Closing her eyes, she clutched her one hand with the other as he left the kitchen. She listened to his quiet voice calling it a night to the children. And the soft slam of the front door announcing his departure made her finally slid down on the floor and rest her back against the counter. She just sat there for a while.

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It was early in the morning and Emma was busy making breakfast in the kitchen. She had one hour to deal with the food, the kids and the disheveled condition of the house after a late night pillow fight between the mischievous siblings and Elli. Then she had to get herself ready too and drag her own robotic self to the office.

"Sammy! Are you and your sister ready yet?" Emma yelled blowing on the hot pancakes as she placed the clean plates on the table. "Jenny would be here any moment to drive you guys to school."

Their school time was much later to the time she had to go to work, so it was Jenny who had been taking them to school. But most of the times it was Brandan who would take the responsibility insisting that he had no problem being late at work. After all, he was the boss, he couldn't possibly kick himself out of his own company for being late - that would be weird.

"What's taking them so long?" She mumbled to herself.

Right then, Sarah's frantic cry from outside the house made her sprung up from the chair in alert. She ran to the window to see Sarah sprawled across the ground clutching her knee, her face red and wet with tears as she sobbed loudly. Sammy was just a few feet away on top of the neighborhood kid Steeve, to Emma it looked like he was trying to strangle Steeve's neck whose chubby hands were flailing around maniacally.

Without wasting a second she flew out of the house and was running towards the commotion. She stopped right by Sarah to be greeted with another shock.

The woman from the other night - the one she had seen in Brandan's arms was pulling up Sarah to a sitting position.

Swatting the hands away of the woman unceremoniously Emma fussed over Sarah worriedly who just wouldn't stop crying. The little girl had gotten her knees scraped up pretty badly.

Emma turned to look at the boys, their loud grunts and groans as they rolled across the ground holding each other's collars made her concentration to divert from Sarah and to them in stead.

"You should stop them, you know. I'm here with your daughter, so don't worry." The beautiful woman gave a little squeeze to her hand which was upon Sarah's leg.

Guardedly Emma looked at the woman's face but saw nothing but genuineness and sincerity. She so wanted to hate this woman but failed to find a reason.

Nodding Emma ran over to the little wrestlers. It took her a good fifteen minutes to stop them from pummeling each other and get to the root of all the drama.

"Steeve was teasing Sarah, mommy, he shoved Sarah and she got hurt." Sammy complained angrily as he once again tried to lunge at Steeve but was refrained by Emma.

Emma gritted her teeth at the information. This Steeve kid was getting too much out of control day by day and she couldn't understand why the hell his mother wasn't even noticing this. 
"I'll talk to his mommy Sammy, calm down and now let's go inside. And you Steeve," Emma pointed a finger at a scowling Steeve and warned, "Don't think that I'll let you off the hook easily if your mother decides to keep a blind eye on this incident too."

Sammy was about to throw a fit again but Emma managed to drag him back. She noticed Sarah was taken to her porch steps by the woman who was now tending to her scraped knees.