A/N: Thanks for the reviews, guys! I'm glad you enjoyed the kid POVs in chapter one. It alternates throughout the story, but there will be a couple more chapters like that coming up. :) As always, thanks so much for sticking with me and my stories, and I hope you enjoy chapter two!

2. Oh My My My

. . .

Shit.

Three sets of eyes gazed at Amanda—two were expectant, the third looked on with mild amusement—and she wondered if suddenly bolting from the room would be a viable solution to the problem. Probably not, and though Daphne might get a kick out of seeing her flee, it wouldn't be fair to the little girls who anxiously awaited an answer. Could Jillian's daddy take them to Coney Island, they wanted to know. A fairly reasonable request, innocuous on the surface, unless you were privy to the behind-the-scenes drama of one of the inquiring children's divorced parents.

Which Amanda was.

She had almost been an active participant, to tell the truth. When Jules had shown up on her and Olivia's doorstep, on the verge of tears because she'd overheard her daughter Jillian talking to her dolls, detailing the sexual abuse she was experiencing at the hands of her father ("She's been sleeping in his bed since the divorce!" Jules had cried, nearly launching her coffee cup across the room with an emphatic gesture. "Who knows what all he's done to her! Why does this keep happening to my little girl?"), Amanda had wanted to track down Robert Wright and kill the sonuvabitch herself. Olivia had sensed it and taken her hand, making a silent appeal for her not to explode into anger. It helped, but Amanda wasn't so sure she could keep her head if she ever bumped into Wright on the street.

Fortunately, she didn't know what the guy looked like, and since his ex-wife was taking him to court for child sexual abuse at that very moment, she would likely never meet him. Or strangle him with her bare hands.

Violent ideations were something she tried her best to avoid these days, but she'd allowed herself to entertain that bit of imaginary vengeance against Jillian's father because she knew the girl so well. Quiet as a little mouse and shyer than the average shy kid, Jilly had become a sort of fixture in the Rollins-Benson household, particularly since the start of her and Jesse's second-grade year. The two were inseparable, and despite being almost nothing alike in looks or build, often mistaken as twins. "Guess we have four girls now," Amanda teased her wife, at first. They were all so used to Jillian's presence now, it didn't even get mentioned much anymore. She was family.

"Please, Mama, me'n Jillian just got married, and we wanna go there for our honeyed— our honeymoon." Jesse fussed with the sweaterlike ribbing of Samantha's blanket, tucking the corner in around her baby sister's tiny pink feet. A gift from Olivia's old friend and one-time surrogate mother, Meg, the hand-knitted blanket was the only thing that could put Sammie to sleep lately, and it barely left her side. Amanda didn't like to think about why her children were developing such strong attachments to certain people and objects, but it was hard to ignore with one of them bundled in her arms and the other professing that she and her attachment were joined in holy matrimony.

"Married," she said as casually as possible. No easy feat with Daphne snickering into her hand like a naughty schoolkid, and Sammie conked out against her chest, face upturned and mouth slightly agape, as if she herself were astonished by the news. But Amanda managed to keep a straight face and a level tone, clearing her throat to ask, "And you didn't think to invite me and your mommy and Aunt Daphne to the wedding? Isn't that kind of unfair? You were invited to mine."

"It was very last minute," Jesse said, and Amanda choked back a giggle at the gravity in her seven-year-old's inflection. Evidently the little girl took her elopement quite seriously. She didn't flinch at the adults' reactions, nor did she let go of her much more sheepish bride's hand. Jillian was in for one wild ride, agreeing to be her wife. "We only invited Noah, 'cause he knew the marrying words. And Frannie, 'cause she wouldn't stop scratching at the damn door. Oops, I mean the darn door."

It was kind of hard to scold the kid for swearing with Daphne cackling like a lunatic, and honestly, Amanda didn't think it was that big of a deal. Compared to the cuss words she had learned at that age from her daddy, many of them screamed during drunken rages or while he whaled on her mother, damn was relatively mild. But Olivia would not approve of any of their children using foul language, and given Jesse's track record at school, that was probably for the best. Getting called in for a sit-down with your daughter's first-grade teacher because your then-six-year-old had been giving her classmates anatomy lessons on the playground didn't reflect too well on your parenting skills.

"Oops is right, Jesse Eileen. Watch that mouth." Lightly, in word and deed, Amanda swiped Jesse's bottom lip with the side of her finger, as if she were chucking her on the chin. "Else you'll be going to a place called Timeout Island, not Coney."

"Sorry, Mama. Does that mean we can go? If I don't say no more bad words?"

She had kind of walked right into that one, and she winced inwardly, wishing Olivia were there to bail her out of Jesse's tangled web. Liv always knew the right thing to say to their middle child, who lived to challenge her mama's authority and had also inherited a generous dose of her spunk. Soothing the savage beast, Amanda called it, although she kept that between herself and Olivia, otherwise Jesse might get ideas. Lord knew she had plenty of those on her own, without Amanda adding to it.

"Jess." Amanda sighed, her gaze bouncing back and forth from girl to girl like a ping-pong ball. She was going to crack under the pressure, she could feel it coming on. They were both just so damn cute and pitiful. "Look here. I can't speak for Jilly's daddy"—rat-fuck bastard that he was—"so I'm not going to say he can take you, no. But he ain't the only one who knows how to find Coney Island, okay? Just so happens your mommy took me there for my birthday a few years ago, and I've been meaning to go back . . . "

It took a second for Jesse to cotton on to Amanda's meaning, that perhaps she could take the girls to Coney Island herself sometime soon, weather permitting. (They had chosen a cold month in which to begin their marital bliss.) She should have known better than to rely on nuance with a couple of second-graders, even though both girls were quite bright. Jesse only heard what she wanted to hear, and Jillian was extremely literal, so jokes and inferences often went right over her head, despite her adultlike understanding of some subjects.

"Why can't my daddy take us, if he knows how to find it better than other people?" Jillian asked, head cocked to one side. With her delicate bone structure, pale brown hair that looked blonde in certain lighting, timid personality, and those great big hazel eyes, she very much resembled a little fawn hearing a twig snap in the woods. Thanks to the careless tread of Amanda's boot. "Did he do something bad?"

That was far too close to the truth for Amanda's comfort, and she wondered just how much Jillian knew about the court case against her father. In spite of Amanda's and Olivia's advice to keep the girl informed, Jules had chosen to shield her child from the proceedings, insisting she couldn't handle the emotional trauma of a trial on top of everything else. Amanda couldn't fault the younger woman for trying to protect her kid, especially when the kid was already highly sensitive to begin with. Still. Jillian's testimony would have made Wright's conviction a shoe-in.

"Um, that's not what I meant. I just mean there's other ways of getting to Coney Island besides going with your daddy. It's down in Brooklyn, so it's not all that far from here." Amanda decided to skip the part where she was familiar with the drive, having been there multiple times for work, usually when a vic from Manhattan somehow ended up washing onto the beach, or a predator from the City chose it as his hunting grounds. Happened more than you'd think.

"She means she's gonna take us," Jesse supplied for her friend, who still looked uncertain of what Amanda was driving at. "Right, Mama? Can we go right now? Can we get cotton candy and popcorn and coney dogs?"

"I don't want cotton candy," Jillian said. She usually wasn't so decisive, but this, she had made up her mind about. "It's too sticky and messy. Last time, I got it on my dress, and my mommy had to throw it away. What's a coney dog?"

"It's like a hot dog, but—"

Amanda waved for a timeout, although neither girl paid her much attention as they chattered on about their plans for the amusement park. Sometimes she caught glimpses of what life would be like raising teenagers, especially during interactions with Jesse, and now was one of those times. "Hang on, guys. We can't go today. Y'all would freeze your itty-bitty little keisters off, and besides that, the rides and really fun stuff aren't open till April or so. Let's wait and have this talk again when it warms up, okay?"

"But—"

"Jesse."

Shoulders slouching in defeat, Jesse muttered a barely intelligible "yes, ma'am" and took Jillian with her, leading her by the hand as they trudged back toward the bedrooms, heads hung low.

"What, no bouquet toss?" Daphne called, getting no reply from the girls and a subdued version of the mom look from Amanda. She lived to pick on Jesse, who usually gave as good as she got, their epic—mostly friendly—rivalry an endless source of entertainment for the whole family. But sometimes they required a referee, and since Daphne was unaware of many of Jillian's struggles, Amanda felt obliged to warn her not to overdo it with the teasing.

She kicked her friend lightly under the table. It was more of a nudge with her shoe, but of course Daphne had to have the most Daphne-like reaction possible. "Ow!" the little clerk yelped, rubbing her shin, bottom lip thrust out petulantly. "Geez. How about we don't kick the crippled lady, I was just asking a question."

"You were bein' ornery." On-ree, she pronounced it, the way many of her relatives did, and in the same sense, which was less about being ill-tempered and more about making mischief. After a quick peek over her shoulder, to be sure the girls weren't nearby, eavesdropping, Amanda leaned in and whispered an explanation to her friend. "Jillian's got it rough at the moment. Abuse by the father. Mom's in your neck of the woods with him right now, matter of fact. Take it easy on them, okay? I know Jess is all sass, but I think they both sense something's up."

Daphne had paled at the mention of abuse by the father. She'd worked Family Court long enough to understand that no visible bruises in a child abuse case meant sexual molestation by the offending parent. For a second, she looked as if she might burst into tears, but swallowing with effort, she managed to hold it together. "Well, now I feel like an even bigger boob than I did finding out your seven-year-old gets more girls than I do." Briefly, she grimaced in thought, then brought out her cell phone, tapping and scrolling the screen at lightning speed. No wonder she answered texts so quickly.

"What are you doing?"

An extended index finger was Daphne's only reply. "Yes, hi, I'd like to place an order," she said when someone came on the line. "How much would it be for two small flower-girl-style bouquets, delivered ASAP?"

Then: "Holy shite! Okay, wow, um . . . what about self pick-up? Like, within the hour? Well, that's . . . a little more reasonable, I suppose. All right, the order is for Ms. Daphne Tyler, and I want—"

An hour and seventy bucks later, Ms. Daphne Tyler returned to the apartment with a pair of dainty bouquets, both featuring roses, peonies, and ranunculus in baby-soft pink and white hues. Ridiculously elegant for the pretend wedding of a couple second-graders, but she had ignored Amanda's hisses of discouragement when she'd been on the phone with Petal Pushers flower shoppe, making her selection. I don't have kids of my own to spoil—besides Hammie, of course—and I only get to see my nieces and nephews on the holidays, she had reasoned, collecting her cane, coat, and bag, to hurry several blocks down and retrieve her gift. Let me have this one. You know I'm all about supporting the next generation of little lesbians.

Amanda couldn't argue with that, and when she stood back to record the girls' reactions to the flowers on her iPhone, it was worth her insistence on footing half the bill, to see their cute little faces light up with wonder. "It's not Coney Island, but I hope it helps make your big day a bit more special," Daphne told them, hand-delivering the sweet nosegays. Jillian kept smelling hers, and Jesse gave hers an experimental (and upside down) shake, as if expecting them to perform some additional function besides being aesthetically and olfactorily pleasing. "If anybody can make it work, it's you crazy kids. Now, give me a hug and quit staring at me like I've got two heads."

The girls obliged her on the hug, but not the staring. "Aunt Daphy, are you crying?" Jesse asked, scrunching up her features in incredulity and maybe some mild distaste. She looked like she'd witnessed Daphne picking her nose, rather than getting misty-eyed.

Waving the question off, Daphne pulled Jesse to her, face buried against her middle. A hug or an attempted smothering, it was hard to tell. "Hush, child. Allergies." She was gentler with Jillian, proving that all her time spent with the Rollins-Benson kids had indeed improved her ability to relate to children and behave accordingly. At first, she had regarded them as space aliens and spoke to them like they were thirty. Now, she bent forward to Jillian's level for a light embrace, respecting the girl's sensory issues and timid personality like a pro. Jillian surprised everyone by throwing her arms around Daphne's shoulders, and squeezing her tight.

"Thank you for the flowers, Aunt Daphy." Jillian smiled shyly and cradled her bouquet like an infant when they parted a moment later. The key to little Jilly's heart must have been an armful of posies, because she was gazing up at Daphne with open adoration, the way cartoon princesses went moon-eyed over the valiant prince. Oh, Lord. "They're pretty, like you."

That captured Daphne's attention—she resembled a woman about to melt into a puddle of goo—and Jesse's, the younger girl looking more than a little put out that her new bride already had eyes for someone else. Amanda thought it best to intervene before anyone's feelings got hurt, or any vows put asunder. She stepped in quickly, just as Jesse linked arms with Jillian, a bit possessively if she wasn't mistaken. Now, where on earth had the kid learned that?

"Okay, newlyweds, why don't you go on over there with your outlandishly pricey bouquets and pose for me," she said, switching her cell phone to photo mode and waving the girls in front of the accent wall.

Decorated in lovely black-and-white pieces, hand selected by Olivia for their elegance and tranquility, the wall had become the go-to backdrop for any and all family portraits. Forever prepared to ham it up for the camera, Jesse dragged her best friend to that side of the room and unleashed her toothiest grin. Jillian was a far more introverted subject, but with some encouragement from Jesse and some direction from the photographers (Daphne's cell phone was never far behind a photo op) she began to flaunt and flex like a seasoned professional.

By the time Olivia arrived home, enough pictures had been snapped to fill an entire wedding album, and the girls were enjoying a reception dinner of mac and cheese, with chocolate pudding cups for dessert. "Guess what, Mommy!" Jesse announced, emerging from the plastic cup she was licking clean, to reveal a muddy ring around her mouth and nose. At least it distracted from the cheese in her hair. "Jillian and me got hinged, and Mama's taking us to Coney Island in April or maybe May."

"Hitched," Amanda said, already regretting using that term around a kid who had the hearing of a bat and the memory of an elephant. To her wife, standing in the doorway, bemused, with Tilly balanced on her hip, she offered a big old toothy smile. (And she wondered where Jesse got it.) "Surprise!"

. . .