A/N: Lol, I'm glad Jesse is such a big hit with y'all. I have a lot of fun writing her. Thanks for the lovely reviews of the previous chapter. This one is a little on the darker side—one of the angstier chapters I mentioned. And again, I've split it in two, so if the ending seems abrupt, that'd be why. Next update will be the conclusion of this part. These two parts are actually my favorite of the entire fic, I think. I've really wanted to write something like this for quite a while. Anyway... mild trigger warning for references to child & sexual abuse.


CHAPTER 11: A-Tisket, A-Tasket

. . .

The tiny brunette snuck another curious glance at the box balanced on Amanda's pudgy knees. She thought she was being subtle, but there were very few subtle things about Daphne Tyler, other than her diminutive size. Sure enough, after one last sidelong gaze and a stagy clearing of the throat, Daphne finally voiced the question that had obviously been simmering in her brain since Amanda had revealed their destination.

"We're not going there to, like, dig her up or something, are we?" she asked warily, sizing up the box as if she thought it might in fact contain a shovel or a backhoe. Maybe a hand trowel. "Because I'm definitely not wearing the appropriate shoes for that."

Despite the January flurries that had recently coated the city in a fine, redemptive powder—even the orgy of beer bottles, pizza crusts, and cigarette butts that littered most corners looked pretty—and against Amanda's strong advice, Daphne had worn a pair of high heels with her cuffed overalls. She looked fashionable, as always, in the black corduroy, striped sweater, matching knit cap, and sable puffer jacket, but she was going to freeze her fashionable little ass off.

Then again, maybe that was Amanda's jealousy talking. She would have resembled an inflatable inner tube in similar attire, and lately she couldn't even see her feet, let alone fit them into a pair of cute heels. For this particular excursion, she'd had to enlist Noah to tie her sneakers just so she could leave the apartment in something other than the moccasins she had barely taken off since Christmas.

If she didn't get this kid out of her soon, she was going to be as big as the ball that had dropped in Times Square a little over a week ago. Amanda and her wife had managed to stay awake long enough to watch it fall and ring in the new year with a long, romantic kiss as they slow danced to "Auld Lang Syne" right there in the living room. Samantha made it the perfect moment with a well-delivered kick that Olivia felt in her own belly, flush with Amanda's, and couldn't stop gushing about for the first several days of 2022.

Amanda supposed if she had to start the year out fat, a pineapple-sized human in her uterus was as good a reason as any. But man, she couldn't wait to meet the kid—and to wear jeans again.

"Yes, Daphne, your hugely pregnant best friend is dragging you out to the cemetery in the middle of winter to dig up her mother-in-law, who's been dead for over twenty years," Amanda said in a flat tone. Her voice was about the only part of her not bursting at the seams these days. Samantha would probably come out sounding like Bea Arthur after listening to nine months of the dry humor. "I thought it would be a fun girls' day out, especially when we get arrested for desecrating human remains."

The cab driver didn't say a word, but his eyes flickered to the rearview mirror once or twice, then back to the road ahead. They were in New York City, he must have overheard stranger things than a pregnant lady and a little pixie discussing grave robbing before.

"My goodness, we are in a mood." Daphne reached over to poke at the container, as if she thought there might be a live rodent inside. She snatched her finger back quickly, nose crinkled. "Seriously, not to go all Brad Pitt on you, but what's in the box? 'Cause if it's a human head, I'm out. I love you, Mandy Lou, and I will gladly be godmother to your little girl, but I draw the line at severed body parts."

Suppressing a deep sigh, Amanda resituated the shoebox on her knees—it was the box that had held the cowboy boots from Olivia on her last birthday, and it was too large to fit in her lap. Actually, the only thing that fit in her lap at present was her gigantic baby bump. She supposed she did owe her friend an explanation, though.

She hadn't invited Daphne out to lunch under entirely false pretenses; Olivia wanted to be there when they asked their friend to act as Samantha's godmother, but the poor thing had caught a nasty cold at work and was self-quarantining to protect Amanda and the kids. Amanda felt guilty taking advantage of her wife's absence—during which Daphne had bawled like her goddaughter's mothers were already dead, and accepted the honor at once—but this was something she needed to do on her own. With her best friend as an alibi.

"No, Daph, it's not a human head. I keep those in jars in the basement. Less mess than cardboard." Amanda drummed a rimshot noise against the box lid with her index fingers. The cab driver's eyes flicked from the road to the rearview and back again. Amanda lowered her voice as she continued. "It's just some . . . personal effects. Pictures and stuff. I've, um, I've been really angry at Liv's mom lately. For the way she hurt—"

She folded her lips tightly, catching herself about to say too much. Olivia and Serena were frequent topics in Amanda's therapy sessions with Dr. Hanover, but it wasn't Amanda's place to reveal her wife's abusive childhood to their friend. It was bad enough that she'd slipped and mentioned it to her own mother. "Just . . . for how she treated Liv. And there's not anyplace for the anger to go, since Serena's, y'know . . . "

"Dead."

"Yeah. So, sometimes I . . . " Throat catching, Amanda gazed down at the box lid, unable to admit the next part out loud while looking anyone in the eye. "I end up taking it out on Liv. Which is so— it's just so damn unfair, Daph. So, my, uh— my therapist suggested I go talk to Serena. Like, have it out with her, finally. The way Liv and I got to have it out with my mama last Christmas."

Amanda forced a light laugh and tapped the box top again. Her nervous knee jiggling, subdued by the extra weight she was hauling around in her legs, seemed to have migrated to her fingers. "Hanover said to bring visual cues, kinda like a pissed off version of Show and Tell. Stuff to leave behind so I can feel like I . . . I dunno, exorcised the Serena demon, or whatever. It's dumb."

"No, it's not. It's a cleansing ritual." Daphne nodded sagely. She had become Amanda's second biggest cheerleader where mental health was concerned (Olivia, of course, was the first). If Amanda's therapist told her to walk backwards and quack like a duck, Daphne would be there to clear the path for Amanda to waddle on through. And to tease her every step of the way. "Like that episode of Friends when the girls burn stuff from their ex-boyfriends."

"Oh Lord," Amanda scoffed, though she knew precisely which episode Daphne was referring to, and could probably quote half of it. "I created a monster when I told you to binge that show."

For the rest of the drive to Cedar Grove Cemetery, Daphne could be heard humming "I'll Be There For You" under her breath. The cabbie eyed her and Amanda suspiciously when they finally came upon the plot where Serena resided—the location was featured on the death certificate that Olivia kept filed away in a neatly organized expandable folder, with other important papers, like the kids' birth certificates—but he agreed to wait for their promised return.

"You can wait in the cab, too," Amanda repeated to her friend, who scooted across the backseat to join her, rather than circle behind the vehicle. Daphne was still leery about cars, after being chased down by one and left with a permanent disability. Didn't stop her from wearing heels in winter, though.

The clerk shut the cab door behind them, planted her cane on the asphalt that wound through the graveyard like candy cane swirls, and looped her arm through Amanda's. "No way. You see how that guy was looking at us after I mentioned digging up bodies? He'll probably drop us off at Bellevue on the way back."

"Psych or prison ward?" Amanda asked, snickering.

"They'd take one look at you and ship you off to some birthing room. Meanwhile, I would go straight to the booby hatch, and as appealing as that sounds—"

"I can still walk, you know," Amanda grumped, only mildly annoyed that Daphne kept pausing to help her step over curbs and clumps of dead leaves frosted with snow. She should be the one helping Daphne, not vice versa. She wasn't the delicate pregnant lady everyone made her out to be. Why, if they didn't have a cab waiting with the meter running, she could probably sprint the whole cemetery without getting winded . . .

Okay, maybe not, she thought when they reached the appropriate row of headstones, and she realized they still had to trek to the very end to reach Serena.

"I know, but when I trip and fall in these heels, I wanna land on you." Daphne tittered one moment, then tottered the next, nearly fulfilling her own prophecy. Her cane wobbled in the grass that crunched underfoot, but luckily—for both of them—it held. "More padding."

"Sure, make fun of the pregnant lady for being fat. That's like me making height jokes while you're— oh wait, never mind, I forgot you're just short."

Amanda left her short, playfully pouting friend behind on a stone bench a few yards from Serena's grave, at least giving herself the impression of privacy for what was bound to be an awkward and very one-sided conversation. ("Don't take no shit, Mandy Lou," Daphne called, as Amanda trudged carefully towards her mother-in-law, attempting not to walk over any of the surrounding graves.)

She had imagined an ornate, imposing sort of structure, perhaps slightly off-kilter like a listing drunkard, her idea of what Serena Benson had been in life somehow translating to what she would be in death. But the headstone was small and almost plain, elegant in its understatedness. Of course—Olivia had been the one who picked it out, at the tender age of thirty-two, on her own and once again cleaning up the mess Serena left behind.

The legend Beloved Mother, bold and set apart in its own eye-catching relief, preceded even the woman's name, like an honorific: Professor, Lady, Her Honor, Beloved Mother. One last attempt to portray Serena as the strong, loving parent Olivia had always wanted. Had always deserved. Interesting that the name Grace appeared nowhere within the etching, though.

Someone had left a paperback copy of Jane Eyre propped against the side of the stone, and Amanda puzzled over it for a moment. She recalled Olivia referencing the novel from time to time, and she'd gathered that it was a favorite of the captain's and her mother's, but as far as Amanda knew, Olivia had not visited the gravesite in almost two years. The book, though bloated from moisture, its pages the color of parchment and curling in on themselves, was still fairly intact. It hadn't been there for more than a couple of months, she was willing to bet.

Dammit. Not bet. The thought snapped Amanda out of her Brontë-inspired reverie—despite her inadequacies as a mother, Serena had apparently been a decent friend and teacher; she must have made an impression on a student or fellow professor somewhere along the way—and she started forward haltingly, as if to shake the hand of a woman who wasn't there.

"Hey. Um, I'm— my name's Amanda," she said, cringing to hear it out loud, here in a wintry graveyard, with no one else around. (Daphne had her nose buried in her cell phone, though she was probably straining to pick up on every word, bless her heart.) Good Lord, this was dumb. But Amanda's determination to put the dead woman to rest and free herself and Olivia from the specter that loomed over their relationship won out over her desire to leave. "I guess I'm your daughter-in-law. I don't know what they call it in the afterlife or . . . wherever you are."

Amanda toed the brittle, snow-glazed grass below, as if indicating she had a vague idea of the direction Serena's soul had gone postmortem—and it wasn't up. "Sorry, bad joke. Anyway, I just realized this might be the first time you're finding out your daughter's bi and married to a woman, so . . . surprise? I'd rather she told you, but you didn't exactly give her many reasons or opportunities to open up to you, huh?

"That's why I'm here, actually. To tell you how much you suck and what you're missing out on. And you know what, I don't give a crap if it's not fair that you can't speak up and defend yourself, 'cause, lady, there ain't no excusin' what you done. And it's your own fault you are where you are now." Amanda switched the box she was holding to the opposite hip, pinning it there with her arm. Okay, once she got going, this might not be so difficult after all. In fact, it might just feel pretty damn good.

"Look, I know you went through some bad shit—I get it, I really do. You survived something awful and didn't have the resources you needed to help you recover, but so what? Awful things happen to people every day, and it's not fair, but that's life. You gotta keep going. You don't just give up and become an alcoholic who beats her kid and sexually abuses her.

"Yeah, you heard me." Amanda pointed accusingly at the engraved name on Serena's headstone and leaned in as she would have were they arguing face to face. "Maybe you didn't do it to her yourself, but you let other people get away with it, and that's just as bad. 'Thanks for warming him up for me, hon'? And forcing her to be examined against her will? I mean, what the fuck, you evil bitch?"

The last part was louder than Amanda had intended, but Daphne kept her head down, reading so furiously it was a wonder her phone screen wasn't steaming in the cold January air. Still, Amanda dropped to a low but fervent tone. "You know what you set her up for? Years of abuse and assaults, one right after the other. You warmed her up and sent her off into the arms of a statutory rapist. You normalized it until she can't even tell she's being mistreated half the time. Or worse, she thinks she deserves it, because you made her believe she's a mistake. Like she's responsible for what happened to you.

"And the thing is, in spite of all that? All that hell you and me and the rest of those shitty bastards put her through? She's a better person than you ever were. She didn't turn into a mean-ass drunk who slaps her kids around and blames them for how they were born." With a disgusted grunt, Amanda bent down and set the shoebox of mementos heavily atop Serena's marker.

"Jesus Christ, why didn't you just give her up for adoption if you didn't want her? Hell, it was the sixties, you probably could've sold her to some rich family on Park Avenue and nobody woulda said boo. Could've made yourself a real chunk of change off a pretty little baby like that. But I guess you preferred having her around as your punching bag, that it? She told me how you choked her unconscious that time. Chased her around threatening to carve her up with a broken bottle, too."

Amanda sneered at the words Beloved Mother, suddenly glad she hadn't brought along to this confrontation any implements capable of defacing granite. "Same kinda shit my daddy did to my mama when I was growing up. I saw it happen firsthand, so yeah, I know all about your kind. People who think life handed them a raw deal, so they gotta make everyone else suffer right along with them. You're just like him. Hollister, I mean. Bet if you'd asked him why he was raping all those women, he'd have given that same tired old excuse. Somebody hurt me, so I'm just paying it forward. God, you're all the same.

"Wait, no, you're worse. 'Cause you chose to hurt your own kid, not some stranger or an adult who could fight back. Make you feel good putting her through the same kinda hell you went through, and worse? You like seeing her cry and wonder why her own mama didn't love her? Thought you were getting one over on Hollister that way, maybe?" Amanda shook her head, a protective hand against her belly. She thought briefly of Olivia's insistence that their daughter could hear them and, if not understand the words, at least sense the emotions behind them.

For a beat, Amanda regretted involving the baby in this. Just like her daddy, dragging her along on his "field trips" to casinos, the track, pawn shops—anywhere he could make an easy buck, or eat a few hundred more; Mean Dean's little partner in crime. But it was too late to turn back now. She consoled herself with the bullshit theory that her huge winter coat probably muffled most of the anger in her voice.

"Well, the joke's on you, lady. There's never been any part of him in her. She was always yours, and you just threw it all away." Unconsciously, Amanda rubbed the bump beneath her coat, as if her daughter needed soothing. "I think you're the real reason she never carried any kids of her own. Sure, she wanted to do something important with her life, but you scared the hell out of her, too. Made her think she'd pass you or him on to her babies. Made her so afraid of not being lovable, she thought her own kids would hate her.

"She still thinks that sometimes. Great a mom as she is, great a person, and she's still worried it's not enough. 'Cause of some loser who died falling down the fucking stairs." Amanda snorted derisively at Serena's date of death—two weeks before Christmas, naturally—but she could feel herself running out of steam. Some of it was third trimester exhaustion, and some of it was disappointment. It didn't feel nearly as good to hurl insults at her dead alky mother-in-law as she'd hoped. Whatever else Serena had been, she was also the one who had brought Olivia into this world. For that, Amanda would always be thankful.

"And even after all your shit, she still loves you. Good Lord, she's got such a big heart, why couldn't you just—" Letting her gesture at the headstone fall limp, Amanda heaved a weary sigh. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, as that esteemed philosopher Dean Rollins liked to say. "She even . . . she wants to name our kid after you. Just your middle name, mind ya. But I got pissed because . . . because— aw hell, I don't know, because I wanted her to be as pissed off at you as I am. But that's not Liv. She's got more grace than you or I will ever have, so I'm gonna agree to the name. Because it reminds me of her, not you."

. . .