Author's note: Apologies for the delay in updating, have been sick :(

"What sort of education have y'all had?" asked Angela Barclay, the Child Protective Services case worker who'd come from Natchitoches to interview Quinn and I.

We were going through an interrogation of sorts, to find out what sort of foster parents we'd be for Hunter. She knew that like her, Hunter and I were both part-fae, so I was by far the best-qualified person to care for him. But she still needed all the paperwork to be in order before she could formally assign him to our care - and that meant we had to give good answers to every question she asked us.

Hunter sat on the living room floor between us, building castles with his blocks and knocking them down with his toy fire truck, utterly unconcerned by the interview going on around him. He'd already 'seen' it work out fine, so he knew that as long as we kept answering conscientiously, there was nothing to worry about.

Quinn and I were still worried, regardless. One wrong answer, and he might not live with us after all.

So far, we'd answered questions about my house, our jobs, our mental and physical health (both fine), whether we drank (a little) or smoked (no), whether we used other drugs (no, although Quinn dobbed me in for my "raging caffeine addiction"), whether we were happy as children (yes), and what we'd do in half a dozen different scenarios, all involving Hunter misbehaving, getting in trouble or being in danger.

It was a weird experience, having a complete stranger come into my home to ask my boyfriend and I all sorts of questions about our personal life, some of which we hadn't even discussed with each other yet. Angela had a 'you can tell me anything' interview manner that encouraged people to open up to her, and I could 'hear' that she genuinely wanted to help... but it wasn't normal for either of us to tell anyone so much about ourselves so quickly, which made us both uncomfortable.

"I finished high school," I answered meekly, a little ashamed by my lack of education. It didn't make me sound like a good 'foster Mom' for Hunter; I knew that. "I got good grades, but I haven't done much since then..."

"She's kind of self-educated," Quinn filled in. "She's not good in classrooms, hearing everyone's thoughts and all, but she reads a lot."

"And you?" she asked, inquiring about his education.

"Yeah, I read a bit too," he grinned, deliberately misunderstanding her.

"Did you finish high school? Go to college?" she probed, not easily distracted from her questions.

"I did my GED. I had a lot of family stuff to deal with then, so I wasn't able to go to school each day. But I did OK. Went to Northwestern for a couple years, but someone I trusted found out I'm a weretiger and told a lot of people, so I had to leave." He sounded really disappointed.

I hadn't known that particular bit of his past, but I could feel that it still really stung. I made a mental note to ask him about it some time.

"Oh," she said again. "I'm so sorry. Sookie mentioned that your Dad died and your Mom's been in hospital..."

He sighed loudly. "Look, you're gonna find out about my family situation sooner or later, so I guess I'd better just tell you." He hated talking about it, but he knew that right now, he had to. "My Dad died when I was fourteen and my Mom didn't cope so well. She's been in mental institutions most of the time since then. My sister's seventeen now, and I've been her legal guardian since she was six. I'd like to tell you I've been an OK parent to her, but I'm not. She's been kicked out of six boarding schools so far, and she's working real hard on her seventh. I don't know if she'll go to college. She doesn't want to. Child Protective Services have been all over us for years and they say I'm doing fine because she's physically healthy... they say it's just that she went through too much before I got custody, and her counselors have all said that as well... but it took me a real long time to get my shit together enough to take care of her, and if I'd sorted things out sooner, got her out of there earlier..." he stopped talking then, too upset to say any more.

I rubbed my head against his shoulder, comforting him in tiger language because I knew it would work a lot better than words.

"You can't have been very old yourself, when you got custody of her?" Angela inquired.

"I was twenty-two."

"That's very young to be a foster parent," she told him, briefly slipping into government-eze.

"I'm not her foster parent, I'm her brother," he retorted, a note of anger in his voice.

She just nodded. "How did you cope with the responsibility?"

"Just made it up as I went along, really," he admitted. "Tried a bit of everything along the way. I was lucky I could afford a nanny for her, so she had someone there to care for her when I was away at work, and someone to tutor her when I brought her with me. The first couple of nannies I hired were useless, but the third was great, she had six kids and ten grand-kids of her own, so she knew what she was doing. Helped me figure out a lot of it. I mean, I always coped with the basics. Frannie always had food, and clothes, and somewhere safe to sleep each night, and we got her caught up on the school work she'd missed pretty quickly. Though that wasn't really my doing, she's smart enough that once she was actually being sent to school, she figured it out herself. But discipline, and setting boundaries... I'm not great at that stuff. Not with her, anyway. At work, with my employees, no problem," he smiled grimly.

"I sent her away to boarding school when she was thirteen," he added, "because I didn't know what else to do. I'm not sure that was the right decision. I thought she needed more structure and stability than I could give her, and I chose schools which were supposed to be great with that stuff, but it never worked out. I'm pretty sure there's something I was supposed to do differently that would've helped her turn out happier, or less angry, or something, but I don't know what it was."

"I'm sure you did your best," was all Angela said, not wanting to dredge any more of it up for him. She knew she'd be able to get detailed CPS records once she was back in her office, and figured that would be better than upsetting him any more now.

"It wasn't enough," he replied, certain he'd let his sister down.

"I'm sorry I have to ask this," she changed the subject, "but did you inherit any money from your father?"

"No, it all went to my Mom," he told her wearily. "The house was paid off, they had some savings, and the life insurance... it was supposed to provide for her for the rest of her life, and for me 'til I finished college, at least. But crazy people... it was all gone in barely five years, I don't know where. She still won't tell me what she spent it on. I didn't find out 'til after the banks sold the house... she'd taken out three different mortgages and never paid a cent off any of them. She and Frannie were on the streets before I heard about it. I've been trying to buy our house back ever since, but the people who bought it won't sell, no matter how much I offer them. All my Dad's stuff got auctioned, sold for almost nothing... she didn't even tell me it was happening. I was already earning enough to take care of it, if she'd just said something..." he suddenly knew he'd said far too much; that his mother's problems just weren't relevant.

"But you really just wanna know if I've got enough money to take care of Hunter, right? Well, I do." He said it with a finality that told everyone to drop the subject.

I realized then that Angela had a gift of persuasion, just like my brother did: except where Jason could seduce anyone, she could get them to tell her anything. She exerted a mental influence that was making Quinn open up about things he never talked to anyone about, ever. Interestingly, it didn't seem to effect me at all, just like my brother couldn't talk me into doing what he wanted, and vampires couldn't glamor me. I seem to have a natural resistance to outside influence. Maybe it's just because I've got 'outside influence' in my head all day, every day. Or at least, whenever I'm around humans.

"What about your family, Sookie?" she asked me.

I could feel the power that radiated from her now, but it bounced right off me, so I was able to keep giving brief answers.

"My Mom and Dad died in a car accident when I was seven. My brother and I were raised by my Gran after that."

"That's when you moved here?"

I just nodded.

"It must've been tough on her, raising you by herself?" She was asking about money, mostly.

"She was great with kids," I made sure to tell her first, "and we had a little oil money, so we were OK financially. It was only when it ran out that things got tough, but I was old enough to work by then, so we got by."

She nodded, pleased with my answer. "You got any other family?"

"No," I replied. "It's just my brother and I, now. My Gran died a couple years ago. My aunt and uncle, Hunter's grandparents, have been gone a long time, too."

"We have fairy family," my nephew interrupted. "Our grandpa Niall will be back soon. And our cousin."

"Well, yes, we do have some fairy kin," I admitted. "They're not around right now, though."

She just nodded. "And you?" she asked Quinn. She couldn't mention 'fairy kin' in her report, so she figured it was none of her business.

He just shook his head, not wanting to talk about it. I caught in his thoughts that, like many shifters, he had genetic relatives who weren't officially part of his family, but he didn't want to explain shifter breeding practices to an outsider. He'd tell me, his mate, but he didn't think it was any other fairy's business. For her purposes - working out what family support he would have in caring for Hunter - he had no-one but Frannie, and even she was doubtful, in his mind.

I expected that to be a huge black mark against us, not having any family around to help, but to my surprise, it wasn't. She had (accurately) guessed that I was in my late-twenties and Quinn his early thirties, and in her opinion, two grown adults were more than enough to care for one child, especially since we both had some experience with children. If my fae relatives helped out, that was just a bonus.

"Neither of you have been married or had kids before?"

We both shook our heads, and I could feel sadness and regret radiating off Quinn, so I held his hand.

Apparently, that also counted in our favor. She saw plenty of people who desperately wanted a family of their own because they never had any family support growing up, and a lot of them got married and had children far too young. She was impressed that we'd both had the sense to not do that; that we'd waited 'til we had our own lives sorted out before bringing children into them. She was confident we could support Hunter: between my trust fund and Quinn's highly-paid job, she was sure we had more than enough money.

"And you've been together for a while?"

"Over a year, off and on," Quinn answered quickly, making sure she got the most favorable take on our relationship. "My work and family commitments made things difficult for a while... I had to work out my priorities before we could really be together. Just seeing each other now and then when I had free time didn't work so well for either of us."

I noticed that he'd carefully left out the trouble he'd been in, my relationship with Eric, even the fact that we split up for a while. Technically, every word he said was true - but it also gave a picture of things that wasn't wholly accurate. I wasn't entirely comfortable with that.

Sorry, he silently told me, we need to make our relationship sound as stable as possible, so she'll leave Hunter with you... I won't tell any outright lies, but we have to be careful how we spin this.

"Have you dealt with that now?" she questioned him pointedly, wondering if he really meant to be around to help care for Hunter.

"Yes," he assured her. "My business partners know I won't be traveling nearly as much as I used to. I've trained my staff to take over all the routine events, so I only have to go to the really big ones. And Sookie can always come with me to those, if she wants, and Hunter's welcome to come along too. I know it's not ideal to pull him out of school for a week here and there, but he'd get to see a lot of the country, and probably learn more than he would in a classroom. My Dad used to take me on business trips occasionally, and it didn't harm me any."

"What did your Dad do?"

"He was an academic. Did animal behavior studies, mostly on big cats," he grinned, both at the apt choice of career, and the memory of his father.

I hadn't known anything about his Dad before, and I was surprised. Shifters usually did jobs where their physical strength was an advantage: the building trade was especially popular, with security work a close second, and mechanical repairs third. (Being strong enough to lift one end of a car really helped, or so Trey once said.) Many also served in the armed forces; so many that I strongly suspected the government had a secret shifter super-soldier program operating somewhere, just like they did in the movies. For a shifter to do such an intellectual job was unusual, though.

Angela was now really impressed. Between the large property my family owned, the length of time we'd owned it, the big trust fund, and the mention of 'oil money', she figured the Stackhouses were a lot better off than we looked. She knew the people with the flashiest houses and cars often had huge debts and lived a paycheck away from losing it all, whereas many of the millionaires she'd encountered (she had the liberty of asking all about a family's finances, in her job) were almost miserly in their spending; they had money because they saved money. She now put my family in that category, figuring that must be how we did things.

Hearing about Quinn's job told her he also had money, and that he was the son of an academic... she was sure any child raised by him would have plenty of educational opportunities, which she thought was just as important as food, clothing, shelter and safety. She believed that any child's long-term removal from the welfare system depended on them getting a good education, so they could learn the skills to make a good living for themselves, and the coping mechanisms to do a better job of raising their children than their own dysfunctional parents had done. I knew plenty of college graduates with none of that, but thought it best not to correct her on it.

When she added up all that she'd heard so far, we were now practically 'ideal parents' in her eyes.

"And you're happy together?"

"Very," I smiled, squeezing Quinn's hand.

He kissed me on the forehead, pleased to hear me say it.

"You haven't had any major problems?"

Quinn just sighed again. "Look, like I said... the amount of travel I used to do, it was too much. Especially with my family commitments as well. But since I sorted things out so I could be with Sookie, things have been great. Better than great. Amazing," he was grinning broadly.

I just nodded in agreement, figuring it was as good an explanation as any.

"Do you fight very often?"

"Twice in the whole time we've been together," I told her, figuring only the big bust-ups had to count.

"What were those fights about?"

"The amount of time I spent away from her," he admitted.

"How did you handle those fights?"

"She banished me to sort out my issues," he groused. "I didn't think it was fair at the time, but it was the right thing to do. I had to be apart from her a while to realize the way I used to do things wasn't working for me any more, that meeting her had changed my priorities... once I had the time to work that out, I was able to make space in my life for her, and we've been fine ever since. We don't agree on everything, but we talk about stuff and it just seems to work out," he shrugged.

"What sort of things do you disagree about?"

"I guess you could put it down in your report as 'different upbringings'... growing up in different households with really different parenting styles. But off the record, shifter customs are pretty different to human customs, so we have different assumptions about a lot of things."

"But he's real respectful of my feelings, and I try to understand where he's coming from," I added. "We just try to be honest with each other about everything, and it works fine. I think that's all you can do, when you're with someone from a totally different background."

I figured I'd better give her a decent explanation, before her 'gift' got him talking about all sorts of private things I didn't want her knowing.

She just nodded, thinking how mature and sensible we both sounded.

"When you talk about different backgrounds," she asked next, switching to a slightly different topics, "were either of you abused as children?"

"Me, not at all," Quinn told her firmly. "My Mom always had some problems, but as long as my Dad was around, she coped OK. I know you'll read all about the stuff she did to my sister when you get our file, but she never did any of that to me."

"What happened to your sister?"

"Look, you'll read all this in the file anyway, so I guess I have to tell you... my Dad isn't my sister's father. After Dad died, my Mom was raped, and that's how Frannie was conceived. My Mom's always had... I guess 'mixed feelings' is how to describe it, towards her. I think if she'd had her head together enough to realize she was pregnant, she might not have had another kid. I mean, she and my Dad had been trying for years, they always wanted more... and there are times when Mom's great, and really loves her and cares for her... but there are other times when Frannie just reminds her too much of what happened to her, and she's not exactly sensitive to my sister's feelings about that. When she's doing OK, she knows it's not right to take out what happened to her on Frannie, that it wasn't her fault... but she's nuts half the time, and then she says and does all sorts of things. I just make sure Frannie has one person who loves her unconditionally all the time, and let her know how much I always wanted a brother or sister, how thrilled I was when she was born... just so she feels like someone wants her to exist, y'know? I've been told that's all I can do."

It was the most I'd ever heard him say about his family, and I now understood why he wouldn't discuss it most of the time. He hated talking about it, as though saying it aloud made the pain of it all too real. But he knew it was better if the case worker heard it from him; that if she found it all out when she got his family's file, it would seem like he'd been evasive, which would be bad for us. He was willing to dredge it all up to help our chances of being Hunter's foster parents, and I felt so grateful for that, I wanted to kiss him.

"It sounds like a difficult situation." She summarized.

He just shrugged. "Only when I have to try and impose any sort of discipline. I'm her brother, not her parent, and she never lets me forget that. Plus the unconditional love part's more important, so she knows I still love her even when she's a pain in the ass, which makes it hard to get her to behave... but we do OK, mostly."

"It must put a lot of strain on your relationship."

"A little," he agreed. "I'm all Frannie has, and she's terrified of losing me, so she's not keen on me having a serious relationship. Never has been. But I'm slowly bringing her around to the idea that she could end up gaining a sister-in-law, not losing a brother."

She just nodded then, thinking it sounded like he was handling it all remarkably well.

"And you, Sookie?" she asked pointedly. "Did you suffer any kind of abuse as a child?"

I just stared at her for a moment, not knowing what to say.

"Sookie really doesn't like talking about this," Quinn told her gently, letting go of my hand so he could wrap his warm, strong arm around me.

It's better if you tell her, he encouraged silently. It makes you more qualified to care for an abused child, if you've been through something similar and dealt with it OK.

Have I dealt with it OK? I wondered, not intentionally projecting to him.

You're doing great. You're psychological functional, and you have a normal, healthy sex life. You still have a few issues, but you're working through them... you're doing really well.

She was looking at me expectantly, and I finally decided to tell her.

"My great-uncle... my Gran's brother... he did some stuff to me when I was a kid," I confided shakily. "Touched me and stuff."

She simply nodded; it was a story she heard all too often. "Did you tell anyone? Did you get any help at the time?"

"I tried to tell my parents, but they didn't want to hear it... but after they died I told my Gran, and she made sure I never saw him again. Her own brother... she never spoke to him again, as long as she lived, because he did that to me."

Angela was impressed. She wished every parent whose child told them a relative was molesting them reacted that way. In her experience - admittedly skewed because of the nature of her work - most parents preferred to bury their head in the sand, to pretend it simply wasn't happening, that their child meant something else, that nobody close to them would do that. Just like my parents had.

"How does it effect you now?" she coaxed, needing to hear more about how I'd coped with what happened to me.

"Mostly, it doesn't," I told her firmly. "It was a long time ago. The last time it really upset me was when my stupid brother invited him to Gran's funeral, then basically told me I should be over it by now."

"So your relationship with your brother isn't great."

"He's a jackass," Quinn told her. "Can't see past the end of his own nose."

"That's my family you're insulting," I chided, elbowing him in the ribs as I did. "I don't say anything about your sister."

"OK, that's fair," he agreed. "I'll shut up about your brother."

"Good," I smiled tightly.

Angela just grinned at us, impressed we'd handled that so amicably. She saw many families where a single remark could lead to hours of yelling, and throwing things, and possibly violence...

"Not our way," I confirmed. "We're just not the stormy type, either of us. I'm pretty happy most of the time, and he sees the funny side of everything. Neither of us scream and yell much."

"No point getting bent out of shape about every little thing," Quinn shrugged.

She stared at me in shock, as it finally hit home that I really could read her mind. As so often happened, as soon as she realized I was listening to her thoughts, she immediately thought of every single thing she didn't want me to 'overhear'. In about two seconds, she let me in on every one of her biggest secrets, and for once, I made mental notes of all of them. On the off chance this didn't work out - that she tried to send Hunter to live with his grandparents after all, or worse, put him into state care - I had more than enough blackmail material to make her change her mind. It wasn't something I would usually contemplate, but if that was what it took to keep Hunter safe...

She won't, he silently told me. She's already decided to let me stay here.

I couldn't help but smile a little. I was relieved I wouldn't have to use any of the things I'd just learned against her; partly because I liked her, and partly because I didn't think she'd really done anything wrong. About the 'worst' I caught in her thoughts was that, after really horrible days at work when she saw things that would haunt her for a long time, she smoked half a joint to help her sleep. It was far more effective for her than any of the sleep meds or tranquilizers she'd tried, and made it possible for her to keep doing a job that would drive her mad without some sort of respite. I couldn't really see anything wrong with that, even though I never took drugs myself. But if her home were ever raided by the police, she would lose her job for her 'drug use'. That actually made me kind of angry, since her actions would be completely legal if it were valium or something like that which helped her sleep. It wasn't like she was getting wasted, or even smoking it for fun...

She'd also made a mistake on her tax three or four years running and owed the IRS a couple thousand dollars, but didn't have the money to pay it, so she hadn't told them she'd claimed deductions incorrectly all that time. I didn't think she'd really done anything wrong there, either, since I knew how much of a pain it was to figure out taxes, and it truly was an honest mistake... but she'd still be in a lot of trouble if anyone found out about it. She could almost lose her job over that, too.

"Where do you see your relationship headed?" She blurted out a standard question she'd been trained to ask unmarried couples, to cover her sudden discomfort over being in a room with two telepaths.

"We haven't really talked about that yet," I admitted without thinking. "He doesn't even live here, officially... he's kind of a house guest still."

"Oh." Her tone of voice made it clear I'd said the wrong thing.

"I promised I'll help her care for Hunter, though," Quinn told her, "and I will."

I was wringing my hands now, wondering what to say. I wanted to blurt out that we were serious about each other, that he'd said he wanted me to be the mother of his children... I wanted to say something to convince her we would raise Hunter together as a couple, but I didn't know quite what to say. 'I bit his neck'? 'We're imprinting'? Neither of those sounded all that convincing, in the human world.

"Do you live here alone?" she asked me, going back to re-check all her assumptions about Quinn and I.

"No, I've got a roommate," I admitted. "She lives upstairs, I'm downstairs."

"Uh-huh." She wasn't sure how she could justify sending a child to live in a share house with two single women, and I could feel this starting to go against us. "Where is your roommate right now?"

"She's gone away for a couple days with her boyfriend." I knew it sounded bad, but I didn't want to lie.

She just nodded tersely. "How long have they been together?"

"A few weeks." I could barely have said something worse if I tried.

"Amelia's house in New Orleans was badly damaged in Katrina," Quinn interrupted, trying to head off disaster for all three of us. "Another lady lived here for a while afterward, too, but she's with her daughter and her grand-kids now. Amelia's just taking a bit longer to get it all sorted out." He was actually contemplating telling her who Amelia's father was, on the off chance it helped us.

Sorry, I'm not trying to kick your friend out, he silently apologized. But this sounds so bad for us...

I knew that. I could feel it. I was wondering what to say next, what could possibly make this better for us, what could make it clear that we really were a committed couple, that we genuinely wanted to raise Hunter together, that we were stable and responsible and would do our best to care for him...

"I know we haven't been together quite as long as you'd ideally want," Quinn told her, deciding to just address this head-on, "but we'll both be here to care for Hunter. If you need some proof of that... would it make a difference if we got married?"

He caught me completely by surprise - an unusual experience, being telepathic and all - and I just stared at him for a long moment, my mouth hanging open.