Henry and Mouse had decided to pull Leo from school for the mid-term ultrasound appointment. He had been so distant and and wary, just so sad since the night Henry had yelled at him, that his parents were really worried. The pregnancy was going very well, and there was no reason to believe they'd find or see anything untoward at the obstetrician, and Mouse thought that it might cheer the little boy up, and maybe make him feel better.

"Hi," Leo said when he entered the front office of his school. He'd been called from class, and was smiling, simply because of the novelty of leaving his room, and the school, in the middle of the day.

"Hi there, big guy," Mouse said, scooping him up. "You excited to see an ultrasound of your new brother or sister?"

Leo nodded. He'd told his friends where he was going that morning, and Kerry and Noah had smiled. Dominick, however, had merely looked at him.

"What?" Leo asked. "I get to go to the doctor with my mommy and daddy, and see if the new baby is okay."

"I know," Dominick finally said. "We had a new baby before, too. I remember what happens." He continued to scowl.

Leo shrugged. He didn't see a reason to look so mad.

"My mommy had my brother last year," Dominick elaborated. "A new baby just means they don't spend as much time with you, that's all." At Leo's look, he continued. "I used to live with my mommy and daddy, then they got divorced, and then I lived just with my mommy. Then she had my brother, and she said I needed to spend more time with my daddy. So now I live with her and my stepdad and little brother sometimes, and sometimes I live with my daddy and Leah."

"I only live with my one mommy and my one daddy," Leo declared. 

"No you don't. She's not your mommy, and he's not even your daddy," Dominick retorted. "You told us so. You don't belong to her or him.

"But the new baby will, it will belong to both of them," he concluded. "And they're really going to love it, probably more than they love you, because it's both of theirs. But you don't have another house to go to for when they 'need a break' or anything." He stopped for a moment. "I live at my daddy's when mommy needs a break, but where will you go?"

Leo tried to wrap his brain around the idea that his mommy and daddy would need a break from him, and couldn't. They didn't want to take breaks away from him, did they?

Again, the bell rang, and he put these troubling thoughts out of his head until his mommy and daddy came to pick him up for the appointment.

"Okay, then, let's get going," Henry said, trying to pick Leo up as they left the school grounds. Leo resisted, however.

"I want to walk all by myself," he insisted.

"Okay," Henry answered, swallowing.

When they got to the doctor's office, Mouse noticed that Leo held the door a little longer than necessary. She sighed, making eye-contact with her husband while they rode the elevator. She'd never told Henry about Amya, because she'd promised Leo, but Henry knew that Leo had some sort of imaginary friend, or at least that he had.

"You know that we're going to find out the gender today, right?" Mouse asked Leo as they sat in the waiting room. "If it's a brother or a sister?"

Leo nodded. "My friend Dominick told me," he answered. "And my friend Kenny, too. Dominick's mommy had a brother last year, and Kenny's having a sister in February."

And even though Leo was so worried about his daddy, and the new baby, and who he belonged to, he was still excited to be there, and to be finding out if he was going to have a brother or sister. 

He'd talked to Brina and Lottie a few more times, too, since that first night, and they'd told him about their baby brother Finn, and how fun and exciting it was to have a new baby. They said that he was like a tiny doll when he was born, with perfect little fingernails and everything. 

They'd also told him about something scary that happened to some baby boys at the hospital when they were born, about cutting the tip of the penis off or something. They tried to tell him what it was called, but Leo couldn't tell exactly what they were saying. It sounded like circus-scissors, but the audio on the talkie-talkies was not very good, and he wasn't sure.

"They don't do it to all boy babies, though," Lottie tried to reassure him the night before. "They didn't do it to our brother. So maybe they won't do it to yours, or maybe you'll have a sister."

"Did they do it to you?" Brina asked. "I think that usually they do all babies the same in families, so if they did it to you, they might do it to your brother."

Leo had considered as he sat in his dark closet. "I don't think so," he finally told the girls. "I'd remember if they cut the tip of my penis off, right?"

He heard the girls' laughter coming out of the box he held. 

"Or maybe you'll have a sister, and you don't have to worry about it," Brina tried to reassure him. 

Leo was supposed to talk to them again that night, after the ultrasound appointment. They said that they'd help him figure out a way to avoid the frightening sounding scissors thing if he was going to have a brother.

They were finally called, and Leo rose and followed his parents into the exam room. There was a narrow bed for his mommy to lie down on, and a computer and a bunch of a equipment. It was dark, like a movie theatre.

Neat.

Mommy lay down on the bed, and raised her sweater. Leo could see that her tummy was sticking out a little. It hadn't looked like that even a couple of weeks ago, he knew. His daddy went to stand by her side, taking her hand.

The doctor came in and sat down on a little stool, the fun kind that twirled around. 

"Hello, Gardeners," she said, smiling at everyone in the dim room. She snapped on gloves as she spoke to everyone.

"Have you felt any movement yet?" she asked his mommy. 

She shook her head. 

"You're going to, probably within the next few weeks," the doctor said. "Okay, let's see what's going on with the baby, shall we?"

And she turned on all the equipment, which began to hum and make low whirring noises. She squeezed some goo on his mommy's tummy, and picked up something that was connected to the computer by a cord. She placed it on the slight rise in his mommy's abdomen.

"And there we are," the doctor said in a pleased voice. "See the head?" she asked Leo. 

He nodded, smiling as he looked. 

"And here's the spine, and a couple of arms," she continued. 

To Leo, the baby's head looked huge.

"It looks like a space alien," he said before he could help himself.

"You're right, Leo, it does," his daddy agreed, laughing. "Look at that bulgy head, and the huge eyes."

After a couple of minutes, during which the doctor froze the screen a couple of times and typed things, keyboard clicking, she asked, "So, do we want a gender reveal, or are we waiting to be surprised?" She looked expectantly at Mouse and Henry.

"We want to know," Mouse said. She looked over at Leo, who was sitting at the foot of the bed. "Right, big guy? We want to know if Beanie is a sister or a brother?"

Leo nodded. "Can you really tell?" he asked the doctor.

"Yes," she answered. "See right here? If the baby will turn just a little bit, we'll see if there's something there or not."

"And if something's there, it's a boy, right?" Leo supplied. 

"Exactly," the doctor answered, laughing. She peered at the screen. "Okay, got it. Last chance, Gardeners. You want to know for sure, right?"

"Yes, please," Leo answered for all three of them. He patted his mommy's foot. He was really excited, even though he was scared about the scissors thing if it was a brother.

"You are definitely having a girl," she announced. She moved the thing a little bit. "See right here? That's where a penis would be, and there's nothing there." She looked at Henry, Mouse, and Leo in turn. "Congratulations, it's a sister," she told him.

A sister.

His mommy and daddy were smiling and kissing.

"You hear that, Leo? You're going to have a sister," his mommy said. She was crying a little bit. "Beanie is a girl."

Leo couldn't help but smile back. No circus-scissors. He couldn't wait to tell Brina and Lottie that night.

Mommy sat up and held her arms out to Leo. He crawled up to hug her, being careful not to touch her gooey tummy.

"How big is she now?" he asked the doctor.

She held up her thumb and forefinger. "About like this? Five or six inches long, like the size of a bell pepper."

Leo laughed. "Before she was the size of an avocado, and now she's a bell pepper," he said to Mouse. "Sounds like we're making a salad or something."

Mouse laughed back. "And in a few weeks maybe we can say she's the size of lettuce or something, huh?"

Leo nodded happily, looking up at his mother. He saw his father's smiling face over her shoulder, and his smile faded a little. 

Not his. Not his. Leo didn't belong to his daddy.

Henry saw this, and again cursed himself for yelling at his small son, this little person who had done nothing wrong, nothing to deserve his, Henry's, awful, raised voice.

"So Beanie definitely belongs to both of you, right?" Leo asked, pulling away from his mother. "You both want her and love her?"

"Leo, of course," Mouse answered, wiping her stomach before pulling her sweater down. "We love her and want her, as much as we love and want you, silly."

"She's a part of us," Henry added, putting an arm around Mouse. He found his son's words and question strange, but if he needed reassurance, Henry would provide it. "We're her parents, Leo, no worries."

Leo just nodded and hopped down from the bed.

The doctor, hearing Leo's words, asked, "Is there anything you want to ask me, Leo? While you're here?"

Leo looked at her kind face, and thought about all the things he wanted to know, about how a baby or a child "belonged" to a parent, and what made it so. But he couldn't, not in front of his parents. 

He shook his head. "If I want to know something, I can just ask them," he replied,  looking at Mouse and Henry. "I can ask my mommy and--and him," he finished.

And when he said that, Henry realized that Leo hadn't called him "daddy" in a while, that he hadn't heard the word he loved fall from his son's lips in a long time.

Not since the night he'd yelled at him.