It was with a real sense of relief that Dave drove to New York towards the end of the second week of May, and spent much of the day hauling stuff out of Shae's apartment and loading it in their cars. There was still quite a bit left behind -- she wasn't moving out all the way, and they would both still be using the apartment from time to time over the next few months. The heavy furniture would have to come later, but there were several pieces that would go well in the new house.

Moving Shae's stuff was the primary reason for the trip, of course, but while he was in town, Dave made a point of dropping by the Dunlap and Fyre offices, still in the Ford building and somehow more crowded than ever. No decision had been made yet about what would happen in the personnel shuffle, although Dave got the impression that Rayme and others thought his getting promoted was all but a done deal.

With that news, Dave decided it was time to come out of the closet a little. "Michelle," he told his supervisor. "I've got a little favor I'd like to ask of you."

"I owe you a few, Dave," she said. "What do you have on your mind?"

Dave reached into his briefcase, and pulled out a CD jewel case. "I'd like you to look this book proposal over," he said. "It's sixteen chapters, somewhere around twenty percent of the whole thing, and there's a synopsis of what happens afterwards. I think it's pretty good, but for reasons I don't want to get into right now, I don't feel I should be the one to make a buy-or-bounce decision. This hasn't been shopped around; other than me, you're the first person to see it."

"Yeah, I'll have a look at it myself," she said. "Maybe I'll have someone in the department look it over, too, if it's one of those sensitive things."

"It is, sort of," Dave said. "Briefly, it is fantasy, but it's rather dark and has a bite to it. Like I said, the editor in me thinks it's pretty good, but I shouldn't be the one to judge it."

Dave was just about dead certain Michelle could read between the lines and tell he was the one who wrote it, though he'd talked around who the author was, and nothing in the file would indicate it. He thought the story was pretty good, but if Michelle thought it was a flat bounce, he might just put it on the shelf and not mess with it any more. He wished he'd had a few more weeks to work on it, but he didn't know how long it might be before Dick's retirement came through. If he was to have the book published at Dunlap and Fyre, he wanted it to be established before Rayme had the job.

After a few more minutes talking with Michelle, Dave headed out of the building and back to the subway for the trip out to Shae's studio. Whatever happened, it was out of his hands now.

On Sunday morning, Dave and Shae set out together in their two loaded cars, heading for Bradford. The trip was familiar by now, and that made it go a little more quickly. As the days were getting pretty long now, there was still plenty of light when the two of them pulled into the yard of the house in Bradford -- their house as far as Dave was concerned, and he was pretty sure Shae felt the same way. They took a while getting everything unloaded, in fact, did not finish that evening.

The next morning Aunt Shae walked the boys to school for the first time, while Dave headed down to the Courier. Janine, Emily's former sidekick at the Spee-D-Mart, had been working at the paper nearly full time for a month, and she was getting the hang of things, but it was still going to take a while, and Dave could still be useful. "So, how was New York?" Emily asked as he walked in the door.

"Still there," he shrugged. "At least this time I brought Shae back with me."

"I'll bet you're glad to not have to make that commute every time you turn around," she smirked.

"It's not over with," Dave shrugged. "I still have to head into the office every month or so for a while yet, and Shae's going to have things she's going to have to go back for, too. But we can get it down to once a month or so and go together, which beats the hell out of one of us driving the round trip every other weekend."

"Yeah, that could get old," Emily shook her head. "You have to wonder how someone like Dean Sallows can be out driving like that all the time. I like driving long distances once in a while, but it could get old in a hurry if you let it get out of hand. Anyway, since you've got Shae in town now, Kevin and I will have to have you over for dinner. We haven't had Shae for dinner since around Christmas sometime."

"Sure," he said. "I know she'd like to see you, too. But it's no big rush; it's not like we're going anywhere anytime soon."

"How about if we hold off until toward the end of the week?" Emily suggested. "That way, we can get the paper out, and she'll have had a couple days to settle in."

Dave was no stranger to the Holst household, and the boys were even less so, since Kayla had spent so much time watching them. He was in fact over there a couple times a week on average, and every week or two he and the boys had been invited for dinner. But, Shae hadn't been there -- blowing in late Friday evening and having to be heading back on Sunday had cut into socializing with friends ever since Christmas, but those days were over with, at least for a while. Ducking her head under the doorframe and walking into the Holst living room was in several ways the start of a new life.

Kevin, along with Kayla and JJ were in the living room when they arrived. Emily had dinner in the oven; it wasn't ready yet but wouldn't take long to serve when it was, so Emily sat down in the living room to catch up on things. "So, Shae," she asked. "Are you really back to stay?"

"Hard to say at this point," Shae said, knowing full well that Dave had been keeping Emily posted on the Avalon situation. "I may have to make a trip or two back to the city to do some looping and take care of business, but I'm pretty much planning on staying with Dave and the boys for a while. We're going to see how I get along in Bradford."

"Have you been out to see how the house is coming?" Emily asked. The new house was under way, although just at the very beginnings. Dave had been just about dead right; it only took a big yellow backhoe a few minutes to do what needed to be done to the remains of the old house. A bulldozer hadn't been necessary, since the backhoe could do the job and was needed for a few other things, like digging the footers for the new house. A separate contractor would be replacing the swimming pool over the next few months. So far, Dave hadn't spent much time out there, but dropped by once or twice a week just to see what was happening, and then got out of the way as soon as possible.

"Yes," Shae grinned as she settled into a chair. A lot of her height was in her very long legs; when she sat down in one of the living room chairs she seemed a lot more like normal size. "It's hard to believe it's happening. It's quite a mess out there now, but Jerry says they're right about the point where things look worst. Has Dave showed you the renderings of the place?"

"He has and I'm impressed," Emily said. "Steve really designed a very nice house there. I think it'll prove to be big without being ostentatious. I'm looking forward to you having us for dinner out there."

"I'm afraid it won't be for a while," Shae sighed. "Not till next fall, and maybe not then, if it winds up we have to go back to New York."

Emily shook her head. "I got the impression that wasn't going to happen."

"Really, nothing has changed," Dave said. "We're gambling they won't renew Avalon before August first. If they do, then we're probably going back to the city for the winter. If it happens, the plan is for all of us to head back in August, in time to get the boys in school. Back before we came here last fall, I registered them for this fall at a private school not far from Shae's apartment."

"Boyce Day Academy," Shae explained. "It's not bad at all. I've been over there a couple times to check it out. I went over dressed as Shaella Sunrise one time, and gave a little performance for the kids. They seemed to enjoy it."

"I'll bet they did," Emily said. "Does it mean you're planning on having your baby in New York?"

"That's one of those open questions," Shae shook her head. "I'm going to have to keep OB-GYNs on the line both here and in New York. In fact, it's part of the reason I'll have to make a couple trips back over the summer. If the show gets cancelled, I'll use one here, whoever they are. That's something I've got to work out in the next few days."

"I don't understand why they're canceling the show," Kayla asked. "I mean, I figured it was something like Sesame Street or Mister Rogers and goes on forever and ever."

"No," Shae shook her head, "I knew from the beginning it wasn't going to be that way. In fact, it's held on longer than I expected. What you have to remember is that Avalon only appeals to kids of a very narrow age range, say two to five or six. Cameron and Tyler are a little old for it, but they still like watching it for some reason."

"Because we like Aunt Shae," Tyler piped up. "We get to see her more that way."

"So what happens with you after the show ends?" Emily asked.

"We move here," Shae said flatly. "What I'm going to be doing and what Dave will be doing is a little up in the air, but we've both got that much worked out."

"Well, Shae," Emily said as she reached for a way to change the subject, "If there's anything we can do to make things go easier for you while you're here, feel free to ask."

"I doubt Arnie Perkins would think very much of someone coming over and taking a chainsaw to the door headers," Kevin smiled. "But if you want it done it can probably be arranged."

"Thanks for the offer," Shae grinned, glad as Emily of the change in subject. "I've been ducking my head under low doors for years, and I think I may finally start to be getting used to it. Part of the reason I wear heels most of the time is that it brings door frames down into my field of view so I can remember to duck them. I've still whacked my head more times than I want to think about."

"Mom told me you used to say that since you were a freak anyway that there was no point in stopping halfway," Kayla commented. "I haven't watched much Avalon," Kayla continued, "But it seems like a real neat way to provide the message that it's all right if people are different from you."

"I probably wouldn't have gone on Charley's House in the first place if that hadn't been one of the main underlying themes," Shae replied. "It's very difficult to deal in subtle messages when you're aiming them at kids younger than Tyler and Cameron. You have to make them broad and easy to understand, perhaps at the risk of oversimplifying them. Fortunately, kids understand make-believe in a way most adults don't. A little kid, not an adult, who's twice as big as they are, is something that isn't going to happen in the real world, but it makes a nice platform to get a message across that we have to be tolerant of differences in others." She let out a sigh, and continued, "We've made progress in that area as a society in this country in a lot of ways since I was your age, kids. But in a way things are getting worse, too."

"How do you mean that?" Kayla asked.

"Like I said, we've made real progress in making people more tolerant of differences in who and what people are," Shae shrugged. "I don't know if it's being a New Yorker, and having been touched so personally through Dave at what happened last September, but it seems to me that people are getting less tolerant of differences in what people believe, and what they were raised to believe."

"I don't know but what Shae is right," Dave nodded. "I think a lot of it is the fact we have become a global society more quickly than our various cultures have been able to adapt. Now we're paying the price in ignorant reaction, much of it disguised as religious fundamentalism. That excuse is being used in many societies, especially including ours, as a justification to keep people from choosing how they want to live their lives."

Shae shook her head. "I don't know if I totally agree with Dave on that," she frowned. "Really, most people choose to live their own lives their own way and are content to let others live the way they choose. But there will always be someone who thinks the way someone else lives is wrong and needs to be stopped. Their reasons can be religious, cultural, sheer personal prejudice, or whatever."

"Wow," Emily said. "This discussion sure got deep in a hurry. But I have to point out there have to be some limits."

"Of course there do," Dave said. "I mean, most societies would agree that a law, 'Thou shalt not steal thy neighbors' car,' makes sense and is justified. But where you have different societies interacting in an increasingly smaller world, there isn't necessarily that agreement. For example, you have some societies that require women wear burqas. You have others that allow women to wear bikinis, or even less. The bikini wearers would like to see the burqas banned, and the burqa-wearing society would like to see those bikinis covered with burqas. Each group sees the other as offensive. Who is right? My view is neither viewpoint should be allowed to dictate to the other one. 'Doing what you do is offensive because it insults my view of morality' is all too common an argument, and all too often wrong."

Kayla looked thoughtful for a moment, then asked, "You're saying we should be free to do what we want to do," she said. "OK, just suppose I wanted to go to school without wearing clothes. You're saying I should be able to do it."

"Since you're still a minor, I might have something to say about that," Emily pointed out.

"In theory, in a totally free society you should have the right to do just that," Shae nodded. "In practice, there would be a lot of people who would be intolerant of your decision to do it, mostly because they think it offends their idea of morality. They add up to enough people that you're going to be badly outnumbered. Tolerance involves letting other people do things that may offend you, so you also have the right to do something that offends others."

"Right," Dave agreed. "While this nation is founded on the premise that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, those rights have to be continually fought for and defended against by the forces that want to take those rights from you. In theory, Kayla, you should have the right to go to school without wearing clothes. However, if you wanted to do it, you would face a long and uphill fight to be able to enjoy that right. But if you chose to fight it out, you would be following in some hallowed footsteps made by people with names like Thoreau, Gandhi, King, and Walesa. I have to point out that the trails they laid led through the cellblocks of various jails along the way, and for much of their lives they were considered to be little better than nutcases."

"Not to mention people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and especially Amelia Bloomer," Shae smiled. "Amelia started the battle for the right for women to wear trousers in 1848. It took a century and more for her battle to be won. While I see girls in high schools wearing even less than your mother and I were allowed fifteen years ago, I still suspect, that if you started a movement to allow full nudity in school, it might be won in time for your great-great grandchildren to enjoy it."

"Maybe not," Dave shrugged. "Things move faster now than they did then. Unfortunately, with the rise of religious fundamentalism and general movement toward reactionary thought, I think we're moving away from that direction. And since things are moving faster and it seems like the reactionaries are winning more, it may turn into a battle to keep your granddaughters out of burqas. Even your daughters."

"I'd rather have the choice to not wear clothes than be forced to have to wear something like that," Kayla said thoughtfully.

"So would we all," Dave nodded. "However, if we don't fight for the right to have that choice, it could be taken away from us."

The conversation turned into a different direction after that -- after all when there were three Class of '88 people around, including Kayla's mother, the subject was bound sooner or later to turn to gossip about class members and tales of days gone by. None of them particularly noticed Kayla sitting off to the side with the gears obviously grinding in her head. A little later, as Emily was getting dinner from the oven and getting it on the table with Kevin's help, they were a little surprised to have a very serious teenager hit them with a question they weren't expecting. "I know who Martin Luther King was," she said. "I know a little about Gandhi, and I've heard of Thoreau. But who was Walesa?"

"Lech Walesa," Dave said. "He was an electrician in a Polish dockyard who set up the Solidarity union in Poland back when it was run by the communists. There were a lot of bricks thrown to knock down world communism, but Solidarity was one of the biggest ones."

"Shae, how about the women?" Kayla asked. "About all I know of Susan B. Anthony is she got her face on a coin, but I don't know why. Maybe that's something we haven't gotten to in school yet."

"I don't know about that," Shae said. "When I got out of high school I hadn't heard much more than that. Most of what I know came from a Woman's Studies class I had in college," Shae admitted. "They were early people in the battle for women's rights in this country. Women having the right to vote is just one result of the things they started, but most women barely know their names or why they are important."

With that thought, Kayla got a pencil and a piece of notebook paper and asked Shae for them again, so she could write them down -- and then asked Dave about the men he'd mentioned. "Those are four very interesting people who people should know more about," he told her. "All of them, in their own way, were fighters for human rights and the right to be different than society wants you to be. I think you'll find there are some good young adult biographies about Thoreau, King, and Gandhi. Lech Walesa, I don't know; he's newer and still alive. The theorists don't think as much of him since he was anticommunist, but I think in time, he'll be considered right up with the other three."

Dave went on to explain that, while he'd heard of all four of them in high school, it had been college before he learned much about them, even though his main interest was literature, especially fiction and fantasy. "But some of their accomplishments make very good stories, and the kind of battles they had to fight often keep coming up in science fiction and fantasy. They're well worth learning about, in any case."

They sat around talking for a while afterward. While they talked, Shae mentioned that Eve would probably be visiting at one time or another over the summer, and Kayla commented she'd heard a lot about her and would like to meet her sometime. "I think we can arrange it," Shae grinned. "Among many other things, she's a real good example of someone who fought -- hard -- for the right to be herself, in spite of people who were offended by it. I'd be surprised if you're not inspired by her."

Kayla looked a little uncomfortable for a moment, then said. "Hey, would you two mind if I came over and talked to you about this stuff sometime? I'm afraid you're leaving me with more questions than I had when I started asking you."

"Sure, no problem," Shae smiled. She knew Dave thought highly of the girl, and she liked her anyway for being a dedicated athlete. But now, for the first time, Shae began to suspect there was going to be more to this skinny little girl than just a fast runner.

Dinner was a casserole, although it was very good. The boys, to no one's surprise, raced through it and were bored as the adults sat around to talk afterwards, but JJ was a good kid and took them into the living room to watch a video on the TV. A little to their surprise, Kayla stayed at the dinner table with the adults. She'd been a teenager a little over a month, now -- maybe she felt like she ought to be part of the adult discussion, Dave thought.

"I'm sure you must be tired of people asking you," Emily said. "But have you made any progress on deciding when you're going to get married?"

"Not really, except in the negative sense," Shae reported. "We talked about Labor Day weekend, but we think we kinda want to keep it out of September. So, that means August, although the last day of the month is Labor Day weekend."

"The problem is we want to do it here," Dave said. "And realistically, while the chance is good we're going to be staying here, there might be a one-in-four chance or so we'll have to head back to New York. And, if we do, it'll have to be before then because we'll have to get the boys into school there."

"Well, have it the first part of the month," Emily suggested. She got up from the table, went over to the wall and took down the calendar. Back at the table she leafed through it. "The first Sunday is the fourth, there's a date that might work pretty well. You'll know for sure about whether you're going to move back to New York by then, won't you?"

"Having to, yes," Shae said. "About six weeks ago I told my bosses I had to know for sure by August first if we're picking up in the fall, or I was quitting. It's not like I have a contract, anyway. By the fourth, we'd be able to make a definitive yes-or-no statement, and if we're moving, we'd have time to do it. Dave, I could do the fourth, I think."

"Works for me," he agreed. "With any kind of luck, the house should be far enough along that we could show it off, although it's doubtful it'd be ready to live in."

"I take it this isn't going to be a big wedding," Emily said.

"Well, no," Dave said. "Mom and Hazel will want to be here, of course, not that it's any kind of a trip for them. Julie's parents said they would like to come, but I don't know if they were just making nice."

"It would give them a chance to see the boys," Shae pointed out. "It's been a while for them. I'm afraid I've got the bigger crowd. My folks, my brother and sister, Eve and John, maybe her folks, I don't know. I'll call her and see what she thinks."

"I'm sure there are several members of the class who would like to come," Emily pointed out. "Dayna and Sandy, Vicky and Jason, Scott and Sonja, Aaron and Amber to start out with. Oh, Dean and his wife, probably."

"You know," Dave said thoughtfully, "It would be nice to ask Rob at work to come. I doubt if he could find Bradford, though. This is deep in flyover country to him. Maybe Michelle and Dick, too, depending on what kind of a response I get to my book proposal the next time I'm in New York."

"If we have the wedding here and show off our new house, it's pretty well going to send the message you're not going to be working in New York again," Shae pointed out.

"Yeah, but by August fourth I ought to be ready to burn that bridge," Dave said. "In fact, I hope I can burn it well before then. But I doubt Rob would come. Like I said, this is flyover country to him. If you showed him one of those outline maps of the United States without the names of the states on it, I doubt like hell he could actually pick Michigan out. Don't get me wrong, Rob is a good guy, but he is about as New York centric as anyone I've ever met. If it happened outside the city, it didn't actually happen, as far as he's concerned."

"You know the word that makes me think of," Shae grinned. "Provincial."

"Yeah, he's about as provincial as they come, but you'd never get him to accept the word," Dave grinned. "I got that way a little myself, I hate to admit, but Emily as much as anyone brought me back into focus last fall."

"I told you back then," Emily grinned. "You may think you're a New Yorker, but we Bradfordites don't let go easily. Do you have any idea where you want to have this wedding? It would be nice to do it at your new house even if it isn't done, but if you have it there, I can't marry you since it's outside the city."

"That knocks that location in the head, as far as I'm concerned," Dave said. "You're stuck with the job, even if we have to get married in the center of the main four corners."

"You know," Shae grinned. "There's an idea."

"I don't think so," Dave shook his head. "But, how about if we rent one of the picnic shelters at Memorial Park? We could have the service there, we'd be covered if it rains, and maybe we could rig a potluck for the reception."

"Ooohhhhh, I liked it till you got to the last part," Shae said. "Then it got a little tacky."

"Well, there must be someone around this town who could cater a picnic," Dave shrugged. "Emily, you probably know someone."

"How about Liz Austin?" Emily grinned. "Maybe she could roast a goat if we can get Sonja to whip up some of her special sauce."

"Oh, Christ," Kevin sneered. "It tastes great, but I get heartburn even thinking about it. Not to mention what burns a day or so later. Let me tell you guys, you let Liz and Sonja get away with it and you'll have a wedding you'll never forget."

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