were holding hands and you came to a telephone pole or something, so you had to let go for a bit, you'd say, 'Bread and Butter!' - Like, I have to let go for a minute, but my hand will still be there for you on the other side."

Paige leaned across the table and kissed her. "My hand will always be there waiting for yours."

"Mine will, too," Emily replied. After taking a moment to savor their commitment, Emily continued. "Anyway, if I'm going to start trying, it wouldn't make sense for me to go back to work, you know, and then go out on maternity leave right away."

"Yeah. I guess it's just a question of what you want."

"I don't want the kids to be too far apart in age," Emily said softly.

Paige got all bouncy. "I'm glad you said that, because that's what I wanted, too. But I didn't want you to feel guilty if you wanted to go back to work!"


Emily was excited about the prospect of a pregnancy, now that Paige was part of her life. Of course, she had just been through a pregnancy with Paige, but this time would be different: This time, she would be carrying. She resolved not to be a pregnancy princess, as she had accused Paige of being. She didn't want to give Paige too much ammunition for teasing her. And she really didn't want Paige to say, "See? I told you!" whenever she complained about something that she had ridiculed Paige for complaining about.

Ever since she went through the whole pregnancy process that ultimately led to Anna, she had looked forward to the next one, knowing that the next one would be different. Although she had been willing to have her first child when she was single, she had been pretty sure that she would only have more children if she were in a relationship. Even though she and Paige weren't engaged, Emily knew that theirs was a committed relationship. Paige may not have proposed, but didn't have any worries that Paige would never leave her with two kids - or that Paige would leave her at all.

Emily was grateful for the support that she'd had from her family and friends the first time around. Still, it would be much better with Paige. Emily remembered the long, lonely nights after failed attempts at conceiving. As close as her friends and family had been, there had been no one to hold her all night and assure her that it would be okay; to tell her that there wasn't anything wrong with her body, and to promise that it would happen in due time.

Paige wasn't the only difference. Anna was old enough to know what was going on, and Wayne had become a part of the family, too. Emily smiled as she recalled how the kids had reacted to Paige's pregnancy, rubbing and kissing her belly, pressing their heads against it, hoping to hear a heartbeat or feel a kick.

She really loved their family.

And she looked forward to returning to the birthing classes, and the knowing looks that they would get from the nurses and teachers - "Oh, you two look familiar, but it seems the roles have been reversed!"

Emily wanted it all. And it was finally about to come to pass.


"I've seen some books," Emily said tentatively, "that point out how you can increase the odds of one gender over another."

The fertility consultant gave them a knowing and slightly patronizing smile.

"It's just that... Well, we've got two girls and one boy, and, well, the boy is feeling a little outnumbered," Paige explained. "I mean, we'd be happy with another girl or with a boy, of course, but..."

Emily was nodding her agreement eagerly. "But," she said, picking up the thread, "if there's anything we could do to kind of... increase the odds in our son's favor."

"Well," the consultant said, "I've seen thousands of people come through these doors, and probably hundreds of them have wanted to sway the odds of one gender or the other. As to whether or not those techniques word..." She was bobbing her head from side to side, like someone who wanted to be honest but who didn't want to crush their hopes. "I wouldn't say they're useless, but I'm not sure how much they improve the odds. And, to be honest, you're at a little bit of a flexibility disadvantage over couples where both partners are fertile. Those couples can time their attempts more precisely to the phases of the moon or the bodily rhythms, or whatever the books they read tell them to do. But in cases where we have to schedule your attempts, we can't be quite as flexible." She gave them both a sympathetic frown before quickly adding, "Don't get me wrong: We'll work with you as best as we can, but we can't always guarantee that we can align our schedules."

"Oh, we understand," Emily said eagerly. "I guess we were just asking whether there was anything that we could do from a dietary or... I don't know, physical standpoint to kind of stack the deck in our favor."

"Well," the consultant said with a sympathetic smile, "I'm not an expert on those things, but if you find a technique that you like, go for it! It certainly couldn't hurt!"


Paige put her hand on Emily's knee as she drove home. "Disappointed?"

Emily gave her a cheerful smile. "No," she said honestly. "It doesn't matter to me either way. But I'm still hoping for the best, for Wayne's sake." She squeezed the hand that Paige had put on her knee. "He's such a great kid."

"Has Anna said anything to you? Does she want a brother or a sister?"

Emily chuckled lightly. "I think she kind of wants a boy. At first, I thought she was just saying that out of solidarity with Wayne, but now I think she thinks of them like dolls - 'Well, I've already got the girl-doll; it's time to get the boy-doll."

Paige laughed out loud. "Man, these kids are going to be loved, aren't they?"

Emily moved her hand up to Paige's cheek. She couldn't wait to get started.


Anna and Wayne rushed the chair where Emily was sitting, reading the book on how to influence a child's gender. "Mommy," Wayne asked with the face of an angel, "can we work on the puzzle on the table?"

"Maybe you should work on one of your puzzles," Emily suggested.

When Anna and Wayne started to get interested in the puzzle that Paige and Emily had been working on, off and on, Paige went out and got them puzzles of their own, to distract them. She didn't want them to mess up the big puzzle, forcing pieces where they didn't fit, or losing some of them.

"But those puzzles are for babies," Anna pleaded.

Emily sighed wearily. "Well, I guess you're going to have to ask Mommy P," she told them. It was her rule, after all, that barred them from working on the big puzzle.

"But Mommy P. said to ask you!"

Why that littlle... Paige was trying to make Emily the bad guy, but Emily was having none of it. If Paige wasn't going to take a stand and tell them no, neither would she. "Fine!" she said, throwing her hands up in celebration. "Go for it! Go crazy with it!"

She shuffled them off, but they turned, when they realized that she wasn't following. "Mommy, we want to work on it with you!"

Even better, Emily thought. It was like having a secret caper with the kids. They could do whatever they bloody well wanted to with the puzzle, without having to worry about Paige's obsessive, compulsive rules. "Let's do this!" she shouted, excited.

Paige was nursing Michelle. They usually fell asleep right after their evening sessions, so Emily knew that she and the kids had plenty of time.


"What happened here?" Emily asked in what was almost a shout as she crossed the threshold into the dining room. There were stray pieces on the floor and on the chairs around the table. Apparently, the kids had gotten started on the puzzle before they received Emily's permission. Oh well... Emily thought. She could cover for them. Paige should have known better than to duck out on the decision, if she had wanted to keep the puzzle-table perfect.

"Here, Mommy," Wayne said, handing Emily a cup full of green puzzle pieces.

"Oh, great," Emily droned sarcastically. The puzzle seemed to be made up of about 90% green pieces. At least, when she worked on the puzzle with Paige, Paige took on that challenge - one of the advantages of Paige's obsessiveness. "Thank you..." She reached into the cup and felt something weird. Before she could investigate, she saw Wayne and Anna pull back the tablecloth, revealing a puzzle that had been totally disarranged. Closer inspection showed that the pieces had been assembled to spell out the words, "WILL" (in green, vegetation pieces), "YOU" (in dark blue, sea pieces) "MARRY" (in gray, castle pieces) "ME?" (in sky blue pieces). The letters were rather ragged looking; not any kind of crisp font, by any means, but Emily knew that it must have taken forever to find pieces to fit together to form anything resembling the letters that they were supposed to represent.

And the weird thing that she had felt in the cup was, of course, been a ring. While she was still processing it all, covering her wide-open mouth with her left hand, she felt a hand on the small of her back. She turned to find Paige behind her, on one knee, holding Michelle in one arm.

"Paige!" she managed to say before she was overcome with emotion. She had expected Paige to get her alone somewhere, when it was just the two of them, to spring the surprise on her, but Paige had managed to involve all of the children in the proposal, too. It just seemed so right; so appropriate; so Paige. None of their relationship would have happened without the children. They met because of Wayne and Anna and got close during their playdates, and they moved in together when Michelle came along.

It was a stroke of genius, Emily realized, to hide the ring in one of the cups for the puzzle pieces. That was pretty much the last place where she would have looked. But she didn't know how Paige had managed to pull off the rest - disassembling and repurposing the puzzle, and getting Wayne and Anna in on the secret without either of them giving it away.

The moment seemed frozen in time until Hanna's words came back to her: Don't cry so much that you leave Paige hanging. Of course, she knew that Paige knew what her answer was, but she knew that Hanna was right. She helped Paige to her feet and hugged her. "Of course, I'll marry you, Paige McCullers," she sniffled.

Soon it was a family hug, with Anna and Wayne hugging them around the legs and Princess circling them and jumping up and down with delight.

They were going to get married. And they were going to have another child. It was everything that Emily had hoped for and even better than she had expected.


A/N - Any of you fans of the show "Monk" out there might recognize the "Bread and Butter" bit... :'(

Thanks for reading!