(Two months after Bette and Tina reunite in Paris and return to New York.)

Sarah and Bette were leafing through print-outs and brochures of apartments in the list Sarah had pulled together.  They were waiting for Tina, who’d called to say she was going to be late.  “New project I’m being asked to look at.  Sorry, baby,” Tina had told Bette.

After a few minutes of silence, Sarah glanced at Bette, who had been staring at the sleeping baby in the stroller next to her, an absent-minded smile on her face.  Sarah shook her head upon seeing the brunette reach in to gently stroke the baby’s cheek with one hand, a clutch of print-outs in her other hand.

“Bette..” Sarah started to say.

Shhh, Bette responded sharply, looking at Sarah quickly with one finger on her mouth, and then turning back to see if the baby had stirred.

“Bette…” Sarah tried again, in a whisper.

“What?,” Bette whispered back, without turning away from the baby.

“I was just wondering if you’d decided which ones to look at this afternoon, since we won’t have as much time as we thought we’d have?”, Sarah continued, voice just above a whisper this time.  She couldn’t help it. Sorry, don’t have a baby.  Haven’t mastered that whispering conversation skill yet.

Bette sighed, handing Sarah the papers she was holding.  Then she sat back, picked up her tea cup, and sipped one of the more unusual tea offerings in the tea house, a blend of green tea and rooibos.  Mmmm… delicious.  It was a blend she’d come across in Singapore, during the month she’d stayed there, and was happily surprised to see it in the menu of the tea house when she and Tina had decided to stop in while heading home after a Sunday morning stroll in Central Park with baby Angelica.  From then on, she and baby Angelica became regulars in the tea house.

It helped that the tea house itself was a fun place to go, with interiors designed after characters in a children’s story.  There were times in the day when the place could be relatively quiet, and it fell right into the hour or so before Angelica’s sitter would come by to watch Angelica, while Bette headed out to put in an afternoon’s worth of work at the office.   Ordinarily, Bette would be able to head home by 6 or so, often coming in ahead of Tina, to relieve the sitter and to spend more time with the baby.  Before long it was likely that they’d have to put Angelica into a child care center, to get her started on a pre-school program. Logan had offered to put a good word in for them in one of the schools Tina had mentioned that she and Bette were thinking off.