Author's Notes: early '70s

He kisses her without prompting, and never complains when her meat jello goes wrong. But going out into the cold every morning, while she drowses in a warm bed? No surer sign of love than that.

(She isn't Ellen; that name is his mother's, always. She can't be MacGyver, though her husband goes by Mac these days to forestall confusion. Between the two of them she's blotted out, and shelters behind her namelessness with pleasure.)

The coffee shop had always been a haven for her in high school, a comforting place of sweet tastes and companionship. Now it's the home she always craved; the mother she never had; and a husband with endless love in his heart.

She rises in plenty of time for the breakfast rush, smiling at every familiar customer. Coffee, milk, sugar. Karen Carpenter's soft soothing voice on their record player. Making change, running out of muffins. Persuading people to take cookies instead.

And then, just as the shop's emptied and she's taking a breather, the door chimes and her husband steps over the threshold.

"Oh, you're home! I thought you'd be hours yet, getting gas for the car."

"So did I. But Jim Larsen remembered that time I fixed his snowmobile for free, and he let me have a few gallons on the sly…so I'm back early." He sweeps her up, kisses her. "And my lovely, clever wife can get on with planning that mural she's going to paint. Have you decided what the design's going to be yet?"

"I think Mission City itself. In winter time, with a blanket of snow on the ground, and smoke coming from the chimneys. Maybe a meat raffle going on at the church…everything we love about home so much."

Time was when she couldn't have said a thing like that, without seeing a little quiet regret in Mac's eyes; but there's none of that now. He's content, just like her.

"Sounds wonderful," he whispers, and starts kissing her in earnest. So rude, and flamboyant, and delightful.

Of course, that's just when Mike Forrester has to walk through their door…

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Mike's return means that they have their foursome back. She treats everyone to steak dinners that night, with off-handed generosity.

(Threesome. It was the three would-be adventurers for a long time, before Mac invited her into the group; Ellen's never quite felt she belonged.)

"You wouldn't believe what you're missing out there," Mike says, digging into her food with gusto. "Glam and danger, and sometimes you get to make the world a better place." She winks at Mac. "To say nothing of all the pretty girls."

"I'm a happily married man!"

"And I'm trying to be responsible these days," Jack chimes in. "Planes are expensive. I can't be wasting all my money on good-looking broads."

"Not even in your thirties yet, and you're already a couple of old fogies," Mike says, with pity in her voice.

Jack laughs. Mac's face is unreadable, at first; but he turns his wedding ring round and round on his finger, and smiles. "If it's so good out there, what are you doing back here?"

"Freelancing," Mike explains. "My editor says he'll start me on headliners, if I can deliver a real eye-opener of a story- and I've had one just waiting in my back pocket. A cute little Minnesota town, built to cater for a federal correctional institute-"

"Oh, that's not fair," Ellen pipes up (to her own surprise). "The city was here long before that."

"Town at best," Mike says, rolling her eyes. "I've seen cities that make Minneapolis look like a ghost town, this is nothing by comparison. But okay, so Mission City used to be this independent frontier beholden to nobody. It sure isn't now- just look at Mac here. Who's your best customer?"

"The prison," Mac agrees. "I drive out with the coffee urns every morning, pick up the empties every afternoon- they could make it themselves, but my mother's done it for them so long they probably don't even have a percolator."

"There you go. Crazy little contrast, isn't it? Perfect material for a nice piece of Tom Wolfe new journalism."

"You're not making it sound nice," Ellen says. "Not that we're ashamed of it, but…"

"We're a little ashamed," Jack says, emptying his wine glass. "The crud at the heart of our all-American town, the raw meat that keeps blood and less salubrious liquids pumping through our collective guts."

"I'm cutting you off," Mac tells him, plunking the bottle out of reach. "When you start waxing poetic, I know you've had too much."

"Me, waxing poetic? And who is it who bought an anthology of the stuff at the bookshop last week?"

"I was flipping through it and saw a poem called 'Notes from a Letter to Ellen'," Mac says. "Of course I had to buy it after that."

"And I've been reading it to him, at nights."

"You two are kinda cute together," Mike admits. "Maybe you're not such a bad match as I'd figured."

She switches topics then, to the glories of Southern California, and the time she stole a camel in Kuwait, and whether Mac can smuggle her into the prison without anyone noticing.

But Ellen finds herself feeling curiously validated.