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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