In progress. Daily-ish fluff delivery.

Rebecca was glad she'd planned for some intense labor, because they discovered significantly more work to be done than Laura expected. One full row of improvised greenhouse had collapsed in on itself, puddles of trapped water weighing down several sections of plastic.

The profanity her mother used was distinctively not the kind of language Rebecca heard back when Laura was still worried about being a role model. "The rain the other day must have softened up the ground enough for the posts to shift. Once the plastic isn't taught anymore it lets water pool up, which stretches the plastic, so it catches more water, and then it all falls in a heap again. I've actually started to prefer when it just rips, because the water drains off and the rest stays up."

Sam was pacing the length of the row with a contemplative scowl that Rebecca knew meant she was already designing an upgrade in her head.

"Rosie, love. Let's get it cleaned up before we turn it into a replacement Seventh Wonder, huh?"

Sam glanced up at her with a mildly perturbed, but conceding look. "Yeah, fine. Busted."

"I mean, you are a little predictable when it comes to rebuilding things better and stronger."

That got an arched eyebrow. "Oh, things like you!" Sam's voice was on the sweeter side of mockery, not unkind, so Rebecca just shook her head and reached for the nearest edge of plastic sheet.

Some twenty minutes later she realized going sleeveless was a mistake once they had the entire row's plastic folded back at one end. Laura had been repeatedly glancing at her scars with an increasingly dour face.

"Mom. That's the look you gave me when I came home with a skinned knee, times a thousand or something. Gimme a break. Chicks dig 'em, just ask Sam."

Sam's retort struck before Laura had the chance to reply. "Oh yeah, sure. I just loved all the times I had to patch you up when you came home bleeding. That's totally what won me over, you ninny."

"Hey, that was two, maybe three times!" Despite the teasing, Rebecca suspected it might have been a gambit to lighten the mood and grinned back. It worked either way, as Laura's reply was at least preceded by a small laugh.

"Well, I guess I should be glad that doesn't solely fall on me anymore." Alas, the diversion only delayed the lovingly disapproving sigh that Rebecca was anticipating. "Sweetheart, isn't there some way you can contribute that's less dangerous? Use your education, maybe. It's the end of the goddamned world, I bet anyone still breathing is a viable therapy client."

Tucking a few stray hairs back, Rebecca looked at her, slightly boggled. "Come on, Mom. I wouldn't have a clue. You need clinical hours, internships, not to mention finishing your curriculum. I know about basic crap like Maslow's pyramid and uncertainty reduction theory, negative confirmation bias." She waved her hand in emphasis. "But I was only barely wading into upper division."

She glanced at Sam for support, but got an uphelpful shrug. "Don't look at me. I wasn't much further along and am running around wiring up power grids."

Oh great, thanks babe. "But okay, let's do look at Sam for a second. She's working to her specialities and still gets caught up in things." Rebecca didn't get into the fact that a lot of the trouble Sam got in was after they became a couple... and mentally sighed at the renewal of her guilt, self-blame, and anxiety-over-Sam's-safety levels. "And I was a wreck myself, still kinda am."

Laura's tack shifted. "Don't be so hard on yourself—"

Sam coughed and poorly disguised the word "specialty" in it, and Rebecca blew a raspberry at her in reply.

"As I was saying." The distinct use of Mom Voice made Rebecca cringe and give Sam a wide-eyed look. "Don't be so hard on yourself."

Sam grinned at Rebecca contritely. "You're lucky she didn't full-name you."

Rebecca wrenched one of the slim wooden posts out of the ground while smirking back at Sam. "Be glad she doesn't know yours yet." She turned to Laura. "Mom, we've been through this, but I guess the hearing-it-twice thing is genetic. I promise I'm not out looking for drama. Remember what you told me about staying out of trouble at school, but how if I needed to stand up for myself you'd have my back?"

"Yeah, and I know where this is going..."

Leaning on the top of the post with her gloved hands, Rebecca pushed it back into the ground several inches away. She kept her eyes on her work, but spoke to both of them in general. "That's fine, it'll be entertaining for Sam and it's a fun story. So, this one day, she has to leave in the middle of work because I apparently busted a kid in the nose, blood and everything."

Sam's eyebrows rose as she mirrored Rebecca's actions across the row. "Goodness. I didn't know we had so much in common."

Rebecca grinned, then looked to Laura yet again. "And then..."

Amused resignation filled Laura's face as she leaned back from the garden bed into a kneeling position. "Mm-hmm."

"Fine. Then, while you were on your way, I pulled out your old hand-me-down flip phone and managed to blurt out the highlights of real story before they made me hang up, right?"

"Yesss." Laura couldn't help a hand-wave, encouraging her to get on with things. Sam, for her part, was resting on the other post with a rapt grin.

"And then you got there and don't even allow Principal Engalls a chance to start talking before informing him that if your daughter punched some brat in the face because he snapped her bra strap, you sure as hell weren't going to punish her, and..." Rebecca tilted her head and lifted a hand to Laura, encouraging her to finish the story.

She complied, in a mightily imposed-upon voice. "And if they were, my first call would be to a lawyer, and then I would make sure it was on every local news station and in every Facebook group I could find on the Eastern seaboard, and that either way I was taking you home for the day and we were stopping for ice cream."

"And?"

"Well I didn't tell them that part, I hadn't thought of it at the time. I let you gloat about it in homeroom the following Monday."

Rebecca gestured towards Sam. "C'mon Mom, I'm giving you a chance at the spotlight."

Laura groaned and turned to Sam. "And her first car because I'm vulnerable to spite spending when I'm angry."

Sam's eyes had already been widening, but she outright clapped as she laughed. "Oh god, that's so awesome. I'm not sure which one of you I'm filled with more admiration for right now."

Laura grinned, obviously pleased with herself despite her initial reluctance. "Well, I appreciate Rebecca giving me the opportunity to look like 'A Cool Mom'. I want to point out it was used, though..."

"Pfft, please." Rebecca scoffed incredulously. "Like I gave a shit that it was a Craigslist Special."

Sam looked her mockingly. "Was it your Mom's ugly-ass champagne-colored eighty-thousand-mile beater?"

"No, it was a black Jetta that lasted three years before the heater core leaked all over the inside."

Sam shook her head at Laura. "I think she was alright, possibly even spoiled. I never got a car for punching a bully. Just grounded."

Rebecca gave her a sympathetic smile, and Laura sighed as she pushed herself up from the ground. "Well, speaking of. Just give me your old address, or maybe we can stop by on our way home and I can give your dad yet another stern parent-to-parent lecture."

Rebecca froze with her hand on the next toppled post, this one a length of white PVC pipe. "Waitwhat?" She saw Sam do a double take and then shared a grin with her as they unpacked the implications of Laura's comment.

It took a few minutes of damp-eyed hugging for Laura to push Rebecca off of her. "Okay, okay, enough already. We still have to finish fixing this mess, because I'm not going to leave all my hard work in shambles. I'll ask Walt if he wants to come too — I'm skeptical, just saying — but even if he does, some other neighbor will inherit this and it's damned well going to do them some good."

Sam shook her head at the sniffling pair of them. "And you wonder where she gets it, Mrs. C."

**

It took the better part of an hour to get the waist-high greenhouse back to how it should have been. Working around the existing crops slowed them, as did several broken pieces of framework. Sam found herself grateful for Leonard's heavy-handed approach to construction back home, not unlike how she joked early twentieth century design used to be — "we're reasonably sure six bolts should hold it, so we'll use eight." Of course, he had power tools to work with even before Rebecca left — kudos to the four of them figuring out their own crude but effective early solar farm.

Sam navigated a swirl of mixed feelings as the work in the garden continued. While she finally removed Rebecca's fleece and hung it from the shed door's latch, she glanced at the two Clinton ladies — she was taking a liking to Laura, so of course she'd help her out. On the flip side, she was toiling to benefit the homestead of a man who said her relationship with Rebecca was "unnatural". Laura's determination that her prior work not be in vain aside, Sam eventually decided to view her own efforts as earning the room and board from the last few days. All emotion aside, a couple of hot showers, a comfortable bed, and a load of laundry was worth a few hours of yard work. She almost managed to detach enough for that rationalization to suffice.

She distracted herself the rest of the way through banter with Rebecca as they straightened the posts of another row and plucked at the low spots to drain lingering puddles. "I admit, I'm glad to be going home for any number of reasons, but amongst them is leaving before we have to eat any of this zucchini. It's really the devil's vegetable."

Rebecca glanced across at her and chuckled. "Yeah, same. Sure, it grows fast, but—" She made a gagging noise, then giggled as Laura probably made a disapproving face somewhere over Sam's shoulder. "The only way I've ever thought it was edible is deep fried, with ranch. I've seen it disguised in bread before, but I don't think even someone with as much baking talent as you're deluded into attributing to me could really make me enjoy it."

"Deep frying something and then using it as a ranch dressing delivery system seems like a universally effective last resort, even beyond adding bacon or butter. Shoe leather would arguably be improved by that."

"Why you gotta waste Rufus' rawhide treats like that?"

Sam simply scoffed and shook her head, with no verbal reply. When they reached the end, she stretched upright and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. Things had certainly warmed up in the afternoon.

Her movement didn't escape Rebecca's notice. "See? And you made fun of me."

"I did not. I made no comment. I didn't even whistle at you. And I was cold when I got out here. When that changed, I took it off. Now I'm hot. But, I'm not wearing the jacket anymore!"

Rebecca's lip twitched. "And I'm avoiding a remark about you being hot."

"Only because your mother is right there."

Laura lowered one of the umbrellas back over a barrel and muttered something about strawberries before looking up at them. "Oh, leave me out of that. I wasn't even paying attention until you referred to me."

Rebecca grinned triumphantly at Sam as they tugged the corners of the plastic tight and placed the bread loaf sized rocks back onto them as anchors. She started to sidle over, but Sam coughed and pushed her away abruptly. "No, go away! I like the jacket but you're all sweaty now and stink!"

Yet again, Laura laughed at them. "Well, I think we're pretty close to done here. Why don't you two go jump in the pond, or make the best of the empty house and take a shower? The water should tolerable by now."

"What about you, Mom?" Rebecca asked.

"Eh." Laura shrugged. "I only have to make sure some vines are starting up the trellises like I want. Then I figure I'll go break the news to Walt about making up my mind."

Sam glanced at Rebecca. "I don't think I want to slog all the way back here from the pond wet."

"Nor is it warm enough to assume you'd dry off before freezing." Rebecca nodded towards the house. "Showers it is then. Why don't you go first so it's warmer?"

"Don't have to tell me twice."

Laura smirked as Sam moved to collect the fleece on her way in. "Well, I don't know how you're ever going to fit into the family then, since clearly it's a tradition."

"Sorry, what?" Sam held her free hand to her ear as she walked backwards. "I couldn't hear you, could you say that again?"

**

"Your father was a smartass too, you know, in his own dry-humored way."

Rebecca smiled at her mother as they walked around the house. "I guess a love of them runs in the family."

"I suppose so." As they neared the bottom of the side steps, she reached a cautious arm around Rebecca. "I love you, dear. Even when you're a little smelly."

"I mean, you did change my diapers a couple decades ago."

"Why do you have to go and remind me how much time has gone by? And, yes, most of them were me. Did you know your father used to wear a respirator mask when he did?"

Rebecca chuckled. "I did not. I presume there were Darth Vader jokes?"

"God, you know it."

Rebecca glanced up the stairs, then looked back at Laura. "I love you too, Mom. Thanks for coming."

"I think we both knew I was going to."

"Doesn't mean I can't thank you for it. See you in a bit."

She kicked off her shoes just inside the door. On the way past the bathroom to get fresh clothes, she put her mouth close to the seam of the doorframe and reminded Sam to save her some of the water.

The valves squeaked off a few minutes later, followed by her appearance in the hallway, wrapped in a robe and carrying a bundle of her discarded clothing. Apparently she'd been in such a hurry to jump in that she'd decided to change in the room afterwards.

Rebecca stood to go take her turn, and grinned as they passed. "I'm surprised you didn't say anything about my mother's use of 'shower' as a singular word, and try to drag me in there with you."

"Mmm." Sam picked some clean garments out of her larger bag. "I won't deny it crossed my mind, but we'd have been elbowing each other in the spleen the whole time in that tiny shower. Not so fun or sexy."

"Fair enough." Rebecca started to pull the door closed behind her but paused, realizing Sam was looking back as she slid the robe down free her shoulders, stopping just as the first inch of her tattoo was revealed. She clicked her tongue at Rebecca and winked, then waved her fingers in a shooing motion. "No free shows for smelly muddy girlfriends. Go get cleaned up."

Rebecca laughed and completed her exit, then used a hair tie she'd left by the sink to put her hair up. At least with Sam preceding her, she didn't have to wait for the warm water to get through the pipes; the shower wasn't hot by any stretch of the imagination, but comfortable enough for a quick rinse. When she'd finished and pulled on her clean attire, she found Sam sitting on the bed in her own new t-shirt and a pair of older sweatpants. As Rebecca let her hair down and shook it free, she realized Sam was looking down at and fiddling with the string of pearls that had belonged to her mother.

She sat quietly nearby, waiting. Sam remained pensive and silent though, so Rebecca simply reached out her arms, and she settled into them with a comforted sigh.