“Eric always did have a hard time having fun,” Lucy agreed, and her voice held a note of wistfulness. “I think he just needs for somebody to show him how.” Then she looked at Devon, and for some reason her eyes seemed to warm, and then to sparkle, like embers kindling.

Devon murmured something ambiguous as she lifted her coffee cup to her lips, but as she looked away from Lucy’s glowing eyes she was seeing another pair very much like them. Eric’s eyes, going wide with surprise as her snowball plunked him in the chest, then suddenly igniting.

She remembered the thrill of excitement that had shot through her then, and her wildly pounding heart as she’d tried to escape inevitable reprisal. How they’d laughed, hurling and ducking snowballs, floundering and wallowing in the snow. She hadn’t felt cold, only exhilarated, carefree. Like a child, she thought-and the realization came to her: We were like them, Eric and I…like Mike and Lucy this morning.

And then he’d come so very close to kissing her. She’d so very much wanted him to. And then…yesterday. And last night.

Tears came from nowhere to sting and blur her eyes, and she plunked down the coffee cup and blinked them away in a panic. What would Mike and Lucy think?

But she heard their voices and laughter, now, moving on down the hallway. She was alone in the kitchen. For that one moment she could safely let her shoulders sag, close her aching eyes and lower her face into the cradle of her hand.

Ironic, she thought, that here in this house, surrounded by so much warmth, so much love, for the first Christmas in memory she should feel the desperate misery of loneliness.

It was like every day-before-Christmas he remembered-the whole household bustling with preparations for that evening and, of course, the Big Day, his sensible mom and dad behaving with uncharacteristic giddiness, and over everything a fog of suspense he could almost touch…smell…taste. Smelling and tasting being the operative words to describe the activity in the kitchen, from which cooking odors wafted through the house all day long in a confusing, ever-changing stew made up of everything from pungent onion and sage, to turkey giblets and cornbread, to pumpkin and cinnamon, chocolate, vanilla and rum.

All that cooking had always been Eric’s cue to make himself scarce, and in that respect, too, this Christmas was like the others in his memory. He managed to spend most of the day in his darkroom putting together his gift for Devon, leaving Emily in his mom’s care-although mostly it was his dad he’d spotted, during occasional forays into the house for food or some forgotten item, walking a fussy baby up and down the hallway. Which was definitely one thing about this Christmas that was different, the other being the presence of a redheaded stranger working side-by-side with his mother in the kitchen.

But while almost everything was the same, it felt different to him in all ways. What he couldn’t decide was whether that had to do with, as he’d suggested to Caitlyn last night, some sort of epiphany he’d experienced “out there” in the big cruel world, or whether he’d just grown up.

One thing that was different was that today his reason for clearing out of the house had less to do with avoiding KP duty, and more to do with avoiding Devon. Developing feelings for the woman was a complication he hadn’t counted on. And while there wasn’t much he could do about that now, at least, he’d thought, if he didn’t have to see her, be around her, maybe he could keep a bad situation from getting worse.

What he hadn’t realized was that he didn’t have to see her or be around her for that to happen. It happened anyway. It happened while he was working on her gift, or while he was looking at the snapshots he’d taken of her that day in the snow, and her red hair arresting as a single cardinal in all that white. It happened when he closed his eyes and memories invaded-sensory memories so keen he could feel her cool wet cheek against his skin, smell her hair, taste her mouth. See the confusion and accusation in her eyes.

It happened. Like an avalanche. A natural disaster. It was going to cause him grave damage and immeasurable pain, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Immeasurable pain. That was the second thing that was different this Christmas. Coloring everything, underlying the excitement and childish anticipation and feverish preparations, was the dull ache of knowing this would be the last time he’d ever be a part of it. While it was true he’d been away for a good many years, that he’d missed a decade’s worth of these Christmases, the knowledge had always been in the back of his mind that he could come home any time he wanted to, that everything would still be here waiting for him-the warmth of this house, his parents, their love for him, all unchanged.

But after tomorrow… Once he’d embarked on the course Caitlyn was mapping for him even now, he could never come back. For the next eighteen years, at least, until Emily was legally an adult, they would be fugitives. If he saw his parents or any of his family again it would be brief visits in another place…another land.

That knowledge clutched at his insides like a cold hand. His heart, his throat, every part of him ached. But what could he do? Barring a miracle, it was the only choice he had.

When Devon’s gift was finished and wrapped, Eric went down to the barn where he spent the rest of the day shoveling out stalls. He found no particular comfort in the solitude; it simply hurt too much to be around the people he loved.

Lucy was worried. Not that she’d ever admit it, but she was beginning to be afraid something had gone drastically wrong with her plan. And whatever it was, it had happened literally overnight. Yesterday, when she and Mike had gotten back from town to find Eric and Devon just leaving the bunkhouse and the tension in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife, she’d been certain everything was proceeding nicely, just as she’d intended. Now this morning, the two were barely speaking to one another, Devon drooping around like somebody with a bad case of Holiday Blues, and Eric looking so grim and purposeful, spending all afternoon in the barn…

Inwardly, Lucy shivered. It was Eric who worried her most. The way he was acting reminded her of that summer, the summer he’d graduated from high school, when he’d announced out of the clear blue sky that he wasn’t going to Iowa State in the fall. He’d left not long after that, and they’d barely seen him since.

“I don’t think I can stand it if he leaves again,” Lucy told Mike on the way down to begin the evening chores. “We only just got him back, after so long… And then there’s Emily. I just hate to think of losing her, too.”

“I’m afraid we won’t have much to say about that,” Mike said in the annoying way he had of saying out loud what Lucy already knew and didn’t want to admit. “And the way it looks, I don’t think Eric will, either.”

Lucy sighed. “I wish I could hate Devon for trying to take Emily away from us-” she ignored Mike’s smile at her use of the pronoun “-but you can hardly blame her for wanting to help her parents. She’s a lovely girl, really-pretty and smart, and I think she’s got a good heart, too. Oh, I know she’s ‘city’ to the bone, but I don’t think she’s near as sophisticated as she pretends to be.” She turned her head to look at her husband, and the cold December wind whipped a strand of her hair across her face. She fingered it back behind her ear and anchored it under the edge of her ski cap. “Mike, I know she likes Eric-I’ve seen the way she looks at him when she thinks no one’s watching. And he likes her, too, in spite of everything. I know he does-a mother can tell. It would solve everything if they’d just…”

Mike looked down at her, then away. “What?” she demanded; Lucy knew that look.

He shook his head, grinning. “Nothing.” The smile faded. “Except that it might not be that simple, Luce.”

“Why not?” As far as Lucy was concerned, it certainly should be. That was the whole crux of her plan, actually; when two people were perfect for one another and didn’t know it yet, all they ought to need was a push in the right direction.

Mike’s head was up, his face, so familiar and beautiful to her, golden in the last light of the rapidly sinking sun. “I just think there may be more to Devon than there appears to be. I told you that first day she reminded me of Chris, remember?” He paused to take a deep breath. “Well, she still does. More and more, in fact.”

“Chris… Chris? Oh, Mike. You mean, you think-” She broke it off with a shake of her head, and walked a few steps in silence, thinking about all that might mean. Then she said, “Well. And look what happened to Chris-she met my brother, and he saved her life. Maybe Eric is meant to be Devon’s-”

“Lucy,” Mike said in a warning tone, “that’s not for you to decide. If it’s meant to happen, it will. Don’t you try and manipulate Providence.”

“That sounds like something Gwen would say.”

“Yes, and think how often she was right.”

Lucy tried her best to follow her husband’s advice and stay out of Providence’s way. Since Christmas Eve’s activities were governed pretty much by tradition, that wasn’t as hard as she’d thought it would be.

Potato soup for Christmas Eve supper had been the tradition in Lucy’s family as far back as she could remember, though she couldn’t have said whether it had actually begun then, during her childhood, with her own parents, or whether it went back farther than that. Gwen had said she thought it might have had something to do with the Great Depression, which certainly made sense to Lucy. She thought it a sensible tradition, and saw no reason to change it. The wholesome, everyday meal made a nice change from rich holiday food, and a simple preamble-rather like taking a deep breath-before the huge feast they’d all be consuming tomorrow.