author's note. I wrote this part five years after I wrote the first chapter (which is actually the second chapter); I don't know why but every few years I'd think of them and then next thing you know I'm churning out another 4,000 words on a TV show that hardly anyone watched in the first place. I'm pretty sure at this point I'm done writing about them, but you never know.

I think it's worth mentioning that practically all of my fandom 'ships have a theme song; Iris and Dom's is 'So Let Us Create' by Jukebox the Ghost. I'll wait here while you go look that up.

Liverpool, England 1946

They had reached into comfortable middle age by then: Domingo was fifty-one, Iris forty-six. Dom's hair had gone silver at the temples and he'd acquired some nice crinkles round his eyes. Iris made sure her own hair wasn't gray, though she'd grown softer around the middle. She had given in to fashion and bobbed her hair - so much more practical with the children to look after - and her accent had waned somewhat. She didn't assist Dom's magic onstage - hadn't for years, not since they brought Jeremiah home - but she handled all his bookings, negotiating his fees with a surprising fierceness she'd inherited from her father. As a team they'd done very well for themselves: they weren't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but they had enough. Domingo held a dozen or so patents, and in '45 he'd been elected to a second term as president of the British Magicians' Society. As a devout Catholic and a respectable family man, Dom had done much to change the reputation of his profession from that of an unsavoury character to something altogether decent. Dom did a big show in London once a year, at the Royal Theater, which had been attended three years running by the royal family. He'd turned down an offer of a touring show - one of his old sergeants from the war was a brilliant promoter, had offered fame and fortune, but Dom would have been away from his family for most of the year. He still performed several shows a week locally, and he provided entertainment entirely free of charge at the Veterans' Hospital.

They'd had their share of quarrels and spats over the years, as married people will do, but only one true fight. It was the night that their oldest boy, Jerry, newly turned eighteen, had calmly announced that he'd be enlisting in the morning. The war had been going on for two years at that point and he couldn't sit idly by. That was the first and only time Iris ever heard her husband raise his voice. He wouldn't have it. He couldn't. Dom knew the wreckage that war would make of young men's bodies - his own two brothers, including Jerry's namesake, were buried in anonymous graves half a world away. It was too much to bear - and yet they had borne it, somehow. Jerry bade them an unsentimental goodbye and was shot down two years later. But he survived. His leg was horribly shattered - he'd have a limp the rest of his life - but he survived.

Iris was doing the washing up after dinner, listening to the radio, humming along softly. The world was at peace, and she was content. Then the door clicked open and shut behind her. Dom emerged from the loo and sat down at the kitchen table. Iris could feel his eyes on her, and she turned around. His face sent a cold shiver of fear up the back of her spine. Quietly she wiped her soapy hands on her apron, clicked off the radio, and sat in the chair opposite his. "What is it?"

"There was blood," he said, so quietly that she could barely hear. He couldn't meet her eyes.

"There's often blood," Iris said, but her words seemed to be swallowed up in the deathly still of the room. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears, the clock over the stove ticking in a deafening roar.

"Not this much," Dom said. "It was..." He couldn't finish the sentence, but in that moment, Iris knew. She'd noticed he had grown thinner lately, but she was just hoping that was just overwork. She'd been hoping she could persuade him to take a rest after the show in London. Well, things would be different now, that was for sure.

"Oh, Dom," she said. That was all she said for the time being. Iris reached across the table and took her husband's hand. She had always known this day would come.

They went to a specialist in London. Iris wandered around downtown to kill the time, making a half-hearted attempt at window shopping. Many of the stores were still boarded up from the Blitz, though the war had been over for nearly a year. And the stores that were open often had half-empty shelves, a result of the wartime rationing. She looked at a display of hats and remembered how Dom had wanted her to have a brand-new dress and hat, all those years ago. She'd bought plenty of things to wear in the decades since, but that yellow dress and hat were still a sentimental favorite. Because somehow, he'd understood how much it meant to her to have something that was beautiful just for the sake of being beautiful. She still had them in a hatbox in the attic. Her throat constricted suddenly and her eyes swam with unshed tears. Iris left the millinery department and walked the seven blocks back to the hospital.

They had known hard times before. That one winter when Dom had been so ill, Iris really thought it was the end of him. But it wasn't; he pulled through. The time Violet brought home scarlet fever from school and all four children had to be quarantined for six weeks. Dom couldn't even see them and poor Iris had run herself ragged looking after them. There had been lean years, when few people in England could spare the money for a magic show, and Iris had to take in sewing. But they'd pulled through. And when Clarinda Hennessey died - she had suffered terribly from stomach cancer - Iris had genuinely mourned her.

Iris' father was hit by a streetcar and killed in 1929. The last time Iris saw him was a few weeks before, at the twins' first birthday party. It wasn't anything special, just little cakes in the back yard, but the sun was shining and the children were happy. While Iris served coffee to her Dadda, Dom was taking the children in turns round the yard on his shoulders. The babies shrieked with delight and clapped their chubby little hands. Joseph Moss looked at his eldest daughter. "You done all right for yourself, Iris Moss," he said.

For some reason her father's words came back to Iris as Domingo escorted her into the doctor's office, a hand on the small of her back. You done all right for yourself, Iris Moss. The doctor, a very serious, rather gray man leaned across his desk to shake her hand. "This is my wife," Domingo introduced her.

"Your wife?" A look crossed the doctor's face. He had, after all, been up close and personal with Dom's infirmity. "How long have you been married?"

"Twenty-five years next month," Dom said. It was something closely related to pride that prompted him to add, "We're having the children up for our silver wedding anniversary."

"If you don't mind my asking…" the doctor began.

Politely, Iris interrupted him. "Our children," she said firmly, the way she'd done many times over the years, "are a gift from God."

Apparently satisfied, the doctor launched into his presentation. It was very dry and utterly unsentimental. He had diagrams and notes and blood tests, all of which led to one unsurprising conclusion: Domingo was going to die.

"Isn't there anything that can be done?" Iris pleaded.

The great man stared at her, apparently unused to having his pronouncements questioned. "Mrs. Hennessy," he intoned, "have you ever torn your apron?"

Iris knew when she was being condescended to. "Of course."

"And what do you do when you tear your apron?"

"I sew it up, or course," she said.

"And the place where you've repaired it, isn't it more likely to tear there again?"

"Eventually," she said. "But by then it's only good for scraps. It's weaker where you've repaired it." Then she sat back. "Oh."

"There is too much scar tissue," the doctor explained. "If I thought I could operate, I would. But there's nothing left to patch together."

"How much time do we have?" Domingo inquired. Not I, Iris noted, how much time do we have.

"I honestly don't know," the doctor said. "I've never seen a man with this type of injury survive as long as you have. A month, maybe? Two, if you're careful?" He leaned across his desk, compassion finally seeming to get the better of him. "It won't be pretty. This is a terrible way to die."

"You ought to marry again," Dom said when they were home again. "You're still young. You deserve a man who's... properly equipped."

"And what would I do with a man like that?" Iris demanded. "I wouldn't know the first thing about it. I'd probably run away in terror on the wedding night." Domingo smiled. It had been long enough, they could joke about it. "You've been the best husband I could ever ask for," Iris said. "And I mean that in every possible way."

"When shall we tell the children?"

"Let's wait until after the silver wedding," Dom said. "I'd like to leave them with a nice memory." And to Iris that was as good as a promise that he'd live that long.

In the month that followed, a curious calm settled over Iris like a second skin. The days were strung together like the beads on her rosary. Most days, she and Dom would work together in the garden, then she'd accompany to his shows in the evening. They'd go for walks or see a movie, like they were courting again. They spent nearly every moment together and they didn't quarrel once. When Dom was feeling poorly Iris would just curl up in the bed next to him and they'd read or look at the photo albums of the children. He tried to teach her the most basic of his card tricks, but Iris never could get the hang.

The children had known for a long time that they were adopted. One day when Violet was six, she'd come home from school sobbing. That was so unlike the stoic, straight-browed little girl that they knew that it took Iris the whole afternoon to get the truth out of her. It turned out that Jimmy Chitwood, a not altogether pleasant little boy in her class, had passed on a rumor that had been going around. "Jimmy Chitwood says that I'm adopted and you're not my real mommy and daddy and you don't love us at aaaaaall!" she sobbed.

"Oh, my sweet girl," Iris murmured, gathering the heaving little body into her arms. "Of course we love you, darling. Come in the kitchen and you can stand on your stool and help me roll out cookies, and we'll have a talk when Daddy comes home, all right?"

It was a dirty word back then, something that was not talked about, but Iris was determined to nip it in the bud. In a way, she supposed, this was the inevitable consequence of her much-talked-about fleeing on her wedding night. On the other hand, she knew perfectly that Mrs. Chitwood hadn't wanted all those children but was too Catholic to do anything about it.

"First of all," Domingo began in that gentle voice of his, "that boy from school is wrong about one thing. We love you children very, very much." He had the twins - freshly scrubbed and drowsy in flannel - on his lap, one on each knee. Walter and Rose were only three, so they'd have to repeat this conversation a few years down the road, but Iris wanted them to hear it from her first. She had Violet and eight-year-old Jeremiah gathered to her like baby chicks and there was a plateful of cookies. For some reason Iris was so happy she could die.

"It's true that you are adopted," Domingo went on. "Do you know what that means?"

Violet shook her head. "I thought it was something to do with head lice," said practical Jerry.

"It's to do with how we got you," Iris said. "Usually, when a mommy and a daddy get a baby, it grows inside a mommy's tummy." The children's eyes were wide. She hadn't planned on telling them this until they were older, but she didn't see a way of avoiding it. "Do you remember when Mrs. Macartney next door's tummy got very big? And then they got baby Betty?" Violet in particular was fascinated by the baby next door. "Most of the time that's the way that parents get babies. But we couldn't do it that way."

"Why not?" Violet inquired.

"Well, before you were born there was a war," Iris said. "Lots of men from England had to go very, very far away and shoot at other men with guns. Your daddy was one of the men who went into the war."

This was Jerry's favorite part of the story - he was always playing war with his little friends, a fact which Domingo did his best to ignore. "Mama, we know about that," he said, rolling his little eyes.

"Yes," Iris continued, "and we've told you about how Daddy was hurt very badly in the war." The children nodded. "Well, one of the things that happened is that Daddy couldn't put a baby inside Mommy's tummy." They looked a little confused, so Iris hurried past that part of the conversation. She wasn't really ready for that. "So after we had been married for a little while, we decided that we wanted to bring a baby home to be part of our family."

Now Jerry beamed. "That was me."

"Yes, it was." Domingo picked up the story. "We talked to the priest at the church and asked him if he knew where we could get a nice little baby. He told us where there was a home where the nuns were taking care of some orphans. Do you know what an orphan is?"

Violet's eyes grew wide. "I read a story about orphans," she said. "They are children who don't have a mommy or a daddy to take care of them." She looked distressed. "We aren't orphans, are we?"

"You have a mommy and a daddy, don't you?" Dom reassured her. "It just means that you grew inside of a different mommy's tummy before you were born. And maybe that mommy died, or maybe she just couldn't take care of you. The nuns at the home were taking care of all the babies that were waiting for a new mommy and daddy to come and take them home."

"So we went to the orphan home," Iris said, eyes shining with remembrance, "and we looked at all of the babies, and we decided that we liked baby Jerry the best and so we brought you home. And a few years later we decided that we wanted a little girl so Jerry would have a friend to play with, and that's when we got you, Violet." Vi had been the most serious baby they'd ever seen - gazing up at them from her crib with those dark eyes. Iris had fallen in love with her right away. "And a few years later Father Melia asked us if we could take care of two more babies so we brought home the twins."

The twins had been a surprise - they had gotten rid of the crib, even, when the priest called them up. No one would take them, he said, and he was afraid that they would have to be split up. Iris and Dom had discussed it for days and days... and then Iris caught sight of the photograph of Dom and his brothers on the mantle, smiling in their Army uniforms, and that was that. She couldn't bear the thought of the twins being separated, and so they bought a pair of secondhand cribs and welcomed them into the Hennessy family.

"So don't you worry about a thing," Iris finished. "Yes, we adopted you. As far as we are concerned you are all gifts from God. And we couldn't love you any more than we already do."

Iris and Domingo's silver wedding went off beautifully. They had a mass at the Catholic Church (although Father Melia had long since travelled to Africa and died from malaria) and then a luncheon at one of the nicer hotels. All of the children were there, and Iris' sisters and their families, and many of their neighbors on Medici Street, and dozens of friends they'd accumulated along the way. Children who'd been to Dom's magic shows that had grown up and brought their own children to see him. Iris had chosen the menu carefully - roast lamb, peas in mint cream, tomato aspic. For dessert, vanilla custard in little silver cups. Centerpieces of iris flowers intermingled with magician's props.

Violet cornered Iris during the clean-up afterwards. "Mother?" Violet said, her dark eyes serious. "What is going on with Dad? He's not himself."

Iris looked at her older daughter, and knew that there would be no lying. Violet had always been the quickest to catch on to things. She'd figured out the truth about Santa Claus when she was only four.

"No, he's not," Iris agreed. "Why don't you go round up Rose and the boys. We've got to have a talk with you."

"We can cancel the London show," Iris had said.

"No," Dom had responded. "It's our best ticket sales all year. It's for you and the children." And that was that.

Backstage at the Royal Theatre, Iris straightened Domingo's tie, although it wasn't really crooked. He had the best suit with tails and the hat and everything - he looked so professional, a far cry from the young man she had once known performing simple tricks for children. And yet, he was exactly the same, somehow. "Are you sure about this?" Iris said. She'd been up with him most of the previous night - the pain was getting worse.

Domingo brushed his sleeve across the brim of the hat. "Perfectly sure," he said. "Come here." He led Iris by the hand to the wings of the stage, where behind thick velvet curtains they could survey the glittering assemblage. "Did you know Princess Elizabeth and Margaret are out there?"

Iris looked. "I can't see them, but I believe it," she said.

"I can't believe so many people have turned out to see Domingo the Magnificent." He smiled a little, as he always did at the use of the nickname Iris had created for him. "It's just tricks, after all."

"But you're good at it," she said. "And people like to watch you."

He put an arm around her shoulders. "But it's you who's made me into what I am," he said. "I wouldn't be on this stage if it wasn't for you."

Iris shrugged. "Mouths to feed, that's all."

He turned towards her. "Are you sorry we didn't take Sergeant Brown up on his offer?" he asked. "If we'd done this year round, you could be one of those ladies out there." He swept an arm towards the front row of the theater. "Some of them are draped in diamonds head to toe."

Iris fingered the small diamond pendant around her neck - Dom had given it to her for her fortieth birthday. A quarter of a carat. "I don't regret a thing," she said.

He put a hand on either side of her face, touched his forehead to hers. "I don't either," he said.

As the house lights went up, Domingo gestured to the bandleader to hold for a minute. He took the microphone and cleared his throat. "If you would indulge me," he began in his humble manner, "I'd like to say a few words." He turned towards Iris, standing in the wings as she always did, and gestured towards her. As she crossed the stage - thankful she'd gotten her best dress back from the cleaners' just in time - Iris knew what was happening.

"This is my wife, Iris," Dom began. "We just celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary." Polite applause came from the members of the audience who weren't busy with gathering coats and handbags and programs, filtering towards the exits. "I'd also like to announce my retirement from performing magic." Now the theater fell silent. "They say a good magician never reveals his tricks, but Mrs. Hennessy is and always has been the secret to my success." Iris blushed furiously. "I have been privileged to entertain you for the last twenty-five years. I count myself blessed that God gave me the opportunity."

Iris slipped her hand into his, quietly. "I've given a lot of thought to how I want to leave the stage," he continued. "For a long time I thought I would make myself disappear into a puff of smoke or vanish into thin air. But the time for tricks is over. It's only sleight-of-hand, anyway." He turned towards Iris, and smiled. "I know now what I want to do. I want to leave the stage hand-in-hand with my wife."

As they walked off the stage, the applause started, scattered clapping at first, building into an ovation. Iris glanced at it over her shoulder. But if Dom was aware it was the greatest reception he had ever received, he didn't show it. Because as soon as they reached the wings, he collapsed in pain on the stage floor.

It took Domingo five weeks to die.

Because it was a war wound that would eventually do him in, Domingo was taken to the Veterans' Hospital. The same hospital where Dom had been entertaining the wounded men since the war began - where Jerry had had his shattered leg repaired after he was shot down. The same hospital, in fact, where as a young man Dom had lain for months in bandaged agony and taught himself card tricks.

And Iris knew, as she followed him into the hospital, still in her best dress from the magic show, that this was the end. That any time left was - just as every day had been until now - a gift from God, to be carefully savored and not discarded lightly. And she would pray for strength, as she always had.

They wouldn't even let her see him for the first two days. He was in bad shape, they told her again and again. But she had known it would be ugly - she had lived most of her youth in ugliness, in poverty. She wasn't the type of woman who had been protected from the world. And she let her Scouse accent come through loud and shrill until she eventually badgered her way in.

"I found it," Iris said as she laid a white paper box on the table beside the bed where her husband had lain for two weeks. "It took me four department stores and most of our ration coupons, but I did it."

"They're a little old fashioned," Domingo agreed as he unknotted the string, "but then, so am I." He lifted the small package to his nose and breathed in the aroma of Viegler's Violet Creams. "Just like I remembered."

He'd asked her for the chocolates - just in passing - a few days ago and Iris' heart had constricted. She knew what he was really saying - that it didn't matter anymore. That he might as well have the chocolates he'd been avoiding all these years.

Domingo rolled his eyes heavenward as the first morsel of chocolate melted on his tongue. "Ohh," he exclaimed, leaning against the head of the bed with a contented smile. "I'm not even going to try to act dignified about it. That is transcendent." After a few more moments of rapture he seemed to remember himself. "Chocolate?"

Iris ignored the proffered box. His satisfaction was more than enough for her. "No thanks," she said with a rueful smile. "I've had enough of Viegler's to last a lifetime."

Domingo chuckled, looking down at the box in his hand. All the chocolates were uniform and perfectly smooth. "I think they're all made by machine now."

"I wonder what happened to all the piecework girls?"

"Well," Dom said, "I know for a fact that one of them married a magician."

"Oh?" Iris played along. "And is she happy?"

"Very."

"I have a new trick for you," he said. "I just worked it out." Four weeks gone, and Domingo was as weak as a kitten, but he could still make her smile.

"Just now?"

"I couldn't sleep," he admitted. "Hand me my cards."

Domingo shuffled the cards in an effortless way that still fascinated Iris, even after all these years. He never took his eyes off of her. "Now pick one, but don't show it to me."

Iris picked. The two of hearts. "Now tear it in half," he instructed her.

"Really?"

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Yes, really. Just do it." Iris complied. "Now tear it in half again." Domingo leaned forward. "Now put it in my pocket." Iris dropped the torn cardstock into the breast pocket of his pale blue pajama shirt. He took her wrist and placed her hand over his pocket. "Can you feel the pieces in there?"

Iris could feel the torn edges of the cards, and beyond that, the rhythmic thump of Dom's heart beating. For now. "I can," she said.

Domingo grinned at her, and spread the rest of the deck on the table before him. He fanned the cards expertly, hovered his open hand above them until he came to the right one. "Is this your card?" The two of hearts. Whole again.

She gasped. After twenty-five years, he could still surprise her. "How did you do that?"

He winked. "Magic."

Iris laid alongside him in the narrow hospital bed. He took up so much less space now than he used to. Gently, she put her arms around his chest. He couldn't even return her embrace, but he kissed the top of her head.

The children had already said their good-byes.

"Oh, my darling girl," he said. She could barely hear him, he was so weak. "Please don't cry. I never could stand…"

Iris wiped her tears away with the back of her hand and smiled bravely up at him. "That's... better," he managed.

"I love you, Domingo Hennessy."

"I love you, Iris Moss."

She laid her head against his chest and listened as his breathing stilled.

Iris lived until 1973. She never even thought of remarrying, and within a few years there were grandchildren to spoil. Eventually Iris moved in with Violet, who had never married. One night Iris fell asleep in the rocking chair in the kitchen, listening to a program of old songs on the radio. And for a moment it was as if she had never aged. Vi found her there the next morning.

Domingo was coming towards her. He was smiling. "I've missed you," he said.

"Did I die? I don't remember dying."

"Come here," he said. "I've got something to show you."

THE END