"So, Portia's job was to insist to my brothers and brothers-in-law that you have a bachelorette party, because you knew that they would seize on the idea, and insist on giving me a bachelor party."

"Yes."

It was sunny, clear and warm already, and it was only nine a.m. She and Vincent had been at the site of their house for two hours, sawing lengths of wood for the plates, joists, studs, headers. Vincent was running the saw, pausing now and then to talk; Catherine was moving lumber from the pile to him, and re-stacking the cut lengths.

"However, you were not having a bachelorette party, but were creating an excuse to spend the night away from the commune."

"Yes."

"You were, in fact, spending the night in Dosal Dayeh, along with Lisa, Mouse and Cullen. Those three didn't need a cover story, because I don't care where they spend their nights."

She laughed. "Correct, again."

"If they had not abducted me, you would simply have left with Portia, and gone with her to Dosal Dayeh, and rendezvoused with your partners. So it served your plans perfectly when my idiot brothers and friends dragged me out, because not only did it take me out of the picture for the night and shift my focus off you and onto myself, it was inevitable that some of us would drink too much, and have to play hung over."

"That was a f-i-i-ne piece of serendipity."

"So the four of you had a good night's sleep, a nice breakfast, and then, in the morning, you had plenty of time to camouflage yourselves, and take your positions."

"Yep."

"And then Birnam wood removed to Dunsinane. You sat there at dinner, and told us what you were going to do, and we still didn't catch on." He shook his head.

"I think our camouflage was too good, we were moving too slowly, and you were too hung over to spot us. Why did you drink so much?"

"I didn't. I had two beers, but they spiked them. I must've passed out. When everyone else finished their evening, they dumped me in the dirt in front of the farm house on their way home. I don't remember the last time I was that sick."

"Oh, Vincent…I feel badly…you bore the brunt of the suffering that day, and you didn't deserve it…"

"That's right. I suffered terrible, terrible hardship…" He sighed, and glanced at her to make sure she was watching his display of pain.

"I just wonder if there's any way I could make it up to you?" She caressed his arm.

"I'll try to think of something…" He bent his head down and slowly, gently, rubbed his cheek to hers. He brushed his lips over hers, then kissed her softly, lingeringly, with open eyes. He pulled away, smiling softly. "…something involving your sweet, naked body…"

He returned his attention to the boards, leaving her to negotiate the wetness in her panties. She shifted position a bit. After a moment, she spoke.

"You know, I've been curious about Colm, Hugh and Alby. What kind of trouble are they in for defecting to the human side?"

"No, nothing." He sawed a few planks. "It's not like we're organized, or anything," he looked at her meaningfully, teasing, "certainly not like you. You had the humans working with clockwork precision…like diamond cutters…" He trailed off into a growl and sawed some more planks. "Anyway, they have enough trouble. They're crazy about those girls, and ready to join. Ha, 'ready' isn't the right word, it's closer to 'anxious'. But the girls are truly conflicted about joining with a Mayopelley versus a human." He sawed some more planks.

"Isn't it just a matter of who the girls are more attracted to?"

"I'm ready for some water. Let's sit down." They walked to an oak tree, sat at its base, and rested their backs on its trunk. Catherine pulled out two bottles of water from the cooler, and handed one to Vincent. He continued, "Those girls grew up on this farm, so they've spent a lifetime listening to men complaining about women being disloyal to their species by joining with a Mayopelley. But at the same time, how could any woman say 'no' to all this?" he asked, gesturing to himself.

Catherine laughed, then shook her head and sighed. "I laugh, but I can't say 'no'. She reached over and laced her fingers through his.

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. "My Queen," he murmured. She pulled his hand in hers to her lips, and returned the kiss. She chuckled. "'Palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.'"

"'O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do. They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.'" He leaned over, and kissed her softly. Pulling away, he rubbed his nose to hers.

"Dinner with my family on Sunday," he said as he leaned back on the oak, and took a long pull of water.

She tried, but couldn't squelch her reaction before he felt it.

He almost spit out his water. "'Again?'" he said with her feelings of astonishment, dread, protest. "'Again?'" he repeated. "I can't read your thoughts, but that was a damn powerful feeling."

She was holding her forehead in her hand. She looked up. "We're over there a lot."

"And?"

"It's just a lot. I like them; I enjoy myself while I'm there. But every week is a lot."

"There's some place you'd rather be? There's something you'd rather be doing?"

"The only place I want to be is with you."

He looked at her for a moment, head cocked to one side. "Okay, well, I'll be at my parents' on Sunday. If you want to be with me, that's where I'll be."

"Look, you don't have to be obnoxious about it. I'm-"

"'Again?' Who's obnoxious?"

"You're going to have to make some allowances, and not jump on me for my spontaneous feelings. I didn't say a word. You're going to have to limit your reactions to my expressed feelings."

"Do you hear yourself? This isn't a courtroom, Counselor, we're not constrained by any kind of bullshit rules of evidence! Oh, yes, we are going to talk about your honest feelings-"

"You want feelings? Here's one: I have the feeling that I'll never know if there's anything I'd rather be doing-"

"—especially your honest feelings about my family, the most important thing in the world to me-"

"—because there's only twenty-four hours in a day, and we're spending them all with your family!"

"-after you. They come after you."

They stopped talking abruptly, and sat staring at each other.

Catherine blinked. "You pushed my buttons. You reached out with your fuzzy little fingers," she smiled at him, and he smiled back, "and you pushed my buttons, and I let you. I let you get to me, and so easily, too." She shook her head. "I really trust you."

"Forgive me, Beloved, but I wanted to get to the heart of the matter, and it's not that you equivocate, although you do-"

She laughed.

"-but rather, if you let the words just fall out, you find out what the real issue is. Sometimes, we really don't know what's at the root of our unhappiness.

"I heard you say 'there are only twenty-four hours in a day'. Perhaps your feeling is that if you spend a minute doing one thing, it's a minute taken away from another thing."

"Exactly."

"Hmmm, perhaps life in New York is like that, fast paced, you have to multi-task? Yes? Life's not like that, here. Here, we have plenty of time."

"I'm still struggling with my time demons…"

He reached out and brushed her hair off her face. He leaned close to her. "Kiss me?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Again? Again? Are you kidding?" She twisted her face away from him.

"I just kissed you, and now here you are again-"

He grabbed a big handful of her hair close to her scalp and turned her head to face him.

"Very well," he murmured, "I'll take what I want." He had meant to kiss her lightly, but her resistance and his hold on her aroused him, and her. He kissed her deeply, passionately, and gave his imagination free reign; it soared on erotic wings. His free hand was less than an inch away from cupping her breast, and he almost didn't have the strength to fight down his desire plus hers, urging him on.

Slowly, still breathing deeply, Vincent pulled back. "Father should be here soon."

She grabbed his wrist and clenched it hard. "Tonight we meet—and we finish this," she snarled through clenched teeth.

He fell back against the oak; he cleared his throat. "Catherine…" She kissed his fingers before releasing his hand.

"Hellooo!" a dozen voices called out from a few hundred feet away. Father, Mary, Kanin, Cullen, Mouse, Jamie, Olivia, William…it looked like practically the whole commune was on their way to the site.

"I thought you said Father. This is almost everyone," Catherine asked.

"Everyone has a part to play. I won't be able to stand up for a few minutes."

Catherine chuckled. "Fear the power I wield over you, puny mortal! Mwa-ha-ha!" she cried in the deep voice of a sorceress persona. She reverted to her normal voice, "We can say your foot fell asleep." She stood and waived.

As they neared, Catherine and Vincent's closest neighbors, whose house stood about fifty feet away, came out and joined the approaching group.

"Vincent, I don't understand. Two men just came out of that house. Our neighbors are two men. I thought you said you get a house when you get married?"

The mention of his neighbors worked like a tonic on Vincent, a debilitating, flaccidity inducing tonic. He stood up next to Catherine.

He sighed. "Yes, you haven't yet met Adam and Steve."

It took a moment for Vincent's meaning to register with Catherine. "What? Gay people? Here? How?"

"The commune recognizes gay marriage. It's the Mayopelley that do not. To their credit, they have adopted four children from the foster care system, and they have had no less than fifty foster children."

"How do you function? Do you have to stay out of their sight?"

"They only foster and adopt children with severe mental and physical handicaps. Some have been on ventilators; none have been able to walk."

The group reached the site. Father spoke.

"Brothers and Sisters, let us join hands. On this day we celebrate, and we are joyful. Our hearts are overflowing because Vincent and Catherine, our beloved Brother and Sister, have chosen to bond in matrimony. Their hearts are bursting with happiness in the love they have found, and we gather to help them provide a home for this new family. Let us all reach out to that great spirit of love that fills us and guides us, and wish all happiness and love live with them all the days of their lives."

Everyone cheered and applauded. "Thank you. We love you," Vincent said simply.

And then everyone went into motion. If the Capture the Flag game was diamond cutting, then building a house was a bee hive. Every house that had been built was the same, and every member of the commune had a particular part of the house they specialized in working on. Father led the work on the walls; his specialty was creating a strong structure. Mary and William led the work on the kitchen; their specialty was creating a warm, loving hearth. Mouse was a genius with electrical wiring, and Randolph was a master plumber. Winslow drove up with a backhoe and dug trenches for the utilities, then the pit for the septic field. Kanin shaped stones for the fireplace and the exterior. Jamie was the HVAC specialist, and she would work closely Kanin and Olivia on the fireplaces. Cullen was more akin to a conductor than a carpenter, and kept the entire job organized.

Catherine was astonished. As the only generalist on the job site, she was pulled in dozens of different directions as people called for help, holding or hammering. Cullen called her and Father over to help frame the turret. "The studs are going to be six inches on center, so there's going to be a lot of hammering," he said.

"Catherine, how are you holding up?" Father asked.

"Great," she said smiling.

They talked as they worked.

"Even if you hadn't, I suppose Vincent would've let me know about any problems," he said. "You know, Catherine, I've never seen him so happy. I hope he makes you as happy as you make him."

"He's the one I've been waiting for."

"He said the same thing about you. Smart, kind, sense of humor, and not intimidated by him."

"Yes, he has very strong opinions."

"Yes, but more so the yelling, the growling-"

Catherine laughed. "Don't forget the throwing things."

Father laughed. "He was truly surprised that none of it bothered you."

"He was, he is, so gentle with me, always, Father. Feeding me, cleaning me, dressing me…and he never stopped reaching out to me. I've never trusted anyone more than I trust him. Of course, I never really trusted anyone until I met him."

"He is a remarkable person. Even when he was a child he had an insight beyond his years."

"You knew Vincent as a child?"

"Oh, my, Catherine, you know next to nothing about most of us."

"Vincent's told me some. I know your actual name is Dr. Jacob Wells, and you started this commune twenty-five years ago. I know that everyone calls you 'Father' because you adopted several children from a small town close to Kansas City after their parents died, and you raised them here."

"Correct, as far as it goes."

"Maybe you could flesh it out a little?"

Father chuckled. "You may have noticed my accent, or as I think of it, my lack of an American accent. I moved from Colchester, in England, to Boston, Massachusetts with my family when I was seven years old. My parents were both teachers. My father was a college math professor. My mother was a grade school teacher. I have one brother, three years older.

"We lived in a nice house in the suburbs, and my brother and I went to fine schools. I met my beautiful wife at university, got married and became a surgeon. We had one child; Devin is my son, you might not have met him yet.

"It was about thirty years ago, I got a call from The Medical Center of Independence asking me if I could possibly perform surgery on some cancer patients for a reduced fee. They said these patients were from Sugar Creek, which is a very small town close to Kansas City, Missouri. These patients had been employees of an oil refinery in Sugar Creek, but the refinery had closed a few years earlier, so they didn't have any health insurance.

"Catherine, there were dozens of them, all with the same type of stomach cancer; it had already killed dozens. There were others, almost a hundred people, who had leukemia. Nothing helped any of them. We carved them up, we shot them full of chemotherapy, we radiated them—we nuked them, but they still died. Terminal, every one of them.

"Sadly, you always find more of these types of cancers in people who live near petroleum refineries. The refining process creates toxic by-products and waste products, namely benzene, which causes leukemia when inhaled, and hydrocarbons, which cause stomach cancer when ingested. The refinery tried to dispose of their wastes by dumping them into sludge pits. They dug huge holes in the ground, and dumped their waste in. Well, the waste products, including the hydrocarbons, seeped down into the water table. Tragically, Sugar Creek got its water supply from ground water. The benzene just rose up into the air, and people breathed it in."

"All that is so illegal."

"It's hard to fight now, it was harder to fight thirty years ago. Plus, Sugar Creek was a very small town, perhaps a thousand residents, while the refinery was a very powerful corporation; it was almost impossible to take a stand against them. It was quite a mess, lots of lawyers, environmental groups, the refinery and the professional associations for the oil industry, and everybody had representation. Everybody except Cullen, Kanin, Olivia, Winslow, Rachel, Randolph, William, Scott, Lisa and Lena. They were children, their parents were dead, they didn't have relatives willing or able to take them in, and they were going into foster care. So my wife and I adopted them and bought this farm, as far away as we could get from any kind of industry. Quite a few of the residents wanted to come, too, they'd had enough of the brutality of civilization, the injustice of the justice system. And a lot of them had grown up on farms, so they were invaluable in getting us established here."

"Where does Vincent fit in?"

He smiled, and reached out and touched her arm. "Vincent was my wife's nephew. Yes, Vincent's father was my wife's brother. That's how we found this farm, Riordan told us about it. By the way, Mary and Sarah are sisters." He laughed at Catherine's surprised face.

He sobered. "Yes, Riordan and my wife were brother and sister. She passed on three years ago."

"I'm so sorry."

"Yes, she had an abdominal aortic aneurysm which we didn't know about, and it ruptured. I'm actually grateful it happened the way it did. We'd had a nice day, nothing special going on, just the usual routine, but it was nice. Dinner was nice, very pleasant. We were sitting in the great room, cuddled up on the couch. Our jazz quartet was playing, and Daria—her name was Daria—she and I danced a little, but mostly we just sat and listened, and all our kids were there. And she just slipped away."

"That sounds like a very gentle, loving way to pass, Father."

"She was a wonderful woman. She made me a better man." Catherine hugged him.

The children were in charge of food and water. At noon, Zach and the children delivered lunch in a battered pickup, laying on the horn as they arrived.

Vincent came out of the structure to see the children setting up long folding tables, spreading out sandwiches, pots of soup and fruit, and Catherine helping with the turret roof, which was being framed on the ground. They picked out some sandwiches and fruit, and joined Cullen sitting in the grass.

"Catherine's been awesome on framing the turret," said Cullen. "She can drive in a nail in three blows."

"She loves those turrets," said Vincent, smiling.

"I do," she agreed.

"How's your arm?" asked Vincent.

"Okay."

"Everyone will probably go to the springs tonight. It would be a good idea for us to go and soak your shoulder," said Vincent.

"You know, we're all going to go; I would love it if the kids could set up a bar-be-que there," said Cullen. "William!" he called, "how about a bar-be-que at the hot springs tonight?"

"Yeah, sure," William agreed. "Zach?"

"Can do!" Zach called out. A cheer went up.

Mary came over. Catherine took her plate from her, while Vincent helped her lower herself down to the ground.

"Catherine, I see you're learning house construction quickly," she said. "We'll probably get the rough-in done tomorrow, then start hanging sheetrock."

Catherine was shaking her head. "This is moving at light speed. I can't believe it."

"It will slow down a little as we do the finish work, because we use smaller crews," said Vincent. "But it should be done in a few weeks." A smile lit his face as he felt her excitement.

"So, Catherine, we need to get started on planning your ceremony and sewing your gown."

"Planning the ceremony?" echoed Brooke from where she sat.

"Planning the ceremony?" echoed Jennifer.

"We're planning the ceremony?" asked Emily.

"We're planning the ceremony?" asked Claire.

"Why wasn't there an announcement?" asked Lisa as she moved with the other women to surround Catherine.

Vincent and Cullen were shoved out of the way as the women converged on Catherine. They were barely able to scoop up their food and drinks and get out of the way.

"Our ceremonies are beautiful, Catherine, you will love it."

"We'll show you pictures of the gowns we've sewn for Olivia and Ruth and Clarisse, and everyone, and you can decide everything, neckline, sleeves, waistline—"

"—and the lace and embroidery, and beading—"

"And we'll talk about your vows—"

"Flowers!"

"Music!"

And then they were all talking at once, giggling, whispering, screaming now and then.

Vincent and the men sat away from them, watching silently, chewing thoughtfully, considering them.

Zach and Geoffrey joined them. They were silent for a moment, then Cullen spoke.

"They are, roughly, three-fourths of our size. They have maybe half our strength. They have no apparent organization. And yet…" he let his sentence trail off.

"They rule you," finished Geoffrey.

"They don't even have to raise their voices; sometimes, they just give you a look…" said Scott.

"…and you obey," finished Zach. "It's pathetic."

"And inevitable," said Cullen.

"We're doomed," said Geoffrey.

"Say, Adam," said Steve, raising his voice loud enough for Vincent to hear. His name actually was Steve.

"Yes, Steve?" said Brian. These were Vincent's neighbors. They'd been sitting fairly close by. They knew how Vincent felt about them: heartfelt, sincere disgust, but masked as much as the sum total of his strength allowed.

"If men, rather than women, organized weddings, what do you think they'd look like?" asked Steve.

"Well," said Brian, standing up and brushing himself off. "First off, what would we wear?"

Steve stood. "What's wrong with what we have on?" he asked, brushing himself off. They were big men, over six feet tall, and strongly built.

"These jeans cost someone over a hundred dollars when they were new. I picked them up for three dollars at the thrift store."

"Whatwhat? What? What?" said Steve.

They both sang the chorus of Macklemore's song, and the rest of the men chuckled; Vincent smiled.

"I wear your granddad's clothes,

I look incredible!

I got this big ass coat

From the thrift store down the road!"

"Yep, not a darn thing wrong with what we have on," asserted Steve.

"How about the flowers?" asked Brian.

Steve bent down and pulled up a dandelion flower and a purple thistle. A long blade of grass was caught up with the thistle. He handed them to Brian. "Fur ewe, hunny. Cuz yur so purdy."

"Aww, hunny…" said Brian in falsetto; he stuck the grass in his mouth and shuffled his feet. The gathered men laughed.

"How about the vows?" asked Cullen. He stood and joined them. "I'll be the preacher." He motioned them to approach him. They linked arms, and stomped three steps up to him. More laughter. "Deerly belov-ed, we air gathered here," and then he went into Foghorn Leghorn, "pay attention, son! I say, I say we are gathered he-ah, to join these two in holy matrimony. If anyone knows of any reason wha-ah these two should not be joined—except for you, Vincent—let him speak now."

"There won't be any PMS," yelled Randolph.

"There won't be any dominant video gamer!" yelled Scott.

"Neither one of them throws temper tantrums!" yelled Mouse.

"They'll have to call Vincent in for that!" yelled Winslow, and even Vincent laughed.

"Alright, alright!" yelled Cullen. He addressed the couple. "Steve—do you?" Cullen asked Steve.

"Ah dew," said Steve.

"Brian—do you?" Cullen asked Brian.

"She duz, tew," answered Steve. Brian batted his eyes and shuffled his feet. The men laughed.

"Ahem," said Mary. The women were all silent, staring at them.

The gathering of men quickly thinned, fading from the edges inward.

"There's a reason why you're still single, Cullen," hissed Claire as she walked by.