“You’re it!”

Bethie squealed in something like a cross between frustration and annoyance, reaching out to tag Ethan back but he danced out of her way, laughing.

“I’ll get you for that!” she promised running after him, then darting to her left and catching Ben on his shoulder. “You’re it!”

Ben groaned. In the game they were playing in the area behind the house he’d been ‘it’ more times than he could count, and he was out of breath from running. He stopped, leaning forwards with his hands on his knees as he tried to pull air into aching lungs. “Gorramit,” he muttered.

Molly, standing by the back door so she could referee, with Fiddler and Giselle on leads snuffling around her feet, shook her head. “Language.”

Ben lifted his coffee face to her and grinned. “Sorry.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s not the worst you know.”

“It isn’t,” Ethan agreed. “Cal’s first word was a curse.” He glanced across to where the little boy was happily toddling among the vegetables and pulling up weeds like his mother had shown him.

“Mine was Dada,” Bethie admitted, standing with her fists on her hips since the game seemed to have stalled. “I said it to Uncle Mal.”

Molly laughed. “I doubt your Pa was too happy about that.”

“He wasn’t.”

“Well, I don’t know what mine was.”

“Mine was the co-ordinates to Persephone,” Ben said. “But then my daddy is the pilot.”

“What about you two?” Molly asked Jesse and Hope, who were sitting on a blanket making flower chains out of some late daisies they’d discovered.

Jesse just shrugged, but Hope said, “I think I asked for paints.”

“Sounds about right,” Ben said, smiling at her. Then he reached out and touched Bethie’s arm. “It.”

Bethie stamped her foot and growled, while the autumn air was filled the giggles.

The sound didn’t reach the man lying flat on his stomach a distance away, a long-range ‘scope held to his eye. He stilled as the young woman darted from her position by the door to pick up a crawling baby making a determined bid for the wide