Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Their new forever starts that day.

Their new forever starts with goodbyes.

It starts with goodbyes, and tears, and hugs, and promises. It starts with a moving van packed with everything important. It crosses over state lines into Connecticut, then Massachusetts. It arrives at an empty house that one day they’ll come to fill with light, love, family, memories.

Tonight it’s just a house.

But it’s also never just a house.

Everything falls into place with neat ticks on a checklist. Moving in. Telling Mark that he’s going to be a grandpa. Telling Luke that he’s going to be an uncle. A housewarming party with Rebecca and Connie. Telling Rebecca and Connie that they’re going to be grandmothers. Rebecca denying her status as a grandmother based on the lack of biological or adoptive connection. Jillian laughing at her denial. Everyone pretending not to notice how emotional Rebecca actually is.

The sooner they get unpacked and settled, the sooner they can update their homestudy. The first few weeks after moving in, Jillian chips away at the house while Erin’s at work. She comes home from work each day to find something else done.

The homestudy update begins and ends in just over a week. Their house is deemed acceptable by state laws. The next week, they get to have an arranged meeting with the kids.

Jillian brings the comic for Will to read. He reads it right there and decides that he wants to read more. Jillian promises him that she’ll find him more. They talk about Ghost Girl and Reptilian Jillian. Will says that their superpowers are cool.

Erin talks to Laura while Deanna takes notes in the corner. She asks Laura questions about school and hobbies and interests. She’s quiet, but once Erin gets her talking, she finds out a lot: her favourite books and shows and movies and subjects in school and foods and sports and what she likes doing when she’s not in school. Erin learns that she goes to conventions, comic conventions, with Will every year.

Near the end of the visit, which flies by, Laura looks at her scuffed Chucks and tugs on her ear. The habit reminds Erin of Jillian.

“Your wife is pregnant,” she says quietly to Erin. “Deanna told us.”

Erin fidgets with her hands. “Yes. How do you feel about that?”

“I dunno.”

“How does Will feel about it?”

“I dunno.”

Erin is quiet. “It’s okay if you don’t know yet,” she says finally. “But I want you to know that it doesn’t change anything from our perspective, okay? We want you to be a part of our family.”

Laura is quiet, too.

“I think it’s time to get you two back to Max and Sam’s,” Deanna announces.

Laura thanks them for meeting them again and says that she’ll think about it.

As they’re putting on their coats to leave, Jillian shouts suddenly and clutches her stomach. Erin’s heart drops, and she’s at her side in an instant.

Jillian grips Erin’s arm, one arm still wrapped around her abdomen. “I just—Erin, I just—”

“What’s wrong? What’s happening? Does it hurt? Is something happening?” Erin can feel herself struggling to breathe. Deanna and Laura are inching closer, eyes worried.

“It kicked, Erin. Poppy kicked.”

“What? Poppy kicked?”

“Poppy kicked. I could feel it.”

Poppy, who’s grown from an apple to an avocado to a turnip to a bell pepper to an heirloom tomato in the last month.

Poppy, kicking.

“Oh my God,” Erin says softly. “Really?”

“I want to feel,” Will says.

They all look at him.

“I don’t know if you’ll be able to feel it, buddy, but you can try,” Jillian says.

Erin watches him approach. Jillian hikes up her shirt enough to expose her still small (but definitely pregnant) belly and points to the spot. Will very carefully and gently lays his hand on the spot.

Silence. Everyone waits.

Less than a minute passes.

“I felt it,” Will says.

Jillian looks back at Erin with wide eyes. “That was definitely another one. How common is that this early?”

Erin thinks back to all the research she’s done. “Not very,” she says in wonder.

Jillian looks back down at Will. He gazes earnestly up at her.

“It must like you,” Jillian says. “It’s never done that before.”

“Yes,” Will says. “I think it likes me.”

A slow smile spreads on Jillian’s face.

After that, they go home.

It kills Erin that they can’t take the kids home with them. She doesn’t like goodbyes.

Sometimes they’re necessary, though. Without saying goodbye, you can never say hello again.

When they meet with Deanna a few days later, she says that the kids didn’t stop talking about them the entire car ride back.

They want to move forward.

Jillian clutches Erin’s hand tightly, other hand on her belly.

Deanna has a plan. A plan that gives them a chance to bond with the kids prior to the baby’s birth, and then a chance to bond with the baby in the absence of the kids. Adjustment periods, she calls them.

It means that they won’t get to live with the kids full time until after the baby’s born.

Jillian doesn’t mind anymore. She doesn’t care how long it takes, because she knows without doubt that these kids are meant to be a part of their family, and that they will be.

The day after their meeting with Deanna, Jillian enters Week 20, which means she’s halfway done. Poppy is the length of a banana and wreaking all sorts of havoc on everything from her skin to her appetite. That being said, Jillian a hell of a lot more comfortable now than she was in the first trimester.

Because Erin is always at work, Jillian becomes very acquainted with the closest grocery store and becomes friends with all the cashiers, who see her at least once a day. Her cravings are frequent and all over the place. It’s not uncommon for Erin to return home to find five or more new items in the fridge.

She has another ultrasound to check that nothing’s out of place and that all Poppy’s parts are there. At this point, they could find out what parts are specifically there, but they’re not going to. The technician says that everything checks out and looks normal, and that’s all they want to hear.

That weekend, they get to spend a full day with Deanna and the kids. They take them to the Museum of Science, where Jillian finds out that the kids have a lot of the same favourite exhibits as she does. The excursion reminds her of her first date with Amber to this very same museum, and she makes a mental note to phone her when she gets home. She hasn’t had a chance to connect with her since they moved. It’s been a chaotic few months, but she’d like to catch up.

At lunch, they sit in the cafeteria and eat together, and they’d feel almost like a family if not for Deanna’s presence. Jillian listens to Erin and Laura talking and watches Will carefully cutting up his hamburger patty covered in ketchup, and she smiles.

She does call Amber that night, who’s surprised that they’ve moved to Boston, to say the least. They make plans to have her over for dinner.

The next week brings an unsupervised evening with the kids. Deanna brings them to the house, ensures that they’re comfortable, and then leaves them be with a promise to be back in a few hours. They give the kids a full tour of the house and make them a nice dinner, fully gluten- and dairy-free for Will. In addition to his food allergies, they’ve been told that he’s a very picky eater, so it’s a relief when he eagerly eats his helping of the gluten-free spaghetti that they’ve made.

The visit goes by way too fast. When Deanna comes to pick the kids up a few hours later, they look like they don’t want to leave either. Jillian grips Erin’s arm when they say goodbye.

On the weekend, they have Amber over for dinner, which is a very different (but equally pleasant) experience.

The second Amber gets inside, she envelopes Jillian in a tight, rocking hug, then jumps back almost instantly.

“Holy shit,” she says, her eyes going straight to Jillian’s (quite noticeable) midsection.

“It’s nice to see you, too, Amber,” Jillian says, grinning widely.

“That’s…that’s…are you messin’ with me? This like a prank? You’re a few days past April Fools, but like that’d stop you.”

“What’s the verdict, Er?” Jillian calls over her shoulder.

Jillian hears the sound of Erin washing her hands in the kitchen, in the middle of dinner preparation, and then she steps into the hallway a few seconds later.

Erin wipes her hands on her pants as she comes down the hall. “Hi, Amber! It’s so nice to see you again. Sorry about that, I was just working on dinner.”

Amber gives her a hug, too, but she’s still wide-eyed. “Erin, set me straight on this.”

Erin looks at Jillian nervously. “What?”

Jillian points to her protrusion. “Prank?”

Erin frowns. “No?” Her face softens into understanding a second later. “Oh, Amber thinks it is. That’s fair, actually.”

“You’re telling me that you managed to convince this one to carry a pregnancy? Are you for real?”

Erin laughs. “This one wanted to. She had to convince me.”

Amber’s expression grows even more comical. “What? Damn. That’s…wow. Didn’t know you had it in you. Or that you wanted to have it in you.”

Jillian smirks. “Why does everyone assume I wouldn’t want to carry a human fetus around?”

“You said so,” Amber says.

“Many times,” Erin says. “Also, why do you keep calling it that?”

“What? A human fetus? That’s what it is.”

“It’s redundant,” Erin says.

“I beg to differ. Everyone knows if given the opportunity, I’d be carrying a non-human fetus before you could say ‘Scully.’ I need to clarify so everyone’s on the same page that this isn’t nearly that exciting.”

“She has mentioned that on many occasions as well,” Amber agrees.

“Yeah,” Erin says in defeat. “Yeah, she has.”

There are several long seconds of silence.

“So, welcome to our home,” Erin says cheerfully.

Over dinner, Erin finally gets to know Amber better, and she discovers why Jillian fell in love with her. She has a warm, comforting, happy presence. She seems to genuinely care very deeply about Jillian, even now. There’s no bitterness, no resentment, no anger. In fact, Erin isn’t sure that Amber is even capable of bitterness and resentment.

They tell her all about what brought them to Boston. Erin’s work. The kids. They tell her all about the pregnancy and carrot-sized Poppy.

In turn, she tells them about how she’s still going strong with Krystal, and how they’ll probably be engaged within the year. She tells them how she never wants kids, so she probably dodged a bullet with Jillian in more ways than one. That gets a laugh.

They eat and drink (water, in Jillian’s case) and laugh and the hours slip by without them even knowing it. Finally, reluctantly, Amber packs up to leave.

“Y’all better make this a regular thing,” she threatens. “Now that you live here, there’s no escapin’. No more years goin’ by between visits, alright? I wanna meet these kids of yours eventually.”

Jillian hugs her goodbye. “You can be Auntie Amber.”

“Good,” Amber says with a laugh. She moves to hug Erin. “It was so nice gettin’ to know you better, Erin.”

“You too,” Erin says. “Thank you for coming over. Next time, bring Krystal!”

Amber smiles. “How about you come over to our place next time?”

They all agree to make it happen.

After she’s gone and they’ve gone to bed, Erin rolls over onto her side and stretches her hand to rest on Jillian’s belly. She still hasn’t felt Poppy kick.

Jillian yawns. “You’ll feel it soon,” she says.

“I know,” Erin says with a sigh. “Maybe Poppy just doesn’t like me.”

Jillian sniffs. “As if.”

The next weekend, they get to spend another day with the kids, this time alone. They take them to a Red Sox game. Will, in his noise-cancelling earmuffs, gets really into the game and is very vocal about unjust calls. He knows all the rules to the most popular sports, despite not being much of a sports guy. She doesn’t like sports much either, but she gets into the game as well. The Red Sox end up decimating the Baltimore Orioles, much to everyone’s glee.

They deem the day a rousing success. When Deanna picks the kids up, they immediately begin talking her ear off about the game and the day. She shoots Jillian and Erin a smile on her way out with them.

After they’re gone, the two of them sit on the couch and decompress.

“Do you think this is going to work out?” Erin asks. Her hand lands on the Poppy Bump.

Jillian glances at her. “You mean the kids?”

“Yeah. Do you think it’ll work out? Once Poppy is born and everything?”

“I think it will,” Jillian says. “I have a feeling about it. The universe has never let me down before.”

Erin yelps suddenly and her hand flies back off the Bump. “Oh my God!”

Jillian sits up excitedly. “Did you finally feel it?”

“I felt it,” Erin gasps. “Holy—holy shit, Jillian, there is a living thing in there. A spaghetti-squash-sized living thing.”

Jillian just laughs.

The next weekend, which happens to be the Patriots’ Day long weekend, it’s Laura’s sixteenth birthday. They aren’t spending the day with her, because Laura has friends, but they’re granted permission by Deanna to drop off a gift for her. They had debated for weeks about what to get her, but finally ended up getting her a rare collectible action figure from one of her favourite shows. They had to pay quite a bit for it on eBay, but it’s worth it to see the look on her face.

On Tuesday, they have a meeting with Deanna to discuss how things are going. She says she’s very heartened by how things are looking. She wants to arrange the kids’ first overnight visit.

Erin and Jillian have booked to travel to Michigan the following week to see Mark and Brenda while it’s still safe for Jillian to travel. They arrange to have the kids overnight once they get back.

Once that’s confirmed, it becomes essential that they get the kids’ rooms set up. They currently only have beds in the rooms, because that’s all they needed to pass the homestudy update.

They spend the next few days giving the rooms paint touch-ups and buying and assembling furniture. They fit both rooms with desks, dressers, lamps, cozy armchairs, and bookshelves that seem far too small.

Jillian wonders aloud about the baby’s nursery when they’re shopping, and Erin agrees that they should probably start thinking about it more. They spend the weekend before they leave starting some baby shopping. They pick out a paint colour for the nursery as well as a theme, and they find the perfect accent item to kick the room off. Connie has already told them that she’s going to build a crib for them.

They also go maternity-wear shopping for Jillian. So far, she’s been getting by with her baggiest and stretchiest clothing, which she owns a lot of. She complains the whole shopping process, but Erin finds some items that even Jillian can’t dispute getting once she tries them on and realizes how comfortable they are.

When they get back from shopping, Erin unpacks the bags while Jillian rests on the couch downstairs. She unwraps the paper covering the medium-sized frame that they bought earlier and examines the artwork inside.

She bends and carefully leans the black and white calligraphy against one of the bare walls in the soon-to-be-nursery, then turns and leaves it sitting there to soak into the room.

the universe is yours

They fly to Michigan.

Mark and Brenda are looking good, if old. Mark is retiring this year. Brenda retired last year.

They’re beyond excited to hear all about how Poppy is doing. Jillian also gets to tell them about the kids. She says that they shouldn’t get their hopes up, though. Nothing is even remotely close to definite yet.

Poppy is the size of a rutabaga, now, and Jillian’s stomach is the size of a soccer ball. It’s quite ridiculous, actually. It’s astounding how many people walk up to her on the street and touch her stomach without asking or initiate conversation about how far along she is and what gender her unborn fetus is, like that’s completely normal.

(She supposes it sort of is, but that doesn’t mean she supports it).

Mark and Brenda get them a few presents, some for the house, some for the baby, and best of all, a maternity shirt for Jillian that reads We’re hoping it’s a dinosaur with an accompanying picture. She immediately puts it on.

Mark and Brenda have been packing up the house to downsize, finally selling the home that Jillian spent all of her teen years in. It’s been twenty-six years since she moved from the apartment of her childhood into this house, this house that felt like a real home, this house that united her, her mom, and Mark into a family. For a long time, she was uncomfortable that Mark hadn’t gotten rid of it yet and was continuing to live there with Brenda, but now she realizes that it’s going to be harder to say goodbye to than she would’ve thought.

Mark tells her that she can take whatever she wants, that he’ll even pay to ship a few boxes to their place in Boston. He’s still got several boxes of her mom’s old stuff that she’s welcome to go through, in addition to everything in her own room.

She starts in her room. It’s still scarily untouched from her youth. Her closet has the most to go through. Boxes upon boxes of stuff.

She opens one of the boxes, unmarked, and a smile spreads on her face when she realizes what’s inside. She uncaps a Sharpie with her teeth and scrawls a note on the side of it, then pushes it to the side.

After she’s gone through the closet, she sits on her bed and opens the box of her mom’s belongings. One box is full of clothes, some that Jillian had completely forgotten about. She removes and sets aside a whole stack of wonderful old oversized shirts that she can vividly picture her mom wearing. She discards all the skirts, but keeps one or two pairs of outdated, wide-legged pants that she’ll definitely wear.

The next box has some of her knick-knacks, jewelry, and other treasures. There’s a set of gaudy ceramic salt and pepper shakers shaped like ducks that she fondly remembers sitting on the kitchen table. There’s a Ziploc bag of magnets from the fridge in their apartment. There’s a short metal sculpture, an abstract representation of a woman, twisting, bending, arching, arms raised to the heavens. There are a handful of cross-stitched decorations bearing generic flower patterns and cheesy sayings like home is where the heart is, from the brief cross-stitch phase her mom went through. There are a set of beautiful wooden coasters. There’s her old name tag from her days bagging cereal at the Kellogg’s factory.

The jewellery is less interesting, but Jillian sets it aside to take anyway, if only to offer her future kids. The one item that she decides to keep for herself is a silver ring, a twisted band that her mom used to wear on her thumb before she met Mark. Jillian had no idea that she kept it after she stopped wearing it.

She slides it onto her own thumb for safe-keeping, planning on finding a chain for it when she gets back so she can it around her neck. Her neck has felt oddly bare ever since she stopped wearing her Screw-U necklace.

The next boxes are filled with photo albums. Mark said that she can take any photos or whole albums that she wants, because he digitalized all the photos years ago. She flips through a few of the albums from her childhood and then decides that she wants to take them in their entirety so she has more time to look through them without rushing. One she does pause on is the one filled with baby pictures and photos from before she was even born. She finds one photo of her mom, pregnant with her, and she pauses to study it.

She removes it from its dusty plastic sleeve to get a better look. Though faded, she’s still struck by how much she can see herself in her mom. After a few moments, she carefully folds it up, pulls her wallet out of her back pocket, and tucks it inside with the latest sonogram.

At the bottom of the second box, there’s a smaller leather-bound book that Jillian initially assumes to be another photo album, but when she opens it, she finds it filled with pages upon pages of her mom’s scrawling handwriting. She spots her own name a few times on the page she opened up to. Her eyes dart up to the top of the page, which is dated November 17^th, 1981. A few months after she was born.

She swallows. Shuts the book. Puts it in one of the boxes that she’s keeping.

She can’t do it today, but she will.

Later that day, the four of them (five if you include Poppy) go out for a walk together and end up in Hamilton Park. Jillian is fairly certain that she hasn’t been here since the robot fight with Carl Lund, which would have been twenty-two years ago, give or take a few weeks.

They walk through the park, dodging kids as they run around and play on the playground.

“Suppose there’s nothing we can do to convince you to raise your kids here, huh?” Mark says.

“Sorry,” Jillian says. “If the circumstances were different, I’m sure we’d consider it.”

She’s not actually sure if Erin would ever be okay living in Battle Creek again, not when there are still so many ghosts here. Jillian would be okay moving back. Her ghosts here are the kind that she wants to see.

“Oh, shit,” a male voice says.

Jillian is startled out of her thoughts. Erin jerks to a stop beside her. Mark and Brenda keep walking, unaware of what’s going on.

Carl Lund, of all fucking people, is standing in front of them.

“Seriously, universe? I thought we were cool,” Jillian mutters. “Come on, Erin, let’s just keep going.”

Carl holds up both hands to stop them. “Jillian Holtzmann and Erin Gilbert? Is that really you?”

“Doctors Holtzmann and Gilbert, to you,” Jillian says curtly.

“Old friend?” Brenda says, having finally stopped with Mark.

“Nope,” Jillian says, and steps forward, pulling Erin by the hand.

Carl steps sideways to physically block them from moving. “Wait.”

Jillian grits her teeth. “Carl, I suggest you move. I don’t think your fragile ego could handle getting punched by a pregnant lady.”

He seems to notice the Poppy Bump for the first time. “Oh, wow. Congratulations. Are you—”

“Still a dyke, still a psychotic lesbian, and very happily married, thank you for asking.” Jillian pulls Erin closer to her, steps forward to shield her.

Carl looks pained. “I was going to ask if you’re living here. I already knew you two got married. There was an announcement in the Enquirer. That’s where I work.”

Jillian huffs, making a mental note to ask Mark and Brenda why they ran a wedding announcement in the local paper. “You’re a journalist and you had the audacity to spread your homophobic garbage to that loser of a blogger? To the tabloids? Fan-fucking-tastic, dude. You’re a real winner.”

“I didn’t mean to say all that stuff—”

“Like hell you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry. Erin, you too. I’m really sorry for everything I said. Not just the stuff from a few years ago, but when we were younger, too. I didn’t…I didn’t know any better.”

Jillian laughs. Mark is coming closer like he’s ready to fight Carl as well.

“I’m not even a journalist,” Carl says quietly.

“Good.”

“I just run their website. But I’ve…I’ve grown a lot. I know that what I said and did was wrong. My…my mom came out as gay last year, and I had to…I had to grow up and deal with it and face my own homophobia. I did a lot of research and have been going to support groups and I know so much more than I used to. I’ve changed. I’m not going to defend what I said or the asshole I used to be, but I want you to know it was coming from a place of ignorance and, quite frankly, stupidity. I was an ass. I’m sorry.”

Jillian doesn’t even know what to say to that.

“What about the other name-calling?” she says. “Everything you said to Erin.”

“It was wrong,” Carl says. “I have a son, now. Ryan. He’s two. I don’t want him to grow up and be treated the way I treated you guys, and I don’t want him to ever treat anyone like that. It’s not right. I’m going to raise him the right way and teach him not to be like how I was. And I hope that—I hope that your kid gets to grow up without anyone like me making their life miserable.”

Jillian squints. She thinks, in there somewhere, there is a nice sentiment.

“I’m really, really sorry,” Carl says. “I know nothing I can say will fix the damage I did or erase what I said, but I’m still sorry.”

Jillian looks at Erin, who looks pale and slightly reserved. She looks back at Carl. He looks as sincere as can be.

“Thank you for your apology,” Jillian says. “I can’t speak for Erin, and I’m not going to say that I forgive you, but still. Thank you.”

Carl bows his head in acknowledgement, then scratches his neck. “I should get going. My wife is waiting at the car. It was…nice to see you guys. I hope that you’re doing well, whatever you’re doing, and I hope you have many years of happiness with each other and your family.” He offers a meager smile. “See ya.”

Then he’s gone before they can say anything else. Jillian squeezes Erin’s hand.

“What was all that?” Mark says after he’s gone.

Jillian licks her lips and lays her free hand on the Bump. Poppy is squirming.

“I’m not quite sure,” Jillian says slowly, “but I think it was something good, whatever it was.”

Erin doesn’t stop thinking about the encounter with Carl until after they’ve left Battle Creek. She’s mostly just frustrated that she couldn’t bring herself to say anything to him, to snap back at him like she’s wanted to all these years. The whole conversation with him felt surreal, like she wasn’t even there. Despite that, she feels like something that she’s been hanging onto for years is finally starting to be laid to rest. There’s something strangely relieving about it. She leaves Battle Creek feeling better than she did arriving.

Back in Boston, they finish up preparations for the kids’ first overnight stay. Jillian busies herself with some sort of project. Erin calls her from work on Thursday only to find that Jillian is out at the library, of all places.

“What happened to not liking books?” Erin says.

“Unless it’s telling me how to do something,” Jillian reminds her.

“You must be really stuck,” Erin says, amused. There’s a knock on her office door, and she looks up to see one of her colleagues. She holds up a finger and mouths one sec.

“I’m not that stuck, but I’m under a time crunch and don’t have the brain power to work it out as fast as I need to.”

“Well, I wish you luck with that. I have to go, Dr. Andrews is here. See you at home?”

“See ya,” Jillian says. “Love you.”

“Love you, too,” Erin says, and hangs up. “My wife,” she says to Dr. Andrews by way of explanation. “How can I help you?” She braces herself for some sort of criticism. Did she suggest something stupid in their curriculum development session earlier?

“Would you like to join us for lunch?” Dr. Andrews asks with a smile.

“Oh! Of course. Let me grab my purse,” Erin says, smiling in return.

Jillian finishes building a VCR player just in time for the kids to arrive on Friday. She helps them take their stuff upstairs to their bedrooms, where they seem to like the new furniture.

While they wait for dinner, Jillian heaves out one of the boxes that Mark express shipped to their house. It’s the first one that she pulled out of the closet.

“What’s that?” Will asks.

She opens the box to reveal the rows of VHS tapes. “It’s a TV show. Have you heard of the X-Files?”

Laura moves closer so she’s hanging off the edge of the couch. “I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it.”

“What’s it about?” Will says. “Will I like it?”

“I don’t know, buddy,” Jillian says with a slow smile. “How do you feel about aliens?”

By the time Erin gets dinner ready, she has to work to tear Jillian and the kids away from the TV. She’s been eavesdropping on the show from the kitchen, but what she couldn’t see was the way they’re all completely captivated by the screen. She has to call their names several times, and only gets their attention when she walks in and physically pauses the show (which takes a few tries, given the artfully designed VCR that Jillian built).

The kids won’t stop talking about the first few episodes over dinner, and Erin gets into the conversation as well. She’s not about to let them think that she doesn’t love X-Files just as much as Jillian does.

After dinner, they watch the end of the episode all together, and then it’s Will’s bedtime. They go through his whole nighttime routine, which takes a little longer than anticipated, and soon he’s tucked into bed. Outside his room, Erin exchanges a look with Jillian and smiles.

They go back downstairs with Laura and find a movie on TV that’s just starting, which they all settle into. On one of the commercial breaks, Erin gets up to pee and leaves the two of them alone.

“How’s the baby doing?” Laura asks.

Jillian mutes the TV. “Oh, Poppy? Poppy’s real good. Length of a scallion in there.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Me neither,” Jillian admits.

“Is it weird being pregnant?”

“Yeah,” Jillian says. “Super weird. I don’t like it.”

“Really?”

“I don’t hate it as much as I thought I would, but no, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Nah,” Jillian says. “Not at all.”

Silence. The muted TV shows a commercial that’s either for yogurt or a prescription medication. She’s not sure what, yet.

“Why do you call her Poppy?”

“Not a her,” Jillian corrects. “Just Poppy. Like poppy seed. That’s how big it was when we found out I was pregnant.”

“Oh,” Laura says. “Sorry. So you don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Boy, girl, both, neither, anything is good for us, but we’re waiting to find out.”

On screen, a running line of text is listing side-effects underneath footage of a woman prancing in a field. Medication, then.

Laura nods. “Would you keep calling the baby Poppy if it turns out to be a girl?”

Jillian makes a face. “Ugh. I don’t think so.”

Erin has rejoined them. “What don’t you think?”

“That we’d ever actually name the baby Poppy.”

“Oh. No, I don’t think so either.”

“Glad we’re in agreement.”

“Have you thought of any names yet?” Laura asks.

“No,” Erin says, at the same time that Jillian says, “Yes.”

Erin looks at her.

Jillian shrugs. “I have some ideas.”

“When were you going to tell me?”

“Whenever we finally talked about names.”

“Oh. Okay, then.”

The movie comes back on. Jillian unmutes the TV.

Later, as they’re falling asleep, Erin rolls to face Jillian. “So, X-Files, huh?”

Jillian makes a noise.

“Is, uh…is it really appropriate for a six-year-old, Jillian?”

“Pssh. Don’t you trust me? I have all the episodes memorized. I’d never show him one with anything bad. No gore, no murderers, nothing scary.”

“They’re all a little scary,” Erin mutters.

“Come on. He loved it.”

“I just don’t want to scar him when he’s not even our kid.”

“Right. That’s for once he is our kid.”

Erin laughs lightly. “Goodnight, Jillian.”

“Night, Erin.”

Their first overnight is deemed a success by Deanna and the kids, and they arrange to spend a full weekend together the next week, which also goes extremely well.

Jillian enters the third trimester.

“Home stretch,” she groans to Poppy, who’s the size of an eggplant now.

They have the kids for two days in a row, school nights, so they can assess how it would be taking them to and from school. It’s a bit of a commute to get to their schools in Brighton, but completely doable. Erin is off work now for the summer, which helps, but the commute could easily be combined with her commute to Harvard once she’s back.

They also spend Memorial Day with the kids. The Museum of Fine Arts is offering free admission for the day, so they spend part of the day there.

The next day, they have a meeting with Deanna to assess their progress and discuss strategy for the future. The way she explains it, they have to be careful to strike a balance between fostering a bond between them and the kids and becoming too attached. After Poppy is born, there’s still a chance that things won’t work out. Deanna says they want to lessen that blow if it happens.

Jillian doesn’t say anything, but she knows Erin is thinking the same thing that she is—there’ll be no way to cushion that potential blow. They’re way past the point of being too attached.

As Deanna’s last test, they’re going to have the kids for an entire week. Then she says they’ll slow their visits as they get closer and closer to August. It makes sense logically given the whole Poppy situation, but Jillian is still having a hard time with it. She wants to increase their time spent with the kids, not decrease it.

To distract themselves and pass time while they wait for their week with the kids, they prepare for Poppy. Jillian paints the nursery while Erin shops. She researches nearly everything that they have to buy and finds the best stroller, best car seat, best highchair, best diapers. Jillian leaves all of that in Erin’s capable hands.

Erin comes back from a shopping trip one day with her hands full of bags. Jillian is sitting on the plastic-covered floor in the nursery, using a fat paintbrush to flick paint on the ‘accent wall,’ as Erin calls it.

“That’s looking good.” Erin kisses the top of her head.

Jillian looks up. “What did you get?”

Erin sets the bags down and reaches inside one of them to pull out an impossibly tiny onesie. “I wasn’t going to get any clothes today, but look at this.”

Jillian sets down her paintbrush and wipes her hands on her overalls, then takes the microscopic article of clothing from Erin.

“I didn’t even know they made clothes this small,” she muses. She looks up at Erin in horror. “We’re going to have a tiny human this small. What the fuck, Erin.”

“Breathe,” Erin says.

“You sound like Cheryl,” Jillian grumbles. They’ve been attending birthing classes, which are just about as horrible as she expected they’d be.

Erin kisses her head again. “It’ll be okay.”

On the third night of their week with the kids, Erin wakes up to audible crying.

She startles upright and turns the light on, and she’s already thrown back the covers before she realizes that it’s coming from Jillian.

She’s curled on her side, facing away from Erin, and her whole body is shaking.

“Jillian? What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is Poppy okay?” Erin scrambles over to the other side of the bed so she’s standing in front of Jillian.

Jillian cries harder.

“Talk to me,” Erin pleads. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t leave me,” Jillian gasps out.

Erin crouches and takes Jillian’s hand, her other hand resting on her side. “I’m here, Jillian. I’m here. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“Don’t leave,” Jillian says again. “Don’t—”

“Jillian, I’m right here. I’m here.” Erin squeezes her hand.

“Don’t leave—don’t—don’t leave me,” Jillian keeps repeating. It’s like she can’t even hear Erin.

Erin’s own eyes are filling with tears. “I’m here,” she says, her voice breaking. “I’m here, Jillian.”

“Don’t—DON’T,” Jillian shouts.

“Please,” Erin says, “tell me what’s happening. The kids are going to wake up. I’m here. I’m here.” She bows her head, resting her forehead on the side of Jillian’s belly. “Please.”

Jillian jerks beneath her. “Erin?”

Erin lifts her head. “I’m here, Jillian.”

“What’s—what’s going on?”

Erin frowns. “You tell me.”

“I don’t—” Jillian pushes herself upright. She touches the moisture on her face and stares at Erin, wide-eyed. “What’s going on? Why am I crying? Erin?” Her voice cracks on Erin’s name.

“Hold on,” Erin says, “were you asleep?”

“I—I don’t remember.”

“You kept saying don’t leave me. Do you remember that? Were you dreaming?”

Jillian closes her eyes, scrunches up her face, shakes her head. Erin moves to sit on the bed beside her, wrapping her arms around her as best as she can.

“It must have just been a bad dream or something,” Erin murmurs. “I wonder what it was about.”

Jillian shakes in her arms, and Erin realizes she’s crying again.

She grips Jillian tighter. “What? What is it? Do you remember?”

Jillian slumps into her. “I think I can guess.”

Erin waits.

“You’re not going to leave, are you?” Jillian says quietly.

“I’m right here,” Erin says. “I’m not going anywhere until you’re okay.”

“No,” Jillian says, even quieter.

It takes Erin a second.

“That’s not what you meant,” she says, finding it hard to breathe suddenly.

Jillian hangs her head.

“Jillian,” Erin manages to get out, “we’ve talked about this. I’m here for life.” She thought they were past this, that she had finally convinced Jillian that she was never going to leave again.

“I know,” Jillian squeaks, “but…”

Silence.

“But what, Jillian?”

“With Poppy on the way and things progressing with the kids, I just…I can’t help but get scared because what if? What would I do if you left me and I had to raise them by myself? I don’t think I—I wouldn’t—I’m not strong enough, Erin. I wouldn’t get through it. I’d be too devastated, and I wouldn’t know what to do, and I’d…I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Erin exhales slowly. How long has Jillian been thinking about this?

Their doctors as well as Jillian’s therapists all warned them to keep an eye out for any changes in her mental health. It can be very common during pregnancy, especially with an existing predisposition and a long history of mental health issues. Erin has been watching her like a hawk for any slippage, any shift, any microscopic hint. She thought she had been being so vigilant.

She holds onto Jillian tightly. “I’m not leaving, Jillian. No matter how hard it gets. I will be here with you.” She swallows, something about Jillian’s certainty of failure that is unsettling. “But there’s only so much I can control,” she says, wondering if maybe she should stop but continuing anyway. “I can promise you right now that I’ll never intentionally leave you, but…life happens. Circumstances change. Life is…unpredictable and short and can change at any moment. I might not leave, but I might—”

“Don’t,” Jillian says. “I know where you’re going with that. Don’t. I can’t think about that. I don’t want to lose you in any capacity.”

“I know. But…it’s important to me that you know that you are strong enough. You would get through it. For our kids, for me, for you. You are…the most incredible person, Jillian. You’ve been through so much and made it out the other end. You haven’t just survived: you’ve thrived. You would be okay without me, if it ever came to that. I have faith in you.”

“I don’t want it to come to that,” Jillian says.

“Neither do I,” Erin says, “and that’s why I said I’m never going to intentionally leave you. Never. I swear to you.” She laughs a little nervously. “Plus, with what we know about the afterlife, I could just come back and never leave your side anyway, but—”

“Erin.”

“I know. Sorry. Not talking about that.”

They sit in silence for a while, and then they eventually go back to bed and sleep off the conversation.

They don’t talk about it again, pretend it didn’t happen.

That doesn’t mean Erin stops thinking about it.

Their week with the kids goes on undisturbed.

They get into a rhythm with them, an ebb and flow, taking them to school and picking them up, making dinners, supervising homework, watching appropriate episodes of the X-Files, bonding.

That weekend happens to be Pride, much to their glee. They take the kids to the parade. It reminds Jillian of last year, at World Pride, when they got the phone call about being approved for adoption. She never would’ve expected to be here a year later, carrying a cabbage-sized-fetus and in the company of two incredible children who might be theirs soon.

It bums her out that she can’t ride with the Dykes, but this is one year that she’s also perfectly content spectating with Erin, Rebecca, and the kids. She doesn’t tone down her regular enthusiasm in the slightest, using the extra canvas space of the Poppy Bump to increase the amount of festive body paint on her skin. She paints a rainbow that arcs over the top of the Bump, followed by the (quite clever, she thinks) slogan Full of pride, baby. She also opts to wear a rainbow tank top hiked up instead of sticking with her usual pasties, mostly out of courtesy for the kids (but also because her boobs have been leaking a bit lately, which is horrifying in itself).

Rebecca shakes her head when she sees what Jillian is wearing, but then spends the rest of the parade talking to Laura about the history of Pride, explaining the politics much better than Jillian ever could. Laura hangs off Rebecca’s every word, stars in her eyes, especially when the conversation dissolves into a series of stories from Rebecca’s activist streak over the years. Jillian even hears some new ones.

Will, on the other hand, spends the parade talking nonstop to Erin and Jillian about the floats and other parade passerby. Apparently he loves parades, and his enthusiasm is incredible. Jillian gets even more pumped than usual with him at her side.

All five-and-a-half of them freak out when the Dykes pass, waving and cheering (and kicking, in Poppy’s case). The Dykes all make sure to rev their engines and wave back with just as much excitement.

It’s an amazing way to end their week together.

On Sunday evening, when it’s time for the kids to return to Max and Sam’s, Laura—somewhat shyly—hugs them goodbye for the first time. It makes Jillian feel all warm and fuzzy inside. She salutes Will goodbye, and he eagerly salutes back, which is just as encouraging. He doesn’t like being touched, so they’ll never use that as an indicator of comfort.

It’s incredibly difficult to say goodbye to them that night, and it seems like it’s just as hard for the kids. It’s especially hard knowing that their time together is going to be limited after this. They’ll only see the kids a handful of times from now until Poppy is born.

The next time they see them is two weeks later, when they get to spend a fairly uneventful weekend with them. Another two weeks after that, the kids are done school for the summer and they get to spend the Fourth of July with them. Will doesn’t like the noise of fireworks and Jillian is thirty-four weeks pregnant and exhausted, so they have a small barbeque at their house, just them, and stay inside to reduce the noise of other celebrations in the neighbourhood. They play board games and eat food and have an excellent day together.

A few days later, Rebecca calls out of the blue and casually suggests that they go out to dinner. Just the two of them.

Jillian immediately assumes something is wrong.

They make plans to meet at an Italian restaurant in the South End on Wednesday night. Erin tries hopelessly to convince her that everything is probably fine, but Jillian can’t help but stress a little about it.

On Wednesday, she finds the restaurant and the hostess leads her to a table where Rebecca is already waiting with a glass of wine.

Before Jillian is even in her seat, she’s already talking. “What’s going on? Are you dying?”

“Always with the dramatics, Jillian. No, I am not dying.” As if to prove her point, Rebecca takes a sip of her wine.

Jillian sighs and takes off her coat. “You’ve never taken me out to dinner alone before. You can’t blame me for being freaked out by this shit.”

Rebecca rolls her eyes, and Jillian relaxes.

Their server appears and asks for Jillian’s drink order.

“I’ll just take sixteen ounces of straight vodka. Thank you.”

The poor girl’s eyes go wide with fear. She glances down at the planet-sized protrusion. She’s wearing a shirt today that says FBI: Funky Baby Inside.

She’s gathered a whole collection of novelty shirts at this point. This one was a gift from the kids, but she’s also got ones that other people have sent or that she’s bought herself. Her favourite is the one that Luke sent that has a picture of the Death Star covering the Bump with the quote “That’s no moon!” That’s one of two that he sent (the other says the force is strong with this one). Other highlights include Watermelon Smuggler, a black shirt printed to look like an 8 ball, an installing baby progress bar, and BaBY represented by periodic table elements.

“I’m kidding,” Jillian says. “Just a Coke, please. And do you think you could do me a favour and swirl a cigarette around in it? Then garnish it with some raw seafood. Thank you very much.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Enough,” Rebecca says.

“You never let me have any fun,” Jillian says. “Alright, just a plain Coke, no funny business.”

“Is Pepsi okay?” the server squeaks.

“Pepsi is wonderful,” Jillian says with an easy grin. “Thank you.”

The girl scurries off, probably escaping before Jillian can mess with her any more.

“Was that necessary?” Rebecca asks.

“You try being eight months pregnant,” Jillian says. “It’s so boring.”

She flips open her menu and quickly decides to order two different pasta dishes. Rebecca eyes her.

“Eating for two, Becca,” Jillian reminds her.

“Two fully grown adults?” Rebecca quips under her breath.

After their poor server takes their order and leaves, Jillian leans forward onto her elbows. “So. You going to tell me what this dinner is about?”

Rebecca sighs and twists the stem of her wine glass. “As I am sure you are aware, I will be turning seventy next year.”

Jillian waggles her eyebrows. “Perfect age to be a grandmother.”

Rebecca looks unimpressed. “So MIT would assume. There has been increasing pressure from the higher ups to act my age and step away from my research.”

Jillian blinks. “They want you to retire?”

Rebecca gives a tight nod.

“But…you’re Dr. Rebecca Gorin,” Jillian says.

That gets Rebecca to crack a hint of a smile. “Yes.”

“Why would they ever want to push you away?” Jillian says, baffled. “The work you’ve done there for the field is…”

“I am aware,” Rebecca says. “I am under the impression, however, that it is their goal to replace me with less expensive, less difficult faculty. God knows I have been a steady annoyance in that department for decades.”

Jillian snorts. “That was actually my title, I think.”

“Thus brings me to my objective here,” Rebecca says with another sigh.

Jillian eyes her.

“I am not ready to retire,” Rebecca says. “Far from it, actually. That being said, I have found it…strenuous, to say the least, to manage the lab the last few years.”

“Well, no kidding,” Jillian says, “you’re an old woman.”

Rebecca’s sharp look nearly kicks Jillian into premature labour. She shrinks back, holding her hands up.

“I have told the board that I would consider cutting back my time over the next few years on one condition.”

Jillian takes a long slurp from her Pepsi. “What’s that? They install a motorized stair-chair to help get you up to the reactor?”

“For God’s sake, Jillian,” Rebecca snaps, “I am trying to offer you a job.”

That shuts Jillian up. She leans back in her seat, absorbing that. “What?”

“I informed the board that I will only reduce my time if I know I am leaving my lab in the hands of someone I trust.”

“Which is…me?”

“Yes.”

“But…what if they don’t want me? Couldn’t they just go over your head and get someone else in there?”

“I would like to see them try.”

“Do you really have that kind of pull over there? I mean, I don’t doubt it, and I don’t know a lot about how academia works, but I thought that there was a bunch of bureaucracy involved in working your way up to a position like yours and—”

“I am tenured faculty,” Rebecca says. “If they don’t agree to my terms, then they will never get rid of me. I will continue to work there until I drop dead in the lab.”

Jillian grimaces. “Can we not go there?”

Rebecca tilts her head.

Jillian closes her eyes and rests her palms flat on the table. “So, let me get this straight. You’re holding your retirement hostage until MIT hires me to replace you?” She opens her eyes. “What if I don’t want to? What happens then?”

“Do you not want to return to MIT? I was under the impression that you were quite fond of your years there.”

Jillian waves a hand in dismissal. “Well, yeah, but that was because I was working with you.”

“You would still be working with me, until such time that I retired fully. I do not foresee that day coming any time soon.”

Jillian licks her lips. “Alright, fair, but…I’m about to have a baby, Rebecca. I have no clue how long it’s going to be before I go back to work. Erin is making enough money that I can afford to take as long of a maternity leave as I want.”

“You do want to return to work, though,” Rebecca says, “do you not?”

“Well…yeah. Now I do, but that’s because I’ve been off forever and I’ve been bored. I’m sure I won’t be missing it as much when I’ve got my hands full with an infant. Regardless, I don’t think I’m going to be ready for at least a year, especially if everything works out with Laura and Will.”

Rebecca sighs. “Let’s take the children out of the equation for a moment. Would you still have any reservations about the job?”

Jillian thinks for a minute. “I’m sorry, Becca, I can’t take them out. They’re my life now. They have to shape my decisions.”

“In the future, then, is taking over my lab at MIT something you would be interested in when the timing is right for you? Or can you say with confidence that it is not an opportunity you will ever be interested in taking?”

“I—I might be interested, someday, but I don’t want you to work yourself to death waiting around for me, Rebecca. What if I change my mind? I don’t know what the future will look like.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to know the future, Jillian. You shouldn’t worry about me; I am a grown woman. There are many ways in which I could cut back and ease the burden on myself without relinquishing control or stepping down from my position, until such a time that you would feel ready to step into the role yourself. If that day never comes, I will reassess. There are a few others who I would feel comfortable handing my lab over to; you happen to be my first choice.”

“I…I’m really flattered, Rebecca,” Jillian says. “That you trust me enough to take over your lab…and that you think I could actually do it. I think your faith might be a little misguided, but—”

“You don’t believe you could do the job?”

“I—”

“You are well-qualified,” Rebecca says, “and you have come far from the old days when I barely trusted you to be in the lab, let alone run it.”

“I don’t think I’m that qualified, actually—”

“You,” Rebecca says firmly, “are one of the most well-respected nuclear engineers in the field right now. Your work has been ground-breaking, to say the least. I can think of no individual more qualified. I have always said that you should aim your sights far higher than MIT, but selfishly, I am asking you now to consider bringing your talent back.”

Jillian’s face heats up. She’s not used to being complimented so overtly by Rebecca. Or complimented at all by Rebecca.

“How am I supposed to say no to that?” she says weakly.

“Please know that you do have the option to say no,” Rebecca says. “I do not want for you to feel pressured to take the job. Not now, and not after any number of years. It is your decision to make, not mine.” She sips from her wine glass. “I will say this, though: the board expressed keen interest when I mentioned your name for consideration.”

“They did?”

“Yes. I am certain that the position would be yours even without my…endorsement.”

“Ransom.”

“Indeed.” The corner of Rebecca’s mouth ticks up. “Your reputation precedes you, Dr. Holtzmann.”

“Never thought that’d be a good thing,” Jillian muses. “I used to think that my reputation would keep me from getting a job, actually.”

“I remember.”

Jillian thinks back to the months locked in her bare apartment, the hopelessness, the darkness. “Never thought I’d see the day…”

“Nor I,” Rebecca says, “for different reasons. As I said, you have come a long way.”

Jillian swallows and blinks back moisture from her eyes. She nods slowly. “Yeah. I have, haven’t I?”

The last month goes by quickly, but slowly.

Jillian expresses a great deal of frustration, claiming that she is “over this pregnancy garbage” and deciding to post an eviction notice. She spends most of the month wearing a shirt that says I think I might be pregnant and achieving staggering levels of sarcasm. She tells a well-meaning elderly couple that her due date is next June and that the baby’s gender is “none of anyone’s goddamn business.” Erin tries to keep her inside after that, where she’s less susceptible to prying eyes and hands.

At the end of July, it’s Will’s birthday. They go to his birthday party at Max and Sam’s and get him a mint-condition first edition of one of his favourite comics. His enthusiasm is off the charts.

They enter August with less than two weeks on the countdown. Erin flies around, doing last-minute shopping that’s probably not entirely necessary. She rearranges the nursery microscopically: pushing the rocking chair ten degrees towards the window; switching the diaper genie to the other side of the change table and back again; moving the stuffed monkey on the dresser an inch to the left; changing the order of the storage bins against the wall. Jillian calls her crazy.

She packs and repacks the hospital bag. Jillian says that they can just wing it. Erin nearly has a heart attack. She’s been the calm, rational one for most of the pregnancy, but now that they’re getting closer, it’s Erin who’s starting to panic.

The last week is the longest week of their lives. Waiting. Just waiting. Jillian is cranky, they aren’t allowed to see the kids anymore until after the baby’s born, the house is sweltering and outside is even worse, and there’s nothing to do but wait.

They hide out in the basement, which is the coolest place in the house but still warm enough to have them sweating, and they talk. Erin tries to have a conversation about names, but Jillian still wants to wait until after the baby is born so they can see what fits. Erin is pretty sure she has something up her sleeve, though. Whatever it is, she’s sure it’s perfect.

One day, they’re sitting down there with the TV playing some mindless reality show, and Jillian stands up and begins pacing.

Erin perks up. “Contraction? Are you going into labour?”

Jillian shakes her head and continues to pace, one hand on her back and one hand playing with the two rings hanging from identical chains around her neck. One is her mom’s, and the second is her own wedding band, which she had to take off months ago to accommodate her swollen fingers.

“Rebecca offered me a job,” Jillian says.

Erin sits up straighter, sure she misheard. “What? When?”

“About a month ago.”

Erin frowns. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jillian shrugs, not breaking her stride or meeting Erin’s eyes. “I can’t take it now anyway, so it didn’t seem important enough to mention.”

“I’d say it is,” Erin says. “What kind of job?”

“Rebecca’s job.” Jillian stops pacing and stops to look at Erin, hands on her hips. “She wants me to take over the lab so she can start to retire.”

“Rebecca? Retire?” Erin laughs.

“Yeah, that’s kinda what I thought.”

“So you would…work at MIT? Running the lab?”

“Yup.”

“Jillian, you have to take it!”

Jillian rolls her eyes, and for a second she looks much younger, standing there with her hair pulled back in a messy bun, sweat plastering a few strands to her cheeks, wearing nothing but a worn black sports bra and faded blue terry cloth shorts. The skin covering her stomach pulled taut like an over-inflated balloon wobbling on the edge of bursting. The magnitude it makes her look smaller, not bigger.

“I’ll consider it. Eventually,” Jillian says. “Not for a while, obviously.”

“Why?”

Jillian gestures wildly at her stomach.

“Exactly,” Erin says. “Soon you won’t be pregnant anymore and you can go back to work. I know you’ve been dying to ever since you had to stop. It’s been almost a year, and I know how hard it’s been on you.”

“Someone needs to take care of the baby,” Jillian says. “We already know that you’re going back for the winter semester.”

“That plan was when there wasn’t a job offer for you on the table,” Erin says. “There are always other options. You know that Connie has volunteered to help as much as we need, and we could always hire a nanny. Or, I could take a longer leave and—”

“You need to go back to work if you want to stay on track to launch the program next fall,” Jillian says firmly. “Come on, we’re not going back on our plan now.”

Erin huffs in irritation. “So what if we had a plan? Plans change. We packed up our lives and moved here so I could take an incredible opportunity. You should be able to do the same.”

Jillian crosses her arms over her belly. “Maybe we should wait and have this conversation in a few months. Our lives are about to change in the next few days. Seems a little stupid to make any sort of plan right now. That’s what I told Rebecca, too. I’ll figure it out later. Right now, I’m a little pre-occupied.”

“Right,” Erin says. “Of course. I just…I don’t want you to already feel like you’re…trapped, or locked into anything, or obligated…I know how much work means to you. There’s always the option to go back, whenever you want, after the baby is born. Okay?”

Jillian sinks to the floor and assumes a cross-legged position. She closes her eyes and bows her head, hands resting palm-down on her knees.

Erin watches her. “What are you doing?”

“Meditating,” Jillian says. “Aren’t I supposed to be visualizing my baby outside of me or some shit to speed this up?”

“I—yes, absolutely, if you think it will hel—”

“IT’S TIME TO MOVE OUT, POPPY,” Jillian shouts.

Erin jumps about a foot in the air.

Jillian opens one eye. “Meditation.”

“I think meditation is supposed to be silent,” Erin says, clutching her heart.

Jillian shrugs and closes her eyes again. A few minutes pass in silence.

“I don’t think work means as much to me as it used to,” Jillian says quietly after a while without opening her eyes. “I can think of a few things that are more important, now.”

Erin hesitates for a moment, then slides off the couch to sit on the floor across from Jillian. She covers her hands with her own. Jillian opens her eyes. Erin pushes a sweaty piece of hair from her forehead and kisses the spot.

“So can I,” Erin says.

There’s something beautiful about the pain, Jillian thinks.

Pain and destruction have always been so interconnected in her mind, in her life. Pain and suffering. Pain and loss.

This, this is creation. This is joy. This is life.

She holds her daughter in her arms and runs the pad of her fingertip along her cheek, where her first tears have already bled and been absorbed into her skin.

Erin grips Jillian’s other hand. Light filters through the blinds from the sun rising outside the window. A new day, with new life. Their first wedding anniversary. She couldn’t resist coming a day early to meet them on the same day that they met each other so many years ago. A day already spilling over with love, ready to give to their daughter.

“Welcome to this wild, wonderful universe, Dana,” Jillian says. “We’ve got you.”

They take a few hours alone together. The baby falls asleep first, then Jillian. Erin slips from the room. The hospital bustles at the early hour, even in the maternity ward. Life doesn’t stop for anyone.

They’re all there, waiting. Abby sees her first.

They reach her before she reaches them, skittering and crashing into each other like puppies.

Erin swallows, inhales.

“Dana Kathleen Holtzmann,” she says, voice shaking a bit. “Seven pounds even. Born at 4:14am on August 10^th. Everyone is doing perfectly.”

They erupt in excited cheers and chatter, hugging and thumping her on the back and saying things that she doesn’t quite take in. It’s all a little overwhelming.

“I can’t believe you guys,” Abby says. “Actually, I can. I wouldn’t expect anything different.”

“Tribute to X-Files, tribute to Kathy, it’s all there,” Erin says weakly with a laugh. She was right that Jillian had the name up her sleeve, and as soon as she suggested it, Erin couldn’t imagine calling her anything else.

“It’s perfect,” Abby says.

Life becomes a series of firsts.

First time giving birth. First time breastfeeding. First time cleaning baby spit-up from her hair in a cramped hospital bathroom. First time installing a car seat. First time introducing her newborn daughter to the world.

Dana meets Mark, Brenda, Abby, Rebecca, Connie, Patty, Kevin, Luke, Cara, Amber, and then—

They’ve been home a week and Deanna brings the kids to meet her. They sit in the sunny living room and Jillian hasn’t slept in a week but her family is here, all together, they’re here and everything is right.

Will is captivated and Laura holds Dana like she belongs in her arms, and Jillian just knows, clearer than ever before. She has faith in the universe.

Deanna congratulates them when they leave and lingers on the porch to tell them that they can resume temporary placements in a few months, once they’ve had time to settle with Dana.

The waiting doesn’t seem so hard, now. Waiting doesn’t mean anything when you know your family will be together at the end of it all.

The first month with Dana is difficult, so difficult. It’s not what she thought it would be like. Jillian feels like everything she does is wrong. She’s exhausted already and it’s only been a month. Sometimes she gets flashes of regret, and then feels guilty and wrong.

Jillian is head over heels in love with her.

How could she regret that?

It’s fine, Jillian tells herself. It’s fine. She focuses on the love she feels and pushes down the other feelings. They’ll go away. She tries not to think about how she’s going to cope when Erin goes back to work.

She turns thirty-nine. Abby starts a new job at Yale. More firsts.

Then Jillian crashes.

Erin has been trying so hard to look out for the warning signs.

She’s been trying, but it’s a lot to manage when you’ve also got a newborn occupying most of your time.

It’s late September. She wakes up in the middle of the night. Something is wrong.

She doesn’t know what’s wrong, but she can feel it.

Jillian isn’t in bed.

Dana isn’t in the bassinet beside the bed.

She’s been fussy through the night lately, waking up and crying frequently.

Jillian could be changing Dana’s diaper. Feeding her, maybe.

But Erin didn’t hear them leave.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong—Erin didn’t wake up to any noise. It’s silent.

She waits for a full forty-five seconds before she can’t take it and rolls out of bed. She pads down the hallway to the nursery, but the door is open and the light is off. She steps just inside the doorway and turns on the light anyway.

Empty.

She stares at the constellation wall for a few seconds, then turns and leaves, shutting the light back off on her way out.

She tries to breathe through any impending panic as she walks down the hall.

“Jillian?” she calls softly as to not wake the baby, wherever she is.

Nothing.

She swallows and tiptoes down the stairs. The third step from the bottom creaks loudly with her weight.

All the lights downstairs are off as well. She can hear the refrigerator humming.

She turns on lights as she goes, checking the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom. She checks the basement, then returns to the main floor. Something seems out of place, but she can’t put her finger on what, besides the obvious.

Back upstairs, she checks the other bedrooms, even the attic.

“Jillian?” she calls loudly, not caring about potentially waking up Dana at this point. She’d kill to hear her cries right now.

Nothing. Neither of them are in the house.

In their bedroom, she sits on the edge of the bed—Jillian’s side—and notes that her phone is still plugged in. She chews on her lip anxiously and tries to come up with some sort of logical explanation for where they could possibly be.

Outside. Of course. How did she not think to check there?

She goes back downstairs, taking her own phone with her. The doors are still locked. She checks the front porch anyway, the backyard, the garage. They’re nowhere to be seen.

She’s really panicking now.

She returns inside.

Then she notices what’s out of place, what’s missing from the foyer—the stroller.

That doesn’t help her panic, although it lessens the chance that they’ve both been abducted and killed.

Now that she knows what to look for, she takes stock of what else is missing. A pair of Jillian’s shoes. Her keys. Her wallet is still on the counter.

Erin paces back and forth in the living room for twenty minutes, trying to decide what to do, and then she phones Abby.

“Hello?” Abby says after four rings. “Erin? What’s going on?”

“Hey,” Erin says shakily. “Um, I’m kind of freaking out right now and I don’t know what else to do so I thought—Jillian and Dana are gone. The stroller is missing. I have no idea where they went or when they left—I didn’t hear anything, and I’m freaking out and—”

“Slow down. What’s going on?”

“Jillian and the baby are missing, and the stroller isn’t here.”

“So…they went for a walk?”

“Abby, it’s 3:00am.”

“I know, you woke me up,” Abby says.

“Who goes for a walk at 3:00am?”

“Your wife,” Abby says immediately. “All the time.”

“What?”

“Does she not do that anymore? Huh. Well, she used to do it all the time, back when…”

“When what?”

“After you left,” Abby says shortly. “When she was really hurting. She’d take off for hours at a time in the middle of the night or early morning and walk for miles all over the city. She thought she was being sneaky about it, too, like I didn’t know.”

Erin swallows thickly. Has Jillian been doing this frequently? Has she just not noticed?

“If she’s doing it now, does that mean…” Erin trails off, unable to finish that sentence.

“It probably doesn’t mean anything. She’s probably fine,” Abby says quickly.

Erin is finding it hard to breathe. She sits down on the edge of the couch. “What if she’s not? What if—”

“Erin. Erin, chill. She’s fine. So is Dana.”

“You don’t know that,” Erin says. “We don’t even know that that’s where they are. They could be anywhere—”

“Alright, fine, but let’s not ignore the fact that Holtz is a creature of habit. When life gets hard and throws stuff at her, she does what she’s used to doing. I’m fairly confident that she’s just out for a midnight angst-stroll.”

Erin shuts her eyes and furrows her brow. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Something that doesn’t make me terrified that she’s becoming depressed again.”

Abby sighs. There’s a muffled noise, probably the rustling of sheets as she shifts in her bed. “There’s no ‘again.’ She never stopped having depression. She just got better at coping with it.”

“So she’s losing the ability to cope again?” Erin clenches the hem of her nightgown in between her fingers.

Abby sighs again. “I’m not saying anything, alright? I’m just saying that maybe you shouldn’t jump to any conclusions about her mental state without asking her.”

“I’d love to ask her,” Erin snaps, “but it’s 3:00am and she’s missing with our infant daughter, so that’s a little hard.”

There’s a pause. “Goodnight, Erin.”

“No, Abby, wait!”

Another pause.

“Please,” Erin says. “I’m sorry. I’m just—I’m really freaking out right now. I have no idea where she is and whether or not she’s okay and I’m just—I don’t know what—”

“It’s okay,” Abby says. “It’ll be okay. She’ll come home soon.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Erin says in a small voice.

“She’ll come home soon,” Abby says, firmer.

Erin exhales through her mouth, tries to regulate her breathing.

“Can you distract me for a bit?” she pleads.

“Erin, it’s so late…”

“I know. I’m sorry. Just…just until I calm down enough to be able to wait for them?”

A pause.

“Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

“Anything. How’s Yale?”

“It’s alright,” Abby says. “It’s not as fun as working with the Ghostbusters was, that’s for sure. I miss you guys.”

“We miss you, too,” Erin says.

“How’s Harvard? When are you going back, again?”

“January. I’m going to be returning to lots of work. We have less than a year to get the program ready to launch.”

“Exciting stuff.”

Silence.

“Why do you still call her ‘Holtz?’” Erin wonders aloud.

“I thought you were trying to distract yourself from thinking about her?”

“I am. But I’ve been wondering it for a while, and…”

“She told me to,” Abby says. “Many years ago, she told me to stop calling her Jillian, and it was very important to her. She hasn’t told me anything different since, so I’m still playing by her rules.”

“I had such a hard time calling her anything but Jillian. That’s just…who she is to me.”

“Yeah, well, I spent a lot of years with a very different Jillian than the one you knew. It was a lot easier for me to let her go and accept the new name because it could almost convince both of us that she was okay.”

“Abby…”

“Sorry. I know, it’s not the time.”

They stay silent for a minute. Erin can hear Abby breathing on the other end of the line.

“Did she ever…” Erin can barely say finish her sentence.

“What?”

“Harm herself?” Erin finishes in a very small voice. All she can think about are all the interviews with their social workers.

Abby sighs for what feels like the hundredth time. “Depends on your definition. It’s complicated.”

“How?”

“She did a lot of harm to herself…to her body, to her mind…she’d probably argue that it was unintentional, but…well, let’s put it this way: she refused the help that everyone offered, which was very deliberate. She nearly killed herself—again, she says it was an accident, but it was a preventable accident and she deliberately did nothing to prevent it. So yeah, I’d argue that by those standards, she did harm herself.”

Erin feels nauseated for not the first time.

They don’t talk about it a lot—the dark years. Erin has tried, but Jillian shuts down every time. It makes it that much harder to watch for warning signs that she’s slipping again.

“I’ll let you go back to sleep,” Erin says with a waver in her voice. “I’ll let you know when I find her.”

There’s a pause.

“You don’t have to find her,” Abby says. “She’ll find you.”

Erin swallows and looks up at the ceiling, trying not to cry. She hangs up and sits very still on the couch in the hopes that it’ll somehow make Jillian come home sooner.

Time slows. She waits.

At 4:53am, the front door unlocks and swings open and the nose of the stroller pokes in, followed by Jillian, who looks, in a word, sheepish—like a child caught doing something they’re not supposed to.

Erin, who has spent the past few hours paralyzed with fear, experiences approximately ten seconds of relief before pure, unbridled fury kicks in.

“Where,” she hisses before Jillian has even gotten all the way inside, “the hell have you been?”

Jillian shuts and locks the door behind her. She winces. “How long have you been up?”

“Does it matter?”

Jillian winces again. “No. I’m sorry. I just went for a little walk with Dana because she wasn’t falling back asleep and I was getting antsy. I thought I’d be back before you’d even notice we were gone.”

“It’s been hours,” Erin spits. “I’ve been worried sick. I thought you were both dead. Why wouldn’t you take your phone? Or leave a note?”

“I…” Jillian looks at a complete loss.

“And then I phone Abby, and she basically convinces me that you’re probably in the middle of a mental collapse and that this is normal, something you just do. What am I supposed to do with that, Jillian? You have a family now, you can’t just leave in the middle of the goddamn night!”

“You’re right,” Jillian says dejectedly, head hanging. “I’m sorry.”

Erin slumps, the majority of her anger expelled. She moves to peer inside the stroller, where Dana is fast asleep. Slowly, carefully, she reaches in to pull her free and take her into her arms. She holds her close, finding relief in the warm, solid weight of her. Safe.

“I’m sorry,” Jillian says again, voice raw. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Come to bed,” Erin says by way of a response.

They walk upstairs together. Erin lays Dana in her bassinet, still asleep, and then pulls Jillian close, just holding her.

“I’m sorry,” Jillian says against her chest, wet-sounding like she’s crying. Erin pulls back to confirm that she is.

She thumbs away the wetness on Jillian’s cheeks and kisses her, a little desperately, with need. She’s crying as well when she pulls away.

“You haven’t kissed me like that since we were teenagers,” Jillian says, voice shaking.

Erin knows that’s not a good thing.

“Are you okay?” Her voice breaks.

Jillian looks for a moment like she might lie, then shakes her head in surrender.

“It’s been so much harder than I thought,” she gasps out.

Erin pulls her in close again, clutching her wife’s shaking frame tightly.

“What’s wrong with me?” Jillian cries against her chest.

“Nothing,” Erin says. “Nothing’s wrong with you. It’s okay. It’ll get better. I’ve got you.”

She repeats that like a mantra, over and over and over again.

It gets better.

She starts going to therapy with Erin. They leave Dana with Connie and go twice a week, one individual session with Jillian’s current psychologist and one group session with other new parents.

It’s normal, everyone tells her. It’s okay to feel like this.

It gets better.

She finds her footing. She learns. She grows. She opens up to Erin, leans on her, recognizes that they’re in this together and that they don’t have to be perfect. They learn to laugh at how ridiculous it all is sometimes, how hard, how wonderful. They talk about the future, about how Erin will extend her parental leave in an instant if Jillian isn’t ready to be left alone come January. They reach out to their friends, accept help, take breaks.

She remembers about the journal she scavenged from her mom’s stuff, and she finally reads it. It details all the ups and downs of life as a poor single mother during Jillian’s first year. She reads it, reads it again, reads it once more even though the words were burned into her the first time with the imaginary click of a camera shutter. She soaks the words into her soul.

This universe we live in is so utterly incomprehensible, so dark, so magnificent in all its infinite influence. I look into the unknown and it looks back at me like a watch face, reminding me that my time in this life is fixed and impermanent. It is maddening, the stagnant chaos of this world, the absurdity of life as we know it, the click and grind of the Great machine. I have to wonder if I have damned her by bringing her into this life, or if the universe, too, will love her as I do.

I look into her eyes, and I know she will carry herself to Greatness, for she is every bit as infinite as the universe.

Jillian only understands about half of the journal, but reading it makes her feel closer than ever to her mom. It gives her insight into the brilliant mind she had, the turmoil, the beauty. The way she saw the world around her. It gives her something tangible to hold onto, however intangible her thoughts might be.

By November Jillian feels so much surer of herself. Stronger.

She and Erin talk with each other for a long time about Will and Laura, about if they’re ready to welcome them back into their home or if they need more time. They go back and forth, mostly on Erin’s end. She doesn’t want to do anything until Jillian is completely ready.

Jillian is ready, though. She’s ready for her family to be together.

They meet with Deanna, arrange to resume temporary placements. They start small, a few hours at a time. The kids adore Dana, especially Will. Jillian would’ve thought he’d grow bored with her, but he doesn’t.

The placements grow longer and longer. Their first overnight goes better than they expected. The first weekend goes even better.

They get to see the kids for part of Christmas. Abby and Patty are in town for the holidays, and they get to meet the kids for the first time. Will is shy at first but warms up to them quickly by his standards. Laura and Abby bond over their shared nerdy interests. Patty brings both of them super cool presents that they love.

The new year brings more firsts. Erin goes back to work, which isn’t as hard as Jillian feared it would be. She misses her, and so does Dana, but they get through it with lots of help from Connie, Amber, and even some of the Dykes. It’s rare that she doesn’t have someone else in the house with her every day at least briefly.

Luke finally gets engaged to Cara, making him the second in the span of a few months. Amber announced her engagement to Krystal back in November, and invited them all to the wedding, even the kids.

The kids love Amber. She offers to be their permanent hairstylist, which excites Laura immensely. Will is a little less enthused, but Amber promises to only trim up his messy curls and otherwise leave them be.

Jillian is relieved to have Amber in the kids’ life. She’s able to bond with them in a way that Jillian and Erin will never be able to, giving them a connection to half their heritage and culture, a role model to look up to, something their social worker has been pushing for the whole time they’ve been in the process of adopting them.

January also brings the decision that the kids will be placed full-time with them. Jillian spends the week before they move in constructing two massive custom bookshelves for the kids’ rooms. She enlists Connie’s help, sometimes with the bookshelves themselves and sometimes with babysitting while she works on them alone. They get them finished the day before they move in, and Jillian spends the rest of the day painting the rooms in the two colours that the kids picked out themselves.

They move in on a Saturday, suitcases and smiles and boxes upon boxes of comic books. They’re incredibly excited about their renovated rooms, especially the bookshelves.

Their goodbyes to Max and Sam are teary, but there are promises of frequent visits. They say goodbye and shut the door.

And all their children are home at last.

She can see all the strings of the universe stitching together, leading here like they always have been. She can also see that she made this happen, that they made this happen. They created this family.

To celebrate, she gets her first-ever tattoo, something she never planned on doing. Her mother’s handwriting, scripted on her shoulder blade like a hand guiding her forward.

she is every bit as infinite as the universe

The rest of Dana’s first year and their first months all together as a family are a series of good and bad moments, days, weeks. They learn about each other, the ways they fit together, what works and what doesn’t work. They focus on ways to strengthen bonds with each other.

Jillian takes Will to one-on-one martial arts lessons, which they call Hero Training, to give him an outlet for his anger, which used to come out in destructive ways, often hitting his own body or hard surfaces when frustrated. She talks to him about his mom and gives him the words to talk about his feelings by opening up about her own experience losing her mother.

She talks to Laura, too, about their shared experiences. She watches her favourite shows with her and reads Laura’s fanfiction, but only the ones that she lets her read.

Erin’s parenting strategy is, in a word, research. She spends hours and hours combing through articles, parenting websites, books, anything she can get her hands on to become an expert in autism. She quickly finds out that the best strategy is just to listen to Will and let him tell her what he needs and what works for him. She learns to rely on her instincts instead of relying on the internet, and her bond with Will becomes stronger than ever. She also lets him teach her all about the different superheroes that she’s not familiar with, and she applies her studious brain to the process, reading all the comics that he assigns as homework so she can remember all the details and be able to participate in conversations with the rest of them.

She also uses her researching skills to help Laura prepare for her future. The two of them start trying to figure out what Laura wants to do after she graduates, and research colleges across the country. Laura thinks she probably wants to stay close and attend an in-state school. She also thinks she might want to become a teacher. Erin helps her with SAT prep and selecting courses for her senior year.

Rebecca and Connie bond with the kids, too, in their own ways. Connie takes Will to the comic book store every weekend, just the two of them. Rebecca teaches him all about the work she’s doing in a very logical, very Rebecca way. Her straightforward speech is easily understood by Will, free from hidden meaning and always blunt. It’s one of the reasons he adores her.

Rebecca still resists grandparenthood, but Jillian catches her enjoying the little moments, like reading to Dana. She does best when it’s just the two of them and it’s quiet, and generally jumps ship if things start to get loud or messy.

Laura turns seventeen. Will turns eight. Erin turns forty-one. Dana’s first birthday falls during Boston Comic Con, which they all go to together, the five of them all cosplaying as the Incredibles.

September rolls in, the start of Laura’s last year of high school and the official launch of the paranormal studies program at Harvard. Erin has been working tirelessly for weeks to get the last-minute details in place, and is extremely excited to return to teaching. Their enrollment levels are strong, the exoticness of the program and the reputation of the school and Erin’s work clearly coming through. Everyone is holding their breath to see how the first year goes.

Jillian turns forty and feels old.

They have a fairly large celebration because her birthday happens to fall on a Friday and is also technically, she supposes, a large milestone. Abby, Patty, and Kevin come, and they have a backyard barbeque at the house with all the Dykes in attendance, Amber and Krystal, and Rebecca and Connie. It’s sunny, warm, and a wonderful evening.

Jillian is flipping burgers at the grill and making faces at Dana, who’s sitting in a high chair a few yards away, when her phone rings. She fishes it out of her back pocket and answers without checking the call display, assuming it’s someone calling to wish her a happy birthday.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Jillian?”

“You got her.”

“It’s Deanna. How’s everything going?”

Jillian squints up at the sun for a second, then looks back at Dana. Phone calls like this often lead to a home visit to check up on how they’re doing. “Everything’s great! We’re having a little barbeque right now for my birthday. Will is on his third hotdog like a champ.”

Deanna chuckles. “Excellent. I’m sorry for bothering you on your birthday, then, but I have some news. Call it a birthday present.”

Dana throws her sippy-cup on the grass and promptly frowns. “Cup!” she shouts, slamming her palms on the tray in front of her.

Jillian rolls her eyes and sets down her flipper, stooping to pick up the fallen cup and return it to Dana, who’s still banging on the tray with a certain glee in her eyes that indicates she’s doing it on purpose to be as disruptive as possible.

“—and that will be on October 21^st at 10:30am. Both you and Erin must be in attendance, as well as the kids, so they’ll need to be pulled from school that morning.”

Jillian frowns and straightens up. “Sorry, Deanna, I missed the first part of that because Dana was being loud. What is this?”

“Your court date,” Deanna says.

“What? Court date for what? Did we do something wrong?”

Deanna laughs again. “For the adoption, Jillian. Your case is finally being brought forward for legalization.”

“Holy shit,” Jillian says, then covers her mouth and glances at Dana. “Sorry. You mean—”

“You’re in the home stretch for finalizing this adoption.”

“Oh my God,” Jillian says. “When did you say it was?”

“October 21^st, 10:30am. You’ll receive more information about it.”

“Thank you,” Jillian says, unable to believe this.

“You’re welcome. I’ll let you go and enjoy the rest of your birthday. Tell the kids and Erin I say hi.”

“Will do. Have an excellent weekend, Deanna,” Jillian says.

“You too, Jillian.”

She hangs up and stares at Dana, a wide grin spreading on her face. “Scully, you’re not gonna believe this…”

The rest of the family is just as ecstatic when she breaks the news. They’re so close.

October begins with Amber and Krystal’s wedding, a small but extravagant celebration with a party just as lively as the two of them. Jillian couldn’t be happier that Amber found Krystal. They’re so in love, clearly a perfect match for each other. Seeing Amber so happy is all Jillian ever wanted.

Then comes the court date. The morning of the 21^st, they’re all nervous wrecks as they dress in their nicest clothes and drive to the courthouse. Jillian grips Erin’s hand in the front seat.

They stand in front of the judge as he reviews their case, and Jillian has never felt so stripped bare, so anxious. This one man is about to decide if they get to be the legal guardians of these kids, but it’s more than that. He’s deciding the fate of their family.

And he approves them.

They can’t keep from cheering and hugging, bringing disorder to the otherwise silent court, but nobody reprimands them.

They’re finally a family. Legally, officially a family. Forever.

The rest of forever falls into place after that.

It comes in a series of firsts, in milestones, in birthdays and holidays and marriages and graduations and twisting spirals of fate and choice, life and death, the universe bending and shaping around them.

They’ll move and grow and change and stay the same, tumbling forward into new adventures, writing new stories, creating new memories. They’ll achieve beyond what any of them thought possible.

Luke will get married and eventually run for congress, winning by a landslide. Amber will have a prolific career and long and happy marriage. Kevin will start a business that offers therapy to depressed and anxious pets, which will become wildly successful much to everyone’s surprise. Patty will receive an honorary doctorate in history from NYU for her years of work in the field of paranormal history. Abby will continue to work at Yale until her retirement, gaining worldwide recognition for her work.

Laura will attend Boston University and have a long career as a high school English teacher. Will, real-life hero, will translate his love of justice into a career as a police officer. Dana will follow in her mothers’ footsteps to attend U of M (and follow in her namesake’s footsteps to become a medical doctor).

Harvard’s paranormal studies program will be wildly successful and rapidly gain a reputation, sparking similar programs at colleges across the country and world. Erin’s contributions to the field of particle physics and paranormal studies will last throughout history.

And Jillian will, of course, return to MIT to take over Rebecca’s lab, where she’ll continue on Rebecca’s legacy by taking one or two cocky grad students down a few notches over the years. Rebecca will finally join her wife in retirement but visit the lab frequently to ensure that it’s being run to her standards. Jillian will run a safe, accepting, incredibly productive lab in the most Jillian Holtzmann way possible.

They’ll all have legacies that last long after they’re gone. Forever, even.

But that is tomorrow, and today is just today. Today, Jillian is holding her family close and celebrating, and she is kissing her wife like she’s never kissed her before, and she is thinking about all the moments that she had to make it through to get to this point, all the good, all the bad, all the choices she made and didn’t make, all leading back to one little decision in the Battle Creek library in August of 1989.

Because in that moment, she’s seven and rounding the corner into the Natural Science section, which she knows is the wrong one, but she caught a glimpse of a sad-looking girl through the shelf and she feels a desperate pull to approach her because she really, truly seems like she needs a little love.

So she gives it to her.

Forever  by Alooockhard