This should answer the question as to what the change was! Again, I'd really like reviews, to see if this is worth keeping. It's been buzzing annoyingly around my head, but it promises to be quite difficult and involved (to write; not so much to read, I hope), trying to keep them realistic without it being a carbon copy of the original. Yes, the characters will be different, but that's because I was trying to figure out the new family dynamic.

I hope you understand: there will probably be a long(ish) delay before the next chapter, since I'd like to plot this out a bit. I figured I'd see what the reaction to this aforementioned change was - since the story itself may be quite difficult to write.

Guest, I'm so glad you like it. I hope you'll still be 'sold' on it after this chapter!

John Jude Farragut, I'm also glad you are liking it so far. If you like tying up the loose end of Susan, you might like others of my stories, which mostly deal with Susan. Your idea is an interesting one - that's not the change that's happening, but it could be a really interesting one, perhaps if someone wrote a story that essentially substituted Susan for Edmund at the beginning, and reform Ed another way. Maybe you should try it! :) However, you have got to the heart of why I chose the change I did, since I figured, perhaps if there were more efforts made to get Susan there in the first place, she might be impacted more deeply by it.

dontgiveahoot, I saw your review partway through writing this chapter! and came back to edit this top section. I sincerely hope you aren't turned off the way this story will go. :) If you like that reviewer's idea, perhaps (with their permission, o' course) you should write that story yourself! It isn't the story I want to tell here, though. I'm really glad you're looking forward to all the possibilities! I hope I don't disappoint you.

Anyway, now that I have piqued your curiosity for long enough - on with the story! And once again, I beg you to review, to see if it's worth continuing.

The coin bounced high in the air, catching the sunlight briefly before succumbing to the pull of gravity once more.

"John - don't," his wife pleaded. He caught the falling coin and closed his hand tightly over it.

"See? Perfectly safe."

"But if it wasn't," Mary argued. "That's our last coin."

He frowned, as always when reminded of it, and his gaze involuntarily went to her stomach. "We're pretty done anyhow, love, whether or not we have that half-a-crown."

She shrugged and pulled the threadbare coat closer around her, wishing it was larger so that it could be adequately buttoned. They did not have enough to buy proper maternity clothes. "At least my parents will take him in, while we're having the baby."

John sighed. "We still haven't decided what to do about the child."

Mary sighed in return. "I think you know what we have to do," she said softly. "We can't raise one, let alone two, even once you get a job."

"Mary, I am sure God will guide us so that I get another job."

"I know, but John - what if he wants us to - do that?" She wrapped her arms around her belly protectively. It was still too painful to speak it aloud, the possibility of that. "Nobody could have predicted we would have another child so soon. There must be a reason."

"I am sorry," he apologised gravely. His wife caught him in a spontaneous embrace, made awkward by the almost nine months of pregnancy between them.

"It's not your fault," she started, but was unexpectedly overcome by giggles despite the gravity of the situation.

"It is my fault," he replied, his lips twitching but quickly stilled. "Now, love, I really must go in."

Mary lifted her hand to brush a film of tears from her eyes; the possibility of this job meant so much to them, the difference between happiness and - the other.

"Godspeed."

"You will be good to her?" Mary looked longingly at the tiny, crumpled bundle, the baby she had borne scarcely an hour before, and was now to lose forever.

"I promise we will do all that is in our power to give her a happy life." Anne Williams reached out and slowly, carefully, eased the child from the arms of her mother, whose grasp for a moment tightened in spasmodic, unwanted desperation, then consciously and heartbreakingly released.

"You will treat her as your own child?" Arms devoid of anything to hold, Mary wrapped them around herself, a pathetic and lonely figure. John moved from the corner where he had been standing and put an arm carefully around her shoulder.

"She is our own child. We can have no other."

"I know you will be kind. But - oh, John, if only you were given that job!" She looked up at her husband.

He replied very gently, "My love, it was God's will." Absorbed in looking at each other in their personal web of grief, the pair missed Anne's satirical glance towards her husband Robert. Perhaps if they had caught it, things would not have turned out as they had, and they would have raised their second child instead of giving her up, in any case: but they did not.

"I know," she said after a moment. And after another fleeting moment, Anne and Robert walked out of their lives - and took with them John and Mary's baby, their second child, a girl that, had they kept her, they would have named Susan.

I know the chapter is short, shorter than I'd've liked, but it just seemed to work to be this short (any feedback on that would be welcome!). And since we'll probably be doing some time skipping next chapter, it seemed better than to put the next scene after this bit.

I hope you enjoyed it. Please, please review and tell me if this twist is interesting enough to continue.

Let me just spell it out completely: the change here is that owing to financial difficulties Susan is given up for adoption. How, you may ask, will that change canon? We need the four Kings and Queens... but one of them isn't there. So what will happen? I guess... you'll see! :D (If you want me to continue, of course.)

Please review, and I do hope you enjoyed.