"I don't like the sound of this." Wren opened the car door on her side.

"Where ya goin', babe?" asked the man.

"Anywhere to get away from you." She slammed the door shut and stalked into the convenience store, where she was faced with a dilemma. She was now too far away from her home to walk back, and she had no money for a taxi.

"I'll take you home." She turned to see Danny standing beside her.

"Oh, Danny..." She tried to hug him, but he stepped aside. At the same time, he extended his hand to her. She took it, and instantly they were standing outside her apartment. "Oh, thank you!" she exclaimed. She thought of kissing his cheek in gratitude but decided that he probably didn't want her to.

"I don't mind helping you out this one time," he told her. "But if you ever do anything that stupid again, you're on your own."

"But how will I ever find anyone else? I've lost both you and Gabriel now."

"Not like that." He vanished, leaving her alone and desolate.

"I had to bail your sister out of a bit of trouble she got into over the weekend," Danny told Robin as he walked her home. "She did something silly and almost ended up in a very bad situation."

"What did she do?" asked Robin.

"She accepted a ride from a stranger who offered to take her to a bar. For the sake of what she and I used to have together, I just couldn't let her be taken advantage of. I knew that guy was only trying to get into her pants."

Robin frowned. "That doesn't sound like something Wren would do."

"Desperate people do desperate things," Danny replied. "Now that Gabriel's out of her life, she's all alone for the first time, and without a man in her life, she doesn't know what to do with herself. She needs some time on her own to figure out that she's enough by herself before she'll be ready for another relationship."

"I used to admire her so much," Robin reminisced. "I always wanted to be just like her. She was so smart, so advanced, so...together. She could do things I could only dream of. When..." She looked down and blushed deeply. "When you started coming around a lot, I used to watch you two together and wonder what you did when I wasn't around. I must have been a terrible pain in the butt," she muttered.

Danny laughed. "It never bothered me when you hung around us. I always thought you were kind of cute. And I know exactly how you felt, because I was the same way about Adam. I always wanted to be just like him. I remember how tired he used to get of my always tagging along after him."

"I'll bet he felt terrible about about getting annoyed at you after...well, you know," Robin said softly.

"He used to cry sometimes. I used to watch him and wish so badly that there was some way I could tell him that I was OK, that I was better than OK, that I was just fine. Then I finally thought of a way. There's this rose bush right outside his window that had never bloomed before, until I made it bloom. My Mom and Molly were really happy about it, but he just brushed it off and didn't pay it any mind."

"Do you suppose you'll ever let your Mom and Dad know that you're back too?"

Danny grinned. "I'm sure it will happen some day."

For Halloween, Robin and Bailey dressed as red and blue M & M's respectively and handed out candy to the kids who rang their doorbell. "I remember the last time I handed candy out with Brittney," said Bailey. "We were dressed up as Raggedy Ann and Andy. We had so much candy left over that it was months before it was finally all gone."

"How did she die?" asked Robin.

"She was coming home from a Christmas party, and the car she was in got broadsided," Bailey told her. "She was already brain dead before she got to the hospital. I'll never forget the phone call my parents got in the middle of the night. They didn't want me to go to the hospital with them, but I blocked the door and refused to let them leave the house without me."

"When I finally saw her lying there in the emergency room, she looked so peaceful it was hard to believe she was really gone. She had a thin little trickle of blood running out of the side of her mouth, and that was all."

"Her funeral was beautiful, but I was in so much pain that I barely noticed. I felt just like I'd been ripped in half. I never imagined anything could ever hurt as bad as that did."

Robin thought of Danny and wondered whether he'd known Brittney in heaven. She decided to ask him the next time she saw him.

He hadn't met her after school that day as he usually did on Fridays, but she hadn't really expected him to, as she'd told him that she planned to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters that night. When she still hadn't heard from him by late Saturday evening, however, she started to worry.