APRIL 8th, 1992, SEATTLE WA

         AS REAGAN WALKED through the familiar front door of her and Dave's apartment, she felt like she was stepping through an invisible veil, one that's presence had everything to due with the bundle of blankets shrouding Gracie in her arms.

She hesitated at the doorstep, surveying the surroundings of her home. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen the place in ages. Her and Dave had been there the evening prior, if only for several hours. Within the last month, they had lived duplicately between the hospital and the apartment, never separated too long from Gracie as she recuperated from her early birth in the NICU. It had been harrowing when Reagan's doctor had released her a month prior, but not Gracie.

"She needs time," the doctor had explained gently to a horrified Reagan, who had known that this had been coming, but was stupidly trying to deny it. "She has to reach certain milestones here before you can take her home."

The last month had been awful. Maybe not for Reagan's family and friends, who had all simply basked in the relief that Gracie was in the world and well, but she had not felt the same. While she was ever-grateful that Gracie would be alright, there had been a lonesome melancholy when she'd returned home from the hospital with Dave and sans-Gracie. It was a far different reality than the one she had pictured while pregnant.

The month had dragged by agonizingly slow, taunting Reagan with each day that dawdled on. Since she was on leave from work, she had spent nearly every second of her free time back at the hospital, content to watch Gracie and sometimes hold her, experiencing the first trials of motherhood with watching nurses nearby. That part had been hard — she had almost lost her patience and snapped at one of the nurses when the woman had hovered, doling out instructions as Reagan changed Gracie's diaper.

"I hate it," she had spat through gritted teeth at Dave as they'd driven home one night under the gloom of inky nightfall and rain. "It feels like she's not even ours. We can't even touch her without someone right there telling us how to do it."

"Reags, c'mon. She's ours," Dave had reasoned, shrugging with one hand dangling over the steering wheel. "They're just trying to help. It's not like we know anything about preemies."

"I know how to hold my daughter!" Reagan had seethed angrily.

"Shit. You're taking the term 'mama bear' to a whole new level."

If it hadn't been for the support system that had wrapped itself around Reagan and Dave, she didn't think she would have been able to reign in her anger over the situation. She had never thought of herself as the type to lean on others, especially considering the bullshit that she had shouldered through alone throughout her whole life, but Reagan and Dave's families had truly come through for them.

Ginny namely had been a saint, doting on her son and daughter-in-law in the absence of her newly arrived granddaughter. She and Lisa had made it safely to Seattle shortly after Gracie's birth and had stayed in the living room of Reagan and Dave's apartment, laughing blithely every time Reagan had insisted that they take the bed instead of the lumpy, blown-up air mattress dominating the room.

"Reagan, honey, you just gave birth. Sleep in your bed. Lisa and I are fine."

"And I am not sleeping in your bed," Lisa had said under her breath with an eye roll. "I have no desire to sleep in my brother's coital spaces."

"Well, you better think twice about crashing on the living room floor then," Dave had shot back, picking up on Lisa's jab and smirking in a way that only brothers can manage when irritating their sisters.

The one-bedroom apartment had become significantly more cramped with four people inside of it, especially with Reagan's dismantled drum set taking up a wide berth of the living room space, but Reagan didn't mind. It was something that ordinarily might have grated her nerves, but she loved Dave's family and needed them as that anxious month drew past. Ginny and Lisa had taken good care of her, whipping up dinners and doing her laundry as if they were housekeepers. There had even been nights when Reagan, under the weight of exhaustion from spending long days at the hospital, had collapsed onto the living room couch and allowed Ginny to stroke her hair gently. Those moments had brought a twinge of regret to her heart, as she sometimes wished that her own mother was capable of doing such a thing for her.

Richard and Kimberly had kept their distance, allowing Reagan and Dave the space to enjoy his mother and sister until they'd flown back to Virginia in late March, promising to return soon. In their place, Richard and Kimberly had slowly trickled in, sometimes swinging by the apartment or joining Reagan and Dave at the hospital to keep vigil watch over Gracie. They had been joined by Chris and the twins and Kate and Robbie, who had finally shown up to see his older sister and niece, albeit a little terrified in doing so. But he had come around, mystified by Gracie just as everyone else was and suddenly proud to be named an uncle.

Krist and Shelli had offered their support too, dropping off some of Shelli's vegetarian dinners and one time joining Reagan and Dave at the hospital where they got their first glimpse of Gracie. It was only then that Reagan had genuinely laughed for the first time in weeks, watching as Krist, always the giant in the room, had towered over her little baby.

"I could probably fit her into one hand," Krist had admitted with a grin.

Kurt was the one friend who had decidedly stayed away, living out his small vacation from touring in Los Angeles with Courtney. They'd both called to give their congratulations, but Reagan had sensed that Kurt was troubled by Gracie's premature birth. With a baby of his own on the way, she had guessed that he'd imagined the worse when hearing about his bandmate's daughter being born so early. Considering Courtney's spotty history with heroin, she couldn't blame him for worrying.

The memories cascaded down upon Reagan as she stood on the threshold of her home, holding Gracie close as the last month played on fast forward in her mind. It didn't feel real to have her in this place, in the place that was now her home too. Reagan had only known the version of her daughter that had lived within an incubator, hooked to monitors and wires that had tracked her survival within those last few weeks. She supposed that her initial imagination of what it would be like to bring Gracie home for the first time had come true — she had no idea what to do next.

"You coming inside?" Dave asked, setting Gracie's hefty carrier down to the floor and facing his wife.

"I . . ." Reagan began, before her voice trailed off thoughtlessly. She didn't know what to say. All the advice and instructions that the nurses had crammed into her brain before she'd left the hospital with Gracie had gone out the window. Her mind was a blank slate, like Gracie had just fallen out of the sky and landed unexpectedly in her arms.

"I Lysol'd the shit out of this place," Dave said. He gestured widely with one arm. "If you're worried about bringing her into the cigarette smell, I mean."

"I know you did," Reagan replied. She took her first step inside of the apartment, staring wondrously around. "I'm not worried about that."

"I'm nervous too," Dave said suddenly. He walked to her side, brushing his hand to hers, which was clasped firmly around Gracie.

"It's like I'm scared to let go of her," Reagan whispered. "I don't want anything to go wrong. I don't want to hurt her."

"Are you too scared to let me hold her?" Dave asked, smiling slightly. Reagan hadn't put Gracie down that day except to secure her into her carrier in the car. And even then she had sat in the back seat, situating one hand on Gracie the whole ride home.

"Of course not," Reagan said. She passed Gracie over to Dave with careful ease, taking longer than necessary to fit her into the shape of his arms. Her biceps ached once they were free again, empty of the mass that had inhabited them nearly all day.

"We got you," Dave said, speaking to Gracie softly as he looked into her baby pink face. "You're alright."

He walked over to the couch with her, sitting down slowly and murmuring words of reassurance. Reagan watched and folded one arm around her torso, standing in place. If she trusted anybody with Gracie, it was Dave. For someone who could thrash so violently behind a drum kit, he displayed a kind of tenderness with her that Reagan thought most fathers lacked with their kids. The sight of them together made a warm feeling curl in the pit of her belly. They were hers, all hers, the two greatest loves of her life. That warm, tickling feeling could persist forever and she would never complain; if not for the fact that once she began to recall Richard's words to her in her hospital room a month earlier, a coldness washed over it and extinguished it right out.

She had tried to forget what her father had said. She had tried to stamp it out of her conscious, passing it off as a silly warning that he must have only felt obligated to tell her as a parent. While there had been some truth in what he'd said, it had not all been fact. A lot of it had been fiction — mostly, all the parts that had alluded to her relationship with Dave having the durability of a thin sheet of glass.

But still, Richard's concerns had haunted her. She'd replayed them over and over, wondering that if just by speaking them into existence, Richard had placed an irreversible curse on her future. She loved him all the same, mildly thankful that he cared enough about her to say what he'd said, but it had been the wrong time. The wrong place. Things had been said that shouldn't have been, at least not over the welcoming of her daughter into the world.

For the first time, Reagan's fear of losing Dave had percolated into the very center of her heart and paralyzed her with true terror. If someone else thought it possible that she could lose him just as quickly as she'd gotten him, then her nightmares tiptoed on the edge of truth. Dave, her very best friend in the whole world, could possibly leave her life for good for reasons that felt beyond their control.

She crept over to the couch and sank beside him, listening as he continued to coo at Gracie and caress her face with touch as light as a feather. In that moment, she wanted to grab hold of them both and sweep them away, somewhere far where those old nightmares could not reach them. She found herself wishing selfishly that they were a normal family and that Dave was a normal guy, one who wasn't bursting with massive amounts of unsurpassable talent. She'd never say that aloud, though. Mostly because she knew as hard as she may have wished, she didn't really want that. Not for her. Not for Dave.

"Don't leave," she murmured, tilting her head onto his shoulder. Tendrils of his hair caught in her eyelashes.

Dave abruptly stopped his baby talk at Gracie, whipping his neck to the side to look at Reagan with confusion.

"Leave? Where am I going?"

Reagan immediately regretted saying it. She hadn't known what she was doing, thinking aloud. It wouldn't have made sense to him at all. She burrowed closer into his side and shielded her face.

"Hey," Dave said, nudging her with his elbow in an attempt to keep his grip on Gracie. "What are you talking about?"

"It's nothing," she insisted.

"I don't leave again until June," he reminded her. "And I know Europe is going to put some distance between us, but maybe you and Gracie could come. You've got the leave from work already."

"I can't take Gracie to Europe," Reagan said. "She's too small. In her condition? I couldn't do it. And June isn't that far away, Dave."

"You know I wish I could stay."

"I wish you would."

The words had come out harsher than Reagan had intended, filled with a tight bitterness that was obvious to not only herself, but to Dave too. He quieted for a moment, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Reags . . . you know I can't. I want to, more than anything. I would give it all up for you. I seriously would."

"No," Reagan sighed. She sat up straight and pushed back her bangs. "Don't say that. I don't want you to do that. This is your life. I've got to accept it."

"You're my —,"

"I know, I know, I'm your life," Reagan griped. "I get it. You've said it before. But can we stop pretending that music doesn't take up a whole lot of your life too?"

Dave's shoulders went slack and he lowered Gracie by a few inches against his chest. His mouth fell open slightly.

"Reagan, what did I —,"

She cut him off again. "You didn't do anything. I'm sorry. Okay? I'm just . . . freaking out a little bit. Give me a sec."

"If you think that you don't come first," Dave began. "If you think that she —," he jerked his chin down in gesture to Gracie, "Doesn't come first, you're wrong. Fuck, Reagan, I know this was unplanned but that doesn't change every principal that I gave myself before I joined Nirvana. I always knew that once I had a family that that would be my priority. I thought you knew that about me."

Reagan didn't say anything. She curled her legs up onto the couch and folded her arms, looking away from Dave as she silently cursed herself for being so tactless.

"Look, I'll do whatever you need me to do. Band business is the last thing on my mind right now. We could have a real life together, you know."

"This is real life. This is the life that we agreed on."

"It could be better. We could move to Virginia. Be close to my mom. I've always wanted to move back to Virginia. Get a big house." He was leaning closer to her now, close enough that she felt his breath on her cheek. "Have more babies."

The picture that he was painting in her head was almost too sweet to push away. She imagined herself and Dave looking out together onto a big stretch of lawn, dampened with fresh Eastern snow while their kids played in front of them. She saw their weekend visits at Ginny's and their nightly dinners spent as a family. She saw Dave teaching their kids about music, guiding them through the steps of learning an instrument. Maybe they would both teach their kids how to play the drums, the unifying thing that had brought them together. She envisioned a life in which Dave would never be ripped away from her again, lured in the opposite direction by his insatiable love for performing.

It was all great to think about, but Reagan still sighed defeatedly. Despite knowing that somewhere deep inside she did want the make-believe future that he'd described, she also couldn't fight the love that she had for what they did share. Their unorthodox lifestyle was what made their relationship special.

"You don't really want that," she asserted quietly.

It was the delayed seconds that it took for Dave to respond that confirmed this for Reagan. As much as he tried to say otherwise, a part of him held a great deal of love for the life they were living. He had the best of both worlds. He got to enact his childhood dreams and get the girl and the family, all combined into one. He still had the hope that they could make it work.

"Not true," he finally said. It was a half-hearted retort. "Whether you think so or not, trust me, I can live without this band."

"I know you can. I know you will. You act like I've forgotten all of the music that you've recorded without them."

Dave hadn't tried to hide his other musical pursuits from her. In fact, he had boasted happily about them in private within the last year. He'd recorded a compilation of songs, all penned by his own hand, and wanted to see them eventually released. He had even concocted a pseudonym for the identity of his solo work. Reagan knew that his dreams extended far beyond Nirvana.

"I can do that and still raise a family."

"That will be hard once you're across an entire ocean."

Dave sighed and shook his head. He focused his attention back onto Gracie, no doubt trying to diffuse the tension between them both before it could really gnaw at what was supposed to be a joyous moment. Reagan could not blame him. She knew that she was being a pain. They were supposed to be celebrating Gracie's homecoming, yet there she was, picking fights with him about uncertain what-ifs.

"I still think that we need to move," he said, bouncing Gracie gently as he steered the conversation directly away from their troubles.

"Move where? To Virginia?"

"No, not there, not now at least. We'll stay in Seattle. But Reags, be real. This apartment isn't going to cut it. Not with Gracie here."

She looked around again, eyeing the eight-hundred square feet that they were working with. She'd tried to reason before that staying in the apartment would work, but she saw Dave's point. Taking in the breadth of Gracie's needs and her anxiety-inducing arrival, they would have to move out.

"Yeah, you're right," she said, feeling a little melancholy. She did love their apartment, even if it was a shoebox. "We probably need a house."

"I think it's more along the lines of we definitely need a house."

He leaned over and kissed Reagan, their disagreement forgotten. She resisted grabbing his face and holding his mouth to hers a little longer, remembering that Gracie was in his arms.

"House hunting," she said. "Alright. First thing on our to-do list, then."

Dave winced. "Uh, maybe not. I think the first thing on the list should be figuring out how the hell to take care of Peanut, here."

"Right," Reagan laughed. She allowed her joy to take precedence, her worries ebbing away as she reached down to touch Gracie's head. "So what first?"

"Diaper change," Dave said as he sniffed the air around Gracie. "I think she just shit."

Reagan watched as Dave stood up, walking Gracie into their bedroom while talking to her again in his soft coo of a baby voice. Suddenly, it became very easy for her to forget everything else as she witnessed the sight of Dave stepping into his new role as a dad, taking care of their baby girl without a single trace of doubt that he would be the best father in the world.