A/N Yes, I am back. Nothing much exciting to report. Thanks to all of you who enjoyed the last chapter of Home is Where the Heart is and let me know. The fact you all love these characters as much as me, keeps me chugging along.

So this story starts after the epilogue to Homestay, and the one-shots Eric Northman is Not Hot! and The Naming of Things. It's early April and Amelia is 14, Felicia 11, Sam 8, Tray 7 and Pam 4. Hope you all enjoy!

Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me.

SPOV

It was Sunday afternoon so it was designated 'amuse the kids time', well, I think sometimes Eric really wanted to declare it 'hide in the office under the pretext of working time', but I'd discovered that sending Pam in usually ferreted him out. He could only take so much of her trying to draw rainbows across all the emails he'd carefully printed out, before he'd decide he'd finished his work and he'd remerge into a less rainbow-filled environment. And whatever Tray and Sam were up to could generally be guaranteed to be completely rainbow-free. Usually there was yelling, wrestling and large amounts of mud.

But this afternoon we were all outside in the driveway playing basketball. Well, some of us were. Eric, Tray and Sam were playing basketball. Felicia and I were tending more towards netball, as we kept forgetting to dribble, or whatever, and found it easier to just pass the ball to each other. Pam was sitting on the side-lines having a bit of a sulk because she'd wanted to be on Eric's team, but the ruling had been boys versus girls and she thought playing with me and Felicia was less than appealing.

Amelia was over at her friend Yvetta's house. I was trying not to think too much about that one. I wasn't keen on Yvetta, and I really wasn't keen on her mother the failed Russian bride Ana Lyudmila. If anyone should ever be pictured next to the definition of the word slatternly, it was that woman. She made me think of Tanya quite fondly. But sadly these days Emily was on the out, and Yvetta was Amelia's best friend in the whole wide world.

Unless Yvetta had hurt Amelia's feelings again, in which case there'd be tears all evening and I'd be left to pick up the pieces until Amelia had grovelled sufficiently for Yvetta's liking and things could go back to normal again. Well, normal in that Amelia would go back to being haughty and disdainful of us all rather than tearful and melancholy all the time.

In the meantime I, apparently, wasn't doing anything right. "No, Mum!" Sam yelled as I passed to Felicia. "That's not how you play!"

"What?" I asked, as I watched Felicia execute a neat pivot and shoot for a goal. She really was quite good, and of course that was totally due to Eric. Despite the fact he'd probably known less about netball when Felicia started playing than she had, and he'd spent ages fretting about when she was going to be taught to dribble. It took him a while to figure out that wasn't going to happen.

The ball missed the hoop however, and bounced over to where Pam was sitting on the grass; patting Ivan who'd exhausted himself running around excitedly for the first fifteen minutes we were out here and who now wanted a nice lie down and a tummy-rub until he got his second wind.

Pam looked at the ball, and then looked pointedly in the other direction. "Pam!" Tray yelled. "Ball!" Pam muttered something and refused to budge, so Sam stalked over and picked up the ball himself.

"Are you sure you don't want to play?" Eric asked Pam, which nearly made her grumpy expression crack a little. After all, this was the point of sitting on the side-lines looking miserable, she wanted Eric's attention.

Pam shook her head for no. "You can play with me and Mum" Felicia tried. "'Cos we're doing it right. Ow!" Felicia's concern for Pam dissipated the moment Sam hit her square in the back with the ball. "Don't do that, fart-breath!" Felicia said, whirling around and aiming a swipe at Sam that he managed to dodge. Then she picked up the ball and aimed it squarely at his head.

"You couldn't get it in the hoop before" Sam taunted, refusing to move, as Felicia lifted the ball menacingly over her shoulder. She was about to throw it when Eric lifted it out of her hands and she glared at him. "So are we actually playing?" Eric asked.

"Yeah!" Felicia said. "It's not me, anyway. Sam's the one mucking around."

"At least I know the difference between basketball and netball" Sam retorted.

"I don't need to know the difference" Felicia replied. "Because I can actually play netball, can you actually play basketball? No you can't. So just shut up."

"No, you shut up" Sam said.

"I don't think we can play unless everyone shuts up" Eric tried again as Sam and Felicia faced off. After a couple of seconds Sam backed down and looked around. "Where'd Tray go?" he asked.

Yeah, Tray had obviously gotten bored and wandered off. It wasn't the first time it had happened. "Did he go inside?" I asked Pam.

"He's with Ivan" she said, rolling her eyes. Sure enough you could hear the barking coming from the side of the house. I guessed Ivan had got his second wind.

"Pam, do you want to fill in for Tray then?" Eric asked.

"Well…OK" Pam said. "If you really need me." Her face gave away just how thrilled she was that Eric needed her. I half-wondered who had really had the idea about Tray running off with Ivan.

"But you have to actually play" Sam instructed her. "You can't just chuck it about like they do" he nodded to Felicia and me. "Because this is basketball, eh Dad?"

"Yeah" Eric agreed.

"Look" I said. "I spent a lot of years practicing my chest passes and I'm buggered if I'm not going to use them when I can."

Sam just rolled his eyes, Felicia looked me up and down like she thought all that practice had been a total waste of time because I was clearly not in her league, and Eric glanced at my boobs when I said the word chest, but then turned back to Pam. He'd lifted Pam up so she could get a goal and she was giggling and had zero interest in anyone else other than Eric anyway.

Tray re-appeared around the side of the house. "Is it OK if…" he started to say as he jogged over. Questions that started with those words were never good; I'd learnt that long ago. So I braced myself. "Ivan eats wood?" Tray finished.

"Wood?" I asked. "What wood?" There had better not be any wood lying around there. It had taken a good couple of years to finally get Calvin to take away the stuff he'd left here after the renovations, longer than the time it had taken to get rid of the detritus we'd had at Merton St. If there was new wood then…oh, Eric and Calvin had better not be building anything else.

However Eric didn't seem any the wiser either. "What wood?" he asked, setting Pam down on the driveway and making her pout.

"The fence" Tray said.

"How can he be eating the fence?" Eric asked.

"He's not eating the fence" I pointed out. "He's digging himself out." Ivan's main mission in life, aside from chewing things, was getting out in order to find new things he could chew in more exotic locations. Kennedy had been very understanding when it was her garden hose that got chewed because she had a dog herself, even if he was now old and grumpy and hated Ivan, which confused the crap out of Ivan because he just wanted to play. But other neighbours might not be so forgiving.

"Oh, for fuck's sake" Eric muttered. "I don't understand what's so fucking interesting about the other side of the fence."

"Freedom, Eric" I pointed out. "Plus there's the joy of the chase."

"Yeah, joy for fucking Ivan. I don't fucking get any joy out of it" Eric replied. We'd walked around the side of the house, and sure enough, there was a nice indentation beneath the fence and one of the wooden palings was slightly askew where he'd worried at it. I wonder how long he'd been planning this escape, or whether it was a spur of the moment kind of thing.

Oh, who was I kidding? I doubted Ivan could plan anything. He kind of lived in the moment and was basically a bundle of barely-controlled energy constantly looking for his next bit of excitement like a junkie looking for his next hit. To be honest he wasn't much better than Sam or Tray, but at least they were starting to grow out of it. I suspected that the fact he was getting past the puppy stage wasn't going to make any difference to Ivan.

"Ivan!" Eric yelled. "IVAN!"

"God, you're loud" I said. "My ears are ringing." He was loud and I'd been standing right next to him.

"Well, I want him to hear me" Eric explained, like I'd missed that one.

"But we don't want the whole neighbourhood to hear us calling him" I pointed out. "It's fine if he's still next door with the Bodehouse's, because honest to God, I swear that woman drinks. If you talk to her past two in the afternoon there's a real slur to her words. But if he's gone on to the Furnan's then we're screwed. I'm pretty sure that guy doesn't like dogs."

Eric looked confused, because of course he was kind of hazy on who our neighbours were. He would have preferred, I think, if we had no neighbours, but short of moving to a lifestyle block out in Rama Rama or Kumeu, there wasn't much we could do about that. He knew Kennedy and Danny, and that was his limit. It was a bit frustrating sometimes, because he tended to blank people in the supermarket who actually lived three doors' down, but so far no one had asked me if he was deaf, so I figured we were good.

A black nose appeared in the hole from the other side of the fence. At least Ivan hadn't gone far then. "Ivan" Eric said. "Get back here."

"No!" I said. "Don't encourage him to dig up their garden. She might drink, but she'll still know who did it if the evidence leads this way. Sam'll go and get him. Sam!"

"What?" Sam yelled back.

"Go next door and haul Ivan back."

"Yeah. Alright" Sam yelled, and I saw him jog down the drive and disappear out the gate. I just hoped Ivan hadn't already been in the fishpond next door. Why we had to go for a breed that liked water, I didn't know.

Eric looked impatient and started to look over the fence, but I grabbed his arm. "She'll see you" I warned.

"Maybe she'll think she imagined me in an alcoholic daydream" Eric said, ignoring me and standing on tip-toe to look over the fence. "Ivan!" he warned. "Get away from the pond! Sam, grab him!"

I wasn't sure what was more worrying, Mrs Bodehouse looking out her window and seeing Ivan and Sam splashing through her fishpond, or her seeing Eric and thinking it was a totally normal daydream. Did Eric really think the housewives of the world all sat at home daydreaming about him? Luckily Sam yelled "I've got him!" and Eric stopped looking over the fence but instead went off to meet them at the gate across the driveway.

Felicia was still practicing her shooting with a certain amount of grim determination. Sadly it wasn't her strong suit and they always put her on defence because of her willingness to be generally intimidating to the opposition. That was maybe one part of her skill-set that Eric wasn't laying direct claim to having coached her in, but I didn't think he was totally above giving her the odd spot of encouragement in that regard.

Sam hauled Ivan back through the gate by his collar which didn't distress Ivan too much, judging by the general amount of tail-wagging that was going on. Ivan seemed to think this was a huge adventure and was rather enjoying himself. Well, he was until he saw Eric looking pissed off about the whole thing.

"Ivan" Eric said, sounding really menacing. "Just fucking stay on this side of the fence, alright?" Well that stopped most of the tail-wagging. Ivan sat down and looked sad and repentant. He'd figured out pretty quickly what the pecking order was in the house and in his mind the order was Eric, followed possibly by Sam, and then the rest of us. The rest of us were interesting in a potential playmate kind of way, but the real authority was Eric, and Ivan was desperate to get Eric's approval. His little canine brain, however, couldn't quite work out that his desire for approval and his desire for excitement were often at odds with each other and so he lived in a desperate cycle where the heady joy of doing something forbidden was closely followed by the deep despair of Eric yelling at him.

Ivan hung his head and looked miserable and Eric decided that was enough lecture for one afternoon. "We'd better go and fill the hole in, I guess" I said. "I feel like I should be reading The Poky Little Puppy to Ivan tonight at bedtime."

Eric looked at me like I'd lost the plot. "I don't think cautionary tales are of much use dealing with a dog, Sookie."

"No, but…it would be nice if it did" I said. To be fair, I wasn't sure that story had ever worked on any of the kids either, but it was a nice thought.

Eric sighed and wandered off, muttering, in the direction of the garage. Hopefully to find a shovel. And maybe some extra pieces of wood to nail over the fence. I hoped he wasn't going to call Calvin to come over on a Sunday afternoon.

"What's Dad doing?" Tray asked me.

"He's got to block the hole" I said. I looked at Ivan, who no longer looked miserable, but was back to watching us to see who was going to do the most interesting thing. Tray, I think, had the same idea. "Oh" he said. "I might go too." He ran off in the direction Eric had gone.

"Where's Daddy?" Pam asked.

"Fixing the fence."

"Who broke the fence? Did Tray break the fence?" Pam was suddenly interested in the fact one of her brothers might be in trouble.

"No, Ivan tried to get out. Again" I informed her.

"Dogs are stupid" Pam grumbled, before walking off into the house.

"You're stupid!" Sam called after her. He patted Ivan's head and Ivan looked at him gratefully. In a pinch Sam would do if Eric wasn't around.

I walked over to the garage. "I'm going to get Amelia!" I yelled.

"OK" Eric yelled back, and then, after a beat he yelled. "Where's the hammer?"

"Don't know" I yelled back,

"Fuck" Eric muttered. At least I think it was him, it could have been Tray commiserating with him. It was hopeless trying to discourage them from swearing as much as Eric did and I tended to be selectively deaf at those moments. I guessed at least that was the only good thing to come out of most of my kids having no grandparents, there were at least less people we knew who were likely to be offended by the stuff that came out of my kids' mouths. Although it had still been embarrassing the day Kassidy loudly exclaimed "Fuck!" as she fell over on her way home after we babysat her for the day. Kennedy had laughed at least rather than been too horrified, but I would have preferred if Kassidy had just held that one in until she was safely in her own front door.

I walked into the house to get my car keys wondering if Calvin was actually going to be here when I got back. I could pretty much guarantee Calvin would know where his hammer was.

My car was out on the street because we'd needed the space the for the game of basketball-netball, so at least I didn't have to do the usual trick of getting someone to watch Ivan for me while I opened the gate to reverse out. Half the time it was easier to just put Ivan in the car with me and take him along, and he kind of enjoyed the ride. I just didn't enjoy the inside of the car windows being covered in dog-slobber from where he'd been watching the world go by.

And Pam really hated it when he slobbered all over her instead. For some reason, possibly because she was the closest to his height, Ivan thought it was totally OK to just drool on her. Pam was not fond of Ivan.

EPOV

Every fucking weekend there was some kind of crisis as something else broke around here, and I wasn't quite sure when it had been decided that I was the person most qualified to fix all the shit when it did break. I didn't feel qualified. Sam was probably more qualified.

And it was one thing if the stuff actually just out-of-the-blue broke, but when the fence was deliberately ripped apart in order for Ivan to make another escape attempt, it was fucking annoying. Somehow, when I'd thought about getting a dog, it hadn't been like this in my mind. For one thing the dogs were always well-behaved and just kind of…well, companionable. Ivan was kind of companionable, in that he liked to follow me around, sit on my feet and make fucking noxious smells that Sookie tried to blame on me, but most of the time he was just looking for an opportunity to destroy things. They don't tell you that when you're researching what dog to buy. Well, maybe they do, but they put it in terms like 'active', 'playful' and the ever-popular 'enjoys being part of the family.' Enjoys fucking eating everything owned by the family more like.

So although I'd known that dogs were expensive, and a lot of work, I maybe hadn't grasped quite what that meant. It might have been better if Sookie had owned a dog when I first met her, as well as a cat and some kids. Then at least I would have known what I was signing us up for, in the way I'd had some idea what kids were going to be like. Actually, in some ways, the kids would have probably given me some insight into what the dog would be like if I thought about it.

"I'm bored" Tray announced, after he'd watch me search in vain for the hammer in the garage. "What are we doing now?"

"I don't know what you're doing, but I, apparently, am fixing the fucking fence" I said. I had no fucking idea where the hammer would be, but I would have thought the garage was a good place to keep it.

"Really? Uncle Calvin isn't coming over to do it?" Tray asked. I wasn't sure whether to be insulted or not. Probably not. Tray really liked Calvin simply because Calvin spent as much time bashing the shit out of stuff as Tray would really have liked to. Stopping Tray bashing the shit out of stuff was the hard part.

"No" I said, and then I thought about it. "Maybe" I amended. "Because I can't find the fucking hammer."

"Um…I think it's in the kitchen drawer" Tray said. "Yeah…it is."

"Why the fuck would it be in the kitchen?" I asked him.

"Um…I was using it…" he said, trailing off and looking shifty.

"Do I want to know what for?" I asked.

"Mum wanted me to help with the wonky shelf" Tray said, sounding quite proud of himself. I knew we had a shelf in the pantry that was in danger of coming down at any moment, but fuck, I wasn't sure Sookie really wanted Tray taking to it with the fucking hammer. "It's all fixed now" he said.

"Really?" I asked him.

"Well…duh, yeah. Ask Mum."

"She's just left" I said. "I heard her car."

"Oh." Tray looked a bit crestfallen. Just then Sam yelled out. "Dad! Dad, Ivan's digging again."

"That fucking dog!" Tray and I joined Sam and we hauled Ivan away from his fucking escape route and into the kitchen, where, sure enough, the hammer was in the kitchen drawer. "I told you" Tray said.

"Yeah" I agreed.

"Look at the shelf" Tray said, proudly. I stuck my head in the pantry and sure enough, the formerly loose shelf was now braced by a fucking weird and ugly kind of bracket with a large amount of nails. "Mum and I did it" Tray said. "Together." It did kind of look like it had Sookie's brand of ingenuity all over it.

Sam muttered something to Tray that I didn't catch, but which didn't sound particularly complimentary and then there was the thud of someone hitting the floor, or possibly the side of the counter-top, and a lot of other sounds which could best be described as wrestling with a lot of muffled cursing.

I wondered whether I was better off just staying facing into the pantry until it was all over, because I'd learnt by now that they'd try to be as silent as possible in order to avoid detection, but I realised I could be here for a while. They were pretty evenly matched, and what Tray was lacking in size he more than made up for in enthusiasm for hurting Sam.

"You know" I mused, still looking at the pantry shelves. "If anyone actually wants to come and help with fixing the fence I'd need to be sure they could be trusted to hold the hammer and not fucking bash anyone else's head in with it. I'm not interested in having fucking savages anywhere near anything I'm holding."

There was another thud, some muttering, a definite mutter of "You've got shit for brains" from someone, and then it all seemed calm enough that I could risk turning around.

"Good job with the shelf, Tray" I said. "Shall we go and fix the fence?"

"Yep" Tray said.

"Sam?" I asked.

"Yeah, alright" he grumbled, and the three of us headed out the door.

SPOV

I pulled up at Ana Lyudmila's house and sighed. It was a small, terraced house in the slightly more industrial end of Mt Eden, one of the many developments from the early '00's that had been tainted with the whole Leaky Homes scandal when poorly constructed homes made of monolithic cladding over untreated timber had leaked like sieves. In fact, when I looked at the water-staining on the outside of the building, I suspected that this place probably was leaky. So currently my daughter was sitting in a grotty house with people I didn't like breathing in noxious gasses from toxic mould. So that thought cheered me up no end.

I knocked on the door and after what seemed like forever, Yvetta answered it, giggling. I had to damp down the feeling she was giggling at me because she thought I was silly and ridiculous. I mean, it was probably a given she didn't think much of me, I was the adult and she was the teenager, but still, it was kind of obvious that she was one of the cool kids and I never had been and even at the ripe old age of 44 there was a part of me that still felt on the outer.

I could kind of see her appeal to Amelia.

"You can come in" Yvetta said, shrugging, like she was doing me the biggest favour in the world. I followed her into the tiny and cluttered living room, where Amelia was sitting on one of a mismatched pair of couches with her feet tucked up underneath her. "Oh" she said. "You're here."

"Yes" I said. "Time to get going."

Amelia sighed, but didn't make a move. "Come on" I said. "It's nearly dinner." Then I turned to Yvetta "Where's your mum?" I asked. I didn't really want to chat to Ana Lyudmila, but I supposed I should say thanks for having my daughter for the day.

Yvetta sat down on the couch next to Amelia and took a handful of potato chips out of a bag that was sitting open on the couch between them. "She's at work" Yvetta said.

Oh. Well I hadn't known that was happening. Ana Lyudmila worked in a café and bar in Kingsland and seemed to work on a shift basis. I didn't want to look down on people who worked in bars, I really didn't, because God knows, at least she had a job. Unlike some of Bill's sisters. But all the same, I couldn't see it was a suitable job for someone with a child.

Occasionally Ana Lyudmila's ex-husband helped out. Franklin Mott was in his '60's and had paid for Ana Lyudmila and a toddler Yvetta to come out from some part of the former Soviet republic and marry him. The marriage hadn't lasted, but he still turned up every Saturday and took Yvetta out, to her increasing displeasure from what I could gather. He seemed nice enough, but I thought there was something creepy about buying your partner from overseas.

At least mine had turned up here under his own steam. Well, kind of. But I wasn't about to send that Victor guy a thank-you or anything.

So I was never sure how much time Yvetta spent rattling around by herself in this place, or what she got up to when she was. And it probably didn't bear thinking about.

Amelia must have caught my expression. "God, Mum!" she said. "We're fourteen now, we're allowed to be here by ourselves!" Yeah, Amelia had been fourteen for two weeks; I didn't think it made that much of a difference.

"Yeah, OK. Fine" I muttered, thinking it wasn't fine at all really. I maybe wouldn't have minded so much if I'd just known they were going to be here alone.

Yes I would have, but at least I would have been prepared.

It took another ten minutes to get Amelia out the door, she dragged her feet, literally, and then remembered her jacket, remembered something important she had to tell Yvetta, remembered that she'd left her phone next to Yvetta's laptop and then finally, we could leave. I couldn't get out of the place fast enough; I don't know why she found it so appealing.

"I'm not a baby" Amelia grumbled, as we got in the car to go home. "And I'm not stupid, either."

"I know you're not" I said. I didn't add but I have no clue about Yvetta. She'd maybe have to make her own mind up about that. I snuck a glance at Amelia as we stopped at some lights. She was looking down at her phone and clearly ignoring me. A smile crept across her lips as she read whatever she was looking at, and then she realised I was watching, and quickly rearranged her face back into grumpy sullenness.

I sighed. I wished I'd know how much work teenagers were when she was three.

A/N Rama Rama is pronounced Rah-mah rah-mah, pretty much how you'd expect, and Kumeu is Q-myu (that's the best I can describe it, anyway). They're both slightly rural areas outside of Auckland, but only just, so within the bounds of commuting distance depending on how much you love traffic.

If you don't really get netball, then try looking at this clip. It's very, very popular here and for a sport played entirely by women (men only play in social leagues) it gets a lot of publicity and prime-time coverage. Our team are the Silver Ferns, named after the NZ national emblem which appears on most of our sporting uniforms.

www (dot) youtube (dot) com /watch?v=8BADqwSU78M&NR=1

Thanks for reading!