They honeymooned in Provincetown on Cape Cod for ten days.  The weather was picture perfect the icy cold waters of the Atlantic a refreshing change from the warmer Pacific temperatures.  The Guest House located on the West End was close to the main drag Commercial Street that they wandered window-shopping for the most part; every now and then there was a treasure, which insisted on being shipped home.

Herring Cove Beach was the most popular lesbian beach and offered magnificent views of the sunset.  One afternoon Tina noticed that one woman kept looking at Bette and while she was used to the attention that Bette garnered the intensity with which the woman kept looking at her wife started to annoy her. 

The woman caught Tina’s glare and approached them. 

“Pardon me, but I was wondering if you and your partner are expecting?”

“Yes we are” Bette smiled at the woman and then looked over at Tina.  Tina she quickly sensed was pissed off. 

“My partner and I are expecting too.  It’s our first and I am scared out of my mind” the woman confessed. 

Tina relaxed once she understood the woman’s preoccupation with her wife.  “This is our second, though I was the birth mother with our first” Tina disclosed, as the woman seemed to need some support.

“Really, I didn’t notice a child with you.”

“She is four and at home while we are on our honeymoon” Bette boasted.

“Congratulations” the woman offered.  “Here comes my partner Lynn.”  They followed her gaze to the slender chocolate toned African-American woman who came towards them with a tray of food and drinks from the concession stand.  They watched as their new acquaintance struggled not to go to her.  “She says I hover and she is ready to kill me,” the stranger explained. 

Tina rose not so constrained and met the woman and took one of one of the trays she carried after introducing herself.

Lynn and Sheri they learned had been together five years and they were the first of their small group of friends to take the plunge into parenthood.  They wound up spending the afternoon together.

“She is driving me crazy” Lynn confessed directing her comments to Bette whom they discovered was three months along as well as Sheri. 

“Having been in the ‘daddy position’ the last time I can understand” Bette replied.  “I felt kind of shut out and shut off.  I don’t know enough about the two of you but I can tell you that when Tina got pregnant for us and I became the person solely responsible for providing for and protecting our family I messed up royally.   I stopped talking to her and went into full alpha mode.  I can’t speak for Lynn or even Tina at this point but closing down communication is not a good idea.  I closed down because I was scared and I would bet that Lynn is scared too.”

“Scared of what?” Tina was surprised by this information.  Bette never seemed scared that was a problem that she planned to overcome.  She narrowed her eyes and waited.

“I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to take care of my family.  I was afraid that I wouldn’t measure up.  I felt left out of the connection that Tina obviously had with our son, which makes sense because she was carrying him, and I was embarrassed to admit that I was jealous of him getting all her attention when I used to be her ‘baby’” Bette chuckled. 

“Wow” both Tina and Lynn responded almost in unison.  Sheri looked at her and slowly nodded her head. 

“I guess this is stuff that we as lesbians have not had much practice talking about.  It seems so petty yet it’s real and can lead you to make bad choices to try to deal with your secrets.”

It was the closest that Bette ever came to explaining her affair with Candace.  Looking back Tina could see how Bette would have felt all those things and said nothing.  She being in the daddy position this time felt an overwhelming need to protect her woman and her child.  She doubted that the intensity that she felt would have been any different if they had used Marcus’ sperm.  Something had shifted inside her when she learned that Bette was pregnant.

Something shifted again when Bette became her wife and again when they consummated their marriage.  No one and nothing could come between them again.