It took a little longer than he hoped, but they still made it across the street before the boys were up. JoAnne greeted them with the news that coffee was ready and some fresh cinnamon rolls would be out of the oven soon. "You two had a good night, I take it?" she asked smugly.

"Oh yeah, pretty good," Dave shrugged, trying not to give anything away but seeing the gleam in Shae's eye -- and in his mother's. They weren't getting away with a thing.

They actually got to try out the cinnamon rolls before they heard the boys stirring. In a moment, the two appeared, dressed in flannel pajamas, still yawning and bleary eyed, but happy at the sight of Aunt Shae, the filled stockings, and all the presents that hadn't been there the night before. It was not long before JoAnne's living room was filled with scraps of wrapping paper and empty boxes, while the boys were beyond excited at the wonder of all the new things they had to play with. Among the things the boys received was a DVD player, and DVDs with various episodes of Avalon along with several other cartoons and kids' movies. Shae was happy, too, with a diamond pendant, a long winter jacket, and a few other gifts; Dave had an expensive sweater from her, along with some books, CDs, and a new PDA.

The house was a little crazy for a while, since the two boys had problems trying to figure out what to play with first while trying to play with everything. Dave stayed in the living room with the boys, and Shae was there part time, but helping JoAnne in the kitchen too. Hazel showed up for a while with a few more presents for the boys, and after a while, they all had a big Christmas dinner. After dinner, both Shae and Dave collapsed onto the couch, and soon they were leaning up against each other, sound asleep after their short night. They woke up after a while to discover that Hazel or JoAnne had hooked up the DVD player, and the two older women and the boys were all enthralled in a Disney movie. By the time the show was over, it was getting dark; Dave, Shae, and the boys made several trips across the street carrying armloads of the day's plunder, then they gathered in JoAnne's kitchen to make a lackluster assault at all the leftovers.

All in all, it was a very nice Christmas, the nicest he could remember. Dave thought it was a shame Julie wasn't there to enjoy it, and it was his big downer of the day. But, he also reasoned the day would never have been like this if she had still been alive. For one thing, they probably would not have been in Bradford at all; Julie didn't like the town, thought it was too primitive and too far out in flyover country to pay attention to. The only times she'd been there were when Dave had insisted it had been too long, and she'd never been happy when there.

No, if she still had been alive, the Christmas celebration would have been much more low-key in their long-gone New York apartment, or, more likely, up at her parents' house in Connecticut. Christmas with the Albrights had always been much more formal, much more low-key as well -- while the boys were allowed some seasonal excitement, there was a limit on it. Dave had tried to be circumspect about it, but he enjoyed the Albrights house about as much as she enjoyed Bradford. The Albrights insisting on their presence at one event or another had all too often won out over Dave's wishes. The Albrights had sent the boys a few gifts for the holidays, and he'd made sure they'd talked to their grandparents on the phone, but the mere fact that he and the boys were not with them made it a better holiday for Dave. He was pretty sure the boys enjoyed it more, too, but he wasn't going to ask them about it. One of the things Dave had reluctantly accepted was the boys were going to have at least limited contact with Albrights and it meant he was going to as well.

Dave wondered how the Albrights would feel if they knew about Shae. They probably wouldn't be very happy about it, at least not this soon. His very limited contact with them had told him they were still having difficulty accepting Julie's death, which Dave thought was very understandable since he'd been having a lot of difficulty with it himself until recently. It had been at least part of his logic about wanting to keep things with Shae low key around the boys so they wouldn't make an innocent mistake that might upset Stan and Deborah. The cover up was going to have to end, sooner or later, but it was something else that was probably going to have to wait until at least next summer.

Around noon two days later, Eve and John showed up, bringing Sergei and Milla with them. The two were significantly younger than the boys, but not so much that some serious playing couldn't happen. The four adults had a pleasant afternoon, mostly talking about the old days and the things happening in their lives. There was some discussion about the new relationship between Dave and Shae, and he expected Eve to drag the two of them off somewhere to have a serious talk about it, but it didn't happen.

Apparently Eve was learning all she needed sitting right there, for as Dave and Shae were fixing supper she came out to the kitchen and commented, "I think the two of you are coming along fine. You're probably going to hit some rocks in the road, but I don't think it'll be anything you can't handle if you trust each other enough to just talk it out. Of course, I'm available if either of you have questions, and I'm sure I'll be hearing some of the dirty details, anyway."

"We appreciate your opinion," Dave told the little blonde. "It means a lot to us."

"I appreciate that," Eve smiled. "I also want to say you're both probably wise to take this a little slowly in the public sense, as well as in your own. Sometimes these things happen quickly, and people go too far, too fast. Although you might not feel like it, slowing down a little might be good for both of you. As far as that goes, your decision to keep this to a small group of people like me at first, is a good one."

"Actually, I want to keep it from the boys for now," Dave said. "Partly because of Julie's parents, and partly because I want to break it to them properly."

"You're not going to be able to put it off forever," Eve warned. "Those two are smarter than you think, and kids in general can be more perceptive than you imagine. But yes, it might be wise to put it off until things are a little more settled between you."

"In other words, you're telling us you think we're handling it pretty well," Shae smiled.

"Well, yes, from what I can see," Eve grinned. "Of course, there are things I can't see, although my imagination has filled in quite a few holes. But it leads me to something about tonight. I presume you're planning on trying to keep this secret from the others, especially Emily?"

"Well, yeah," Dave sighed. "I think Emily suspects there's something going on but isn't sure enough to spread the word. Don't get me wrong, I love Emily as a friend, I think she's great people, but right now I don't want her spreading the news around in such a way that the news might get back to the boys."

"Then you're going to have to be a lot more careful about your body language than you've been this afternoon," Eve smiled. "You don't need to be an expert at the subject to see what's going on with the two of you cuddled up together most of the time, stealing little kisses from each other, just touching, and looking at each other. I'm amazed the boys haven't figured it out already."

"It's not the first time they've seen us like that," Shae protested. "They've seen us doing it clear back to my apartment last fall. Granted, back then it was something a little different, I was just trying to comfort Dave with some body contact. But I think they accept it as normal between us."

"We can hope, anyway," Eve sighed. "You're probably not going to be able to keep the secret from them very much longer. But if you want to keep it from Emily tonight, you might consider sitting in separate chairs and avoiding those long, loving glances at each other that have been so prominent this afternoon."

"Were we that obvious?"

"Yes, you were," Eve laughed. "And it doesn't mean I'm not happy and thrilled for the both of you. Dave, you have no idea how much I've wanted to see this for Shae. I'm glad it's finally happening, even though it's taken so long."

The get together was at Jason and Vicky's house, which meant there was a strong Scottish influence. Eve and John left their little ones with the boys at Dave's house, with both JoAnne and Kayla to watch after them, and were just a touch late arriving at the affair. There was a pretty good crowd expected -- besides the four of them, Jason and Vicky, Emily and Kevin, Dayna and Sandy, and Andy and Hannah Baker were there. Scott and Sonja Tyler were driving down from their home near Lansing with their close friends, Aaron and Amber Heisler.

When they arrived, they had a surprise -- Jason's son Duane had showed up without warning that afternoon, bringing with him a girlfriend no one had previously known about. Duane was a slightly shorter, stockier version of his father, while she was a short, bubbly long-haired blonde who didn't look like she could be very far out of high school, if that. Dave just barely remembered Duane, and then just as a little kid, well, at least a pre-teenage kid, but he had certainly grown up. Over the next while, he learned Duane had once had plans to be a National Park Service ranger, but the expectation hadn't panned out. He'd spent several years on a summer job running thrill-ride rafts down a river in Tennessee, and one of his former co-workers had recruited him for the same job in the Grand Canyon. Since they didn't run in the winter, Duane had a winter job in the North Country helping to train dogsled teams for the Iditarod -- the thousand-mile dogsled race in Alaska.

"Boy," Emily summarized, "Bradford kids sure wind up going in a lot of different directions, don't they?"

"You should know, Emily," Vicky laughed. "You probably know more about what's happened with Bradford kids than anyone else in town, except maybe for Lloyd Weber." Lloyd was the editor and publisher of the Bradford Courier, the local weekly newspaper.

"Maybe even more than him," Emily grinned. "I get the impression he doesn't know the kids like he used to. Since I started working part time there, I've been able to tell him things he never heard about."

"I didn't know you were working at the Courier," Shae commented from the sofa where she sat next to Eve and John, away from Dave.

"It's only a part-time thing," Emily told her and the group. "Lloyd came to me a while back and asked if I'd like to work for him a day or two each week, so he'd have someone who knew something about getting the paper out if he wanted to take a vacation or something. I don't have anything to do with covering the city council any longer because it would be a conflict of interest, but I keep an eye on the schools and the township."

"She's written a number of pretty good articles," Jason commented. "She has a nose for knowing what people find interesting and a good way of presenting it."

"It's kind of fun," Emily admitted. "It really gives me a different way to look at the community."

"Well, cool!" Shae exclaimed. "Remind me to talk to you about a subscription."

"You're now a subscriber," Emily grinned. "I have your address, and I'll have Hazel bill you. That'll keep you up on what's happening in Bradford."

As in any large gathering of Bradford '88s, there was a lot of discussion of what those not present were up to, which Jason, Kevin, Hannah, Sandy, Sonja, Amber and John just basically had to endure. They weren't classmates, although Jason and Kevin knew a lot of the kids from being from Bradford. Dave, Shae, and Eve heard plenty of tales they hadn't heard before.

The evening got late before the four of them piled into the McClellan minivan and drove back to Dave's house. "You know," Eve said, "I'm sure glad I've got friends like them. I'll tell you what; I never would have believed it when we were in high school."

"Yeah, it is a pretty good group," Dave admitted.

"That's not the point," Eve said. "After what happened to me in high school, and what's happened since, I'm surprised anyone would speak to me at all. Yet, I find I've got some close friends here, closer than I would have ever believed. John and I aren't very close to anyone in the Philadelphia area except family, and it's thinning out. Chad and Cheryl are in Chicago, and my parents are in Florida for the winter, so the nice little family community we had there is breaking up. That makes this evening particularly heartwarming. Like I said, I would never have believed this could happen after I walked out of Bradford High for the last time."

"Things have changed," Shae agreed. "I didn't get it from the other kids the way Denis did, but I was still a freak to just about everyone but you and Dave. I find it a little surprising myself that Dave and I finally seem to be getting together."

"I have to admit," Eve grinned, "You did a pretty good imitation of being 'just friends' tonight. I think you brought it off pretty well."

A few days later, Dave and Shae got in the Chevy and headed for New York. They talked most of the way there, but mostly about the book. There were only a handful of chapters complete by this point, but Dave had much of the plot worked out and discussed it with Shae. Together, they evolved several things to be included: some descriptions and motivations of some of the characters, and some interesting ways the plot could be twisted. Shae's storyteller instinct was working hard, and Dave could see that she had some valuable suggestions.

They got to her apartment late on New Year's Eve. They were both tired from the trip, so after each of them giving the other a massage to loosen up they collapsed into Shae's bed for a nap. When they woke up, they were much more ready to make up for some of the time they'd lost in being discreet around the boys for the last several days.

Although they broke for dinner, they were still in bed and having fun when the ball dropped in Times Square a few miles away. They were watching it on TV, but their New Year's kiss led directly to a much more intimate New Year celebration, a lovemaking session they hoped would be the first of many in the New Year.

2001 was behind them, and Dave was glad to have it there.

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