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"Little fucking shit," Jamie yelled from the nursery. A crash rang through the hallway and it caught Dani's attention. She set down the shirt she was folding and sought out the source. Her wife was sitting, legs crossed, on the ground in what was Miles's room, but would now be the nursery. Miles had moved into one of the two guest bedrooms downstairs so that the nursery could be right next door to Jamie's and Dani's room.

Dani walked into the room and rested her hand on her belly. "What's going on in here?" She surveyed the room. Some stray pieces of furniture sat wherever they had been placed. A rug was rolled up in the corner and a few cans of paint waited by the door. Jamie had a toolbox next to her and a manual in one hand. A pile of wooden slats were splayed out on the ground in front of her.

Jamie held up the manual, "This guide is pointless. It's like trying to build a puzzle, but all the pieces are faced down."

"Let me see?" Dani asked. She took the booklet from Jamie and flipped through it. It was a diagram for how to build the crib they purchased. Each page had a picture that included tools, parts, and arrows depicting how to put the parts together. Dani reviewed the first page and then squatted to look at the parts. Her hand dug through a pile and pulled out a peg. "We put these pegs into the hole there on the base and then the slats go on top."

"You serious?" Jamie cried. She looked over her wife's shoulder at the picture. Meanwhile, Dani picked up the base board and began to insert pegs. "Give me that, Blue Eyes."

"I can help," Dani said.

"Of course you can, but I'm not letting you," Jamie said. She took the boards from Dani and got to putting them together. "I told you, I'll build the nursery, you build the baby. Now, if you want to be my hot assistant, I happen to have a job opening."

Dani gave over the supplies and leaned back against the wall. "What's the requirements?"

"Must respond to 'Poppins', 'Blue Eyes', and/or 'baby'. Can't make tea no matter how much you think you can. Have a disturbing love for candy corn. Must be 20 weeks pregnant." Jamie winked at her wife. "You fit those qualifications?"

"I could probably make the cut," Dani laughed.

"Great, 'cause I have a task for you," Jamie dropped the pegs in her hand. She tipped Dani's chin up and then slipped her hand around the back of her head as she leaned in for a kiss. When they pulled apart, Jamie brushed Dani's bangs from her face. "You're hired."

As Jamie went to return to the project, Dani caught hold of her hand and kissed it. She laced their hands together. "Let the record show I've never liked candy corn before. The baby just can't get enough of it."

"Bloody hard craving to have in March," Jamie said. When it first hit a few weeks ago, Jamie ended up driving all over town desperately trying to find it. A candy store on the opposite side from their house happened to have a stash left over from Halloween which they sold for a discounted price. It was depleted fast, though, and the owner of the candy store (mom of three kids) took pity and tracked down some from the supply company she ordered product from. "I'm gonna need my hand back, Poppins."

"Not yet," Dani said and squeezed tighter. Jamie gave a playful eye roll and slid into place next to Dani. She wrapped an arm around her wife's shoulder and pulled her close. Dani looked around the room. "When are we gonna paint?"

"If I can get this bloody crib put together I was thinking about starting a base coat tonight. Might let you help with that if you ask nice enough."

Dani chuckled and shook her head, "Buying pink paint was one thing, but we should really wait to actually have the doctor confirm it's a girl."

"I dunno, Flora's pretty convinced," Jamie said. "Besides, boys can like pink."

"I think she has more dreams than she tells us," Dani said. "Did you notice how the other day she told us we were going to be late so she made us leave early and then fifteen minutes after we got to their school there was a crash?"

Jamie's eyebrows pushed together in thought. "Oh, yeah, and then yesterday she told me not to forget eggs."

"That's different," Dani bumped her shoulder into Jamie's. "We just know we have to remind you of stuff ten times over or else you'll forget. Now with pregnancy-brain, she's gotta step up to the plate or nothing gets done."

Flora screaming her brother's name made its way to the nursery. Jamie groaned. "All day. You'd think they would run out of things to argue about." She pushed herself up off the floor and then turned around to help Dani up. "They're gonna burn down this house one day."

The kids' feet ran down the hallway. "Hey, no running in the house," Dani yelled. She walked out of the nursery. "You know this."

"I didn't take your game," Flora yelled. She was on the landing with Miles's arm around her neck. The girl was yanking at her brother's arm, but it wasn't budging. "Let me go."

"What is this?" Jamie cried. She grabbed his arm and pulled it off Flora. Once she was free, she ran on the other side of Dani. "Barely has her stitches out and you're ready to give her new ones."
Miles pointed at his sister. "She took the game out of my Atari."

"Did you?" Dani asked Flora. She shook her head. "Do you know where it is?"

"No, I told him. He always forgets to put it back in the case and they get lost." Flora sighed and readjusted her shirt.

Dani tilted Flora's head back so she could take a look at the girl. "You okay?" Flora nodded. "Okay, go back to your room while we talk to your brother." She did as she was told.

Jamie took a deep breath and stared off into the distance for a moment. "Come on." She led the three downstairs and then gestured for Miles to sit on the armchair in the living room while she and Dani sat on the couch across from him. "Why are you so angry all the time?"

"May as well ask you the same thing," Miles snapped. He slouched against the back of the chair and crossed his arms.

"You're failing classes, you're angry all the time, you're hurting your sister," Dani sighed. "We're worried."

"Don't be," Miles said.

Jamie set her elbows on her knees and leaned over her legs. "Look, mate, I've been down this road before. It's not a pretty one." He stared blankly at her. "You've got a lot to be angry about, but anger just sits in you and burns you to the ground. It takes you with it."

That made his blank stare falter. "What if I want it to?" He said, under his breath.

"What do you mean?" Dani asked, her heartbeat picked up in her chest.

He thought to himself for a moment. "It's always there, in the back of my mind. Bly." His eyebrows pressed together and he stared at his lap. "When I'm awake, everything reminds me about it. But even sleeping doesn't help, I just have nightmares. It feels like if I just accept it and be angry it's easier to deal with than trying to fight it."

Jamie looked over at Dani next to her and took a deep breath. "We have nightmares, too."

"You do?" Miles asked.

Dani nodded, "All the time. What we all went through, especially you and your sister, those kinds of things stick with you. And sometimes they follow you, like they're ghosts."

"Sometimes people touch me and I think it's Peter trying to take control," Miles said.

"If a scarf is too tight I think it's the Lady in the Lake choking me," Dani said. "Nothing you're feeling is bad. It doesn't make you a bad person."

"Anger may seem like the best coping mechanism, but I promise you, it's not." Jamie wrung her hands. "I thought anger made it easy for me, too. Then, it wasn't just anger. It was drugs and alcohol. Got me locked up."

Miles tilted his head and looked at Jamie. "I didn't know you went to jail."

Jamie held her hands out and nodded. "Learned a lot there. Mainly, how destructive anger can be for a person. At first, it seems like it's just about you. Like it doesn't matter because the feeling inside you is just inside you. But it spills out. It touches everything around you and it spoils everything around you." She looked at her wife. Dani took Jamie's hand, rested it in her own lap, and gave a slight nod to let Jamie take over the conversation. Jamie returned her attention to Miles. "It's okay if you're struggling. We all struggle sometimes. You, me, your mum. Everyone. There are consequences to failing classes and there are consequences to having to repeat school. But, that ship can be righted. We can help you right it. But, hurting people? You can never take it back. You can never fix it."

Tears cropped up in Miles's eyes. "Did you ever hurt someone?"

Jamie took a deep breath and Dani squeezed her hand three times. "I did, yeah. Part of the reason I served time, actually. I think about it every day. It's something I have to carry with me for the rest of my life. What you've done to your sister, you'll have to carry for the rest of your life."

"It's not just Flora," Miles whispered. He studied the rug beneath their feet. "I got expelled from boarding school because I jumped out of a tree and sprained my shoulder."

"You jumped out of a tree?" Dani squeaked. The fear washed over her again.

He nodded. "And I put my friend in a choke hold. He passed out."

"Blimey," Jamie whispered. She took her hand back and rubbed her thighs up and down. "Well–."

"And killed a bird." Miles whispered this one the quietest. "It was the teacher's pet."

Dani's mouth dropped open and the wives took a second to make eye contact. There clearly was a lot more going on than they were aware of. "Why did you do all of that?" Dani asked. Her voice shook, wary of whatever answer he could give.

"Flora needed me. She asked me to come home because of Miss Jessel and Peter. I didn't want her to have to deal with that by herself so I had to find a way." Miles started crying. "Does that make me a bad person?"

"Think that just makes you a good person who was put in a shite position," Jamie said. "It doesn't have any say in who you are unless you let it." He nodded, but remained silent.

Dani jerked her head toward his bedroom. "Okay, sweetheart. Go clean your room and your mom and I will come find you in a bit."

Once he left, Jamie stood up and held her hand out to her wife, helping her up and off the couch. They walked upstairs together and closed their bedroom door behind them. Dani returned to folding laundry and Jamie started to put away what was already laid out on the bed.

"I think we should revisit the psychologist idea you had," Dani said. "The dead bird thing really scares me."

"That kid's not a sociopath. Besides, it's not that simple." Jamie walked into the closet and returned a moment later with a handful of hangers. "What do we tell a psychologist, though? 'He's traumatized from being possessed by a lowlife scumbag who killed his girlfriend that later possessed Miles's sister, too.'"

"Yeah," Dani said. Jamie's head whipped up in surprise, but she found a stubbornness in her wife's eyes. "We do. If he's going to come out of this with some sense of healing, he needs to be able to process the whole thing. Not just pieces. We'll tell the psychologist everything first so we know how they deal with it. I'm not sending him in only to be further traumatized. That's something we can hold."

Jamie, with a pile of jeans in her hand, got lost in Dani's eyes for a time. "You know how much I love you?"

A smile spread across Dani's face. She dropped a pair of socks on the bed, pulled the jeans from Jamie's hands and wrapped her arms around her neck. "I love you so much," she whispered into her wife's neck.

With Dani's pregnant stomach pressed against Jamie, a sudden movement caught their attention. Jamie sprung back to look down at it. "Was that?"

Dani gasped, "Yeah, I think so."

"Has it happened before?" Jamie asked.

"No," Dani shook her head. She pressed her hand against her stomach to feel the baby kick again. Then, she pulled Jamie's hand in to feel it. Jamie laughed with joy as tears built in her eyes.

"That's incredible," Jamie whispered.

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