The next Saturday, Emily and Henry drive to meet up with Andrea and take a few of the younger kids to the air and space museum.

After parking and unloading an excited Henry from the car, they meet up with Andrea in the lobby. Standing around her are Ezra, Logan, Addy, and Kyle, with Isabel strapped to her in a carrier and a diaper bag on her shoulder. It takes a bit of coordination to get all the kids and their belongings through security.

They head down the hall to the moving beyond earth exhibit for the museum's story-time hour. As they walk, Emily holds onto Ezra and Kyle's hands, and Andrea walks with Addy. Logan and Henry walk ahead of them, stopping seemingly every twenty seconds to look at some distraction or ask them questions.

It's quite enough walking for Emily, at an exhausting thirty five weeks, four days pregnant. When they finally arrive at the right room, Emily immediately takes a seat and lets Ezra and Kyle run ahead to sit in front of the storyteller. Soon, Andrea joins her, Isabel gurgling happily on her lap with a teething toy in her mouth.

Later, they corral the kids into the food court, buying happy meals for the lot of them. Andrea and Emily take the chance to catch up as they eat, Isabel in a high chair with Andrea feeding her a bottle and single-handedly eating her own meal.

"How's newlywed life treating you?" Andrea asks her. "And the pregnancy?"

Emily helps open a packet of ketchup and squirts it out in front of Henry's fries as she answers. "Getting used to taking care of Henry. I don't have much experience around kids, so this is all new to me. I think we're doing alright adjusting to living together. JJ's also pregnant, so we're having to figure out if we're wanting to keep our nursery arrangement. We're not sure how much use the nursery is going to get anyways, since she wants to keep the baby with her and it sounds like what I'm going to end up doing as well," Emily answers. "As for the pregnancy, I'm just about ready for it to be done. Andrew's fine, he's just spending way too much time trying to kick my ribs."

Andrea laughs at this. "Trust me, I know how it is," she answers.

"Your family practically wrote the book," Emily says with a laugh. "By the way, I wanted to thank you for suggesting we have a little family talk. We've started to clear the air about a few things in the future. I'm glad we did it."

Andrea nods. "We definitely had a few of those talks in the beginning before I married Alex, and even after. I wasn't raised this way, you know."

"You weren't?" Emily asks, her eyes widening for a second with surprise. "I just assumed."

Andrea shakes her head. "Most people do. People assume that nobody would choose this unless they were raised to believe. My family is part of the mainstream church, which outlawed polygamy a very long time ago. As I got older and really started to research my religion, I realized that didn't make any sense to me. Why would God tell us to practice plural marriage and then take it back because it didn't suit the political climate of the time? After I turned eighteen I started searching for people who felt the same way I do, if they even existed. That's when I met Julie."

"Wow," Emily says, keeping half her attention on Henry, who has mostly abandoned his meal and started playing with Logan again. "How do you go from that to married all in the same year?"

"Julie introduced me to the world of independent fundamentalists, that there's other people out there who want to practice our religion as it was in the Prophet's time. When I met Alex it just clicked; he is who God wanted me to marry. I ended up meeting other families who believe as we do during that time, but in the end Alex was it," Andrea says.

"And your family?" Emily asks. "How do they feel about it?"

"They're not in the picture anymore," Andrea says with a sigh, reaching over to pick up a handful of fries that Addy had dropped. "To them, I've left God. It doesn't matter that we share most of our religion, for them and many others it just comes down to the fact that I believe in plural marriage. They didn't come to the wedding, haven't seen any of their grand kids. It was the same for Erin, choosing this faith meant losing the love of her family. That's part of why it took her so long to really decide. Choosing to enter the family was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, and growing a family is difficult, but I wouldn't do it any differently if I were given another chance."

Emily thinks of her own new and growing family, of the struggles they've had and will continue to have. She looks at their full table of beautiful children with all the promise of the world in them. While they don't share the same religion, Emily thinks they both can agree on one point. This is how God wants them to be living. Happy, loving, loved. Raising good children. Sharing the work of motherhood and a marriage with other wives. It isn't for everyone, but it's what they both chose.

After cleaning up, a fifteen minute potty break, and Emily offering to carry Isabel for a while (and the ensuing struggle to properly secure Isabel onto Emily,) they head to the early flight gallery. Andrea has a printed worksheet in her diaper bag to share with the kids, with pictures of parts of a plane on it. They all circle around Andrea near the plane.

Andrea points to a wheel on the page. "Can anyone tell me where this is?"

Henry and Logan both search for a second and point to it. "Here!" Henry exclaims.

"You're right!" Andrea says with a smile. "Do you know what this does?"

They shake their heads.

"This is the wheel," Andrea says. "It helps the plane roll down the runway when it isn't up in the sky flying!"

Then comes the wing. "The wing helps the airplane leave the ground to go up in the sky, and helps it stay in the sky," she continues after the kids have the chance to find the wing.

Finding the rudder is a little bit trickier, so Andrea points it out to them. "The rudder helps the plane turn when it's flying," she explains.

Finally comes the propeller. Kyle excitedly points it out. "Right!" Andrea says. "The propeller spins around and around really fast so that the plane can move forward and fly."

She spends a few more minutes pointing out the parts on the Bleriot they're looking at. Then they walk over to the "how things fly" room, and the kids all get to play in a Cessna 150 as Andrea explains what all the parts are for and demonstrates using a few of them. Catching Emily's eye, she smiles. "I've been here a few times before."

Emily thinks about the sacrifices Andrea had to make to be here with her children today, how good a mother she is, how happy she seems to be.

During the car ride home, Emily and Henry chat about their visit with some of the Holman family, and if Henry liked the museum. They talk about the fact that the Holman family has more kids than they do, and more mothers.

During that talk, Henry spontaneously says "I'm happy I have more moms too."

"Why do you say that, Henry?" Emily asks, suddenly hit with an emotion she cannot describe.

"Because you're my mom too now," Henry answers, all innocent and nonchalant, before going back to talking about Logan and asking when they'll next play together.

Peace, Emily thinks. With her shared love and shared sacrifices, with the fact that she's doing exactly what she's supposed to be doing.