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WHILE I QUELLED the fierce bedtime protests from our bah the door, I realized I didn’t have to say anything about date nights anymore

I disabled the ringers on all the phones

Joe took me into his arms

We went to bed I was full of so er in our lives That ere safe That Joe was home

Joe was home

Joe and I held each other for a good long time before kisses turned up the heat and our clothes ca love with Joe wasn’t the hoo, and it wasn’t the desperate passion we’d felt when our story first began

This was both er and resent I told him I loved him, and he told me he loved me so much

“I’ll never let you down again,” he said “I’ll never let you go”

We spent the rest of the night talking like we used to do

We never slept, and we heard Julie calling out for hten

I went into her roorabbed her up over the “fences” and carried her into our bedroom She crawled in between Joe and me, turned her head to look at each of us

“Nice,” she said

“Isn’t it?” I said, grinning at our adorable, blue-eyed, curly-haired child It was better than nice This was all that mattered

Acknowledgments

Our thanks to Captain Richard Conklin, BCI commander, Stamford, Connecticut, PD; to Humphrey Germaniuk, medical examiner and coroner, Trumbull County, Ohio; and to Chuck Hanni, IAAI-certified fire investigator, Youngstown, Ohio, for sharing their wisdorateful to attorneys Philip R Hoffman and Steven Rabinowitz of Pryor, Cashal counsel And many thanks to the home team, John A Duffy, Mary Jordan, Lynn Colorid Taylar, West Coast, USA