heard thumpity-thump-thumping. Just as I'd heard it
the first time our love changed and became more than
it should have been. "If I blink my eyes just once, I'm twelve years old again, and you're fourteen. I can see you as you were then . . . but I can't see me. Chris,
why can't I see me?"
His crooked smile was bittersweet. "Because
I've stolen all the memories of what you were and
stored them in my heart. But you haven't said you
forgive me."
"Would I be here, where I am, if I didn't want to
be?"
"I hope and pray not," and I was held, held so
tightly in his arms my ribs ached.
Outside the snow began to fall again. Inside my
Christopher Doll had turned back the clock, and if
there was no magic for Melodie in this house, and
Lance's departure had stolen romance from Cindy,
there was more than enough magic for me when Chris
was there to cast his spell.
At nine-thirty we sat, all ready to stand when
Trevor hurried to open the door. He stood anxiously
looking at his watch, glancing at us with great pride.
Bart, Chris, Jory and myself in our elegant expensive
formal clothes faced the front windows with their
splendid draperies. The towering Christmas tree in the
foyer sparkled with a thousand tiny white lights. It
had taken five people hours to decorate that tree. As I sat there like some middle-aged Cinderella
who had already found her prince and married him
and was caught in the spell of the happy-ever-after,
which wasn't all that perfect, something pulled my
eyes upward. In the shadows of the rotunda where two