A/N I just wanted to thank you all for your kind comments regarding this story. I really appreciate you taking the time to leave feedback.

As for the difference between Andy and Jack, that will come up again in future chapters. I've always found it intriguing that two men could be so similar in some ways and yet so VERY different.

Singing carols, stringing popcorn
Making footprints in the snow
Memories, Christmas memories
They're the sweetest ones I know
Cookies baking in the kitchen
Cards and ribbons everywhere
Float like snowflakes in the air
Frosty, Christmas memories
And oh, the joy of waking Christmas mornings
The family round the tree
We had a way of making Christmas morning
As merry as can be

Sharon scanned through the play lists on her iPod, found the one she was looking for, clicked on it and set it in the dock she'd placed on the kitchen counter. Humming along with "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear", she opened the dishwasher and then turned to the sink full of sticky breakfast dishes. She was just reaching to turn on the hot water when she felt a hand on the small of her back and turned expecting to see Andy. He liked to rest his hand there. Instead she was face to face with eyes as green as her own. Eyes filled with concern.

Her mother.

"What?" Sharon asked.

"Nothing. I just want to get a good look at you." Colleen reached out to tuck a few long strands of Sharon's hair behind her ear, away from her face, the way she'd done so many times when she was child and needed comforting. "This is the first time we've gotten to be alone since you arrived."

Sharon set the sponge down and turned to lean back against the sink, her arms crossed in a slightly defensive posture while eying her mother speculatively. "Okay, what's up, Mom?"

"What makes you think something's up?" Colleen asked innocently. "Can't a mother just want to spend time with her daughter?"

"She can. But you want to tell me that shooing everyone else off to start trimming the tree while offering up the two of us to clean the breakfast dishes wasn't a set up?"

"So suspicious. A hazard of your job, I guess."

Sharon grinned at the exaggerated sadness of her mother's sigh. "I guess. So, what did you want to talk about?"

"Oh, well, there are so many things." Colleen had no complaints when it came to her eldest daughter. Sharon was very good at keeping in touch, a phone call every Sunday evening, like clockwork. But after Emily and Ricky went off to college it had all become about the same old thing, work, work and more work. Over the past five years that had changed tremendously. She'd gotten a new exciting job promotion, adopted another child, divorced her husband and had fallen head over heels in love with a new man she happened to work with. And now they were living together. That was a really interesting development, certainly something Colleen wanted to hear more about. But there would be time to pump Sharon about her love life later, right now what she really wanted to discuss were the events of the past few months.

"Breaking news. We've just received live footage of the shooting inside a Los Angeles Superior Court where five people, including an LA deputy chief of police, were killed. The shooter was shot by police and taken to a local hospital in critical condition. Dwight Darnell…" The details had been lost on Colleen as she and William watched the scene unfold, the chaos, the carnage, people screaming and fleeing for their lives, the shooter turning toward Sharon and Chief Taylor, Taylor going down and then her daughter stepping forward like an avenging angel, calm, cool, deadly…shooting three times directly at the man. Darnell going down and Sharon standing unblinking and unwavering over his body. They had already known that Sharon was okay when the news story broke. Andy had called them while she was being questioned by FID, at her request. But nothing could have prepared them for seeing it played out like that.

"I just wanted to check in with you and make sure you're really okay. Talking over the phone and the Skype isn't the same as seeing you face to face. Dear God, Sharon when we saw the shooting on the news, well it about took 10 years off my life-and your father's. Watching all those poor people get shot and then you…well…"

"Me shooting him." Sharon turned back to the sink, flipped on the hot water and began running a sponge over the dishes. It was easier to talk about this if her hands were busy. Colleen moved up beside her to accept the rinsed dishes and put them in the dishwasher.

"Yes. I was so proud of you."

Sharon turned with surprise. "Even though I killed a person?"

"And saved dozens of others. You were a real hero that day. I don't know how you stayed so calm and focused with all that going on around you…your friends-"

"It's training, Mom. It's my job."

"I know that. And I understand why you struggled with what you had to do. But you saved a lot of people that day. That man…He was a monster."

"No, Mom. There are no monsters. He was a human being. A vile, evil human being. You saw his final actions but you didn't hear the hatred and filth that came out of his mouth. The things he'd done, the things he believed." Sharon shuddered remembering the shocking "Sieg Heil's" he sent her way the first time she'd met him in the courthouse. She wasn't sure if she would ever forget that. "I kept thinking about Grandda and the things he said about Nuremberg. How much he hoped the world had learned a lesson and that we would never see the likes of the Nazi Party again. But Dwight Darnell, he was a Nazi. An American Nazi and so were all the people he surrounded himself with. Grandda told me once that there were allied soldiers who took justice into their own hands after seeing the atrocities the Nazi's committed at the concentration camps. After coming up against Darnell and his group of white supremacists I can understand how that happened. I couldn't find it in me to feel sorry for killing someone like that."

"That's perfectly understandable."

"For some, maybe."

"But not for you?"

"No, not for me. I had just killed a man and I had no guilt, no remorse. I know I did what I had to do and that the world is a far better, safer place without Dwight Darnell in it. I don't question that or my actions. But I still took a human life and I felt like I should feel some remorse about that. You know, thou shalt not kill. It scared me not to be able to feel that."

"I'm glad Father Stan was able to help you work through those feelings."

"Father Stan and Dwight's mother, Wildred Darnell."

"His mother helped you?" Colleen was surprised to hear that. Sharon had mentioned talking to her priest for guidance, but hadn't said anything about talking to the mother of the man she'd killed.

"Yes. She told me she understood why I had to kill Dwight. I think I really needed that absolution as much as I needed God's. She helped me to see Dwight as the child he was before he became a hate spewing Nazi. I couldn't feel sorry for killing the adult, but I did feel sorry about the child and I was sorry for her pain. Whatever Dwight had done, he was still her child and as a mother, I could empathize with her grief. "

"Of course you could. You've always had great empathy for people."

"Andy helped me too. "

"Andy? I thought you said he couldn't really help you because he sees the world in black and white."

"He does, to a certain extent. He's been a homicide detective for a long time and his way of coping with all the ugliness we deal with is to separate people into good guys and bad guys. His job is to protect the good guys and he does that very, very well." Under his GQ suits, Andy Flynn was a scarred warrior. And though she was pretty sure he might still have a few emotional scars hidden away from her, she was on intimate terms with every one of the physical scars that marred his impressive physique. The long one on his abdomen where he'd been knifed, the puckered one on his thigh where he'd been shot, the two slashes, one the back of his shoulder and one on his bicep where he'd been grazed by bullets, the faded one on the back of his head at his hairline where he'd been hit over the head with a beer bottle and the tiny one on his neck where he'd had to have a blood clot removed from his carotid artery after being thrown from a moving vehicle.

"That can be dangerous, especially for a police officer."

"Yes, it can. I saw the dark side of that when I worked at the PSB. But Andy's a professional. As far as I know, he's never crossed over the line. Walked up to, maybe looked over it, but cross it? No. "Sharon paused to squirt more dish detergent on her sponge, and then continued to wash the juicer they'd used to make fresh orange juice.

"He's not blind to the gray areas. Sometimes good people do bad things, to protect the ones they love or in a desperate situation. Andy understands that." How many countless times had she heard Andy empathizing with a suspect who had killed the person who raped or murdered their child, wife or girlfriend. They all tried to remain objective but they were also human beings and there wasn't a cop out there, herself included, who could say they'd never put themselves in someone else's shoes and wondered how they might have reacted to such horrifying circumstances. "It's a lot easier when there is a clear cut good guy/bad guy. The murderers, the rapists, the pedophiles, the gang bangers. Every cop has to come up with his or her own coping strategies in dealing with those kinds of people day in and day out. Andy's is to dehumanize them into dirt bags and scum bags. Since he's become sober he's had to learn how to compartmentalize in different ways than I ever had to."

"Why is that?"

"Because he's spent his whole career out on the front lines protecting the innocent, putting his life on the line. I didn't.

"Well then how did he help you if he couldn't understand how you felt?"

"He didn't need to understand my feelings to accept them and to just be there for me. I haven't had a man in my life that I could lean on since I was a child living in this house."

"No, I guess you haven't. Jack was hardly a supportive spouse."

"No he wasn't. I could never rely on Jack or look to him for support, but I can with Andy. He's a rock." A tall immovable rock that never let her down and always made her feel like she was standing in sunshine whenever he was near. "I don't think I really understood that until this happened. I just assumed that he wouldn't be able to understand or help me so I distanced myself from him. I felt like I had to go through what I was dealing with on my own, because that's what I was used to doing."

Colleen sighed sadly. "Well, I'm just so pleased that you have somebody supportive in your life now. Andy sounds like a good man, Sharon."

"Andy is a good man." She took the frying pan Colleen handed her and dunked it into the soapy water. "Just because he didn't think I needed to feel remorse for what I'd done didn't keep him from trying to understand how much it bothered me that I didn't. And even when I pushed him away, he didn't let me go. He gave me my space but he also made sure I knew he was there for me and that he had my back. Andy always has my back. Unfortunately this time…I didn't have his." Quick tears shined in Sharon's eyes and she turned back to scrubbing the frying pan fiercely.

"Why do you say that, honey?" Setting the dishtowel aside, Colleen rested a hand on Sharon's shoulder.

Sharon kept her head down, her hair shielding her face, a trick she'd learned a long time ago in an effort to gain control of her emotions. "Because I was so self-absorbed with trying to deal with what I was going through I didn't notice that Andy was struggling too. Looking back I should have seen it." She shook her head with regret. "The nights I woke up to find him sitting on the edge of our bed covered in sweat or out on the balcony looking out over the lights of city. I believed whatever excuse he gave me-because I didn't have it in me to look any deeper. I should have looked deeper. Because I didn't he damn near had a heart attack."

"What are you talking about? You said Andy had a pinched nerve."

"Cervical radiculopathy to be exact. Stabbing shoulder and chest pain, numbness in the arm and hand brought on by a pinched nerve in the neck." Sharon recited verbatim what the emergency room doctor had told her.

"Yes, and that all started with him getting thrown from a moving vehicle. It didn't have anything to do with you."

"That's not entirely true. The nerve probably became pinched from an altercation he had with the mob of Nazi's, but it was exacerbated from the stress he was under because of the shooting. Also, his blood pressure was through the roof. That comes straight from the doctor."

"Stress from how you were handling the shooting?"

"Stress from the shooting itself…and me shutting him out. Andy's been in his share of shootouts but this time it was different, it was personal. This time I was there and people we knew and cared about were being shot. It was chaos in that in courtroom, Mom. Andy was doing his job, protecting the civilians around him, trying to make them get down so they would be safe and so he could get a beat on Darnell-all while Darnell was shooting up the room. With everyone running in fear we had to be careful we didn't shoot any civilians. After shooting his own lawyer, Darnell turned and fired toward Taylor and I. Taylor went down but there was nothing Andy could do, he didn't have a clear shot. I got the clear shot. If I hadn't, I probably would have been his next victim and Andy knows that -"Sharon stopped at Colleen's soft sound of distress.

"Oh my God, Mom, I'm so sorry. " Sharon dropped the pan she was scrubbing in the water, slipped off her rubber gloves and took her mother's hand, noticing as if for the first time the age spots and prominent veins. Her mother was so vibrant, so active there were times Sharon forgot the woman was in her 80's. -and that she wasn't a police officer. The last thing she wanted to do was upset her. "This is too much for you."

"No, no it isn't," Colleen insisted. "I can handle it, Sharon. I just feel so bad for Andy. It was hard enough watching someone shooting at you on television and already knowing you were okay. I can't imagine how hard it was for him to be there in that room and not be able to stop it from happening."

Sharon nodded. "That's exactly it. Andy is a cop, he's a protector, but in that moment, he couldn't protect me. He had a hard time working through that, even though he knows I'm capable of protecting myself."

"Oh dear." Colleen squeezed Sharon's hand and leaned heavily against the counter. "I hadn't thought about all that."

"It's one of the reasons I was so hesitant about getting involved with him. An office romance is always chancy but in our situation it's worse. Working side by side by side with someone you love in situations where either of you could be injured or killed can be agonizing. I've been through it myself several times with Andy-only I'm the one who has to send him into those life and death situations." The loud blast of gunshots, the staccato beat of machine gunfire, explosions, shouts of "officer down", how many times had she been safe in her command center listening to all that going on and not knowing if Andy had survived or not. "It's incredibly stressful."

"I can see why you'd have a hard time with that and why Andy would have had a hard time with it."

"He had terrible nightmares."

"Of the shooting?"

"Yes. Only in his nightmares I was the one who was shot and killed instead of Taylor and the kids were all accusing him of not protecting me"

"How awful. And he didn't tell you?"

"Not until we got home from the hospital." Sharon paused then added sarcastically, "He didn't want to add to my burden."

"Men. " Colleen shook her head with a roll of her eyes. "When are they going to learn that we are the stronger sex not the weaker?"

Sharon laughed and handed her the frying pan to be dried. "Uh…never."

"But he's okay now?"

"Yes, he's doing fine. But I never want to relive a day like that again. When he collapsed to the floor clutching his chest, I thought for sure he was having a massive heart attack. It was awful. I thought he was going to die, right there in front of me and all I could think about was how foolish I'd been."

"Foolish? About what?"

"Our entire relationship. I took things so slow with him. I was so damn cautious."

"That just makes sense Sharon. You had a lot of things you needed to work through. Like you said, you work together and that's not easy and, well, I know your history with Jack had to make things difficult too."

"Mmm…It did. Because of how things went with Jack, I had a hard time trusting Andy in the beginning. I was really attracted to him, but I was afraid…"

"Afraid of what?"

Sharon paused, swallowing tightly. "That I would let him in, that I would trust him and he would hurt me. I was so used to dealing with Jack that when Andy complimented me or did something nice for me I had a hard time believing that he didn't have an ulterior motive."

"And did he?"

"Yes he did."

Colleen spun around in surprise, a flash of anger sparking in her green eyes, causing Sharon to smile. "Don't go getting outraged. Andy's only ulterior motive was trying to make me fall in love with him, because he was already in love with me."

"Oh." Relief softened Colleen's eyes.

"But it wasn't just working together or my fear of being hurt. I told you about Andy's history with alcohol and women. Well, that worried me too."

"I know it did. But that's just smart, Sharon. Those are valid concerns, especially considering what you went through with Jack in those areas."

"It was smart in the beginning. But I clung to my worries for far too long. I let them cloud my judgment. I let them hold me back. I used them as an excuse to hold Andy at arms length. I was so afraid of letting myself love him." She gave her mother a roll of her eyes. "As if I could control it, right?"

"You have always liked being in control." Colleen lips twisted wryly.

"Well, as much as I tried I didn't have any control over my feelings at all. I guess we can't decide whom we love and don't love-it just happens. God. I was in love with Andy for so long before I let myself admit it to him or even to myself. For a couple months we had this really lovely, old fashioned sort of courtship." The hours of intimate conversation she and Andy had shared during that courtship had in some ways been as stimulating and fulfilling as physical lovemaking.

"People don't do that enough anymore. They are so quick to just rush through everything."

"Hmm" she hummed in agreement. "Well, I enjoyed it and it really meant a lot to me. I already knew who Andy was as my friend but it was so nice getting to know who he was as a boyfriend before we…um before he became my…"

"Lover?"

Sharon flushed. They were moving into uncomfortable territory now. "Well…Yes."

Colleen smirked. "Sharon, you've never been a spontaneous kind of person. Even as a little girl, you always liked order and plans. And having, what did you call it? Baggage left over from Jack? Well, that's completely understandable. I think you were smart not to jump into anything, especially given the chance for fallout at work. Andy should have understood that."

"Oh, Andy did understand, and he was so good natured about it which, quite frankly, was rather surprising and very touching because it was completely out of character for him. Let's just say no one would ever accuse Andy Flynn of having the patience of a saint. But with me, he did. I mean he got frustrated at times but -"

"What man doesn't? Remember what I told you once during our facts of life talk? That a man might tell you that you're killing him, but no man ever died from an unsatisfied erection."

"Mom!"

"What? I may be old but I'm not dead yet darling."

Sharon felt herself blushing. Now she knew how her kids felt when it came to her and Andy's sex life. "No, no you're not. And I know I've always been cautious but sitting in that ambulance on the way to the hospital, I kept kicking myself for making him wait for everything. For having lost all that time and not just embracing what I was feeling and counting my lucky stars that I found him. What I have with Andy, it isn't like anything I've ever known. I promised myself in that ambulance that if Andy lived I would throw caution to the wind and just let myself love him openly and completely with all my heart and damn what the future might bring." That promise she'd made to herself had been the reason that she had said yes without any reservations to Andy's proposal. She'd had to think about dating him, sleeping with him and moving in with him but by the time he asked her to marry him she hadn't had to think about her answer at all.

"Good for you. When you're lucky enough to find that kind of love, you have to embrace it. And you more than anyone deserve a man who loves you the way Andy loves you. "

Sharon gave her mother a sly glance. "How do you know the way Andy loves me?"

"Like I said, I may be old, but I have eyes and they are pretty clear since my cataract surgery. That man looks at you like the sun rises and sets on you. I hope you know how fortunate you are."

Sharon smiled warmly. Andy did have a way of looking at her that made her feel like she was the most beautiful, most special person in the world to him. "I do know how fortunate I am. I thank God every day that it wasn't a massive coronary, but we're still taking some precautions. He's still on blood thinners because of the severity of the clot, and, because of the issues with his blood pressure he's on a heart healthy Mediterranean diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish and lean meats."

"Well, that's how we all should eat. How's he doing with it?"

"He's doing okay. I think he's actually enjoying the challenge of trying to cook meals that are healthy and also taste good. "

"And you're still looking to buy a house together?"

"Yes. We are." Sharon knew that her mother wished that she and Andy would get married rather than just living together and felt bad for not telling her they were engaged. But they'd agreed they would tell everyone at Christmas Eve dinner. "We haven't really found anything we've fallen in love with since the house in the Hollywood Hills."

"The one filled with black mold?"

"Yes. We've looked at several more, one in Silver Lake, a couple in Long Beach, one in Atwater Village and we just looked at one in Mar Vista. But we just haven't found the right fit yet. It's hard because we keep comparing the ones we're looking at to the first one we loved. We have at least narrowed a style down. We both like the Spanish/Mediterranean homes. You know, white stucco, red tiled roofs, lots of arches. Very Southern California."

"Sounds lovely. " Colleen turned to her with a wistful look. "You know, there was a time I never thought you'd stick it out over there."

"I know, Mom. But I've built a life on the west coast."

"I know you have. "

Sharon took a breath preparing herself to broach a subject that had been bothering her since she and Andy had talked at the growth wall. "Mom, are you and Dad planning to sell this house?"

Colleen wiped her hands on a dishtowel, and then gave Sharon a long look before finally asking, "Why would you think that?"

"Well, you've been packing up a lot stuff to hand over to Chris and me. It feels like you're closing things up. I can't blame you. I mean it makes sense. This is a really big house for two people."

"It is. But it's my home." Tears gleamed in Colleens eyes. "This is where Richie and you and Christine grew up. We bought this house the year I got pregnant with you. It's been 53 years. It's hard to let go of that history. But your father and I aren't getting any younger. The truth is, if we didn't have the money to pay old Ralph Palmer to plow and shovel us out in the winter and take care of mowing the lawns in the summer and I didn't have Shirley Drouin come in three times a week to help with the cleaning and laundry, we probably would have sold it years ago. But we have thought about it. Would that bother you?"

"As selfish as it sounds it did kind of bother me when I first started thinking that might be your plan. This is where I grew up and I always knew that if things ever got really, really bad, this house was here. Surrounded by these walls Sharon O'Dwyer still lives, not Sharon Raydor, not Captain Raydor. But, after talking with Andy about it, I realized that this house is my past, it's not my home anymore. My home is with Andy, wherever we are, at the condo or a new house."

"As it should be. "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge."

Sharon smiled at her mother's less than subtle use of the quote from Ruth that was used at so many weddings. She was going to be pretty excited when she found out that she and Andy were indeed getting married and all these hints had been unnecessary. "Yes, well, I do understand why you'd want to downsize. I did the same thing after Emily and Ricky both left for college."

"Well, first of all, regardless of what we do with this house, Sharon O' Dwyer still lives. She's your roots, she's a big part of who you are. I see her in Captain Sharon Raydor every time I look at her. I see her in Ricky's big smile and Emily's compassionate eyes. She's not going anywhere. But as far as your father and I are concerned, well, we already spend January to April in Myrtle Beach. As you know we'll be heading out as usual right after the New Year. Your father is already itching to get back out on the golf course. We've talked about selling and moving into one of those senior housing places where they have assisted living if one or both of you are unable to take care of yourselves alone anymore. And we've talked about moving down to South Carolina or Florida permanently."

"What about California? Have you ever thought about moving out near me? Southern California has a mild climate too."

"You'd really want us to move out close to you?"

"Of course I would. My moving to California didn't have anything to do with trying to get away from you. And if you don't want to be that close, you don't have to move to LA. You could find somewhere around San Diego. La Jolla would be perfect for you. "

"Isn't that where Grace and Frankie from the TV show live?"

"I think it is. Yes."

"I love that show. Have you ever..." She paused when Sharon dropped a plate with a clatter. "What?" She asked at the strange look on her daughter's face.

"Nothing. Uh, have I ever what?" Oh please God, don't let her ask if she'd ever bought one of those vibrators. She was no prude but she could only go just so far in discussing her sex life with her mother.

Colleen gave her a small quirk of the lips. She knew why her daughter was so flustered. "I was just going to ask if you've ever watched it."

"Yes." Sharon nearly sighed with relief. "Andy I like it too. Anyway, I think it would be a good fit for you. It's a very artsy community, there's golfing for Dad and you'd only be 2 ½ hours away from me instead of an entire continent."

"Oh, honey. It means a lot to me that you want us closer. It's something we can certainly think about.

"Hey Mom, do we have another bag of cranberries?" Emily called out from the living room.

Sharon made her way to the refrigerator, pulled out the last bag of berries, and canted her head to get her mother to follow her into the living room. "How are you set for popcorn?" She asked, handing the bag of berries to Emily.

"Oh we're good on popcorn." Ricky pointed toward several bowls lined up by the hearth. "I think Gramma popped a dozen bags."

"Gramma did NOT pop a dozen bags," Colleen said, ruffling her grandson's hair. "I just wanted to make sure we had enough."

"Oh, we have enough." Rusty was standing at the tree with Dean winding the popcorn and cranberry garland around its fragrant branches. "Can you remind me why we are spending all this time making garland when they sell this stuff at Wal-Mart?"

"Cause it's fun," Scotty said from his perch on William's knee. William gave Rusty a grin and continued to thread his needle through the popcorn and cranberries.

"Yeah, it's fun," William agreed.

"And when Christmas is over the birds will enjoy it," Colleen added.

Nicole was seated by the tree pulling carefully wrapped ornaments from a storage box. "You sure have a lot of angels," she said.

"Oh, you can never have too many angels." Colleens reply set Andy and the Raydor kids into peals of laughter. Colleen's brow furrowed with confusion. "What's so funny about that?"

"You sound just like Mom," Rusty explained. "She said the exact same thing when I told her she had a lot of angels my first Christmas with her."

Andy looked up from the photo album he'd been flipping through while the others decorated the tree. "And she said the same thing to me my first Christmas with her."

"Just proves I raised her right." Colleen slipped an arm around Sharon's waist.

-.-.-.-.-.-.

"Did my mother give you those?" Sharon asked, sitting down beside Andy on the couch.

"I told her I'd like to see some pictures of you as a kid."

Sharon raised a brow at the pile of photo albums on the coffee table. "And she brought out the entire Sharon O'Dwyer collection?"

Andy grinned. "It's a pretty great collection." As soon as he'd started looking through them, he could see where Sharon got her organizational skills. The albums were all labeled and the pictures chronologically placed. Book one started with the banner "Happy Birthday, Sharon Elizabeth O'Dwyer" and was filled with pictures of a newborn Sharon being held by a much younger Colleen and William along with other various adults he assumed were relatives. One photo struck him as particularly poignant. A young boy of around 9 or 10 sitting in a chair awkwardly holding his new baby sister.

Richard "Richie" O'Dwyer. Sharon's deceased older brother.

Andy had seen a picture of him, along with her parents and her sister in Sharon's bedroom back home, but he was older in that photo. When he'd first seen the picture it had struck him how much Sharon's son resembled her brother and her father. Back when he'd first met Ricky Raydor it had been hard to find a familial resemblance with either Sharon or Jack. Ricky was very tall and lanky and he had hazel eyes. Jack was of average height and stocky build while Sharon at 5'7 was only a few inches taller than the average woman. But now having met Judge O'Dwyer and seen more pictures of Richie, it was even more apparent that Ricky favored the O'Dwyers, while Sharon's auburn hair and green eyes favored her mother's O'Neill side. But even though mother and son might not share the same features, Andy had always seen Sharon in Ricky's smile. Like Sharon, the boy had a smile that lit up his whole face and in his ebullient personality; Andy had been able to see hints of the girl Sharon had been before life had caused her to erect barriers around herself. The girl whom she was revealing to him more and more as each day passed.

After the newborn pictures had come those taken in the church at the baptismal font, Sharon's tiny form enveloped in an ornate satin christening gown. He wasn't surprised to see that baby Sharon had taken the holy water being poured on her head without a fuss. His ladylove was always calm, cool and collected.

The last few pictures in the first album were of Sharon's first wobbly steps into-not surprisingly-her father's outstretched arms. He'd long since figured out that Sharon was a daddy's girl. But she was not her daddy's only girl. A tender smile touched his lips at the photo of Sharon, still a baby herself, with chubby porcelain cheeks, strawberry curls and big green eyes, holding another newborn with a little help from her mother. Her sister Christine Mary O'Dwyer. Only 16 months apart in age, Sharon had described them as "almost Irish twins".

With the family complete, he moved on into another album that was filled with pictures taken during vacations and holidays. Three kids having fun building sand castles on the beach and splashing each other in the ocean waves, laughing on the rides at Disney world and snow suited and rosy cheeked skiing down snowy slopes in the mountains. The holiday pictures included older people he assumed were Sharon's grandparents. He didn't usually find looking through pictures particularly interesting but he was really enjoying the opportunity to see all the facets of Sharon's personality today in the little girl she'd been in these pictures.

There she was serious and polite seated at an elegantly set table at Thanksgiving watching her father carve the turkey and then a month later cross legged on the floor in front of the Christmas tree in her pajamas grinning ear to ear while holding a tiny black and white puppy with a bow around its neck. St Patrick's day found her all dressed in green and shamrocks dancing a jig with her sister and mother and the fourth of July in a red, white and blue bathing suit swinging a sparkler in front of a picnic table laden with lobsters and bowls of steamed clams and corn on the cob, the dog dancing at her feet. She definitely came by her sense of occasion honestly.

He grabbed the next album and opened it to find Sharon standing in front of the Sacred Heart Convent School in patent leather shoes and a light blue checked jumper over a white collared shirt, her hair tightly braided. She had a slightly uneasy look on her face. It was labeled "Sharon's first day of school." His grin at how cute she was faded and his chest tightened with sadness when he flipped the pages and came upon the pictures of William and Richie teaching Sharon how to ride a bike down the long driveway. Sharon had spoken to him of her grief at her brother's death when she was only 12 and he had ached for her, but seeing them together in these pictures and the way that Sharon looked at him with a beaming, adoring smile made that grief so much more real.

His smile quickly returned when he got to the first Holy Communion pictures. Sharon looked like a little angel in her white dress and sheer veil, a rosary clutched between two hands held together in prayer. He couldn't wait for the day he saw her in white again, only this time as his bride.

Another album brought him into the middle school years when she was all skinny arms, coltish long legs and braces. She'd been quite a busy little thing, he mused as he took in the pictures of dance and piano recitals, soccer and softball games, swim meets and horse shows. One of his favorites had been taken of Sharon sitting astride a beautiful chestnut colored horse in jodhpurs and a blazer her long hair pulled back into a low bun. She was beaming and holding a blue first place ribbon.

Those years morphed into high school and the more traditional Catholic schoolgirl uniform that he was used to; navy, green and gold plaid skirt, knee-highs, saddle shoes and a gold crucifix dangling over her navy blue sweater. The braids and braces were gone, replaced with a mane of glossy waist long hair that had deepened into the darker rich auburn it was today. Little Sharon was blossoming into quite a beauty.

"Where was this taken?" he asked, pointing to an unmarked picture of her in her late teens standing in the sand in front of a shingled beach house. She was wearing striped hip hugger bell-bottoms and a bikini top, a puka shell necklace around her neck and a big mood ring on her finger. It was obviously the 70's and she was developing the curves of the woman she would become. Her head was tilted to one side, long hair, falling like a curtain over her shoulder. Her hands were on her hips and she was smiling broadly, it was the same smile she had today.

"Oh God," Sharon groaned at the photo of her in her 70's glory. "That was at my grandparents beach house in 'Sconset. Nantucket. We used to spend a month out there every summer."

"You were gorgeous even back then. Of course nothing can compare with how you look now."

"Andy." Sharon flushed and shoved him good-naturedly with her shoulder.

"What? It's true. You were pretty back then, but you're a knockout now."

Sharon smiled at him and looked back at the picture, a dozen memories flashing through her mind. "Oh, Nantucket," she sighed. "It's so beautiful out there. I'd love to take you some time."

"I'd like that." Andy flipped the page. "Hey, is that you in Paris?"

Sharon glanced down at the picture of her and her parents standing in front of the Eiffel Tower.

"Yes. As part of our curriculum, we had an exchange program with other Sacred Heart schools both here and abroad. I chose France and spent a school year in Lille which is about 2 hours north of Paris, close to border of Belgium."

"Did you like it there?"

"Once I got past the homesickness I had a great time. That picture was taken when my parents flew over to bring me home and we spent a few days in Paris."

"That's right; you did say you spent some time as an exchange student." Back when they'd first begun dating he'd taken her to a fancy French restaurant and had been surprised by how fluently she'd been able to order in French. Usually in Southern California if someone spoke a foreign language it was Spanish. Sharon didn't speak Spanish.

"Okay everyone, the ornaments are all laid out, time to start decorating."

Andy set the photo album aside and rose, but before he could make his way over to grab an ornament Sharon took his hand and pulled him aside.

"You know. " She leaned in speaking softly. "I made a promise to myself when I was 17 and in the City of Love."

"Oh yeah, what kind of promise?"

"That I would come back one day with the man I love."

"And did you?"

She shook her head negatively. "Not yet."

"Well," he said, bending to press a kiss to her cheek, absurdly pleased she'd never gone there with Jack. "I may have to do something about that."

"Hey, hey, enough with the lovebird stuff," William said. "We have a tree to decorate here."

Sharon bit a back a smile. "Yes Dad."

TBC