April and four destinies.

[dreadedcandiru2]

As we are about to see next Saturday, John is about the only person in the Patterson household who is capable of seeing the new addition to their family as a good thing. Liz is worried that not only will she be lost in the shuffle because of a projected (but ultimately fictional) obsessive need to pay attention to the new child to the exclusion of all else, whatever social life she has now will be sacrificed so that Mommy can run away from what is her responsibility whilst claiming that Children Owe Us Help. Meanwhile, Mike is worried about the twin evils of having to share even more spotlight and derision from boys who ain't really his friends. That being said, the champeen natural-born martyr is, of course, Elly herself. As near as I can see, she gets to enjoy all of the things that she claims that a child will make impossible but still resents April for stealing something she actually didn't. This leaves us with four scenarios in which Elly finally reconciles herself to the existence of a third child:

1. April Moves Out: As we know, Elly likes to spend a lot of her time insisting that if she didn't have people racing around underfoot, her life would be a lot sweeter than it is now. The problem with that is that when her kids do leave the nest, she's able to step back far enough to realize how empty her life is without her family around to keep her on her toes. This tells me that when April splits for the wilds of Calgary, Alberta, Elly's response might be to wish that she had what she wanted to throw away.
2. April's Kids Drive HER Nuts Too: One of the things that Elly likes about her adult children is that having modelled her bad behaviour, watching them make the same mistakes she does makes her feel right. If April asks 'Did I ever thank you?'. Elly might start to finally feel good about having more kids than her folks didshe was supposed to.
3. The Rest Is Silence: Elly appears to have wasted a lot of time the same way Lynn did by expecting an apology from her mother about the way she was treated. Given her being the same sort of person, she might die never having admitted that she was wrong to treat April like a threat because not even the approach of death will coax an apology out of her. The only sign that she wasn't totally against the idea of a third kid is an self-serving almost-apology in her will in which April is forced to accept something stupid in order for everyone to agree that old feuds die with old idiots.
4. Not Even Death Will Stop Me!: Elly leaves April with nothing because she takes being humiliated about the Kortney situation personally.