We were able to take baby Milo home two days after his birth.

Since Hadley had refused an epidural - thanks to a fear of needles - she had been released with a clean bill of health.

Sophia had begged us to stay at their house for the next few days, to give Hadley a chance to rest up and for Milo to get as much sleep as possible before being in the city. Hadley had graciously declined, claiming that she wanted to go home more than anything.

I could hardly blame her, but I was a little concerned for her health.

"Archer, I swear, I'm fine," Hadley said again as she slipped into her jacket. "If I thought I needed to stay I would."

"I know, I know," I said, holding my hands up in a defensive gesture. "It's just that we're about to go on a three hour car ride and I don't want to end up having to call an ambulance."

"You're such a worry wart." Hadley scoffed. "I'm fine, and Milo is fine, and honestly, I am so ready to go home you would not believe it."

Oh, I was fairly certain Hadley didn't quite understand just how ready I was to go home, too.

"All right," I said defeatedly. "I trust you. Let's get outta here, then."

"Now you're speaking my language."

I finished going about the room to make sure I had all of our odds and ends picked up and packed into the suitcase while Hadley carefully buckled Milo in to his car seat.

If there was one thing I had learned about my son since his arrival, it was that he loved to sleep. Seriously. The kid could give a teenager a run for his money. We kept having to wake him up every two hours or so just so he could eat, and even then he could barely keep his eyes open.

I didn't think the ride back to the city would be too perilous, but I was paranoid about driving in the car with Milo. People could be assholes on the road. I had a feeling I would be driving at least fifteen under the speed limit the entire time.

There was a knock on the door just as I was zipping up the suitcase and a nurse in purple scrubs stuck her head in, giving us a wide smile.

"Just about ready in here?"

"Sure are," Hadley said, smiling in return.

"Great. I've got your discharge papers right here and follow up instructions for when you go back to your primary OB and pediatrician, okay?"

I took the papers from the nurse and tucked them away while she went to help Hadley with the car seat.

It had taken an act of God to somehow convince my family that they didn't need to constantly hover around the hospital like vultures and that we would visit them all with the baby once we had settled in at home. Our escort out of the hospital was comprised of only one nurse, and for that, I was thankful.

Peace and quiet was what we needed. Not rapid hand gestures and blabbing in Italian.

I felt myself going weak in the knees as I buckled Milo into the SUV. I was going to break out into a nervous sweat.

If I was going to become a paranoid wreck any time we traveled with Milo, then I shuddered to think of what a mess I would turn in to anytime we had to take him out in public or something equally as heinous.

With any luck, Milo would stay asleep for the entire ride and wouldn't notice his father becoming hysterical.

"Is this really necessary?" Hadley grumbled as I wrapped an arm around her waist to hoist her up into the SUV. "I can walk."

"Just accept the help," I said. "You just gave birth the other day. Go ahead and take it easy for once, won't you?"

She screwed up her face in this annoyed expression as I made to shut the door, which only made me lean in to smack a kiss on her nose.

"You're so cute."

"Bite me."

I jumped into the driver's seat and started the engine, then pulled out of the hospital parking lot, ready to get on the road. If I wasn't so damn nervous about driving, that was.

I lasted about five minutes on the road before Hadley was leaning forward in her seat, resting a hand on my shoulder.

"Archer?"

"What?" I said distractedly, afraid to so much as take my eyes off the road to glance back at her.

"Honey, you're going fifteen under the speed limit."

I briefly allowed myself to look down at the speedometer, and sure enough, she was right.

"There's nobody behind me. I'm fine," I said stiffly.

"Yeah, but it'll also add an extra three hours onto the trip," Hadley pointed out.

"So? An extra long car trip is a small price to pay for our son's safety."

Hadley cracked up into laughter, fondly reminding me of the morning before when we'd been getting ready to leave my aunt Sophia's house for the hospital.

"Archer, Milo is fine, I swear," she said breathlessly. "Nothing bad is going to happen."

"How do you know that? I swear, anything could - jesus, a speed bump!"

Hadley dropped back against the seat, laughing all over again. Milo made this noise in his sleep that almost made me want to twist around in my seat just to check on him.

"Do you want me to drive?" Hadley asked, her eyes practically streaming with tears. "Because I honestly don't mind."

I shot her a glare in the rear view mirror. "Thanks, Hadley."

She launched into another round of giggles that I swear lasted a good five minutes.

It wasn't that funny. Honestly.

After the hell that Hadley and I had each experienced in our own right, I would've thought she'd cut back on the laughter a little bit.

Or maybe I was being a little too paranoid.

How was I suppose to know that I'd turn into a six-foot-three mess of nerves anytime I laid eyes on my son?

"Seriously, Archer." Hadley said, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder. "Nothing is going to happen to Milo."

"I know that," I said, and maybe my voice was a little too harsh. "It's just...dammit, he's two days old and already I'm a paranoid mess, okay?"

"And you think I'm not?" she said. "I am, too. But I think that's to be expected, considering he's our first kid."

"Not to mention everything else we've been through in the past few months," I added.

"There's that, too. But I also know locking ourselves up in the apartment with Milo and throwing away the key isn't the best way to go about this either."

"I never said I wanted to do any of that."

"Yeah, but you're thinking it. I've learned to read you like an open book, Archer."

I dug my teeth into my lip to keep from sighing. There was no point in denying it.

"Fine," I said. "So I'll go the speed limit now. Just make sure - "

"I swear I won't take my eyes off Milo the entire time."

I was going to say she didn't need to be quite that vigilant, but who was I kidding? It would probably be a good idea if she didn't take her eyes off Milo the entire car ride. For my nerves, at least.

We made it into the outskirts of the city just before the after work traffic jam usually began. We only had to make a few unscheduled stops so Hadley could feed Milo and change his diaper.

It was a relief to pull into the parking structure of our apartment building with the realization that our home was only three floors above us. It had been far too long since we had been home together without the fear of unspeakable horror hanging over us.

"Home at last," Hadley said with a sigh, yanking off her seatbelt. "It feels like it's been a hundred years."

"I agree."

I got out of the SUV and helped Hadley get Milo's car seat out of the car. Somehow I managed to carry most of our bags from the car and Milo up the three flights of stairs to our apartment, Hadley ahead of me.

She unlocked the door to our apartment, and then we were met with my little sisters rushing at us, closely followed by my mother.

"We were wondering when you would make it home!"

"How are you feeling, Hadley?"

"Lemme see that baby!"

The relief I felt at seeing my sisters and my mother, alive and unharmed, made the paranoia still bubbling up inside me not quite as debilitating as it had been before.

"When did you get here?" I asked them, fighting back a smile.

"Early this morning," Mom said, squeezing my shoulder with a wide smile. "We took a cab from JFK."

"Can we save the pleasantries for later and let me look at my nephew?" April said excitedly, making grabby hands at Milo.

I set the car seat down on the couch and bent down to unbuckle Milo. My sisters immediately started squealing and doing the whole "Aw!" thing.

"Excuse me!" Mom said, throwing out a hand to stop the girls from getting any closer. "This is my first grandchild here. I get first priority."

I carefully handed Milo - who was still conked out from the car ride - off to her and moved to the side so she could settle herself down on the couch.

"How are you doing?" I asked Hadley, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her to my side as my sisters cooed over Milo.

"Good," she said, resting her head against my shoulder. "Tired. Could do with a shower."

And an explanation is what she didn't add.

I wanted to tell Hadley everything. She deserved an explanation, and she needed to know. It wasn't as if it had slipped my mind since Milo had been born, but in the middle of a crowded hospital wasn't exactly the ideal place. Neither was in front of my sisters and mother.

Like it or not, it was going to have to wait just a little bit longer.

I made Mom and the girls tell me everything about their short trip to Palermo and how our extended family was doing. In return, they demanded to know everything about what happened with Milo's birth.

We were only too happy to tell them.

I never would've thought that I would be the type of parent that would want to talk non-stop about their kid, but I was surprisingly wrong. It was like I stupidly had to let the entire world know that Milo was my son.

And for the first time since I could recall, things felt...normal. Not exactly right, and I wasn't sure if things would ever really feel right, not after everything that had happened to us, but it was a start in the right direction.

It was exactly what we needed.

Mom and the girls left a few hours later, after a dinner of Chinese take-out, and after we had chatted about what felt like everything under the sun.

Milo pretty much slept through the entire visit, except when we had to wake him up again so Hadley could feed him. He had blinked up at his grandmother and aunts with unfocused eyes for a couple of seconds before promptly yawning and passing out on Hadley's shoulder.

Falling asleep for the next couple of days sounded totally appealing. The sad thing was that it was time to face reality now. The truth had long since been overdue.

"You look like you're about to pass out," I said to Hadley as I lay Milo down in the crib we had set up beside our bed.

I knew it was wishful thinking that Milo would always be this sleepy and not all that fussy. It would only be a matter of time before the midnight feedings and diaper changes would happen.

Hadley blew out a sigh as she flopped back against the pillows, covering her face with her hands. "I feel like I just drank too many energy drinks."

I perched myself on the edge of the bed beside her, reaching out to squeeze her leg. "That bad, huh?"

She didn't answer for several moments.

Everything unsaid thing was thick in the air between us. Either it was my nerves, or it was getting a little hard to breathe in the room.

"Not bad." Hadley took a deep breath. "Weird. It's just...I don't know."

I felt myself frown. "What?"

She passed a hand over her mouth, refusing to look me in the eye. Despite the fact that being pregnant had made her ten times as emotional as she normally was, I knew she hated crying in front of me. She hated crying in general. And I could tell that she was trying her utmost hardest not to start crying right then.

"Hadley?" I said slowly. "Are you - "

"I thought you were dead."

"What? I - "

"I thought you were dead." Hadley shoved my hand off her leg, drawing in a breath that sounded like she was about to start hyperventilating. "Do you have any idea what that was like? Sitting around, about to have a baby, while for all I knew, you'd been dragged off into some altnerate dimension and left to die? Something God awful could have happened to you and I wouldn't have known."

There it was.

It was finally out in the open.

And there was a part of me that wanted to get down on my knees, take her hands in mine and start apologizing profusely. But what good would that do? Apologies went a long way, but they never stood in the way of the truth.

"I know," I said carefully. "I can't imagine what that was like."

I didn't want to know what that must have been like either. I suspected I might have gotten the better end of the deal.

Hadley gave this harsh sort of laugh, rubbing at the tears starting to streak down her cheeks. "No, I don't think you do. So would you just do me a favor and tell me the truth?"

So I did. I told her everything.

I started from the beginning, when Death had shown up while Lauren was in the hospital with flight tickets for Mom and the girls to Palermo. I wanted to skimp over the details when Havoc had appeared at the airport and dragged me off to the cathedral, right in the middle of my funeral, but she deserved the truth, as much as I wanted to hide it from her.

She had gotten through this much on her own. She was stronger than what others might have given her credit for.

When I introduced Lucrezia into the conversation and explained how she had been masquerading as my therapist, Agnes Schaffer, this entire time, looking out for me, Hadley's jaw dropped and she started coughing.

"Lucrezia?" She gasped. "Are you serious? Death's wife seriously showed up to - "

"Wait a second." I held up a hand to cut her off. "How do you know about Lucrezia?"

"Death told me about Lucrezia years ago," Hadley said. "During my twenty-seven days. They didn't exactly, um...have a very happy ending."

That much I could have figured out for myself, but I made a mental note to have her elaborate on their story later. I needed to finish speaking. I felt like I was going to explode if I didn't finish telling the truth.

"And it turns out, Lucrezia is my, um..." I felt myself faltering. How exactly was I supposed to explain this next bit without sounding insane? I still wasn't even sure I believed it myself. The facts were there, but...

"Your what?" Hadley demanded.

"My aunt."

Hadley looked like she'd just been clubbed over the head. "Your...aunt. Lucrezia is your aunt?"

"That's what she said," I told her. "And it must be true, because she took my place."

Hadley sat back against the pillows on the bed, the dazed expression on her face remaining. "Took your place...how?"

Here was where it became tricky.

"In high school, when I...well, when you made the deal with Death and everything?"

Hadley nodded slowly, staring at me cautiously. "Yeah, I remember."

"Death didn't exactly fill me in on the finer details, and neither did Havoc, but there was a...a debt. An unpaid debt, really, because you saved me when I should have stayed dead."

It took a moment for Hadley to respond.

"So...so, what? Havoc was a debt collecter?" she said, her voice cracking.

"Maybe," I said. That seemed like a fitting title. "I'm not sure, Hadley."

"So when you say Lucrezia took your place..."

"That seemed like a loophole Havoc hadn't counted on," I admitted. "He was furious, but because Lucrezia and I come from the same bloodline, she was able to take my place and, I don't know, pay my debt? I don't think it would've worked if Death hadn't gotten me out of there in time."

We didn't speak for a while after that.

I could tell by the expression on her face that Hadley had already put two and two together and knew what the outcome would have been had Lucrezia not intervened.

I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees, watching as Milo slept soundly in his crib. His little hands were balled into his fists on either side of his head, and I watched the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

I was still having a little difficulty wrapping my mind around the fact that Milo was actually my son, but everything that the past few months had put us through, how dangerously close I'd come to the end, had all lead up to Milo's arrival. It was all that mattered now.

I looked away from Milo when I felt Hadley's arms wrapped around me from behind, resting her chin on my shoulder.

"So Lucrezia paid your debt," she repeated quietly.

There was a funny note to her voice I couldn't quite place.

"Yeah," I said. "She did."

"And...what about Death?"

There was yet another tricky question I had no idea how to answer.

"I don't know." I laced my fingers through hers and squeezed. "He understood what she was doing, and why, but he's...he's heartbroken. He never stopped loving her even after four hundred years."

"Poor Death," Hadley murmured.

I didn't think poor Death even began to cover it. I wasn't sure if I wanted to learn the extent of what had happened to him over the centuries. It was obvious it had been more than enough.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Poor Death."

I had no idea if we would ever see Death again, or if we would ever be visited by anything supernatural again, but I would continue to be thankful for everything he'd done. A day wouldn't go by where I wouldn't be thankful.

"Is it stupid that I have no idea what the hell what we're supposed to do now?" Hadley asked after a moment.

"No," I said immediately. "I don't think so. Are we even supposed to?"

As if on cue, Milo stirred in his crib and let out a cry, loud enough to break whatever spell had fallen over us.

Hadley carefully pulled herself off the bed and went to Milo, leaning down to cradle him in her arms.

"At the very least, this is good start to something new," she said humorously as she consoled Milo.

"Yeah," I said, suddenly feeling too tired to even muster up a laugh. I had a feeling that was going to become the norm soon enough. But she was right.

Milo was the start of something new. Something good.

____________________________________________________

Finally, after several months, this chapter has finally been posted! This isn't the end just yet, either, so hang in there, and I hope this was worth the wait!

Thank you guys for being so supportive, too - you guys are seriously the best, and you all are what keep me going! :)

So don't forget to drop a comment and tell me what you think!

Lots of love,

Ally