Joan had called and booked an appointment with Patricia before they left Indiana, scheduling it around Sam's classes when he said he wanted to be there, and on Tuesday morning when they would normally be looking for a hunt Sam drove his wife to the tiny office that the midwife kept.

Her tall, handsome husband looked almost comically out of place in the traditionally feminine space, with its gentle but cheerful colors and pamphlets about the signs and symptoms of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes. He fidgeted in the waiting room while Joan gave a urine sample and had her blood drawn and hovered nearby while they took her weight and blood pressure. They had all of Joan's medical history on file from before, but Sam needed to share what he knew about his family's medical history. He temporarily abandoned that project when Patricia came into the room. There was a couple of minutes of small talk, clearly to get Sam a little more comfortable, before Patricia moved on to the main event.

"Well, the tests came back positive," she said. "Based on the date of your last cycle, I'd estimate seven weeks. We'll see if we need any adjustments of that after the exam. Any questions before we get started?"

Joan's questions would wait until after the physical exam, since they were mostly about what to do to combat nausea that seemed to be much worse this time around, but Sam had written a long list of questions for Patricia, which the woman patiently answered.

Eventually he got to the end (some of them Joan could have answered from her first pregnancy, but there were a couple of things that she hadn't ever considered) and she endured the physical exam. They ended with an ultrasound, Sam looking starry-eyed when he saw the flicker of the heartbeat on the screen. Patricia even pulled out the doppler so that they could hear the heartbeat.

Most of the paperwork from her pregnancy with Billy had been lost on her end, probably at Bobby's somewhere and good luck finding it in the stacks of papers and books that the man kept, so she ended up with another thick sheath for her and Sam to go over at a later point. When Joan brought up how much worse her morning sickness was with this pregnancy, Patricia got a little more serious.

"Your family is still mostly on the road?" At Joan's nod, the midwife scribbled a prescription and a couple of recommendations down. "It might be best if you stay settled until the end of the first trimester. That means about six weeks in one place, if you can manage it. I'm prescribing something that might help the nausea if it gets worse, but I would try using the wristbands and maybe ginger when you feel nausea before that. Same advice as before otherwise; drink plenty of water, eat several small meals during the day, figure out what upsets your system and avoid it."

Sam escorted his wife out of the office after she hugged the midwife goodbye. "Guess we're looking at a place who will let us rent month-to-month," he said as Joan looked up the closest drugstore for what she needed. She'd started taking her prenatal vitamins back in Fairfax, so she was good on those, but she didn't have any of the things that Patricia had recommended.

"Will you be all right with that?"

"It's not any different than taking time off earlier in the year when Dean got hurt on that vampire hunt," Sam said, shrugging. "I'll see about knocking out a few classes while we're here. Do you want to sign up for a month to month at the YMCA? I know swimming was your favorite exercise with Billy."

"It might be a good idea," she agreed. "Being in the water helped literally everything last time. And since we're going to be circling back to Chicago a lot for your classes and my appointments, we'd get some use out of it."

Sam guided the Impala into street parking in front of the pharmacy and Joan went in with her list of things that should help make things a little better. While he waited, Sam called Dean and put him to looking for a place to stay before calling Father Forthill and giving him the news. They were going to need to be more careful on the hunts they took on in the foreseeable future, especially the Order-sanctioned ones that tended to be a little more complex and that usually ended up with Joan on the front line of the trouble no matter how they planned differently.

Joan dropped the bags on the passenger-side floor at her feet when she got back, digging through and looking for the wristbands that had been recommended before they were moving. "Here's hoping they help," she said as she double-checked that they were hitting the pressure points.

"At the very least they can't hurt." Sam guided the car carefully into the flow of traffic as they headed back towards the Carpenters. "I put Dean onto looking for someplace to stay that's longer term. And I called Father Forthill, so hopefully the Order puts us on less-risky cases for a while."

Joan sipped at her water and looked out the window, apparently deep in thought. Sam was still a little overwhelmed by the earlier appointment, so he did his best to focus on his driving. "The Boss showed up in the pharmacy," she said. "I'm going to take a class and certify to be an EMT during the downtime. We're probably going to need it."

"All right," Sam agreed. Hopefully the Order would take up the costs of that as well. They had pretty simple tastes and had managed to save up some money over the last couple of years, especially since the Order covered gas and accommodations when they were on an Order case but settling down would end up eating up those savings.

Dean already had a line on a month-by-month once they'd fought through the traffic and gotten to the Carpenters house, and they were settled in within a few days. Then they started to plan around the battered kitchen table.

"We're not staying permanently in Chicago, not even the suburbs, no matter how convenient it is," was Dean's first comment. "I freaking hate cities."

Sam didn't want his family so close to the insanity of Dresden's usual antics and was quick to agree. Joan was a little more reluctant, as she did like the idea of being close to the Carpenters, but eventually even she agreed that it would be better to get a little distance.

"I don't want to be close enough to my family that they can drop in without notice," Joan added to the conversation. She looked like she felt a little guilty about it, but not guilty enough to stop her from continuing. "Wherever we end up the chances of us putting every single clue about the supernatural away every second of the day is really, really low. I don't want to have the conversation with my father when he drops in one day and there's a table covered in books about creatures."

Given how Will Girardi was around him most of the time, Sam would rather have some distance from the man as well. "Should we look around Bobby's?"

"That would be sweet," Dean crowed. "Access to the salvage yard anytime we needed without a long drive? Sign me up."

"I would like it," Joan said. "Bobby's great to be around and Billy loves him."

"Where else?"

Joan folded her hands over her stomach. "I've got a feeling that God is going to hold veto power on where we settle down, so we should probably just look anywhere that seems like a good fit."

Sam hadn't even considered that. It made him a little uncomfortable that he wouldn't have final say on where they settled down, but by now he was accustomed to that kind of thing. He had to trust that where they ended up was where they were meant to be.

"What should we do while we wait?"

"If a hunt comes up or the Order calls with a case, I'm going to stay behind. I can do research from here, but I really, really want the puking to stop." Joan made a face and sipped at her tea. "I'm going to look into taking an EMT course this summer."

Dean hesitated, tapping his hand on the scarred wood of the table. The ring he wore on his hand clicked lightly for a second. "We should maybe start looking into training Billy how to shield. None of us can do it, and Joanie can't be there because she's already his shield. Call around get the names of the psychics that we can trust, and I'll take him along."

The other two went quiet. They didn't talk about Billy's gifts often. It rarely came up, since Joan shielded him just by her presence. "Missouri might be our best bet," Joan finally said. "She's the one who already knows about Billy."

It took a while to set up, but eventually Dean left with the Impala and Billy. Missouri was perfectly willing to help train the toddler and assured them that it was better to start at such a young age so that the shields could become instinctual.

Joan had a week-long break from her EMT classes. Dean was in Lawrence with Billy and for the first time in over a year it was only her and Sam. Granted, the morning sickness killed the honeymoon vibe a little, but it was still more uninterrupted couple time then they'd had ever, and when she wasn't throwing up she was determined to enjoy it.

So when she was handed a newspaper for Cicero, Indiana and given the suggestion that the two of them should look for houses, they rented a car and headed out. Joan was just past the first trimester now, and travel should be all right. More importantly, they had a goal and a timeline to beat.

As soon as Patricia had confirmed Joan's pregnancy, the clock started ticking. All three of them had decided beforehand that if Joan was indeed pregnant, they would start looking for a place to settle. Three adults and two small children was too much for life on the road. They would still travel for hunts as needed, but someone would always need to stay home with the kids from then on. Joan had very few illusions about that duty falling to her most of the time, but she had a few ideas on ways that she could continue doing her work in that situation.

There was a house being built in a nice subdivision, but it was likely outside of their price range. Still, it gave them a starting point with a realtor, who they tracked down at a neighborhood party.

After five minutes of conversation in which the realtor in question didn't look at them once, the realtor excused herself and headed towards one of the other adults at the party.

Joan watched as the woman walked away. "Sam?"

"Hm?"

"Have you ever known a real estate agent to just walk away when you've mentioned buying a house, even if its not the nice new one she's trying to sell?"

"No, definitely not." His focus was on the rest of the group. "You ever see a bunch of kids at a party and hardly any of them playing, just standing next to their moms?"

"Nope." She assessed the assortment of whiny children clinging to their mothers, with only a couple of holdouts climbing on the playground equipment. "Reflections show truth sometimes, right?" At Sam's nod, Joan took a couple of steps away and angled her body towards the tinted window of an SUV. "Honey, do you think I'm showing already?" Her volume wasn't raised, but she'd changed the pitch of her voice and it carried, four of the nine women turning to look at them. This altered the angle of the children at their side, and as Sam came up around, he got a good look at something assuredly not human where the children should be. Then he gave himself over to a moment of panic, because his wife had just asked him an impossible question and from the look of mirth in her eyes, she knew it. Those women were all watching them like it was a new and exciting telenovela.

He spread one hand over her stomach. There was only the slightest curve there, only noticeable without her shirt. "You didn't seem to be this morning when I watched you get dressed," he said softly. "Maybe we should go back, and I could take another long look."

Joan laughed and kissed him. "Nice save." He reached for her hand, weaving their fingers together. The neighborhood ladies had all turned back to their gossip now that there wasn't going to be any drama. "Any ideas?"

Sam had indexed every hunter's journal he could get his hands on during the down time in Chicago while his brother rebuilt his knee before he'd started his online law classes a few months ago, so most of it was fresh in his mind. "I'll want to double-check but I think I remember something that fits. That's a pretty recognizable signature."

Once they got back to the motel room and he booted up his laptop it only took a few minutes for him to find the reference and someone's sketch that had been added to his files. "Yeah. Changelings."

"Are those the creepy fairy babies?" Joan was in the bathroom, washing her face and pulling back her hair. She'd put on make-up for the meeting with the real estate agent and had regretted it. Apparently changing body chemistry can make a pregnant woman's skin more sensitive. Sam was learning new things every day when it came to his wife's pregnancy.

"No connection to that side, thankfully. Just named after it." They'd gotten the rundown from Molly about the fey ages ago and Sam wanted absolutely no part of it. "The mother changeling replaces children with her own, like a cuckoo, and the children feed on the human mother. The Changeling mother takes a human face the same way and feeds on the human children that she replaced. Once they've sucked all of the victims dry, they move on. Best way to kill them is fire."

Joan made a face as she came back into the room and sat down across from him. "That's going to get very messy, very quickly."

"I'm guessing the real estate agent is a likely prospect for the mother changeling, given her inability to jump on prospective home buyers like that. Maybe if we take her out, we can force the child changelings away from their victims."

"So do we try following her or pull a Sherlock Holmes and figure out where she's got the children stashed?"

Sam looked startled. "What do you mean 'we'? You're staying where its safe."

Joan gave him an unimpressed look. "So you're going to get a bunch of children to safety while killing a monster with an improvised flamethrower, all by yourself? It's a two-person hunt, and Dean is in Lawrence."

"You can't put yourself at risk like that."

Sam watched as she tilted her chin up and put her hands on her hips. "It's clear that my boss wanted us here to take care of this problem, and that we're both going to be needed in the field. You take the monster mother, and I get the kids out. Otherwise, it's going to kill the kids just to spite you."

"And what good will that do if it kills our kid somehow?" Sam returned.

"Let's figure out where it is first. If you can think of a way to get the kids out safely without getting caught out by the monster mom, we'll do it. But this baby isn't growing up without its daddy either, so think hard, Sam."

Strolling around the neighborhood as a young married couple with a baby on the way was the best camouflage for the suburbs, so they walked around and looked at the houses, eventually noting red handprint smudges near the windows of some of them. The prints were too red to be dried blood, so Joan managed to talk their way in to letting Sam come in for a closer look under the guise of looking at the foundation.

It definitely wasn't blood, more likely rust or dirt with a lot of iron content, so they continued the leisurely stroll and looked for a likely location. They ended up in front of the house that was still under construction, looking at a pile of red dirt. "Is this isolated enough?" Joan asked as she eyed the place, doing her best to look like a harmless young woman. "Wouldn't the kids make enough noise to be heard?"

"Only one way to find out," Sam muttered. "Stay out here, wait for my signal."

"What's your signal going to be?"

"Probably me screaming for help." With that, he headed into the construction site. Joan walked around, doing her best to look like an interested buyer and not someone lurking outside of a potential crime scene. Sam had an improvised flamethrower that he had put together once they realized what they were dealing with, but she was only armed with the small handgun that they insisted she carry. It housed consecrated iron rounds, in the hopes that it might be effective, but fire was the only guaranteed method that they knew.

There was a muffled shriek along with an odd whooshing sound. "Got the mother," Sam called. "Kids are in the basement."

The area was still oddly quiet. Joan wondered if the construction had floundered due to permits or something but decided that it didn't matter. "I'm calling the police. We were out looking at the neighborhood and the houses and heard something suspicious." It would keep their names mostly out of it and cover the bases. She did just that, doing her best to sound worried and helpless.

There were officers there a few minutes after Sam had hurried an even half-dozen children and the realtor, all of them looking a little rough, up and out of the house. As both a bonus and a sad commentary on things, Joan played up the expectant mother and Sam dialed in on worried, protective father and they didn't even get brought in for questioning. Not even a 'stay in town in case we have questions' which cemented that this was not the place for them. Way too nonchalant for a potential trafficking situation.

On their way back to the little house they were renting in Chicago, Sam had to pull over four separate times during the three-hour drive so that Joan could throw up. Patricia had been right and the long car rides were making things worse. Even when they got back, though, her stomach didn't seem to settle even when she took the prescription antiemetic she had been given. Eventually, Sam had to take her to the urgent care because she was showing signs of dehydration. Dean came back with Billy in tow when he heard through the Carpenter grapevine about that, hovering over Joan in a way that made her so annoyed she started throwing things at him.

After another few weeks the nausea slowly eased off, but the coffee ban was still in effect because nothing made her sick faster than the smell right now. When they found a new case following a series of child drownings in Michigan, she was just starting to think about getting back on the road again. Instead they left Joan and Billy behind, Joan fuming, in Chicago rather than risk her or Billy getting injured. It was drowning children, so it wasn't a low risk, but Dean had a feeling that his brother would be paying for it for a while when they got back.

It was the middle of tourist season at Houghton Lake, which made it easier to blend even without the convenience of Joan and Billy. It had become much easier to ease suspicions with the two of them right there, and they were less likely to need to break out any fake credentials. The three children that had died at the lake had all been visitors rather than locals, and all three had been out at night, but two of them had been with parents that swore their kids were right next to them up until the moment they disappeared.

Sam's first step was research into the history of the lake, which had seen very few drownings over the years and none connected to children. Well, reported drownings anyway, which wasn't always the same thing, but it wasn't going after a specific family, just tourist kids.

Dean had taken the other end of the research, pulling up different water creatures, focusing on ones that took children. The problems that they ran into, over and over again, was that in America you not only had to deal with the creatures native to the land and the indigenous people, but the creatures and lore of any settlers that might have come afterwards. And as the native people had been forced to move from one location to another, the monsters similarly had moved around. They'd hunted a wendigo all the way out in Colorado for heaven's sake, when that creature belonged to the East Coast and the plains.

Thankfully they could rule out anything that had omens, like storms or thunder, since there hadn't been anything like that surrounding the deaths in question. That knocked out horned serpents and any possibility of local mermaids. Water babies usually didn't go after children, and they were usually further west from Michigan. With Sam running into more than one dead end on the ghost front, it was looking more likely that there was some kind of creature involved.

On the short list was a strong chance that this was a kelpie. There was a decent percentage of former Scottish and Irish immigrants and kelpies were known to frequent almost any body of water and to drown children. The good news was that there were two or three ways to handle a kelpie depending on the situation and the lore, and silver bullets were supposed to be one of the more reliable ones.

The downside, of course, was that they hadn't confirmed that it was a kelpie. That would require surveillance and put children at risk. Also, it was a decently sized lake and the drownings so far had been a decent distance apart and on two different shores. They would have to split up at the very least, and possibly look into portable cameras to cover some of the gaps. The only upside was that it seemed to be more active in the less-populated areas, away from the higher concentrations of tourists which meant that they could focus on that first.

The two of them found nothing on the first night, other than learning that their current brand of bug spray wore off after a few hours. There was nothing that they could do about it that night other than slap at any whining insect that came to feast. After applying hydrocortisone cream and finding something that promised to last for twelve hours, Dean went back to the map and Sam delved back into local history.

Even a deep dive into the history of the area revealed very few disappearances and nothing that looked like it might be responsible for the murders. Sam was about ninety-eight percent certain that it wasn't a vengeful spirit, unless it was something that predated the written history of the area. Dean had gotten his hands on a bathymetric map of the lake and had plotted the drownings on that, discovering that the kids had all died in areas with a more gradual descent rather than a steep shelf. That allowed them to narrow down the area that they'd need to monitor quite a bit, assuming that the monster followed pattern.

Thankfully after another night of uneventful stakeouts the thing popped up on the third night, and also it turned out that silver bullets did indeed kill it. They pulled it out of the lake and poured salt on it, watching as it dried out as the salt hit it. That had been Bobby's suggestion, since it seemed to be a freshwater creature, and it looked like it would make it possible to burn what was left once they were done.

They headed back to Chicago that morning, not bothering to do much more than shower to wash off the smell of burnt kelpie (a disturbingly fishy smell). Sam did his best to stay awake because Dean was driving for most of the five hours and they both did better tag-teaming to stay awake when they were this tired. The Order probably would have paid for another night so that they could get some sleep, but Sam missed his wife and his son. This was the longest he had spent without Joan since she'd joined them on the road, and he had not liked going to sleep without his wife in his arms at all.

The two of them rehashed the hunt they'd just finished, Sam taking careful notes of what they'd noticed and how they'd found the monster. The hint about coating the body with salt after it was dead had been really useful, and it wasn't anything that Dean had seen in the lore. He'd transcribe the details into a computer file later for easier searching, but nothing beat hard copy for longevity.

Dean stopped for food and caffeine in Grand Rapids, and they switched drivers so he could give his eyes a break. Sam was a more careful driver than his brother, well aware of the hell he would receive if he did something avoidable that could damage the car, but they still made decent time since they'd avoided morning rush hour. The sudden burst of joy he got when he saw Joan in the doorway as they parked the car made him smile.

Dean's observation of 'well don't you look pregnant' when he got a good look at Joan earned him a smack on the back of the head from Sam and a well-timed shove from Joan, but Sam admitted in his own mind that it was true. When they'd left for Michigan her clothes had all been a little tight and she'd developed a tiny bit of belly, but it mostly just looked like she'd put on a little weight. Now her belly was round, standing out from her torso and pressing a little against the shirt she was wearing. "He had a growth spurt," Joan told him when they were alone in the tiny bedroom they'd claimed in this house. "I had to upgrade to maternity clothes while you were gone. Luckily Charity still had some things, because thrift stores are really hit and miss."

Sam grinned. "He?"

"Patricia says that the ultrasound confirmed that it was a boy." She was grinning back at him, her hands resting on her belly.

"Can I see?"

Joan shrugged, but she was blushing a little as she pulled her shirt off over her head, leaving her just in her bra and a pair of leggings with the waistband under her belly. "I felt him move around this week, too. It'll be a few more weeks before you'll be able to feel it, though."

Sam rested his hand on her belly, a part of him still regretting that he'd missed this with Billy. He was self-aware enough to know that he wasn't sure how he would have reacted back then, and at least he was getting the chance to do this now, but that chance had been lost a long time ago. "Can I take a picture?"

She shifted on her feet. "Let me put my shirt back on," she said finally, reaching for the shirt that she'd dropped on the bed. Sam waited until she looked like she was ready before pulling out his phone, though he'd filed away the image she'd made without her shirt into his mind for later.

After he'd taken several shots, eventually getting her to loosen up and be a little less self-conscious, Sam went to take a shower before Dean could use up the limited hot water supply. Dean had commandeered the battered coffee table in the living room and was doing weapons maintenance on all the firearms as Billy watched with fascination and concentration and the firm instruction not to touch. Joan was sitting at the small table in the kitchen with her textbook and a thick notebook, taking notes on medical procedures and when to use them. Sam decided to follow suit and pulled out the class notes he'd taken from his last online session. He had in-person classes that weekend and it wouldn't hurt to review. "Practicals are still going all right?" he asked Joan as he got situated. She'd been monitoring both Sam and Dean's blood pressure for the practice before they'd left.

"Pretty good," she said. "Obviously I'm not transferring anyone onto a gurney or anything, but I got to practice intubation on a dummy this week and the instructor says I've got steady hands for it. I want to be ready for the practical test before I get too big for kneeling down next to a dummy. I can take the written test online anytime I want, once I'm ready."

"After you're done with the tests, do you want to go up and visit Bobby, maybe look at houses near him?" The idea of being near the only man he and Dean considered living family resonated inside of him. Dean had wanted to try there first, honestly, but they had been waiting for Joan's system to settle and adjust first.

She looked up from her textbook. "That sounds nice. I might need you and Dean to help me with the practical stuff, maybe talk to someone at the fire department where Daniel volunteers. Do we want to try talking to a realtor, or just consult the papers and Bobby and look around on our own?"

"No realtor," Dean said from the living room. "They're always so pushy and they ask too many questions."

"They're trying to figure out what we're looking for," Joan called back, returning her attention to her book. "It's hardly their fault that you need to add 'secret weapons space' to your house needs."

Sam huffed out a laugh and turned to his own textbooks.

Over the weekend he and Dean both stood in as dummy patients and let Joan run assessments, take vital stats, and drove her to the fire station so she could run a check on the status of an ambulance. She scheduled the practical test after one more session with the dummy under the supervision of the instructor, administering CPR and intubating and lining up the defibrillator unit until she was certain that she had all three things down.

The written test was online but proctored, so she lined that up as well and took care of it before her scheduled practical. Once they were all done and the Carpenter's address given for results, the four of them were on their way to Bobby's house.

During the eight-hour trip they only had to pull over twice for Joan to throw up, which she counted as a win. Bobby was in the middle of a rant with a hunter about being an idiot when it came to handing out the wrong number and jeopardizing his wall of phones that represented different law enforcement agencies, so they all passed through the Devil's Trap in the library while he was watching and let him get on with it, heading up to the rooms that he let them use when they came to visit.

Bobby hung up the phone and handed out shots of holy water, even knowing that it wasn't likely to ever be a problem with the Winchesters as a whole at this point. Better to keep up the habit and be safe. "Look at you," he said as Joan came in for a hug. "These idjits treating you all right?"

"I'm still planning on keeping them," Joan said. "I've put all of this work into training them up at this point that it would be a pity to drop them both and just move on."

Dean looked a touch offended at the idea that Joan had been training them, but this wasn't Sam's first rodeo with a serious relationship and he'd known all along. He and Dean had been training Joan at the same time. The most sure sign of that had been when Dean had talked her into getting the anti-possession tattoo with minimal arguing.

Billy gave Bobby the pick-me-up signal and the older man obliged, swinging the toddler up onto his hip. "You boys here on a hunt?"

"We thought we'd look at staying around here long-term," Dean said. Bobby was trying not to look too pleased, but Sam could see happiness on his face at the thought.

"Well, I guess I could do with some company now and again."

Once they were settled in bedrooms the four of them spread out the paper and looked at the houses for sale. Nothing directly in town or with close neighbors was one of the first qualifications. At least three bedrooms, and hopefully a bedroom and a bathroom on the ground floor in the case of someone being injured. Some land, so they had options, but not a lot because no one wanted to spend more than an hour a week mowing the lawn.

Financially speaking, they were in a weird place when it came to looking at homes. The Order picked up the tab for gas and motel rooms, which meant that the Winchesters covered food, clothing, and weapons. Sam and Dean received what would have been just over minimum wage for their stipend, while Joan got a little more. It turned out, though, that Joan could pinch pennies at thrift stores and discount stores and salvage stores and they'd managed to save about two-thirds of their stipend for the last couple of years, giving them enough for a decent down-payment. On the downside, not a single one of them had anything close to actual credit. If they ended up having to get a mortgage, they would all be stuck.

There were five houses that filled their criteria in the initial search. One had basement walls that were bowing slightly inward and went right off of the list. Two more had potential, though they would need work. And all three of them liked the last two on the list. Dean liked that both of them had decent basements that could be used for weapons storage and training and something like Bobby's supernatural-proof panic room. Joan liked the kitchen and backyard of one and the floor plan of the other. Sam liked the high ceilings of both houses and the fact that one of them had a small room that could be set aside as a home office.

They debated the merits of the two houses over lunch, with Joan pulling for the one with the nice backyard and kitchen and Sam arguing in favor of the one that would easily house a home office. Dean didn't really have a preference as to which one, since they were pretty much equidistant from Bobby's place, but he played devil's advocate and backed each one in turn.

On the way back to Bobby's they stopped for a few groceries and a guy about her own age in a corduroy jacket fell into step next to Joan as she looked through a section of local produce for zucchini. "You need to keep looking for houses," he said. "This isn't where you need to be."

"What do you mean?" She stopped and turned to look at God. "What's wrong with living here? We'd be so close to Bobby."

He looked at her and Joan flushed a little. "There's nothing wrong with living here. But it isn't the place where you will be the most needed. Keep looking." He handed her three of the squash she was looking for, already in a produce bag, before turning and walking away with a backwards wave.

It took a lot not to burst into tears right there, but she pulled it together and purchased her vegetables and the chicken she was planning on making at Bobby's house for dinner that night. She had started to fall in love with the idea of living near Bobby and having that taken away so suddenly hurt. Her eyes were blurring as she walked back to the car and climbed into the backseat, and by the time the door was closed, and Dean was pulling out of the parking lot she was crying. Sam looked alarmed from the passenger seat and Billy kept asking what was wrong in increasingly distressed tones. Finally, she managed to pull it together long enough to tell the two of them what had happened.

They spent another day or two at Bobby's, but the mood had gone from quietly pleased to depressed and Sam suggested heading back to Chicago rather than prolonging anything.

Joan was crying again as they pulled away and Sam wasn't sure if it was hormones or genuine disappointment. To be given such an uncompromising 'no' to something that they had all started to truly want felt a little like a slap to the face. Dean especially had truly started to want the opportunity to spend more time with the man they all regarded as a second father, and he'd put on his loudest mullet rock tape to express his own thoughts about it.

Sam just wished he knew the 'why' of the no, but he wasn't secure enough with this particular connection to ask, even obliquely. Instead, he just did his best to comfort his wife and his brother on the long drive back to Chicago.