inthewildwood | fic: "and i swear i found the key to the universe"

Title: and i swear i found the key to the universe
Fandom: The Black Phone (Movies - Derrickson)
Summary: Twenty years apart, Hope and Gwen ask the same questions and get different answers.
Rating: T

1971

After the kids have had their bath and changed into their pajamas, Hope relents to their begging and lets them sit up in the living room instead of going straight to bed. It's a Friday night, after all, and it's not like they're asking for anything that will wind them up before bed - they just want to lay on the floor with their colouring books while she and Terrence watch the eight o'clock news. With any luck, they'll fall asleep on their own right there, and all she'll have to do is carry them to bed.

(Although, she thinks fondly with a sidelong look at her husband, Finney and Gwen might not be the first ones asleep. Terrence's head is already listing to one side, cheek pressed against the couch cushion. He's going to have corduroy lines in his skin when he finally gets up. She lets him be. It was a long day at work.)

The news anchor is running down a list of stories that she already heard earlier on the radio - plane crashes, Vietnam protests, the Pentagon papers - so she's not really paying that much attention. Honestly, if she's not careful, she might fall asleep before the kids do, and wake up to find that they've somehow managed to set the house on fire. She pinches her leg, which briefly helps, but it's hard to resist the creeping lassitude that comes from knowing that everyone she loves is safe and warm and cocooned under the same roof. She worries all the time, about everything, but tonight has been a brief respite. She hadn't realized how much she'd needed one.

It's a small noise from the floor that draws her attention - so small that she's not sure at first that she even heard it. She pulls herself upright, glancing down at the kids. Gwen is still absorbed in her colouring book, apparently trying to make the page she's working on as purple as humanly possible. But Finney - Finney's sitting very still, his crayons abandoned, his shoulders held stiffly up around his ears. Hope knows that posture. It never means anything good. His eyes are locked on the TV screen.

She follows his gaze. The anchor - Linda or Lisa or something, she doesn't know - is talking over footage of a rocket ship coasting towards the earth. Her voice is pleasantly bland, the kind of tone that can be used either to announce a parade or an impending nuclear strike. ". . . preliminary investigations by Soviet authorities suggest that the deaths were caused by a pressure valve which fell out of place during re-entry, causing all three cosmonauts to suffocate within the capsule. This disaster marks the first known death of cosmonauts while in spaceflight, although other fatalities have occurred during launch . . ."

Right, she thinks, the astronauts. She'd skimmed the headline that morning and not thought any more about it, but of course anything to do with space would get Finney's attention. He's still staring at the TV. She leans forward, putting a gentle hand on his back. "Sweetheart?"

He whips his head around to look at her, his eyes shiny with unshed tears. She knows that look, too. Her son doesn't ever say when something's scared him, he just tries to brazen it out until he can't anymore. She holds her arms out. "Come here, baby."

He doesn't need telling twice, scrambling up onto the couch and into her lap. She wraps her arms tight around him and lets him bury his face in her shoulder. "It's okay," she murmurs, rubbing his back. She could kick herself for having let him see it in the first place. Of course the kids don't need to be watching the nightly news. And of course they'd see something that would upset one or both of them if they did. She's routinely scared by the nightly news, and she's thirty.

There's a grunt from the other end of the couch as Terrence rouses from his half-doze. He's frowning at Finney. "Isn't he a little old for that?" Gwen looks up from her spot on the floor, glancing between her mother and father. Finney stays where he is, burrowed into her arms.

"He's fine," she says, and gets to her feet. She can keep hold of Finney like this, but barely: at six, he's already tall and long-limbed, gangly in a way that Hope wasn't until she hit middle school. She won't be able to pick him up for much longer. "Kids, it's bedtime. Gwenny, do you want Daddy to tuck you in?"

"Yeah!" Gwen bounces up off the floor immediately, concern and crayons forgotten. She's already chattering about what book she wants Terrence to read to her. Hope shifts Finney to her other hip - it's not easy; he's clinging on with all four limbs like a baby koala - and carries him down the hall to his room.

He's quiet while she disentangles his arms from around her neck and settles him in bed, tucking the covers in around his shoulders and retrieving his battered stuffed dog from where it had fallen behind the headboard. He takes it with both arms, holding it tight under his chin. Did that dog have a name at some point? Hope thinks it did, but she can't remember. It was a gift from Bobby, when Finney was born. The last gift either of the kids got from him, actually. By the time Gwen came along, they'd stopped speaking. But she doesn't want to take her son's favourite toy over an adult argument he has nothing to do with, so it's lived in Finney's room his whole life. One of the button eyes is loose, hanging askew by a few thin threads. It stares at her in a way that feels accusatory.

"Mommy," Finney whispers. His nose is pressed against the dog.

Hope smooths a stray curl off his forehead. His hair is getting shaggy, she thinks; she should cut it soon. "Yes, sweetheart?"

"What happens when you suffocate?" His eyes are still wet. She thinks his nose might be running a little. "Do you explode?"

His hair is back in place, but she keeps stroking it anyway. "No, sweetheart. You just go to sleep." She's lying through her teeth. She has no idea what happens when someone suffocates, is pretty sure it isn't peaceful. But Finney isn't looking for a lesson in medicine, he's looking to be reassured. "And it happens right away, so you don't feel anything."

She read an article, once, about climbers on Mount Everest - about how the thin air makes them tired, if they don't have oxygen tanks, and how they just sit down after awhile and drift away. She doesn't want to die anywhere but home in her bed, but she thinks, if it has to happen, it wouldn't be terrible to go like that. Just sliding into darkness and quiet.

Finney doesn't look entirely reassured. "Can it happen while you're sleeping? Like, in bed?"

Hope gets out of her chair and kneels down next to the bed so that she's eye level with her son. "Not in this bed," she says, still stroking his hair. "Our house is full of air, can you feel it? Lots to breathe." And she exhales softly across his face, hoping to see him smile. It doesn't quite work, but she can see the corners of his mouth pulling up. "There's only a few places that don't have enough air. Like outer space, or underwater. You're safe here."

He hugs the dog tighter, but his shoulders have relaxed. She leans in to kiss his forehead, and he says, "Mommy?"

"Mmhmm?" He can get in his head sometimes, she knows. Turning ideas around and around and around until he's hopelessly tangled up and too upset to free himself. She's hoping that this won't be one of those nights, but there's no guarantees.

"Can you stay here?" His eyelids are drooping, but she can see him fighting to stay awake. "Until I fall asleep?"

She kisses his forehead again. "Of course," she says, very softly. "Go to sleep, baby. I'm right here."

It doesn't take long, after that. His fingers go lax around the dog, and his breathing deepens, evening out into a regular rhythm. She leans over to make sure he's fully asleep, then kisses him one last time and tiptoes out, turning the light off as she goes. Next door, Gwen's room is already dark and quiet.

She can feel Terrence's eyes on her as she goes into their bedroom, feel the impending argument in the air like ozone. She has no interest in starting it herself, so she goes to the dresser in silence and takes out her nightgown, stripping out of her jeans and blouse and tossing them over a nearby chair before pulling it on. Then she reconsiders and folds them. He hates it when she leaves laundry lying around in untidy piles. She can make this peace offering, at least.

Behind her, Terrence says, "you can't be babying him like that."

Hope pauses midway through folding her blouse, shoulders tensing. Then she forces herself to relax, and finishes her task before turning around. "He's only six," she says, keeping her voice even. "Not that far out from being a baby."

Her husband scoffs. "When I was his age, my dad had me up in a deer blind with a rifle."

"I don't want them using guns," Hope snaps, then immediately regrets losing her temper. It's not even Terrence she's angry with, really. She never met his father - he drank himself to death years before she met her husband- and she thinks it says something ugly about her, that she's able to hate a man she didn't even know. But then Terrence will say something that she knows he's parroting from decades ago, from when his dad would cuff him in the back of the head for hesitating before he pulled the trigger on an animal, or failing to acquit himself well enough at school, and she'll think maybe she doesn't hate him enough. Her hand creeps up to tighten around her crucifix.

"I'm not going to give them guns," he says, placating. "But we've gotta do something, Hope. He cries over roadkill, for Christ's sake."

It had happened one time, and the roadkill in question had been the neighbour's cat. But she knows from experience that arguing semantics will get her nowhere here, so she takes a deep breath and says, "He's a good kid. He's sweet with Gwen when a lot of boys wouldn't be, his teachers all say he's smart and well-behaved, he has friends at school and Little League, and he hardly ever back-talks us. What else do you want?"

She looks at Terrence, who's chewing on his lower lip, and she knows he can't answer her question. Not that he doesn't know, exactly - he wants Finney to man up, grow a thicker skin, stop caring so much about everything so much. To be a different kid, essentially. But he won't say it, because he knows how she'll react. Hope can't wrap her head around it. Why have kids at all, if you're not ready to love them as they are? Why bother? Her own parents weren't perfect, but they'd loved her and Bobby as well as they were able - however much they may or may not have deserved it - and she's sure they would have loved their grandchildren, if they'd lived to meet them. She wants to do better than they did, to raise her kids better. If they're not fixing their parents' mistakes, then what's the point?

"There's stuff he can do that'll help him toughen up," he says, finally. "Phil at work was telling me he sent his kids off to sleep away camp -"

"No," Hope says immediately. More than once, she's looked at Finney and thought of Felix - not that they look alike, or act alike, or have anything in common apart from being little boys. But isn't that enough? Enough to keep him far away from the mountains and the ice and hands that will reach out of the dark and grab him?

"You went," Terrence says, and Hope sets her teeth. "Didn't do you any harm."

"You don't know," she says. She's gripping the crucifix so hard, it bites into her skin. "You don't - anything could happen to him out there. I'm not sending him away, do you understand?"

There must be something in her face or voice that tells Terrence to back off, because he raises his hands in defeat. "Okay, fine, no camp. But there's gotta be something."

She says nothing to that, just finishes changing into her nightgown and gets into bed in silence. He stands there for a moment, waiting, then joins her. He spoons up behind her, slinging an arm over her waist and kissing the back of her head. "Love you," he says. His voice is a little thick.

Hope puts her hand over his where it rests on her midsection. "Love you too," she says. She means it, mostly.

On the other side of the bed, Terrence switches off the lamp, and the room goes dark. He's out in minutes, his snores ruffling the hair at the back of Hope's neck. She isn't so lucky. She stays awake for a long time, staring at the spot on the wall where a streetlight from outside is shining through the window. When she does sleep, finally, her dreams are dark.

1990

Gwen figures out she's pregnant three weeks before her college graduation, and she's pretty sure the baby isn't the reason she feels nauseous.

Which is stupid - she reminds herself, perched on the lip of the bathtub just in case the nausea resolves into something concrete - because it's not like they haven't talked about this. It's not like getting married (and they will be getting married, once Ernie's mom gets wind of this; she's been bugging them about it since they moved in together) and having kids wasn't part of their plans. It's not like either of them don't want kids. It's not like she hasn't watched Ernie playing with his little cousins at family get-togethers and thought, it could look like this, it could be this good, and had to resist the urge to just say "fuck it," drop out, and start having kids right away. This was going to happen sooner or later, and she was happy with that.

But.

Reality feels a little different. To put it mildly.

Who the fuck would trust her with a kid? What does she even know about kids? The closest she's come to any kind of child-minding were the years when she and Finney were functionally raising themselves, and she doesn't think that's any kind of foundation to actually be a parent. Parents are people who know about stuff like nutritious dinners, and bedtimes, and helping with homework. Parents are people who know what to say when their kid comes home from school upset about some kindergarten drama that seems like an earth-shattering tragedy to them and a nonissue to anyone else. Parents - at least, good parents - are people who have a solid idea of how to raise kids without fucking them up for life. Parents are, in short, the type of people who Gwen doesn't think she's ever known. Or at least, can remember beyond a few fuzzy images and the impression of a cool hand on her forehead.

She'd learned very quickly, after Mom died, to not mention her - at least, not in front of Dad. Crying for Mom would only set him off, first into crying jags that would last for hours, then into silent rages and retreats into the garage with a case of beer. And it had upset Finney, too - Finney, who was already upset about everything - so she'd trained herself to just not mention it. It made things easier. So the words, I want my mom have long since dropped out of her vocabulary out of necessity. But God, she wants her mom. Wants someone who can tell her what to do, whose advice she can actually trust. She trusts Ernie, and she trusts Finney, but what do either of them know that she doesn't? Finney grew up the same way she did, and Ernie - he had his mom and his aunts and uncles, sure, but he didn't have his dad. Didn't have someone to teach him what he'd have to do someday for a kid of his own. She thinks, at least, that it might have been a little better for him - like maybe missing a dad wouldn't rip the same hole in a kid's life as missing a mom, the way it had been for her and Finney. Probably. She thinks. But what does she know about it? She doesn't know anything. She didn't realize until right this second, how much she doesn't know anything.

She hears a door open and shut downstairs, followed by the sound of keys being tossed in the bowl they have by the door. She'd know it was Ernie even if he weren't the only person besides her who has keys - she knows the soft, scuffing sound of his footsteps. It occurs to her, then, how fucking domestic that is. How she has, without noticing, grown into a person with a house (rented, but still) that she actually likes coming home to, that she shares with someone whose tread in the front hall makes her feel safe instead of scared. How the fuck did that happen? How did any of this happen?

Sometimes she thinks she wasn't actually meant to make it this far. That she and Finney both played some kind of trick to make it out of the house they grew up in, and somewhere out there, somebody - God, maybe - is pissed that they escaped when they weren't supposed to. She's never told anyone, because saying it out loud would make it feel more real. But she does think it.

But - in the immediate, that doesn't matter. She has stuff to do. Stuff like telling Ernie she's pregnant, a conversation that seems like it should be simple (how many ways are there to say, "you knocked me up?") but that she lacks any kind of practical vocabulary for. Still, it has to be done. She rubs her sleeve across her face (she didn't cry, but still. Just in case.) and goes out to meet him.

"Hey!" His face lights up when he sees her, like it always does. "Hey, they had pork on sale at the grocery store if you want pozole for - dinner -" He trails off when he sees her face. "Gwen, are you okay?"

She probably looks like she saw a ghost, she thinks, and then bites down on a hysterical cackle. The short trip from the bathroom to the front hall did not provide her with the words she needs to explain herself, so she defaults to the only solution she can think of: she lifts her right hand, which is still clutching the pregnancy test, and waves it at him.

She watches the moment it dawns on him: the confused furrow between his eyes turning to shock as his mouth drops open. The grocery bag he'd been holding crashes to the floor. She hopes, in some distant part of her mind, that there weren't any eggs in it. "Gwen," he says, "oh my God - Gwen -" And he crosses the floor and grabs her in a hug that borders on bruising. She throws her arms around his neck and lets herself soften into his hold. This part, at least, she wasn't scared of. He's shaking a little bit, she notes. Maybe he's scared. The thought shouldn't be comforting, but it is.

He's saying, "nenita, nenita," into her hair, before he pulls himself together enough to ask, "When - ?"

"Um," she says. She's still resting her cheek on his shoulder. "I don't know. The test didn't say. I think February, maybe?" If she's done her math right, anyway. It's very possible that she hasn't. She hadn't really been paying that much attention, which was probably a fuck-up on her part and also how this happened in the first place. Well. Lesson learned.

"Okay," he says, "okay," and he's got that tone in his voice like he's trying to make a list. "Okay, so you need a doctor's appointment and an, um - that thing where they x-ray you, and - and we need to get married." His voice cracks a little on the last item. "Sorry. This isn't how I, um. Meant to ask you."

"It's fine." It really is. She does not want to get proposed to in a fancy restaurant or with a bunch of rose petals scattered around, or whatever people think is romantic. That's not her; that's not them. "We really do have to. Your mom will kill us if we don't."

"Oh, God," he says, like he just remembered the problem of his mother. It won't be that bad, Gwen's pretty sure. Mrs. Arellano likes her; all of Ernie's family do. She's been spending the holidays at their house since senior year. "Okay, uh. Yeah. We should probably - yeah. How do you - I mean, do you want -"

"I don't know," she says, because wedding planning is genuinely the furthest thing from her mind right now. Her voice wobbles a little, and Ernie pulls back enough to look at her, framing her face with his hands. His eyes are wide and worried. "Are you okay?"

She means to say yes, she really does. Opens her mouth to do it and everything. Unfortunately, her tongue didn't get the memo, because what comes out is, "can we do this?"

He leans in, pressing his forehead to hers. "Of course we can," he says, so fervently that Gwen almost has to believe it. "It's gonna be - I'm gonna take care of you. You know that, right?"

She nods and lets him pull her into another hug. He means what he says, she does know that. Believes it. The problem, she thinks, is that there was probably a time when her mom believed the same thing.

"Okay," he says after a moment, "okay." He pulls back, wiping his eyes. "I'll get dinner started - wait, can pregnant women eat pork? Is that a thing?" He looks genuinely terrified. Like he thinks he's going to poison her with pozole.

"That's fish," Gwen says, letting herself sink into a kitchen chair. "And only if it's raw, I think. Pork's fine." It had better be, anyway. She's not living on rabbit food for the next eight months.

"Right. Right." He shakes himself a little, then sets to taking pots and pans out of the cupboards. Gwen watches him for a moment, concludes quickly that he's too rattled to have any idea what he's doing, and gets up to take the pot from him. "Here, I'll get the broth started if you wanna chop the onions."

"O-kay." He looks at her, wide-eyed, and she sets the pot down to pull him into another hug.

"Hey," she says. "Hey, we're gonna take care of each other. Okay?" That's more manageable. She doesn't want to be relying on him to take care of her - she saw what that did to her mom, how it ended for her. The two of them balancing each other, that's something she can live with.

He bites his lip. "I should -"

"We're gonna take care of each other," she says again, firm. It's the tone she uses when she's drawing a line under an argument, and she knows he recognizes it, because some of the tension goes out of his shoulders. Moves into hers', maybe. Balancing.

She could leave it there, but the words keep coming. "Just. You have to - I need -" Tears are threatening again. Fuck, she hates crying. And aren't pregnant women supposed to cry all the time? God fucking dammit. "Promise me you'll believe me. Believe her, too." She already knows it's a girl, in the same way she once knew her brother was alive in spite of everything. "If - whatever happens, if things get weird, promise me. Promise." Because that's the one thing she doesn't think she'll be able to handle, if it all starts happening again. If her baby is as haunted as she was, she needs to know she won't be alone in it. She needs to know they'll have a safe place to land.

"Of course I will." His eyes are still wide, but his hands on her back are steady. "I promise. I promise I will."

Gwen nods. It's a little silly of her to demand this of him now, when he's believed her all along. But maybe Dad believed Mom at one point, and maybe that changed before she knew to be on the lookout for it. If there was one thing she thinks hurt Mom more than anything else, it was the not being believed. It's easy to go crazy when you're alone. If she hadn't had Finn, and then Ernie, she thinks she would have gone crazy. She doesn't want that for her kids. She needs them to feel safe, the way she and Finn never did. Needs them to feel believed.

"Okay," she says, and hugs him a little tighter before she steps back. "I love you." She doesn't say it out loud as much as she probably should.

He kisses her forehead. "Love you, too." And she believes him. He believes her, after all; the least she can do is return the favour.

1972

After the incident in the road, Hope doesn't love taking the kids to the park. Part of her winces whenever Finney plays a ball game there, although he's never shown any sign of seeing things that aren't there, and probably wouldn't take off running after them even if he did. And she knows from her own experience to date that dreams and ghosts are just that - ghostly and immaterial, not able to do anything to her besides scare her. But she still watches the two of them - especially Gwen - like a hawk while they're running around the play structure. Just in case.

(It's not even exclusively the ghosts that worry her. Last month, Gwen tried to backflip off the monkey bars and wound up with a goose egg on the back of her head.)

But there's no sign of trouble today: Finney's met up with some other kids from Little League to play what appears to be - in the loosest sense - a game of kickball, and Gwen's parked on the swings, chattering with another little girl who Hope vaguely recognizes from daycare. Hope situates herself on a bench that's conveniently halfway between her two kids, and looks back and forth between them like she's at a tennis match.

She's distracted momentarily by a yell from the boys - one of them's tackled another, and they're on the ground tussling, but their mothers seem to have the situation in hand - and when she looks back to the swings, Gwen's gone. She feels her stomach turn to ice in in instant, her water bottle slipping from her fingers as she scans the playground for any sign of her daughter. It's not a big playground; she can't have gone far. And the little girl she was with isn't there either, does that mean they took off together? Where? Is the other girl's mother here as well, or is she busy with the boys and not looking? Someone must have seen -

Her gaze crosses to the far corner of the park, and spots a familiar pair of pigtail braids. Relief washes over her like warm water, and she gets up - her legs feel a little unsteady - and walks over to where Gwen is standing on her toes, peering over the fence that separates the park from the cemetery. "Hey, sweetie," she says as she approaches, and is proud of herself for how little her voice shakes. "Where'd your friend go?"

"Home for lunch," Gwen says absently. Her attention is still fixed on the cemetery. "Mommy, can I go in there?"

Hope takes several measured breaths before she replies. "That's not really a place for playing, Gwen."

Her daughter frowns. "But I don't want to play. I want to see the towers."

"The -" She follows Gwen's gaze and swallows hard. "Those aren't towers, baby, they're gravestones. People put them there to - to -" She's not sure how to finish that explanation. "It's a special place."

She watches Gwen absorb this. Then: "Can I still go see them?"

Hope glances back over her shoulder at the boys. The scuffle seems to have been broken up, and she can spot Finney's hair flying in the wind as he sprints across the park after the ball. The mothers who broke the fight up are both nearby, watching. He can't come to any harm in the space of a few minutes while she indulges Gwen. And if she says no to her daughter, it won't end there; she'll either throw a fit or simply climb over the fence the moment Hope's back is turned. Better to just get it over with now.

"All right," she says, and reaches to undo the latch on the gate. It hasn't been oiled in years; just that simple motion makes it screech like a dying animal. "But hold on to my hand, okay? And no running."

The surprise of having gotten what she wanted seems to have made Gwen more amenable than she would have been otherwise: she takes Hope's hand without complaint. Once they're inside the gate, she trots from grave to grave on her short little legs, sometimes pausing to frown at one before moving on to the next. If she's looking for one in particular, she doesn't give any sign of it.

But why would she be looking for one in particular? How would she even know? It's not like anyone's brought her here before. It's not like Hope's ever talked to her about this place. She hadn't even paid any attention to it herself, before this afternoon. Maybe Gwen's just bored and eager to explore; she's curious, of course she wants to know more about this tumbledown corner of the park that she's never played in. Maybe that's all this is, just curiosity. Maybe Hope's stomach is twisting itself into knots over nothing.

And maybe that little boy Gwen said she saw was just a figment of her imagination. Probably not, but as long as she's wishing, she might as well reach for the stars.

Gwen comes to a halt at a weathered white tombstone near the far corner of the cemetery. It's tilted to one side, sinking into the soft earth, but it's not so askew that the etchings on the front of the stone aren't still readable. Hope's never looked into the history of this cemetery before - never had reason to - but she vaguely remembers there being an Anglican church here at some point in her childhood. They must have closed up shop years ago, and just not bothered to do anything about the graves when they left. She has no idea when that was. A glance at the tombstones around her reveals a series of dates that don't seem to go past 1920 or so.

"Mommy," Gwen interrupts her thoughts. "It's like your necklace."

Hope follows her daughter's pointing: Gwen's tracing the shape of a crucifix carved into the stone. It's black with lichen, but still visible. She wonders briefly if she should tell Gwen not to touch, before concluding that it's pointless. These stones are well beyond saving. "You're right, it is."

The fact that Gwen even recognizes the shape is a little surprising to Hope: she almost always keeps her crucifix tucked under her shirt. Terrence doesn't like it, and it's easier to hide it than to let arguments get off the ground. She hadn't realized Gwen was observant enough to have noticed the rare occasions when she pulls it out.

"What's it mean?" Gwen gives up tracing the stone, and goes to stick her finger in her mouth instead. Hope pushes it down before she gives herself some kind of fungal infection.

"Well . . ." Hope chews on her lower lip, considering her words carefully. If Gwen repeats any of this in front of Terrence, it's going to cause a much bigger fight than her necklace would. "Do you remember when your friend Maggie's older sister had that big party, and she wore the white dress with the fluffy skirt? And she got a necklace like mine as a present?" Most likely she does remember: none of the girls in Gwen's daycare class had had any interest in the actual First Communion ceremony, but the dress and presents had been a topic of conversation for weeks.

Gwen nods. "She got chocolates, too."

"That's right." Of course that's the part that stuck. "Well, the necklace is - it's called a crucifix, and it's something people wear if they go to church. Because it makes them think about God. That's why Maggie's sister had that party, too."

Her daughter frowns. "But you don't go to church, and you wear one."

"I used to." She feels a pang as she says it. It's not entirely Terrence's fault that she doesn't go to church anymore - she has two kids under ten and a husband who works, there's no spare pair of hands available to wrangle them on Sunday mornings - but she does miss it. During the worst years of her upbringing, when Bobby had been at his cruelest, church had been a safe haven. She'd had pictures of her own First Communion at one point, but she'd left them behind when she moved out, and she doesn't know what Bobby did with them after their parents died. Threw them in a dumpster, most likely. "And that's when I got the necklace."

"Okay, but -" Gwen's frown deepens. "What does it mean?"

Hope crouches down next to her daughter so that she's at eye level. Gwen meets her gaze, brow furrowed. Her finger is creeping up towards her mouth again; Hope takes her hand before she has the chance to stick it back in. "A long time ago," she says slowly, "there was someone named Jesus, and he loved everybody so, so much. And then there were people who - they didn't like Him very much, and they -" How did she first have this explained to her? She doesn't remember. It was so long ago. At least she's having this conversation with Gwen, not Finney; she's less likely to get upset at the details. "They killed Him. But He loved us so much, He came back. And the crucifix is to remind us how much He loves us, no matter what happens. That's why people put it on gravestones, because it means that even if somebody's died, Jesus still loves them. And He's taking care of them."

It's not a good explanation. She wasn't cut out to be a teacher. But it seems to have satisfied Gwen at least somewhat, because her forehead is smoothing out. Her next words are slow. "So . . . if someone really, really loves you . . . they can come back after they die?"

Oh, hell. "Not usually," Hope says. "That was - a special case."

Gwen frowns again. "But people do come back. I can see them." She looks across the graveyard, to that spot on the other side of the street that she'd been headed for when Hope had grabbed her. Hope follows her gaze. She doesn't see anything, but that doesn't mean much: her mom was never able to see the same ghosts Hope did, either.

"Is there someone there right now?" she asks carefully.

"Uh-uh." Gwen shakes her head. "But there was. His clothes looked funny, and he had a necklace like yours." She pulls her hand free of Hope's and touches the gravestone again. "And he lives here. Does that mean he's dead?"

Hope doesn't ask her how she knows. "Probably," she says. "Listen, Gwen -" She takes her daughter by the shoulders. "It's really special, that you can see people - like that boy who lives here in the graveyard. Not a lot of people can do that. But people who can't do that, sometimes they get scared because they don't understand why you and I can. So it's important we don't tell them about it, because that would scare them, and it's not nice to scare people. Do you understand?"

"They wouldn't be scared," Gwen says, "if I told them. I told Finney, and he wasn't scared, because he sees them sometimes too. If I - ow!"

"Sorry." Hope forces herself to relax her grip on Gwen's shoulders. "Maybe when you're older, you can tell some people - some really special people who you know you can trust." And, God willing, she'll do a better job of picking those people than Hope did. "But not right now, okay? Right now it's a secret just for us. Can you promise me that?"

"O-kaaaaaay," Gwen says slowly. She sounds - not satisfied, but also not inclined to kick up a fuss about it right this second, which is the most Hope can really ask for. She drops her hand and looks towards the knot of boys on the playground. "Can I play with Finney now?"

Hope stands, brushing bits of grass off her knees. "If he says yes," she says, and that's all that's needed before Gwen takes off back through the gate, ghosts and gravestones forgotten. Hope watches her go, hugging herself tightly. One day at a time, she thinks. One day and another and another, and eventually Gwen will be old enough for a real conversation about this. In the meantime, she just has to keep watch. Keep watch, and keep quiet.

She looks back across the street. There's a small figure there that wasn't there before, pale and thin with a thatch of dark hair falling into his eyes. Even at this distance, Hope can see a crucifix glinting around his neck. The sight makes her heart throb violently. She shouldn't be able to see that. It's too small, too far away. But it's there.

The figure raises a hand, stretches it out towards her like she's seen Finney and Gwen do a hundred times - the gesture of a child whose energy is flagging and who wants to be towed along or picked up until they get home. Hope's fingers flex of their own accord, and she hastily shoves her hand in her coat pocket before she can do something really stupid like reach back.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and she knows the figure can hear her. "I can't help you. I'm sorry." She can feel tears stinging her eyes.

A yell goes up from the playground, and she pivots, jogging through the long grass before she has a chance to think twice about the figure across the street. She has living children she needs to protect. She can't afford to think about anything else anymore.

1991

The beeping of the hospital machines is steady but soft - soft enough that Gwen should be able to sleep in spite of them. But she can't. Her painkillers, which the nurses came by to give her five hours ago, are starting to wear off, and she won't get any more for another three. She also can't roll over to lie on her side for fear of re-opening her stomach wound ("incision" is what the doctor called it; it's a six-inch slice through her abdomen, that's a fucking wound) or generally do anything to make herself more comfortable. So she's stuck on her back like a turtle, staring at the ceiling and waiting for her exhaustion to pull her back under. It hasn't happened yet, but she lives in hope.

She can hear Ernie in the chair by the bed, talking softly to the baby in Spanish. She has a solid grasp on the language most of the time, but pain and fatigue and the lingering effects of the painkillers have left her too fuzzy to follow his train of thought. It doesn't matter much, anyway - more likely than not it's just nonsense babble meant to keep the baby attuned to the sound of his voice. He's been doing it for months, and she's glad it won't be directed at her stomach anymore: it made her feel like some kind of graven image. She's glad to have her body back in general, even if they'd had to cut her open to manage it.

She shifts minutely, trying to find a more comfortable position, and pain immediately shoots through her midsection. She grunts in spite of herself, and Ernie's voice immediately cuts off as he pulls the chair closer to the side of the bed. "Are you okay? You want me to call the nurse?"

"'M fine," she says, and gives up on getting more comfortable. "She won't give me anything anyway. Bitch." Which is uncharitable of her, probably, but she's not in any kind of mood to mince words.

She hears the soft huff of Ernie's laugh. "It's for -"

"If you say my own good, I'm climbing out of this bed," she says, and it's only half an empty threat. If she went crashing to the floor, the nurses would probably drug her just to keep her out of their hair for the rest of the night. "Is she sleeping?"

"Kind of." He shifts closer to her, until she can see his face lit up in the glow of the heart monitor. "She's sort of dozing. You want to hold her?"

"Please." She hasn't gotten to hold her daughter for more than half an hour since she was born; first she was knocked out for the C-section, then the baby was whisked off for "monitoring" while Gwen tried to fight her way out of the anesthetic fog they'd put her in, and then they both "needed rest." She was halfway to clawing the nurse's face when she told her that, but then there'd been more drugs in her IV and she'd bobbed under again. If nothing else, this period between doses at least means she doesn't have to deal with that for a couple more hours. Even if it does mean she feels like she's been through a meat grinder.

Ernie moves close enough to pass the baby into her arms, one hand cupped carefully around her head until she's safely tucked into Gwen's elbow. He reaches over her to flick the lamp on so that the bed is bathed in warm light and Gwen can actually see her daughter. The baby's face squinches up at the change, mouth pursing in displeasure, so Gwen holds a hand over her forehead to shade her eyes. After a moment, she yawns and settles.

"Hey, you," Gwen says to her. "What was all that for, huh? You scared everybody." Everybody except her, really, because she'd been put under almost immediately. Although, "oh shit," wasn't the kind of thing you really wanted to hear from your doctor while you were having a baby, and it was the last thing she'd caught before the mask went over her face.

"So did you," Ernie says quietly. He hasn't moved back since he passed he the baby, leaning awkwardly over the side of the bed so that he can keep a hand on her arm. There are heavy black bags under both his eyes; he looks almost haggard. She would take his hand, but she needs both to hold the baby, so instead she says, "Hey, c'mere. There's room." To make her point, she slides a few inches to the right, although it makes her muscles scream at her.

Ernie gives her a doubtful look, but she doesn't have to tell him twice. He climbs in next to her, settling gingerly along her side before he puts an arm around her shoulders. He's still wearing the sneakers he shoved on as he ran out of the house that morning, the ratty ones he normally just uses as slippers. She taps his foot with hers' and leans her head against his side. "I'm okay," she says, because he definitely needs to hear it. He's holding her gently, but she can feel the anxiety thrumming underneath it.

"You weren't," he says. "For a while there. You almost -" The thrumming intensifies, until she can feel his arm trembling with it. Gwen gives up on holding the baby with both arms - she's tucked in securely anyway - and frees her left arm to wrap around him instead. There are tremors running through his whole body.

"Yeah," she says, "but I didn't." He doesn't say anything to that, and after a moment, she nudges him. "Hey. What are you thinking?"

He's quiet for another long moment, the fingers of his right hand playing with the ends of her hair. "After - Robin," he says, finally, "My tío sat me down and told me I had to take care of my mom, since I was the man of the house. I think he told Robin the same thing, after Dad. And I tried, but I wasn't - I think - I didn't know how, I couldn't help her. She'd stay in bed for days, sometimes. You know."

She does know. Mrs. Arellano had gotten better by the time she started coming around, but there were still days where she just sat in her armchair in the living room, staring unblinkingly at the blank TV screen. The familiarity of it had scared Gwen, the first time she saw it - the way she'd seen the same empty stare on her dad's face, after Mom. Mrs. Arellano hadn't turned her grief outward like Dad had, hadn't curdled sour and angry with it. But she'd seen the way Ernie reacted, how gently he pulled his mom up out of her chair and guided her to bed, and she'd recognized herself in it. In him.

"It's different for guys," Finn had told her once, in a rare unguarded moment after the basement. After the fights had started. Maybe it was. But it hadn't been for Ernie. She thinks that's why she loves him.

"She did it after Dad, too," he says, "I think. I don't remember that part so well. But, you were - and I was thinking - if it were me -" He swallows, his throat clicking. "I don't know if I could be any different. From how she was. And if she needed me -" He brings his hand down to lightly touch the crown of the baby's head. "I don't know if I could do it. Be strong enough. If it was just me. And I promised I'd take care of you, but -"'

"You don't have to," she says, slowly rubbing up and down his arm. "I'm fine. And I can take care of myself."

Ernie aims a pointed look down at the dressing on her stomach. "Fine," he repeats.

"I mean, I'm not dead." Which is the most important point, anyway. "And I will be okay, and - that's not going to happen. It being just you."

"But if it did." There's a stubborn set to his mouth. "If it did and I couldn't -"

"It won't," she says firmly. "So it doesn't matter."

She has a sneaking suspicion that this conversation isn't actually about her, really. Or at least, not entirely. That Ernie's mind is reaching back further, to being that eleven-year-old kid sat down and told he had to be the strong one. Gwen had never gotten the same talk - not from an adult, not in so many words. But she and Finn had still known. How many times had they told each other, you go, I'll take care of Dad tonight? How many beer bottles had they cleaned out of the sink just so that they'd have a place to wash their breakfast dishes? How many loads of laundry, how many forged permission slips from school, how many outfits picked out specifically to cover bruises that hadn't had time to fade?

It hadn't even seemed strange at the time, is the thing. Everyone was a little scared of their parents, weren't they? She'd heard some variation of, "my mom is gonna kill me" dozens of times from friends, so what made her any different? At a distance of nearly fifteen years, her childhood looks a lot less like being free range and a lot more like having to pick up the rope that had been dropped by every adult they knew. And she doesn't get it. Who looks at a nine-year-old and says, "you're in charge now?" Who looks at an eleven-year-old and wants to hit them with a belt?

Who looks at a thirteen-year-old and wants to kill them?

The baby whimpers a little, and Gwen jogs her in her arms until she's quiet. Then she looks back at Ernie, who's watching her, and - she knows that look. She's been seeing it in the mirror for months. All of this is fucking terrifying. It feels like standing on the edge of a cliff. But they've got to do it. They've got to at least try.

"It's going to be different for her," she says softly. "Than it was for us, I mean. It's going to be better." That doesn't mean they aren't going to fuck their kid up somehow, because there are undoubtedly a whole bunch of ways to fuck a kid up that neither of them have even considered yet. But they won't be the specific types of fuck-ups their parents were. They have that going for them, at least.

Ernie reaches over with his left hand to brush the baby's cheek with the back of his knuckles. "If you say so," he says. "If you're sure."

"Of course I'm sure," she says, a scoff in her voice. "I'm sure about everything." Which isn't remotely true, but if she can lie convincingly enough, then maybe it doesn't matter.

1972

The sound of Gwen screaming has Hope up and out of bed before she's even fully awake. She's accustomed enough to the sounds her children make that she can tell an angry scream from a pained one from a frightened one. This is a frightened one, and it makes her heart twist in her chest as she runs for the door.

Gwen's sitting up in bed, her red face illuminated by the stripe of light from the hallway before Hope turns the overhead on. She's barely managed to sit down on the side of the bed before Gwen's flinging herself into her arms, sobbing. "It's okay, baby," she soothes, stroking Gwen's hair and her back while she wails. "It's okay, I'm right here. Everything's okay. You're okay."

Gwen doesn't scare easily, but she does get nightmares The first few times it happened, when she was still a toddler, Hope had almost been more scared than Gwen was; she'd sounded like something out of a horror movie. Then she'd been afraid of just what it was that Gwen was dreaming, what kind of visions were haunting her while she slept. But when she'd asked, Gwen's description had always been a confused jumble of imagery collected from cartoons and storybooks and whatever else a small child's brain will pick up and churn out into threats. Nothing real, nothing concrete. After that, Hope hadn't been as concerned when Gwen cried for her at night - she wanted her little girl safe and happy, but at long as her dreams were an ordinary childhood speed bump, she could at least rest easily about that.

"You just had a bad dream, sweetheart," she says, once Gwen's calmed down enough to actually hear what she's saying. Hope rocks her a little in her lap. "It was just a dream, it can't hurt you. You're safe."

Gwen sniffles wetly against her neck. "He burned up."

"What?" Hope pulls back just far enough that she can look Gwen in the face. "Who burned up, baby?"

But Gwen's still crying. "The boy in the oven. He put him in and he burned up."

Hope feels a chill starting in her core, sliding down her arms and the back of her neck like melting ice. Carefully, she says, "that was just a story, Gwen. Remember? They tricked the witch and pushed her in the oven, and they -"

"No!" Gwen shoves at her shoulders. "It wasn't a witch, it was the man with the long hair. He put him in the big metal oven. And the other one went in the water and he was so c-c-cold -" That's all Hope gets out of her before she starts bawling again.

"Mommy?" When Hope looks over her shoulder, she sees Finney, standing wide-eyed in the doorway. Of course he wouldn't have slept through all this. "Mommy, what happened?"

"Nothing happened, sweetheart," Hope says before Gwen has a chance to speak up. "Your sister had a bad dream, that's all. Everything's fine."

"It's not!" Gwen screams it right next to her ear, loud enough that Hope can't hold back a wince. "It's real! I saw it, and it's real!"

She's not going to talk Gwen down from this tonight; if she tries, it's only going to make this worse. So she just hugs her close again and says over her head, "how about you two sleep in the big bed with me tonight? Does that sound good?" She's incredibly thankful that Terrence is on the night shift right now: she's got enough on her plate managing Gwen without having to run interference with him as well.

"Okay," Finney says, like she knew he would, and Gwen sniffs but doesn't protest. She slides out of Hope's arms and off the bed, trailing Finney into the master bedroom at the end of the hall. Hope clicks the light off in Gwen's bedroom and follows them, getting both children settled in the bed before she climbs in after them. She ends up with them plastered against her sides like barnacles, the combined heat of three bodies enough to make her feel like she's being roasted. At least it's March, not July. Gwen, who always flares up and winds down quickly, is asleep within minutes; Finney takes a little while longer, but soon his breathing has evened out, too. Hope has no such luck. She lays on her back, staring at the speckled plaster ceiling until her eyes blur with tears.

She'd prayed so hard that her children would be okay. That they wouldn't be haunted the way she was, that the terrors that had stalked her would leave them alone. She'd known that day in the park that her prayers hadn't been answered, at least not quite - that Gwen could see the same things she could, even if she wasn't old enough yet to understand what that meant. And she has her suspicions about Finney as well, the way he seems to pick up on emotional wavelengths that no child his age should be able to. But ghosts and empathy were survivable. The dreams - that was something else. When Hope had first been at Camp Alpine, she'd assumed her own dreams owed as much to proximity as they did to her gifts. She was right there were it happened: like a radio picking up a local station, she'd been in the best position to have them. But Gwen had never been near Camp Alpine, never even heard of it. Hope had made sure of it. So if what had happened there could reach her daughter across the miles and years, did that mean Hope couldn't protect her from it? That whatever - whoever - had happened to Felix, Spike, and Cal was prowling closer and closer to her children, just waiting for the right moment to pounce?

Or maybe she was the problem. Maybe it was following her, and whatever psychic infection she'd picked up in those mountains had been passed on to her daughter the way any virus did, through close contact. Maybe if she wasn't here, Gwen and Finney would be safer. But if she wasn't here, then who would protect them? Terrence? She knows better than to hope for that: he can't hear about her dreams without turning snappish, so she stopped mentioning them to him years ago. Gwen can't rely on him; how could he protect her from something he refused to believe in? And there was nobody else to turn to. She doesn't know a single person she could confide in about all this without sounding crazy. Bobby might have been an option, once upon a time, but she'd closed that door years ago. She has to do this alone.

"Mommy?" The sound of Finney's whisper makes her jolt; she'd been so certain he was asleep. "What's the matter?"

It's too dark for him to see her tears, but she brushes them quickly off her face anyways. "Nothing, sweetheart. Go back to sleep."

Even without seeing his expression, she can tell he's not reassured. "But you're crying."

"Oh . . ." She gathers him up closer, setting her chin on his head. "You don't need to worry about that, Finney. I'm just a little sad right now, that's all. It'll be okay in the morning."

She can just barely make out his squint. "Because that's when Daddy gets back?"

If only that were the case. But that's not a conversation to have with her seven-year-old, so she just smooths his hair and says, "that's right." She kisses his forehead. "Go to sleep now, okay? It's late."

If he's unconvinced, then he doesn't argue the point. He puts his head down on her chest instead, closing his eyes. It takes less time for him to fall asleep than it did before, but that doesn't help her. She just keeps staring at the same spot on the ceiling. If she does drift off at some point, she doesn't realize it; the rest of the night is a restless blur.

She gives up on even pretending to sleep when the clock blinks 7:00 and she can hear Terrence moving around downstairs, making breakfast. The sounds wake the kids, too: Finney climbs up and out of bed, padding out to the hallway and down the stairs. When Hope turns her head on the pillow, she sees Gwen staring at her, unblinking. She doesn't make any move to get up.

Hope reaches out to adjust one of her braids, which had come half-undone overnight. "Gwen," she says, then hesitates. She hates lying to her children. More to the point, she knows it won't work: Gwen doesn't let go of things easily, and trying to convince her that her nightmare meant nothing will probably just set her off again. She has to try something else. "Do you remember what we talked about when we were at the park a couple of weeks ago? When we went to look at the gravestones?"

Gwen gives her a tiny nod.

"Tell me," she says. She needs to make sure this sticks.

Gwen purses her lips before she responds. "That we can see special stuff that other people can't. And the people who can't see it sometimes get scared, because they don't understand. And your necklace means Jesus loves us."

They don't need to talk about Jesus right now, but at least she got the gist. "That's right," Hope says. She's just making the braid worse at this point, so she lets go of it. "Well, Daddy's one of those people who can't see it, and it scares him. And we don't want to make Daddy scared. So we're not going to talk to him about it, okay? It's just for us two."

Gwen frowns. "And Finney."

"And Finney, right." She'll have to have this talk with him as well. "And the special stuff we can see - sometimes that means our dreams, too. So we're not going to talk to Daddy about that, either. If you have any scary dreams, you can come and talk to me about it. Okay?"

Her daughter is still frowning, her lower lip jutting out in a pout. "It was real," she says. "I saw it, and it was real."

"I know, baby," Hope says. "I know it was. But it happened a long time ago, and you don't have to worry about it. It's all over now." If she says it firmly enough, maybe it'll be true.

It doesn't convince Gwen, though. Her pout just grows more pronounced. "If I tell Daddy, then what will he do? If he gets scared?"

I don't know, is Hope's first thought, and she shocks herself a little by thinking it. She loves her husband. He loves her, she knows that. And she knows he loves their kids. But she also knows that he can't handle fear, real fear, without getting angry. That doesn't mean he's not a good parent, but it does mean there's some things she can't trust him with, that he just can't manage. That day at the park when Gwen flipped off the monkey bars, he'd gotten to her before Hope had, and he'd been shaking her by the shoulders by the time she arrived. Yelling, what the hell did you do that for? You're lucky you didn't break your neck! Which of course had just made Gwen bawl harder, until Hope had managed to insert herself between the two of them and calm her daughter down. He doesn't know how to talk to the kids about this stuff. He never learned. And he doesn't know what he doesn't know - or is too ashamed to hear it, whichever it is - so Hope has to be the go-between. Has to keep everyone safe.

"Then he'll be scared," Hope says. "And when people are scared, they sometimes say things they don't mean, and then they're sad about it later. So we're just not going to scare him, okay? Promise me." She has to convince her. She has to.

Gwen gives her a nod. Just a tiny one, but it's enough. "I promise," she whispers.

Hope hugs her daughter close, kisses the crown of her head. "That's my good girl," she says. She wishes she felt more certain that she was doing the right thing. "Now, how about we go get breakfast, huh? I bet you're hungry."

Gwen nods again, slipping out of Hope's arms and out of bed. She makes it to the door, then turns around to see Hope still in bed. "Mommy? Are you coming?"

Hope forces a smile. "Go down to breakfast, sweetie. I'll be there in a second."

Gwen goes. Hope lays back on the pillows, pressing the heels of her hands hard against her eyes. She can feel tears gathering there. She just needs a minute, that's all. Just a minute, and she can go down and eat breakfast and pretend everything's okay. She can. She can. And even if she can't, she has to.

1995

Olivia's birthday is in February, but Finn's always working then, so he and Jay never make it up to visit until mid-March. Olivia's fine with it: it means she essentially gets a second birthday a month after the first, one that lasts a whole week until her uncles go home. It always amuses Gwen to no end to watch Finn with her daughter: he was scared to death of her as a baby, and that wariness still hasn't entirely worn off. Olivia, with the unerring instinct of a cat gravitating towards the one allergic person in the room, will drag him along to play with her at every opportunity. She drags Jay along, too, but that's easier: he's game to be climbed on, dressed up, ridden like a horse, or whatever else she's decided that today's game requires, so she adores him wholeheartedly. Gwen's glad to see it. She always missed having aunts and uncles as a kid: her daughter only really has the two, but between them and Ernie's half-dozen cousins, she has more extended family than she knows what to do with.

It's a nice day today, and so they've all trooped out to the park to let Olivia run off some extra energy. Gwen herself, six months pregnant and fucking exhausted, is stuck on the bench; Finn had pushed his niece on the swings for a bit, then begged off to go and sit with Gwen, Currently, Olivia's playing tag with Ernie and Jay, her overalls splattered in mud from the hem to the bib, screaming with laughter whenever one of them manages to catch her. Gwen doesn't remember a version of tag that involves two people being It and only one runner, but it seems to be working for them.

"Why do you keep her hair so short?" Finn asks. He's got his elbows propped on the back of the bench, legs extended out in front of him. If he slides any further down, Gwen thinks, he's going to fall right off.

"Because she screams the house down whenever someone tries to brush it, and it's not worth the fight," she says. Olivia's hair is currently cropped just below her ears; it looks a bit like Ernie's did when they were kids, actually. Maybe next year when she starts kindergarten, they can experiment with letting it grow out. For now, Gwen's fine with the path of least resistance.

"Yeah?" Finn snorts. "I remember you doing that too, when you were little."

Gwen reaches out to flick his forehead. "Fuck you, I did not."

"You absolutely did." Finn has a shit-eating grin on his face that she doesn't think she appreciates. "I could hear you all the way out in the backyard. It drove Mom crazy. You don't remember?"

Gwen shrugs. "I remember Mom brushing it after it got long. And the detangler she used to use. It smelled like raspberries."

"Yeah, she used it on me, too." Finn pulls a face. "I got it in my eyes a couple of times. Stung like hell."

Gwen hums, shifting in place. Her back is fucking killing her. She is going to be so happy when she's not pregnant anymore. She'd gone in for it a second time because she and Ernie both want Olivia to have a sibling, but after this, she's done. If God or her in-laws don't like it, then that's their problem.

Out on the field, the game seems to have reversed course - or else they've just given up on it entirely - because Olivia's somehow launched herself to land on Jay's back, her arms wrapped around his neck, cackling as he tries to throw her off. It's a halfhearted attempt, Gwen can tell, but it doesn't make any difference to Olivia. Her cheeks are pink and wind-chapped, her smile wide enough to split her face in half. She looks - good. She looks loved.

Finn's watching them, too, and Gwen can't quite read the look on his face. He drums his fingers against his knee. "Does she - I mean." He shifts in his seat. "Does she have dreams?"

"I don't know." Gwen says. "Maybe. Not yet." She's only just turned four; if she is having dreams, she hasn't said anything about them. She sleeps like a log, so anything that scared her awake would stand out. It hasn't happened yet. But that doesn't mean it won't. "Do you ever get calls?"

"No," Finn says, then purses his lips and amends, "not - often. Once or twice. Sometimes it's . . ." He sighs. "I don't know. Sometimes the phone rings and it's just dead air." Gwen notes the phrasing, but doesn't comment on it. "There was one a couple months ago - this kid went missing on their way to school. He was missing for weeks. And I got these calls - I could hear crying, and I could hear water. And they ended up finding him in Lake Merced. So I think, maybe, I could've - but I don't know." He sighs again. Rubs a hand over his face. "What about you? Do you have dreams, still?"

She shakes her head. "Not for years." It doesn't really mean anything, she thinks. She dreams when she needs to, that's how it's always worked. She just hasn't needed to, the past couple of years. It doesn't mean she never will again. She just has to trust that it'll happen if it needs to happen.

Jay comes loping across the field to them, grinning. "Hey," he calls, and comes around behind the bench, scanning the area for onlookers before ducking down to kiss Finn on the cheek. Gwen feels her heart clench a little at the gesture. She knows it's safer for them out on the west coast than it ever would be in Denver, and that they're happy out there, far away from all the bad memories. Even if they could move back, they probably wouldn't. But that doesn't stop her wishing she could make it safer here, for them.

"Hey." Finn tips his head back to look at Jay. "Did you lose them?"

Jay shakes his head. "Ernie just took her to use the washroom. They'll be back in a second." He scans their surroundings again, then lets his hand drop to rest on Finn's shoulder. "You guys all good?"

"Ask the pregnant lady, not me," Finn says, and Gwen socks him on the arm. "Jesus, ow."

"You deserved it," she says, but her attention is already being pulled away to where she can see Ernie walking towards them, Olivia hoisted up in his arms. She still feels too ungainly to actually get up off the bench, but she pushes herself upright as he draws level with them. "What happened? Is she okay?"

"She's fine." Ernie drops down into the spot next to her. "Just tired out." Olivia's head is tucked under his chin, her hands wormed inside his jacket to keep warm. The mud on her overalls is rubbing off all over Ernie's front.

Gwen eyes them. "You're on laundry tonight." She reaches out to rub her daughter's back. "What do you think kiddo, you wanna go home?"

"Nuh-uh," is Olivia's mumbled response, but that's what she always says to the idea of leaving the park, so Gwen doesn't put much stock in it. She nudges Finn with her hip, and he gets up and offers her a hand to pull her upright. Ernie's getting up, too, but his hands are still full. "Okay," Gwen says. "Let's go home."

When they get there, Finn and Jay offer to get dinner started while Gwen and Ernie deal with the laundry and getting Olivia into clean clothes. Gwen tosses the muddy ones straight into the machine - she's lucky their house is a single story, so she doesn't have to worry about going up and down stairs - then returns to Olivia's room to see if Ernie needs any help. Olivia had perked up by the time they got home, and it's always a bit of a crapshoot whether she'll submit to getting dressed or not. But there's no sounds of fussing coming from her room, so that's a good sign.

She stops in the doorway, leaning against the frame as she watches the two of them. Ernie's already managed to wrangle her into clean leggings, and is now rolling socks onto her feet. Olivia makes a face at him, kicking the foot he isn't currently holding. "Don't wanna."

"You'll have cold feet if you don't," Ernie says, and tickles her sole to make her laugh. Olivia giggles, objections forgotten. "Which sweater do you want? Your purple one's clean." She nods at that. "Okay, arms up."

The sweater's halfway on before Olivia speaks again, her voice muffled by fleece. "When can abuela come over?"

"She came over last week, remember?" Ernie gives the sweater another tug. "She took you to the pool."

"No -" Olivia's head pops out of the neck hole, her hair frizzed. "Other abuela. Mama's abuela."

Ernie glances over his shoulder at Gwen, who gives him a minute nod, go ahead. "Mama's mom, you mean? She died a long time ago, Olivia."

Olivia frowns at this. "But she came to the park."

Gwen goes very still. Ernie does, too. Then Gwen watches as he forces himself to relax his shoulders before saying, "What do you mean? It was just us and Uncle Finn and Uncle Jay at the park."

"Uh-uh," Olivia says, expression darkening the way it always does when she thinks she's being disbelieved. "Mama's abuela was there. She was by the swings, and she waved at me. She had pretty hair."

Ernie looks back at Gwen again. Gwen's gripping the doorframe with one hand, feeling her fingers go stiff. She can feel something rising in her, but it's a something she can't name. Fear? Not exactly. Not of Mom. Of -

Ernie looks back at Olivia, smooths her hair down. "Well," he says. "That was pretty special, that you got to see her." He makes another attempt at smoothing her hair, then apparently gives up, getting to his feet. "Hey, you wanna see what your uncles are making for dinner?"

Olivia doesn't need asking twice, pattering out of the room and past Gwen without a backwards glance. Down the hall, in the kitchen, Gwen can hear her chattering at Finn and Jay, voice indistinct through the wall. Hopefully not telling them about Mom at the park, Gwen thinks; that's news she wants to break herself, and preferably not while Finn's trying to put a hot dish in the oven.

Ernie comes over to stand next to her, wrapping an arm around her waist. "You okay?" he says against her hair.

Gwen tucks herself against him, relieved to let him bear some of her weight. "Yeah," she says. "I think so, yeah." She bites her lip. "It might've been nothing. Imaginary friends."

Ernie doesn't say anything to that, just hums. After a moment, Gwen sighs. "Probably not, though."

"Mm. Probably." Ernie rests his chin on top of her head. "It's not a bad thing, though. If she's gonna - I mean, your mom's not the worst person she could see." She can hear the hesitation in his voice, in the silence before he says, "or - later, she could see -" He doesn't finish the thought.

Gwen turns herself in his arms so that her face is to his chest and she has the room to slide her arms around him. "Yeah," she says softly. "Maybe." Privately, she doesn't think there's much chance of Olivia seeing Robin; she never had, after the basement, and neither had Finn. He's moved on. But she'd thought Mom had as well, and then - if she's still here, is something keeping her back? Something Gwen needs to do to let her rest? Or maybe today was an anomaly, the universe blinking for a moment. Just a tiny piece of grace for them, an apology for all the bullshit. She doesn't really know if that's how it works. But she'd like to think so. And if it is something else, if it's a harbinger of something worse - she tightens her arms around Ernie. She's survived that before. So has Finn. And they're not kids anymore, and they're not alone. They can survive it again.

There's the sound of feet pattering in the hallway again, and Oliva re-appears, breathless and impatient. "It's time for dinner," she announces, then pivots on her heel and takes off again. The food smells from the kitchen are slowly seeping through the rest of the house: it smells like chicken curry. No wonder Olivia wants them to get a move on.

"Come on," Gwen says, and disentangles herself from Ernie, taking his hand to pull gently. After dinner, once Olivia's in bed, she can talk to Finn about the park, and the calls, and what it all means. Maybe nothing. Maybe not. But she has everyone she loves here and safe and alive. And maybe some people she loves who aren't alive, who still love her back. Whatever else happens will happen; she's ready for it. They're ready for it.