We were cleaning up the kitchen when the boys came home and they headed straight in for some chocolate milk. I realized we wouldn't have enough to last the weekend so I added it to my mental shopping list.

"How was the movie?" Darry asked.

"Good," Ponyboy said. He was grinning at us like the Chesher Cat. "How was your evening?"

Soda popped him lightly on the back of his head. "None of your business," he said as he walked toward the living room. As he passed me, he dipped his head and whispered in my ear. "You're glowing, Mags."

I felt myself blush from my neck to the roots of my hair and I quickly turned back to the sink, hoping no one noticed. If they did, they didn't say anything.

And so my life started that night, and it was rarely boring afterward. I didn't move into Darry's room right away, but by the end of the summer, the spare room was the spare room again. We had good times and bad times, like any family, but we'd promised for better or for worse, and we kept that promise.

The worst night of all of our lives was the night Soda announced he'd been drafted. Everyone was there, us, Steve, Two-Bit, Evie, and Cathy, Ponyboy's girlfriend, and we stared at him in horror. I was terrified for him; Soda's good in a fight, but he was more of a lover than a fighter. I'd thought Darry was going to throw up and Ponyboy broke down and bawled.

But I should have known that the boys wouldn't let him go alone, and the next morning, Steve and Two-Bit went downtown and enlisted.

As it turned out, Soda's medical examination revealed a heart murmur none of us had known he had and he was sent back to us before he ever saw basic training, let alone combat. We were so thankful that he was home, but he struggled for a long time with the fact that his friends were fighting because of him without him.

Steve's dad couldn't take it and by the time Steve was back, his dad was in a constant drunken stupor. Steve didn't seem to mind. He somehow managed to be the same old Steve and be very different at the same time. Two-Bit had said he'd always be fine as long as he had something to focus his anger on, and it had been pretty easy for him to shift his focus from the socs to the gooks.

But somehow, Steve had managed to leave most of his anger in Vietnam and aside from being jumpy and a little quieter and calmer, he was still Steve.

He even fought tooth and nail against all the bureaucracy and red tape when he found out his anger wasn't all he'd left over there. Three years after they'd been home, Steve found out he had a son and the boy's mother had been killed. Steve managed to get Lanh over here, and Evie surprised everyone by marrying him and having three more. Steve ended up saving so much of his war earnings that before too long, he was able to buy the DX and pay punks that reminded him of himself to work there.

Two-bit was different, but it wasn't all bad. When we'd heard he'd taken a to the side, we were just happy he was alive. He still drank, but he actually got an honest job. He tended bar at a slightly seedy place, lived in the apartment above it, and was famous for stomping out trouble before it started. He'd always had a tough reputation, but now he had something else. Respect.

It took him a long time to settle down, he continued to chase blondes well into his forties before he met Linda, a fiery woman who could keep up with his wit and his energy, and wasn't afraid of his four child-support payments.

Soda was lost for a while, even after the boys came home. Before too long though, he found something that calmed him down and fortunately it wasn't cigarettes, beer, or worse. Soda started hanging around rodeos more than ever and got a job taking care of the horses before he started riding again himself. Like the old days, he spent as much time as he could with the horses and just like old times, Steve spent as much time as a family man could out there with him. He was really good and it wasn't long before Soda was beating local and then state records.

He was almost thirty before he met Whitney, but they married after their third date just because she could out dance him. They ended up with three kids, Brooklyn Dallas, Shaynne Michael, and Curtis Curtis. I begged him not to name is son Curtis Curtis Curtis, but he just grinned and said a funny name made would make his son strong.

Ponyboy graduated with honors and had managed to keep his nose fairly clean, even when Angela Shepherd had the hots for him. He had his choice of several colleges, but chose to stay pretty close by going to Oklahoma State. He got the contracts for his first book, the essay he'd written his freshman year, on the day he graduated and we knew that even if he stayed in Tulsa for the rest of his life, he would go places.

He'd dated Cathy, a sweet girl from a huge family, through most of his junior and senior years, but they'd called it quits when he went off to college and the winter break of his sophomore year, he brought Emily home. She was sweet with dark hair and dark eyes, and was really quiet. I wondered if he liked her just because she reminded him of Johnny, but I realized it was more than a passing fancy when they headed to the Grand Canyon together over the summer. After that, they never split up. They traded going to each other's homes for each school break, and when we met her parents at their graduation, no one was surprised when there was a ring on her finger the next day.

Fortunately, they settled in Tulsa, and he started teaching at the middle school. His next book was published right after the wedding. Emily had no trouble getting a job as a part-time nurse and by the time Johnna Elizabeth and Sebastian Patrick came along, they'd carved out a nice little life for themselves.

And us? Well, when Ponyboy headed off to college, we all convinced Darry to apply too. Sure, it was a little late, but no one worried about that sort of thing by then. He said he'd go if I did. He graduated from the local community college with a degree in business management, and I managed to get through a few secretarial classes even though our second child was causing terrible bouts of morning sickness.

Darry had never fancied the idea of just sitting behind a desk so he didn't try. He easily got a job as a production supervisor at a local factory, making pretty good money and eventually, the company helped Darry get his masters degree. It took seven years, but once he finished, he was able to get promoted to operations manager. When asked why he was so good at telling people what to do, he'd just smile and say, "I've had a lot of practice."

I know it wouldn't work out for all couples, but I managed to get a secretary position in the office at the factory and even though our hours were different, we got to have lunch together most days.

We ended up with a three kids, all boys. Darrel Shaynne the third, Cooper Andrew, and Hunter Garrison. They were a good mix between their dad and their uncles; strong and dreamy, practical and loving, and smart and reckless. They adored their uncles, even the adopted ones, and I knew that we'd all given our kids a better shot than we'd had.

Looking back though, I realized that our parents had tried to give us a better shot than they'd had. All four had come from really humble beginnings.

When Darrel was born, we made a shaky truce with my dad. Mom was still zoned out most of the time and I have to admit that I didn't trust my dad, so the kids were never alone with them; but they came over for birthdays, holidays, and the occasional Sunday afternoon.

We stayed in the house, mostly because leaving would have felt like saying goodbye to the memories and the ghosts left behind. We poured quite a bit of money into it over the years but we agreed it was worth it. The neighborhood slowly declined, but it was home.

Even after we had kids and Ponyboy moved out, we were never sure who was going to be on the couch when we woke up or who would stay for supper. Eventually, our house became a right of passage- once our kids were teens, someone in the neighborhood decided that kids couldn't hang out at "The Curtis' place" until they were twelve. Even after Hunter went off to college and grunge was a thing, the younger siblings of his friends were regulars. Someone in the neighborhood once said that if we ever moved out, whoever moved in would have to understand that no matter how long they were there, it'd still be "The Curtis' place."

People used to be surprised to learn that Darry never "made it out of the east side," and I know their comments bugged him. I would just remind him of how much of a difference he's made by being here and how proud I am of him. They affectionately call him the dad of the whole neighborhood- he'd even gone to the police station a few times to pick up a neighborhood kid or two. He's influenced so many lives over the years, and he's really proud of the legacy that he built so that eventually, those remarks didn't matter as much.

Somehow, all five couples managed to stay married, even Two-Bit, once he settled down. Even when there were more kids in our boys classes from broken homes than there weren't, we stuck it out. Johnna commented on that one Thanksgiving.

"Almost all of my friends have at least one broken home in their family," she said as she looked around with hauntingly familiar black eyes. "We're really lucky."

No one had argued. "It's because of your grandparents," Evie had told her. "They taught us that you don't quit when it gets hard. They didn't have much," she said as she took Steve's hand, "but they had each other and that was enough."

And it was. Things weren't perfect, we'd lost too much for that, but we were happy. Looking back, there's not much more we could have asked for.

Honestly, it didn't taken Darry very long to say "I love you" for the first time and it didn't take me very long to believe him. Now, he tells me he was in love with me from the beginning, it just went unnoticed for a while.