Thank you, everyone, for your continued enthusiasm and support for this story.


Christmas morning with three small children, and the born Christmas lovers that especially Rick and Alexis were, made the Castle living room a lively, spirited place filled with joy and laughter.

Pajamas were the attire of the morning, and Javier burst out laughing when he saw that Rick was wearing plaid flannel sleep pants with a red t-shirt that said, "Dear Santa, Define 'Good.'"

Kate smirked. She was carrying the still-sleepy Jake, while Rick had the wide-awake, squirming, excited Reece in his arms, and Lily was already standing in front of the Christmas tree, eyes as big as dinner plates at the gifts piled underneath it, hands covering her mouth in awe, while Jim, Martha and Earl all smiled at Rick's shirt, and Alexis, seated in a chair with Javier perched on the arm of her chair.

"It was a gift from Kate," Rick informed everyone.

"Were they out of 'Dear Santa, I Can Explain…' shirts?" Martha asked.

"In Rick's size, they were," Kate replied.

"Presents!" Lily exclaimed then, interrupting the conversation, her initial Christmas awe giving way to the undeniable need to tear into the wrapped packages beneath the tree. "Can we open presents now? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase!" She started jumping up and down in her excitement.

Reece, having caught sight of the cornucopia of brightly colored wrapped presents under the glimmering Christmas tree, was chanting, "Dada, down! Dada, down!" and wriggling like a trout on the end of a fishing line in Rick's grasp, and Jake, alerted by Reece's and Lily's vocal pleas, immediately perked up in his mother's arms, his little face registering his own awe at the sight of the tree and presents, his mouth forming a perfect little 'o.'

"Okay, okay," Kate said. "Presents it is!"

Lily dashed to the tree and practically dove to the floor in front of it, looking at all the packages for her name, which she had learned how to spell at preschool. Rick set Reece down and then bent over at the waist, holding Reece's hands while Reece walked over to the tree to join Lily. Jim, his ever-present video camera at the ready, got down on the floor a few feet away from the tree and the kids to film what would come to be known in the family as The Attack on the Christmas Presents, while Kate set Jake down and he quickly crawled over to the tree to join his brother and sister. Jake was momentarily distracted by a shiny silver ball hanging from the tree, and when he reached out his hand towards the glass ornament, Kate stopped him by pressing a small wrapped present in his hands. "You know you're not to touch the ornaments, Jacob," she said matter-of-factly. "Try this instead."

Rick and Kate got down on the floor with Lily, Reece and Jake, and the rest of the adults watched, Jim filming with his video camera all the while, as the kids opened their presents, Reece being assisted by Rick, and Jake being assisted by Kate. Both boys got the hang of tearing off the wrapping paper fairly quickly, and soon Reece and Jake were happily babbling as they ripped wrapping paper off of books, stuffed animals, regular toys, bathtub toys, and even a few articles of clothing, since they had presents not only from Santa Claus, but also from Mommy and Daddy, Alexis and Javi, Grandpa Jim, Gram and Pops, Uncle Kevin and Aunt Jenny and Sarah Grace and Nick, Aunt Lanie and Uncle Alan and Will and Baby Boy Masters, name still to be determined, Aunt Victoria and Uncle Gerald, and Aunt Madison and Uncle Mark. Lily had the same number of gifts as both her brothers (Kate insisted it was only fair), and then there were the gifts for the adults, which they would open after the kids were done.

Both boys squealed in excitement as they ripped the wrapping paper off the multitude of gifts into strips and waved the strips of wrapping paper around. They were more interested in the wrapping paper than they were in most of the presents. Rick got more excited about the Mickey Mouse-themed inflatable ball pit that Kate had gotten as a joint gift for Lily, Reece, and Jake all three than any of the kids did (Lily was too busy exclaiming over her favorite gift that year, the LeapFrog Epic Academy Edition Learning Tablet, stocked with plenty of games and even the ability to safely surf the Internet, thanks to the kid-friendly design, and the computer was built to grow with Lily, since Rick and Kate would be able to add Android apps and set parental controls as she grew).

"Babe, you do know there's no way you'll fit in that ball pit with the kids," Kate pointed out.

Rick sighed wistfully. "I know," he said. "They don't make 'em that big unless it's for a restaurant or amusement park. Believe me, if they did, I would have gotten one years ago. Still, it's an excellent surprise, and the kids will enjoy it a lot."

Jim gifted Reece and Jake something called My First Tackle Box, a plush tackle box containing a plush miniature fishing rod with a Velcro fastener for sticking to the plush also included fish, a stuffed worm that crinkled, a stuffed toy fish that squeaked, and another stuffed toy fish that made sounds. His gift to Lily was a magnetic fishing game with two wooden rods that had working wind-up reels, and included ten magnetic fish that were numbered and patterned. The object was to spin the included spinner and then hold the fishing rods over the blue mat where the fish were slotted in like puzzle pieces and catch the correct fish with wooden fishing rods and reel it in. It reinforced the numbers one through ten, and the different colors (the fish were respectively colored red, blue, purple, green, orange, yellow, pink, brown, black, and white).

"For your little fishing buddies, Dad?" Kate asked.

He grinned behind his video camera. "You know it, Katie," he replied.

The living room was soon filled with miniature mountains of crumpled and shredded wrapping paper, and after the adults had opened their gifts from each other, which consisted of photographs, jewelry, video games, Knicks courtside tickets (from Kate and Rick to Javi, with an extra ticket for him to take Kevin), books, sweaters, and for Alexis from Javier a new briefcase engraved with her initials in preparation for the new job she'd be starting after the new year in the A.D.A.'s office. They would be waiting until after breakfast to open the gifts from Lily, Reece and Jake, which Lily had mostly made either at school or with help from the various adults in her life, and all three grandparents had teamed up for the twins' gifts to Rick and Kate, while Rick and Kate handled the boys' gifts to their grandparents and Alexis and Javi, most of which were pictures, video, or handprints and in clay.

Rick waded through the wrapping paper and boxes while Martha and Alexis helped Lily with her Sparkle Fairy All-Natural Makeup Kit. Javi and Earl were assembling the ball pit, while Jim simultaneously helped both Reece and Jake with their tackle boxes, teaching them how to catch the stuffed fish with the Velcro fasteners on the fishing rods.

"Last present," Rick said, emerging from behind the Christmas tree carrying a small rectangular box wrapped in candy-cane striped paper, "and it's for you, Kate."

Kate, who was assisting Jim and the boys with the stuffed tackle boxes, looked up at Rick's pronouncement, confused. The two of them had exchanged gifts already—she had gotten Comic-Con tickets for them and for Lanie and Alan, and he had gotten her a new leather jacket and a new pair of leather boots. "You already gave me my Christmas presents from you."

Rick smiled. "This one's from Santa," he said.

"Open it, Mommy!" Lily exclaimed, her mouth smeared with Pink Lemonade lip gloss as she climbed down from the couch where Martha had been carefully applying organic Fairy Purple eyeshadow to her eyelids until she heard her daddy telling her mommy that Santa had brought Mommy a present.

Kate stood up and Rick, his whole face lit up, held out the wrapped present. Kate took it from him and sat down on the couch, and he sat down next to her, and then Lily rushed over and climbed up on Kate's other side, and everyone but Reece and Jake, who were enamored of their stuffed fishing toys (Reece was chewing on his stuffed worm, while Jake was making his fish squeak every time he squeezed it), watched as Kate opened the gift.

"What..." she said when she saw the box. When all the paper was off the box and on the floor at her feet, she looked from the box to Rick, whose grin grew wider at the look of shocked awe on her face. "How did you do this? They stopped making these...probably by the mid-1980s at the latest, because the one I had, I got for Christmas when I was seven. How did you even know about this? I don't remember telling you about this. And this looks like the original packaging, and it's never been opened. Is this mint condition?"

"I had a little help from a certain elf," Rick said, and Kate looked over at her father, who wasn't even hiding his smile, which was now directed at her instead of at Reece and Jake, or at Lily, who had already extracted a promise from Grandpa Jim to play with her Sparkle Fairy All-Natural Make-Up Kit later.

Alexis was sitting too far away to be able to read the box. "What is it, Mom?" Alexis asked.

Since Kate was still too awed to speak, Rick answered for her. "It's a mint condition Tomy Digital Diamond handheld baseball game, one of the earliest handheld video games ever made, first produced in 1978." He then looks at Kate. "And yes, it is mint condition, circa 1984, never removed from the original packaging." He leans in closer and says so only she can hear him, "And as you know, because of some of the toys the kids got, we have plenty of new batteries in the office. I didn't want to take it out of the box and put the batteries in for you, so-"

He was cut off when she leaned in and kissed him with a fierce tenderness that had the other adults in the room exchanging fond looks and discreetly looking away. Lily was instantly bored by her parents' PDA, so she returned to her Gram and the Sparkle Fairy All-Natural Make-Up Kit. When Jake squawked his displeasure at not being able to attach his stuffed worm to his fishing pole, their attention shifted to him as Kate broke the kiss, breathing hard.

"I asked your dad what your favorite toy was when you were a kid," Rick told her. "Not when you were as little as our littles, obviously, but something I'd be able to track down and get you one now. He told me about Digital Diamond, how you actually wore out the buttons and cracked the battery case, you played with it so much, and yours was eventually held together with duct tape and rubber bands and paper clips until it literally broke into pieces that not even duct tape and rubber bands and paper clips would keep it together. So when I found this one, I had to get it for you."

"How about breakfast?" Alexis asked then.

"Waffles!" Lily exclaimed. "Can we have waffles?"

"I saw a Family Size box of Eggos in the freezer last night," Jim said, "so I think waffles can be arranged, Lily Jo." He scooped up Reece, then Jake, and with a grandson perched on each forearm, he headed to the kitchen to settle the boys in their high chairs, with Lily rushing after him, followed by Martha, who announced that she was on bottle and sippy cup detail, and Earl and Javier put aside the almost-completed ball pit in favor of breakfast, as Alexis headed into the kitchen to begin pouring coffee and orange juice and milk and retrieving syrup, blueberries, powdered sugar, butter, and whipped cream for the waffles.

"Every year, I think you can't possibly top last Christmas, and every year, somehow, you do," Kate said.

"Always," he replied. She smiled back at him before the noise from the boys pounding on their Cheerio-filled high chair trays and the rest of the hustle and bustle coming from the kitchen had them joining the others for breakfast so they could get to the gifts from Lily, Reece, and Jake, and everyone's stockings.


Madison Queller and Mark Fallon were married the evening of December 31, 2020, at Q3 in Manhattan. The reception was also held at the restaurant. Kate served as Madison's matron-of-honor, and Mark's former father-in-law Jack Holbrook served as best man. Mark's former mother-in-law Anna cried more than Mark's own mother, because she was so happy that her beloved son-in-law had found a woman to love. Mark's football coach stepfather kept a close eye on his watch, so determined was he to get back to the hotel and get a good night's sleep in anticipation of his day watching all the college football games the next day.

Madison was a vision in a flowing white sheath wedding gown with three-quarter-length sleeves and a godet skirt with just the right amount of flare. She wore her hair down and no veil. Mark was in a black tux with a black necktie and suspenders. They had chosen white, silver, and gold for their wedding colors, with Maddie carrying a nosegay of white roses with silver pinecones and gold glitter accents, and Mark wore a matching boutonniere. Jack's necktie was the same shade of silver as Kate's satin matron-of-honor dress, and Kate carried a nosegay that matched Maddie's.

Rick sat with Madison's parents and the few other guests on the bride's side (there were only 20 guests total, including Kate and Jack) in a navy blue suit and French blue shirt. (Alexis and Javier, along with Jim, were at the loft with Lily, Reece and Jake.)

The ceremony was simple, as Madison and Mark exchanged their own vows in front of a Justice of the Peace.

"Madison, you made me truly alive again. I had been just existing for such a long time, and I thought I'd already had all of the love and all of the surprises and joy and amazement and the pain that comes with it. Then I met you, and all those doors that had been closed and, I thought, sealed off long ago burst wide open. I promise that I will love you and take care of you through all that life throws at us, fight for you and for us, never let anything come between us, and I will be thankful for you every day for the rest of my life."

"Mark, you are the greatest surprise of my life. For a long time, I didn't think I would ever get married, and then I found you. You have made me feel more loved than I ever thought possible, and I love you more than I ever dreamed I was capable of loving anyone. I will be your friend, your lover, your teacher, your accomplice, your comfort, and I will encourage you, support you, and be by your side for the rest of my life. And I'll be thankful for you every day for the rest of my life too."

The Justice of the Peace accepted the plain gold wedding rings from Kate and Jack, and gave Mark Madison's ring, which he slipped on her finger as he said, "I, Mark, take you, Madison, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honor, and cherish, until death do us part. This is my solemn vow."

Madison then accepted Mark's ring from the Justice of the Peace and slipped it on his finger as she said, "I, Madison, take you, Mark, to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honor, and cherish, until death do us part. This is my solemn vow."

"By the joining of hands, and the giving and receiving of rings, you are consenting to be bound together as husband and wife," the Justice of the Peace said. "Therefore, by the power vested in me by the state of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."

Mark and Madison sealed their marriage vows with a kiss, and the reception began immediately afterward, as people headed to the bar, the buffet, or first one and then the other. Rick found Kate in the small crowd and they both congratulated Madison and Mark.

"Becks, can you believe I got married?" Madison asked Kate.

"I have to. I'm officially a witness, according to your marriage certificate," Kate replied. She hugged Madison, then hugged Mark. "You know you're getting one of the greatest women in the world here."

"I know," Mark assured Kate, "and I owe it to you. If not for your City Council campaign, I never would have met Madison. I'll never be able to thank you enough for that, Kate."

Madison had a teenage male cousin who DJ'ed the wedding, since she and Mark chose all the music themselves and put together a couple of playlists on an iPod with speakers. They had their first dance to Bon Jovi's "Thank You for Loving Me," and the rest of the night was filled with lots of music and dancing. Although it was New Year's Eve, a few Christmas songs had found their way onto the playlist, including "You're All I Want for Christmas" by Bing Crosby, and "Tinsel and Lights" by Train, and Mark, a big U2 fan, had insisted on as many uptempo rockers from his favorite band as possible, and he and Madison put on quite the show dancing to "Angel of Harlem" before cutting their red velvet wedding cake.

Near midnight, everyone got noisemakers and silver or gold cardboard hats or headbands proclaiming "HAPPY NEW YEAR!"

As Rick and Kate slow danced to "Tinsel and Lights," with Kate sporting a silver "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" headband, and Rick wearing a silver hat proclaiming "HAPPY NEW YEAR!", he said, "2020 has been very good to us, and to the people we love the most."

"Yes, it has," Kate agreed, "and I believe 2021 will be just as good, maybe even better. Reece and Jake's first birthday is coming up in February."

"You'll be launching your re-election campaign," Rick added.

"Lanie and Alan are expecting their second son any day now," Kate continued.

"Alexis is happily married to Esposito and about to start at the A.D.A.'s office," Rick said.

"Lily is thriving in preschool," Kate went on.

"All of our parents are happy and healthy," Rick continued.

"Maddie and Mark just got married," Kate said.

"Ryan and Jenny and their kids, and Gates and her husband, are all doing great," Rick said.

"And you're getting ready to start your next book," Kate concluded.

"We're gonna be really busy next year," Rick said.

"We're gonna be really happy next year," Kate remarked.

The ten-second countdown to midnight started then. "Yeah, we are," Rick agreed. He pulled her closer. "I love you, Kate."

"I love you too, Rick," she replied, resting her palms flat on his chest.

At that moment, everyone around them, including Mark and Madison, shouted, "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" as silver, gold, and white confetti fell from the ceiling, a few of the people with noisemakers blew or spun them, and an instrumental version of "Auld Lang Syne" filled the air.

Just before their lips met in their first kiss of 2021, Rick said, "Happy New Year, Kate."

"Happy New Year, Rick," she replied, and then they kissed, as did Mark and Madison, Jack and Anna, and a few of the other couples around them.


I had a Tomy Digital Diamond handheld game. Got it for Christmas when I was 7, and I really did play with it until it was in pieces and not even rubber bands and duct tape could hold it together anymore.