Joe tried to draw me to lean against him but I resisted, and settled for grabbing his hand and holding it tightly. He gave me a slow smile.

"Is Helena a little nervous?"

"Of course I am! How can you not be?"

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "They're going to love me. Look at me. I'm every parent's dream son-in-law. I go to college, I work out, and I've totally thawed out their ice queen daughter. They're probably going to thank me for saving you from a lonely old age surrounded by cats and talking crazy. Hey, ow!"

I didn't stop prodding him hard in the side until he let go of my other hand and, laughing, trapped both of my arms between his hands.

"You did not thaw me out," I said, trying not to smile. "I'm still an ice queen. And I'll freeze your ass if you don't behave."

"Hmm," he said, considering. "Does that involve any more of what we did last night?"

I felt my face growing warm, a mixture of embarrassment that the cab driver could hear him and the very hot memory of a long night with little sleep. For a moment I was back in my bed, with Joe over me and inside me, his mouth and mine pressed together. It was so vivid that I could feel my abdomen and groin all tightening in anticipation.

"No, it does not," I said, but I grabbed another one of those kisses from him. The hot, soft, wet kind that is one of the sexiest things alive.

"OK," he said, afterwards, with a slight sigh. "I'll stop teasing you, because if I arrive at your parents' house with a hard-on, I don't think the Joe-Moe charm will work."

I gave him a triumphant smile, and then tried to think about things other than nerves or last night.

"Were you nervous yesterday?" I asked, after a moment of silence. "Before you took me to see your mom?"

"Not really," he said, considering. "I was worried you'd find it hard. Not because you wouldn't want to be there but... I know I get a little emotional sometimes at how different it is there from an ideal Christmas. You know?"

I did know. It had made me sad, even though I'd been totally happy at being trusted enough to be let into that final part of his life.

Joe had prepared me for the trip, but it had shaken me, driving West toward Albany and then diverging to a small, roadside town that probably only existed because of the hospital. The snow there had been piles of black-stained sludge on the sidewalk, and even the scenery was flat and depressing for a few square miles.

The hospital was gated, and I guessed that its occupants would be sitting out in the garden come summer. In winter, it was a bare, lifeless forecourt with a few spindly trees not doing enough to hide the utilitarian, 1970s hospital building behind.

Inside, it had smelled of bleach and old carpets. The nurse who showed us up to Mrs. Moritz's room was at least a little cheering. His chubby face smiled easily, and he exchanged jokes with a few residents on the way past.

I'd got to the doorway with Joe, and suddenly been scared to go in. I'd been afraid of the reality of Joe's Mom, who had been beaten into a drug-dependency, and gradually descended into psychosis. I was afraid of how this must hurt him.

But when he drew me inside, gently, I felt nothing but a rush of sympathy for the frail, once-blonde woman who was gazing at a small hanging Christmas star that was twisting left and right in front of the window, sending fractured gold light across the walls.

"Mom," Joe had said gently, and gone to kiss her. He had waited while she slowly dragged her eyes away from the star, and then focused on him. "I want you to meet someone."

We'd had our own Christmas there, together. And it had been hard, and heart-breaking, but it had also at times been wonderful, like the moment when Joe's Mom had finally picked the loose wrapping off the earrings her son had bought her, and smiled at them in delight.

So I knew what he meant. It hadn't been ideal; but it had been important.

I nodded, and leaned in to kiss his neck. "I know."

"I didn't worry what she'd think of you," he said. "I knew she'd love you. She always had a talent for seeing through defences. For seeing the good in people."

"Hey, I wasn't defensive," I said, lightly.

"No," he agreed, with a warm grin. "You weren't. You were perfect."

"Well I'm sure you'll be perfect too," I said.

"Good. So you can stop death-gripping my hand any time you like."

I felt almost ashamed of the size and beauty of the house Fernando had bought my Mom. They'd strung up some tiny white lights across the trees on the drive, and there was a huge, all-natural wreath on the front door. There was no snow here, but there was growing twilight, and a crescent moon hanging over the house, and a single star visible in the dark blue sky. It looked idyllic. Like the Christmas Eve you always want as a kid but never seem to quite get.

The cab-driver helped us out with our cases, and then was gone into the night, leaving it strangely quiet. I guessed my Mom and Fernando were in the big kitchen at the back and hadn't heard us arrive.

OK. You're going to introduce him to them, I thought. It's a really good thing.

And yet, somehow, the familiar panic seized me and I couldn't bring myself to rap on the door.

"What's the matter?" Joe asked, looping his arms loosely around me. He peered at my face. "Are you having a relapse?"

"No, no," I said, even though he was almost right. "I'm just... it's such a big thing. I've never got to this part of things. It always... I just... I know you love me. But what if you fall in love with someone else? What if you meet someone you love more? I know you didn't want the red-head but there are other people."

"And what if you do?" he countered, gently. "I've thought about that, too. But I think it's worth the risk."

"But it's not the same," I argued.

"Yes, it is," he said, firmly, but with a grin. "It's exactly the same. That's the wonderful thing about it. You're taking just the same risk I am, and you're doing it because that's what people do when they're in love. Because being afraid of losing it is one of the things that makes it mean something."

For a long time I looked back at him, the panic gradually easing at his steady, still-dangerous gaze.

"I hate it when you're right," I said, and prodded him in the stomach again.

"I know."

I wanted to kiss him, for everything. For making the fear go away; for still being here now, when I thought I'd lost him; for just being him.

But as I leaned up towards him, there was the strangest feeling in the air. It was like something profound had changed a long way away, and we'd felt the shockwaves here.

I was immediately breathless, and my heart was hammering in my chest.

"Did you feel that?" I asked.

I could see from his eyes that he had. They were scanning the horizon, looking for something.

"Yeah," he said, slowly. "It's... it felt like how it does when you do your thing, or I do mine. Only different from either."

And for the first time I thought of the possibility that there were other people like us; other people who did strange things to the people around them, and affected the world in unnatural ways.

"There's someone like us out there," I said, feeling strangely jealous. Instinctively I disliked the idea of there being anyone else, of it not just being us.

"There is," he agreed, and then he focused on me again, and he smiled. "But that's a problem for another day. Right now, we have a turkey and what I'm hoping is a shit-ton of potatoes to vanquish."

"You'd better believe it," I said, and despite the nagging worry, I knew he was right all over again. Right now, this was all that mattered. I grabbed his hand, took a breath, and knocked loudly on the door.

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