Author's Note: I don't really have a whole lot to put here, but I did want to say that I know my timeline is off a wee bit: technically The West Wing would be shown on Sunday night rather than Wednesday, since this story would be taking place… well, now (give or take a few days). But let's just pretend the episode that's mentioned is a "special Wednesday night episode." Hee. Also, thanks again for the reviews. I really appreciate hearing from everyone.

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER

"Mom, they're here," Luke hollered, following up immediately with a retching noise. Joan was seated across from him in the living room, her feet propped up on the coffee table, and nibbling from a mini bag of M&Ms that Helen had bought in bulk a few days ago. Early preparation for Halloween. The moment Luke had opened his mouth to shout, Joan had seized the opportunity, pitching a green candy at the wide-open cavity. She flung her arms in the air - score! – and went on munching as Luke hacked and sputtered the M&M into his palm.

It was Wednesday evening, time for dinner with the Snows. Actually, Will had come home from work yesterday and announced that the heat wave was putting him and Donovan in the mood for a cookout, and might they have one, rather than a big fancy spread? So cookout it was, with steaks, corn on the cob, and iced tea for the grown-ups, hot dogs for the kids, including Joan, whose teeth couldn't manage sinewy meat, and chocolate cake for dessert. Helen barely had to cook a thing because Will insisted grilling was a man's job. Sexist, yes. But it didn't bother her in this situation. Let him handle the meal if he wanted to. She hoped, though, that he wouldn't get anything too done.

"They're here, Will," she called towards the open back door, drying her hands on a dish towel as she bustled into the living room, abandoning the iced tea jug in the kitchen. "Luke, stop eating candy. You'll spoil your appetite." She took the M&M from him as she passed, realizing too late that it was covered in saliva.

"But-" Luke's protest fell flat when he saw that Helen was too busy wiping at her fingers to listen. He ignored the smug, taunting expression on Joan's face as she sneaked the last M&M to her lips and crumpled up the bag, stuffing it in her pocket.

Will arrived as the doorbell rang, and he and Helen answered it together, welcoming the Snows into their home, their greetings at a higher volume than necessary to make up for the fact that they were not well-acquainted with these guests yet. Helen signaled behind her back for Joan and Luke to join in.

"Good to be here, buddy," Donovan Snow was saying when Joan strolled over, his handshake vigorous as he clapped Will on the shoulder.

Not too shabby, Joan thought. Not too shabby at all. Since Monday, after learning of this little dinner soirée, she had been compiling mental images of what Ruthie's family must look like. They would be blond and fair, she assumed, befitting of the last name Snow, and Donovan would be short for a guy, a bit stocky, probably blue-eyed and baby-faced. Wrong on each count. He had dark floppy hair, the kind a woman might describe as "pretty," and lots of it; eyes to match it in color, a deep coffee brown. He resembled a younger, swarthier version of Dennis Quaid. Yeah, Dennis Quaid in a pirate movie. And as Ruthie was to short Donovan was to tall. He measured a good three inches or so higher than Will and had a muscular build, fit and chiseled. He could have been a model for Cop Magazine, if there was such a thing.

And not far behind him was Ruthie, fresh as a daisy in her mint green and white checkered blouse, butterscotch corduroy pants, and tiny white Keds. In the three days that they had known each other, Joan had only seen Ruthie's hair pulled up, but now it hung loose and surprisingly long, framing her face in delicate wispy tendrils. Donovan's thick fingers mingled in the strands at the nape of her neck as he placed his hand there, leading her further into the room for an introduction to Will.

"My wife," Donovan said, traces of pride in those two words. "Ruth Anne." He petted her hair, raked his fingers through it like a comb. "Baby, this is Will Girardi."

"Nice to meet you," Ruthie said, releasing her daughter's hand to shake Will's. "Helen's told me so much about you."

"Same here." Will smiled, noting that neither Helen nor Joan had been exaggerating when they jabbered about how petite Ruthie was, how youthful. The stout little boy she was balancing on her hip looked too heavy, his pudgy legs and scruffy bare feet dangling, ready for landing, as though he knew his weight was cumbersome and could be dropped at any moment. His sister, the one shying away by Ruthie's side, was more fragile, the lighter of the two though older. She had inherited her mother's pixie-like quality and both children had Ruthie's cunning features, but Donovan was in there too, responsible for their mocha-colored eyes and hair.

"Who's this handsome guy?" Will asked, bending nearer to the toddler and, consequently, Ruthie. Playing bashful, the boy lowered his head, nestling into the crook of her neck, peeking at Will through splayed fingers.

"That's Charlie. Don't let him fool you, he's a hellion." Donovan grinned, showing off a set of clean white teeth. "But this one," he added, catching the little girl under the arms and hoisting her up, "is an angel. Tell them your name, Bug."

After a quick survey of the room confirmed that every eye was on her, the girl buried her face against Donovan and held faster than a barnacle.

"June," Ruthie offered, in place of her timid daughter. "She's shy."

"Junie!" Charlie suddenly squealed, bored with his quiet act. He kicked his legs energetically and patted Ruthie's chest. He was ready for attention. "Junie, Junie, Junie, Junie!"

With that as an ice breaker everyone began laughing and talking at once, finishing introductions, Helen fussing over how cute Ruthie's children were, and Charlie finally squirming out of Ruthie's arms and down to the floor, where he danced a little jig and sang, "Junie, Joanie, Joanie, Junie!" after he met Joan. He applauded himself for getting another show of mirth from the adults. And he continued hamming it up until they were seated at the dinner table, opting to bring the cookout in because of drizzle.

"Our oldest boy, Kevin, won't be here till later," Helen said, as she placed a bowl of chips in the last empty spot on the table. "He had to work longer than expected."

"He's the writer?" Donovan asked. He tipped a stream of A1 sauce onto his steak, swirling it with a fork, then coaxed another puddle onto Ruthie's plate before passing along the bottle to Luke.

"Yep." Will gestured at Helen with an ear of corn. "Comes from her side of the family."

"Well, old Charlie here better take after his dad. If he grows up and tells me he wants to sing on Broadway, we're gonna go around." Donovan chuckled, giving Charlie, who was sitting on Ruthie's lap because no one had remembered a highchair, a gentle noogie that made the boy wriggle and laugh. "Gonna be a cop like Daddy, aren't you?"

"I'm a cop," Charlie agreed, jabbing his chubby index finger and raised thumb at Donovan. "Bang, bang!"

"Oh my God, you have to hear Ruthie sing, Mom," Joan announced out of the blue, reminded of it by Donovan's joke. "She sang this song during auditions yesterday— what was it?"

Ruthie ducked her head, resembling June a great deal, but grinned. "'Dream a Little Dream of Me.'"

"It was amazing. I think everybody was scared to try out after that."

"Aww." Ruthie laughed. "But you all were so wonderful."

"Even Joan?" Luke sounded skeptical.

"Especially Joan."

Donovan leaned forward in his seat, gazing around Ruthie at the chair beside her, which June was sitting in, slouched down, her face barely visible above the table. She hadn't touched her hot dog. Charlie was halfway through his, gulping every bite that Ruthie dipped in ketchup and fed to him between nibbles of her own food.

"Eat your hot dog, Junebug."

June straightened, scooting on her rump until she was closer to the table, her curly pigtails bobbing as she moved. She picked up the bun, examined its contents, took a long hard look at the grill marks, and said quietly, "I don't like it."

"You haven't tried it yet, sweetie," Ruthie said, patient, encouraging. "Taste it for Mama? See, Charlie likes it."

June watched as her brother gobbled up his next piece of hot dog, nearly taking Ruthie's finger with it. Not persuasive enough. She scraped at her hot dog's blackened skin, bits of it flaking off, spotting up the bun.

"It looks funny."

"June." Donovan put down his fork.

Helen lifted her iced tea glass but didn't take a sip. She had been through this with the kids when they were five, six, seven years old. Heck, they still turned up their noses at certain foods. Not often. But she knew from experience: kids always win. "I could make her something different."

"Nah, don't trouble yourself," Donovan said. "She'll eat it."

"It's no trouble," Helen said, then consulted June. "You want something else, honey?"

June glanced at her parents, lingering on Ruthie, who smiled, and spoke the first words she had directed to anyone outside of her family since arriving. "Do you have peanut butter and jelly?"

It took some finagling but Helen managed to convince June to accompany her to the kitchen for instruction on the perfect PB & J sandwich, even got the little girl to hold her hand as they went. Of course, the bargain June struck was that Ruthie would come along too, so they waited as she deposited Charlie in Donovan's lap, a change the boy responded to with minimal fussing, and joined them, leaving Joan as the only female in the dinning room who got to hear the punch line to Donovan's crack about how many women it took to make a sandwich. Helen hoped that wasn't as dirty as implied, but judging from Will and Luke's drawn out, rascally "ho ho hos" and Joan's "ew," it probably was.

"He gets a bit wound up when he's with one of the guys," Ruthie said apologetically, as Helen proffered loaves of white and wheat bread, letting June make her selection while sitting on the countertop. "I think he's making up for what he's missed since the move. I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Helen laughed it off, undoing the twist-tie on the loaf of white. She rummaged in the drawer for a butter knife, opened the cupboard and reached for the Skippy. "I know how it is. Get Will together with some old friends and a beer, he's the same. And the things Kevin and his teammates used to say..." She curled her lip, caught her tongue between her teeth. The yuck pose. "Boys will be boys, I guess."

"Yeah," Ruthie said. She leaned her elbows on the counter next to June, her hair falling in one long sheet like a veil, its downy tips brushing against the wooden surface. She cupped a hand over June's knee, a silent request for the child to stop banging her foot against the cupboard beneath her.

"Grape or strawberry?"

June pointed to the purple jar Helen was holding. "Grape, please."

"How's your hand?" Ruthie asked, watching as Helen smoothed peanut butter onto a slice of bread.

Honestly, Helen hadn't thought about her run-in with the knife since yesterday when, at lunchtime, she and Ruthie were sitting in Helen's empty classroom talking over salads and bottled water, and Ruthie had expressed concern about the large bandage Helen was wearing. "What happened?" she had asked, her pale green eyes curious, expressive, but of what Helen hadn't been sure. They had gotten a kick out of the story though, Helen telling it with a dramatic flair she knew had rubbed off from Ruthie, but she couldn't help mimicking. It was like that with Ruthie; she got to you, brightened you up, brightened everything up, and before long she had you laughing at some crazy story that normally wouldn't be funny. It was hard for Helen to believe she and Ruthie had known each other but a few days.

"It's better," Helen said. "I don't really need the Band-Aid anymore. I just left it on so no one would have to look at a scab all through dinner."

Ruthie made a face but giggled. "Much obliged."

"Show her your boo-boo, Mama," June said, working her spindly little fingers under the fabric of her mother's three-quarter sleeve, sliding it back to reveal an ugly black smudge of a bruise on Ruthie's otherwise creamy skin.

"Ouch," Helen said, gazing up from the jelly jar she was clanking the butter knife inside of. "Nasty sucker."

"Oh, that," Ruthie said, rising to her full height, studying the bruise like she too had forgotten about a clumsy mishap, then guiding her sleeve into place again. "I had some blood work done at the hospital. I swear, if they ever give me another trainee who doesn't know how to find a vein, I'm going to grab the stupid needle and jam it in myself." She shook her head, crossed her arms. "She must've stuck me five different times."

"Did you complain?"

"Uh-uh." Ruthie tilted her head and smiled. "Too chicken."

"Could you cut the crust off, please?" June looked at Helen, hopeful, and swung her legs out, bringing her Mary Janes back hard against the cupboard door. The noise, the loud smash of wood cracking into wood, startled her and she put her hands down flat on the countertop, gripping the edge tightly. That was the end of that. She reached for Ruthie to help her climb down.

"Ruth Anne, you gonna eat the rest of this steak?" It was Donovan, inquiring from the dining room.

"No, Don," Ruthie called, rolling her eyes in a way Helen recognized, that of a woman with kids and a husband to raise. "It's all yours." She added the last bit in a low, falsely sweet voice that only Helen would hear, a private dig which left them suppressing mischievous grins as they ushered June and her peanut-butter-jelly sandwich into the next room: "Along with the indigestion you'll be whining about later, dear."

Unsurprisingly, Kevin returned home while dessert was being served. It was as if the chocolate cake had summoned him, its invisible aromatic hands slithering out the back door and beckoning to him the way delectable smells did to cartoon characters. He wheeled into the dining room, his nose in the air, sniffing. "Ah, perfect timing," he said, then acknowledged the guests with a friendly wave.

"Who's dat?" Charlie asked, globs of ketchup in the corners of his mouth, where no amount of spittle on Ruthie's napkin could remove them. They gave him a clownish appearance, those impossible red stains, his fine, unruly hair adding to the illusion.

"That's Kevin," Joan said, reaching for the plate with her favorite piece of cake on it: the corner piece. More frosting. "He's my big, stinky brother."

Charlie laughed a genuine boy laugh, combining giggles and snorts and various other noises. "Stinky!" he proclaimed, delighted. He clambered down from Ruthie's lap, his roly-poly legs no hindrance as he dodged both his mother and father's grasps and toddled over to inspect Kevin's wheelchair. "Hi, Stinky," he said.

"Hey, Squirt." And just like that, Kevin had a new best friend. They made the rounds together, Charlie having scaled Kevin's knee and plunked himself onto a new, more interesting lap, as Kevin got acquainted with the Snows. Donovan offered to take the boy, or "the leech," as he affectionately referred to his son, but Charlie was having none of it and Kevin, who had a knack with toddlers, one that made Helen smile wistfully, insisted the boy was fine.

"You sure you don't want some cake, Ruthie?" Will said for maybe the third time since he and Helen had started cutting and passing the treat around.

"Will, leave the poor girl alone." Helen gave him a reprimanding frown. If there was one thing her husband had absolutely no comprehension of, it was the reasoning behind a woman refusing sweets. She had learned over the years, during numerous dinner parties, Thanksgivings with his culinary-happy Italian family, and Valentine's Days when he would tote in a gigantic heart-shaped box of candy and a big goofy grin, to give in and have a bite, toss the rest when he wasn't looking. But she wouldn't let him force that, no matter how unwittingly, on Ruthie. "She told you she doesn't want any."

"It looks delicious," Ruthie said in a complimentary way that made it plain she hadn't actually changed her mind. "I'm just so full. Maybe I'll have some of Don's."

"All right." Will did a poor job of hiding his disappointment. He ate his cake quickly, not because of the moistness in its sweet, rich layers, but because he felt uncomfortable enjoying it when Ruthie sat three seats away, an empty cloth placemat in front of her, the chatter between her and Helen keeping her busy while everyone else gorged themselves. He noticed, too, that Ruthie never tasted Donovan's cake. She was svelte enough, in Will's opinion, but he nixed the urge to say as much. Let it go, Will, he could hear Helen scolding. So he did.

It was approaching nine o'clock when the last of the plates were cleared from the table and conversation, which had been split into male and female divisions, the men at one end discussing sports, crime rates, the weather, and, courtesy of Luke, science, the women at the other, dishing about school and pretty much everything else, had begun to wind down. Charlie was nodding off against Kevin's chest, thumb in mouth. There was a collective silence which might have segued to Ruthie or Donovan announcing it was time to be heading home if not for Luke, who glanced at his watch and said, "Oh, The West Wing is coming on in a few minutes."

Joan sniffed deridingly. Nobody in the Girardi household but Luke, and sometimes Helen or Will, though they mostly slept through it, watched The West Wing. She was about to remind him of that until Ruthie piped in.

"I love that show. Donnie and I watch it every week."

"Really?" Luke's voice rose an octave. Though he had been polite and talkative throughout the evening, this was the first real interest he had shown in Ruthie. "You should--" He sought approval from the adults, his gaze sweeping over them briefly, returning to Ruthie. "You should stay and watch it. Unless you need to go."

Ruthie leaned into the back of her chair and cast an uncertain look at Donovan. "I think I did forget to set it to tape."

"You're welcome to stay," Helen said.

"Fine by me," Will said when Donovan turned to him.

The relocation to the den was harried, Luke providing the countdown in minutes, then seconds, till the all-new ultra important episode of his show, as Joan made a beeline for her favorite spot, the love seat, and Helen assured Ruthie it was okay for her and Don and June to take the sofa. Charlie was out cold, sprawled across Kevin like a plump, domineering cat that had claimed its territory. Once again Donovan offered to remove his son, but Kevin saw no need to disturb the kid. Will and Helen were just settling in as Martin Sheen's voice declared, "Previously on The West Wing."

Ruthie was unaware of Luke's strict no-talking-during-West-Wing rules and got away with speaking through the entire opening sequence, a feat not many would have achieved in his presence. "I just love that Allison Janney," she was saying to no one in particular. "She's so funny. And tall. I wonder if she'd loan me a few inches."

The only one besides June who didn't seem enthralled by the television screen, Joan was also the only to see Donovan take his arm off the back of the sofa and encircle Ruthie's shoulders, his hand finding her mouth, covering it. "Shhh," he told her, his lips by her ear. "Shh." He nudged her closer against him so that neither of her feet touched the floor when she found a comfortable position, her leg tucked underneath the other. And he kissed her, a fleeting but tender sort of peck on the temple, his hand dropping to rest on her arm, weighty, relaxed. Ruthie caught Joan watching them, and there was that brilliant smile, instantly, like magic.

Joan smiled back, wondering if God would be at school tomorrow to congratulate her on a job well done. She had joined the choir, therefore meeting Ruthie, which more or less played a part in the Snows making friends in an unfamiliar town. It was like killing two birds with a single stone, this one. Help get Ruthie's choir going, help get Ruthie's family going.

Contented, Joan snuggled deeper into the cushiony love seat and tried to pay attention to what the two white-haired guys on television were conversing about. Maybe she would learn something useful.