Bill rearmed the security system and then trudged into the living room. His limbs felt heavy and he had no idea how he was supposed to make it up the fucking stairs, but at least he was finally out of the mother-humping hospital.

The first thing he did upon wandering through the front room was nearly put his boot through a Christmas gift. Goddamn! They were spread out into the middle of the fucking floor! What in hell had those two done? He nudged it out of his way, nearly tripped over a dog in the process, and landed on the couch. Fuck all, he decided he would sleep there.

Bill picked up the stray blanket and wrapped it around himself, then stretched out on the couch. The tree... a fucking monster... he noted, was pretty even in the dim light. Of course, he wasn’t particularly used to Christmas anymore, but it was something he felt sure he could remember how to like.

His hand went, unconsciously, to the polished key that hung around his neck. He didn’t even notice the thing anymore but he had raised holy hell until the hospital had returned it to him.

With the little key between his finger, a symbol of so much that had been unlocked within him in the last year or so, he managed to fall into a fitful sleep.

A screech from hell awakened Bill. He was curled into an awkward position around Hopper and Woodle. He shifted his head slightly and found himself nose to nose with massive Tank. The cat planted a paw in the center of his forehead and yawned. Bill looked to the source of the screech.

Nuala was well into the monotonous bounce. Apparently there was so much booty she didn’t know where to begin. She was making Bill queasy, standing and vibrating as she was. Mick was prowling around the edge of the debris field, looking for something with his name on it. The dogs, except for Hewey, who slept with Sam, were following the boy.

The deep voice stopped both youngsters in their tracks for a moment. They turned to find its source. Nuala cut loose with another squeal.

Bill fought down an image of Brian Keith being mobbed.

Nuala stopped the incessant movement. She and Mick approached the couch slowly.

Cut to the chase.

You can just get your fuckin’ ass down here with me, Gaerity.

Mick turned and ran. Halfway up the steps he stumbled, and did the rest of the climb scrambling on all fours. Nuala remained with Uncle Bill. When she next spoke, it was softly and he heard a note of compassion in the young voice that sounded like Jade, like the Punk, like... well... like Beth, too, when any one of them were patching him up. What was this... a female thing? Were they programmed or something?

It was. He’d seen it reflected back at him in the taxi window, but he’d refused to believe it.

Nuala reached out, that unnerving compassion making her eyes look old and wise far beyond her years. She pulled a strand of the long hair forward, over his eyes. It was soft... and white, with a silvery shine. The child pushed the hair back out of his face.

Bill was touched by the child, strangely moved. Was that all it took to satisfy her? Did he occupy that kind of a place in her world? Had he, Bill Strannix, who had avoided rugmonkeys like the plague... managed to become important to this one? What the sweet fuck was happening here? And why didn’t he want to stop it?

Elmore appeared at the top of the stairs. He wore a pair of soft flannel pants—the Southern boy hated the cold—and an oversized Green Bay Packers sweatshirt. He was barefoot, and he had a Santa hat jammed haphazardly down over his thick hair. Nuala left Bill, went for Elmore like a bullet. He gave her a sleepy grin and hoisted her effortlessly to his hip.

Nuala pointed. She was bouncing again.

Bill groaned, lay back against the arm of the couch and closed his eyes.

Elmore stopped her gently.

Elmore passed the couch and reached down to touch Bill’s shoulder. Privately, Elmore was shocked by what he saw... the white hair, the drawn face... and the older man was so terribly thin and wasted. He would need help, time to regain his former strength and vigor. Elmore knew he could be invaluable once Bill was well enough to hit the weight room.

I had maintained a measure of control when I saw him on the couch. He’d warned me he had no intention of staying in the ‘goddamn hospital’ for Christmas. I’d told him it was up to his doctor, and Dr. Kimble wasn’t really recommending even a compassionate discharge on pass, not yet anyway, but I wasn’t surprised to see Bill had taken the matter into his own hands.

Elmore was wearing the Santa hat for a reason, and as soon as the adults had gathered in the front room, he commenced passing out packages.

But she was plainly pleased to see he liked it. Ryan took his new toy and began filming the children. At one point he was down on the floor, crawling between Mick and Nuala. Gus stuck his nose in the lens and began licking it.

My gift to Bill rested in his lap... a part of it, anyway. Jade had set aside the packages Elmore handed her, while Sam regarded the small packages Mick and Nuala had brought him with vague alarm. I had nothing from Bill, he’d had no time. I didn’t care.

Elmore opened his gift, which had come in several boxes. Jade and I were tired of trying to do business on the household computer only to find Elmore trying to run the Daytona 500 on it. I had purchased him the biggest Hewlett Packard I could lay my hands on—not that he would think of all the bells and whistles, but Elmore was no slouch. The CD burner would get his attention.

Ryan knew better than to give Jade gold or lingerie. Her gifts were a stereo system with CD burner for their room and a pile of blank CDs. Also... flannel pants and thick socks.

Nuala was bouncing and Mick was running in circles. It was time to open the little gifties they had made in preschool.

Deb: Now, Bill... whatever it is, it’s just what you wanted.

Bill: Shit on a stick.

Deb: Just what you wanted.

Ryan went first. Nuala’s gift was... well... she said it was a change cup, but it looked like it had given up the fight in the kiln. Ryan kissed his daughter gently, fished change out of his jeans to deposit in the little clay cup immediately, and set it alongside the video camera.

Mick had made him a gecko. The little beaded thing was green and red.

Nuala had painted a picture for her mother, the artist. She claimed it was of the llamas. Jade swore up and down she had known it all along. The painting had been matted for wrapping, and Jade instantly carried it upstairs. She would have it framed for hanging.

Mick made his mother a gecko. It was red and green.

For her beloved Uncle Elmore, Nuala had returned to clay as her medium of choice. This little cup was intended to hold keys, since Uncle Elmore had so many of them. Lithely, Elmore unfolded himself from his place on the floor and took the cup upstairs. Nuala followed him, so she could see where he put it.

Mick’s gecko was blue and yellow.

Sam had also received a garishly glazed change cup. It was pretty easy to see what order they’d been made in—Sam’s looked ten times better than Ryan’s. Nuala was, apparently, getting the hang of it. Sam touched the child’s nose, gravely informed her that her gift would occupy a place of honor on his desk, beside the Frederick Remington statue.

By now, the opening of Mick’s gifts was taking a comic turn. The gecko was yellow and blue.

Nuala had gone out on a limb for me—potholders. I knew exactly how they were made, I’d done them myself once. I would never use them, my hands would fry off, but Nuala scampered along behind me to watch me hang them in the kitchen.

I rather liked my gecko. He was red with black eyes.

Nuala had finished up on a weaving kick. Bill received a blaze orange baggie looking thing on a split ring, for his keys. He had paid close attention to the rest of us, to his credit. He fished out his keys and immediately hung the new ring from them.

As if he had ever lost them before. I was very proud of him, actually. He’d done beautifully, so far. He went to work on Mick’s package.

He winked broadly at Mick as he revealed his...

My heart nearly stopped, but Bill didn’t seem to notice any unusual emphasis. He went on to my gift.

His voice faded. He looked from the keys to the little beaded snake, from the snake to the keys. He stood up.

Bill hobbled to the garage, with Elmore, Sam, and Ryan making up what the Europeans so charmingly called a ‘crocodile.’ I snatched up the gift we had for Sam and followed them.

Bill had found the Viper near the back of the garage, alongside something else that Jade and I had carefully covered with a tarp. Bill ran his hands lovingly over the paintwork, following the voluptuous curves of the sheetmetal. The other three devoured the vehicle with that lascivious stare men saved for either a stunning woman they desperately wanted to make love to, or a stunning piece of machinery they desperately wanted to play with. I leaned against the Excursion and watched them.

Elmore’s wide, foolish grin answered that question.

Women and machinery, lord, lord, lord.

Bill stopped and tore his gaze away from the car.

I didn’t bother to tell him that I’d been playing the stock market with what I made at the Corner. Bill didn’t like uncertainties—it was why most of his money had been in Eli Lilly and IBM, and why mine was in Microsoft. I’d sold some stock and made enough profit to buy the gift.

He wanted to take the car out. That was the deal. I shrugged and grinned at him, agreeing.

What I wanted to do was give Sam his gift—I’d been planning this one.

Once, back during the summer when grief was still raw in Sam’s eyes instead of the constant glimmer it now was, he had felt a need to talk. Jade and I had listened for hours as he reminisced about everything but what was killing him from the inside. He had given a long stretch to his first car—he hadn’t had the wherewithal to own one until after he’d finished college and been sent home from Vietnam and that had been in 1970. The car of choice? A candy-apple red 1964 ½ Mustang. He’d driven it until 1973, when circumstances had forced him to sell it, and it had broken his heart. He’d never had the time or resources to find another.

I had. The car itself had been decaying behind some outbuildings on a local farm and the owner, a man about as interested in the gently rusting hulk behind his machine shed as he was in Quantum Physics, was happy to take a hundred dollars for it. I’d had the car flatbedded over to the home of one of Number One’s pals.

Shaggy—for heaven’s sake, it was what he called himself—assured me that he and the Shit Brigade could do the job. They had—beautifully. It was what waited under the tarp.

Bill opened the garage door, eased himself inside the car and began to back it out.

Sam tore envious eyes off the Viper. I handed him a very small package. When he opened it, the note within said ‘look under the tarp.’

I knew it was already, but this went beyond simple appreciation. Sam wore the look of a man in love, a man who’d found his true love after years of searching. Women and machinery, indeed.

Sam climbed into the early Iacocca-machine reverently. Before he could start it and listen to the rumble of the little eight-cylinder, Jade poked her head into the garage. She had stayed inside to keep the kids from riding their new, slightly taller bicycles around the house or something.

Jade was grinning, so it must have been an amicable order. Dr. Kimble was nobody I’d mess with.

The roar of the Mustang drowned out his instructions to Kimble. Sam probably hadn’t heard the name, thank god. In any event, Sam pulled out alongside the Viper. Both cars glowed richly in the thin winter sunlight. They shut the engines down.

Sam smiled, lost in memories, somewhere in a past that wasn’t driven, wasn’t lonely.

I hurried back toward Jade. Bill has as much respect for doctors as he did for the hospitals they wanted to put him in, and no time for either.

How could I not? I nearly tripped over it.

There was a low chuckle in my ear.

Kimble cut me off.

Obviously, Dr. Richard Kimble had embraced the Hippocratic Oath, as well as other oaths.

The good doctor let the statement fade. He didn’t need to finish it. I was ready to tell the world how bullheaded William E. could be when he decided on it.

I rang off and turned to Jade.

We stopped, the both of us, at the sound of engines. The Viper and the Mustang were both disappearing up the driveway.

I closed the door and turned my attention to the shiny bicycles parked in the center of the kitchen. Jade and I bundled the two little one up and set them to trundling around on the patio, like colorful beetles. We filled a couple of trash bags with the decimated remains of wrapping paper and then went to attend to dinner.

Ryan found his video camera again. He spent a fair time on the patio filming his children. Occasionally he would poke his lens into our paths. Jade chased him outside once with a dripping dishrag, threatening to wrap it around his head. Then she had to yank the kitchen curtains closed when we saw he’d begun to film her through the window.

It was a much happier day than Thanksgiving had been. I hadn’t been able to put my heart into that one at all. I’d managed to hold it together right until Sam and Elmore settled in to watch Dallas and Miami. When the yelling commenced, I had to leave, I couldn’t listen to them. After wandering through the Dodge lot and finding Bill’s Viper, I went to the Corner with a plate of food for Cori and spent the remainder of the day there with her, playing darts.

Sam had finally come to get me at almost two. I had spent a good share of the evening on the telephone, calling Bully, calling Two-Face—that was a trip; ‘Neither of us has seen him.’ Oh, shut the fuck up, Harv. I’d even gone out on a limb and called the Bastard in Paris. He said he would keep an eye out, he had heard some things, and promised to call if he learned anything definite.

This was... incredibly different. Everything felt better, felt right.

Of the two who’d gone out to play with their toys, Sam was the first back, out of respect for his horse. He parked the car carefully, reapplying the tarp, and came in to see Jade and me. One after the other the two of us were enveloped in one of Gerard’s bear-hugs. I couldn’t remember ever getting such a one.

Sam was good about hugging those ladies he cared about. I was almost as familiar with the feel of his shoulder under my cheek as I was Strannix’, that wasn’t it at all, but Sam always gave the encouraging squeeze or the brotherly cuddle, but never this... total surround. And he felt so happy. After he had mashed us both individually, he tucked Jade under one arm and me under the other and just held us there.

Jade handled this one. I was too busy grinning at the success of the little plot we had hatched.

I provided an appropriate gesture.

The phone rang and I reached to pick it up.

Sam and Jade went silent while Ryan went to harass some other hapless member of the family we had constructed.

Only Sam and Jade.

Jade grinned evilly and patted my belly. I could read her mind. Plead your condition.

I gently depressed the disconnect, trying not to break up. Sam headed for the door, wearing a genial smile. Ryan, sensing something was up, fell in behind him.

Jade and I elected to stay in side. Sam, a picture in the blue topcoat, sauntered slowly to the Viper. Ryan paced alongside, palm-sized camera plastered to his eye.

Elmore chose that moment to back the Hummer out of the garage on some unexplained errand or another. He was wearing, I noticed, the leather Vikings hat Jade had tucked inside her gift of a down comforter. It was backwards. He stopped the big truck beside the sportscar.

Jade and I couldn’t hear a blessed thing, but Bill’s expression was eloquent. Sam appeared vaguely amused, Elmore seemed close to bursting out. Ryan jockeyed for camera angles like any clumsy film student. Mick and Nuala came through the house and pushed out onto the covered porch.

It was all we caught before the heavy oak door latched behind the youngsters.

Sam sent Elmore on his way with a slap on the shoulder. Bill remained in the car, seething. Sam milked this moment of Bill’s helplessness for everything it was worth. Just when I thought Bill would cross the line from irritated as hell to angry, when I was sure the joke had gone too far and the day would be jeopardized, Sam extended a big hand. Bill caught it and Sam stood firmly while Bill used him to pull himself out of his car.

Bill stalked past us into the living room, sitting heavily in his recliner and turning up the massage. I hurried to the kitchen, to pour a mug of the impossibly strong black coffee he had taught me to make. Jade stopped me, and added a healthy shot of Ryan’s Bushmills to the mug.

Funny, I rarely called him Billy anymore.

He favored me with one black eye that wanted to blaze but couldn’t manage much more than a glitter.

Sam came into the room and lowered himself onto the couch.

Bill’s fingers tightened on the mug. He probably didn’t want anyone trying to make him feel better. I toughed the soft, disturbingly white hair. I didn’t give a rip how angry he got about anything just then. He was there to be angry. Before he could shake me off, I headed for the kitchen.

Ryan was sitting quietly, camera decommissioned, snapping green beans. Jade was making that quintessential holiday casserole—green beans with crunchy onions—and she was trying it with fresh green beans. She’d put the frustrated director to work, but he seemed happy enough to do it.

The words, in that reassuring voice, with the gently lilt, soothed me greatly. I knew Bill had every intention of recovering fully, but to hear it from Ryan made it seem even more real. Ryan knew Bill, knew things.

Mick tumbled into the kitchen, Nuala hot on his heels.

Ryan rose wordlessly, and allowed the children to pull him outside. I settled down with the beans, and we waited for Ryan to return and refuse to talk about a cat that had disappeared before he reached it, or a cat he’d had to put out of it’s misery. Instead, he returned with a tiny animal attached to his chest. He was grinning broadly, almost helplessly, and the two youngsters seemed very pleased with themselves.

He extended the little beast towards Jade and she turned, smothering a look that went from annoyance to unalloyed joy.

It had to be the little cat we’d found for her at the Lubbock Humane Society. Her pads were raw, the fur ragged... but there she was. She settled happily into Jade’s arms and a rusty purr reached my ears.

I glanced... Nuala was talking to the cats the way her mother did, and apparently she had spotted Jade’s special pal. Sure enough, there was Bear, trotting across the floor, yellow eyes locked on the interloper. Bear leaped into the chair and onto the table, stopping to poke curious nose leather into the bowl holding the beans.

I grabbed the hairy little monster away from the food. This was what the freak had wanted. She used my arm as a launchpad to Ryan’s shoulder and she balanced there, growling jealously and puffing up her extra-long tail, then using it to lash Ryan across the head. He tried to peel her off but she dug in her claws and began to howl.

Munchie, from her spot in Jade’s arms, gave Bear a bored look. She watched for a time and then reached across, nearly overbalancing in the process, to slap Bear once across the head. Either she was too tired or disinterested for a follow-up. Jade raised a hand to the writhing ball of hate on Ryan’s shoulder and gently stroked the animal.

Before the younger cat could step to her shoulder and plague Munchie further, Jade turned to take her upstairs. With a small litterbox, food and water, and a warm corner of the bathroom, Munchie would have a place to rest and acclimate.

Jade’s tolerance level increased noticeably and she was the soul of patience once she had bedded Munchie down. Ryan was even able to film the mashing of the taties with minimal interference.