The insemination was nowhere close to the big deal it had been for Bette and Tina, mostly because we didn’t want it to be. Still, Helena insisted on taking us for a nice dinner the night before. Alice hadn’t really wanted to go since she knew Bette and Tina would be lobbing advice at us left and right, “and it’s not like they’re the fucking experts,” Alice grumbled.

I saw her point, but the dinner was more for Helena than anyone else, so I told her we had to go. She sighed and said she knew, and that Helena had been bugging her to go try on outfits all week.

“It’s not a wedding,” I muttered, a little hurt that Helena hadn’t offered to go shopping with me. That actually turned out to be Alice’s fault; Helena had asked her to extend the invitation to me, and she’d forgotten.

Not that we weren’t busy. Kallie was a handful even though she was well-behaved, and Alice’s writing had taken on a life of its own. To add to that, I was doing more commentaries and appearances and was rarely in the state two weeks consecutively.

Still, we managed to work it out. Alice called her publisher to ask for a couple weeks’ time to herself, and it was granted immediately since she was one of their more popular authors. I got a bit of time to myself too, and we were both hoping that two to three weeks would be enough time. We’d heard some horror stories but were trying to remain hopeful. 

The dinner went well. Alice had been right; Bette and Tina tried to start in with us right away, but Shane managed to distract them with something or other. I wasn’t paying a ton of attention, but it had something to do with Angelica. Everyone else was really supportive of us, and it was nice to feel like everyone was a family again. Sort of. 

The night would have ended well if Max hadn’t spoken up. I know he didn’t mean to upset anyone and was genuinely curious, but it upset Alice a lot and I was in no way a fan of that. 

“It must be nice to know that this time you’ll never have to worry about the real parents trying to come back into the picture,” he said. There were a few seconds of complete silence, and Alice looked like she was trying to avoid crying. Luckily we’d agreed that the kids should have sitters, and one of the nice gay male couples that lived on our block had volunteered for both Kallie and Angie, or else there probably would have been questions from little people.