other up between sessions. She’d written and he’d researched and they’d made love and built snow castles. And vowed to avenge themselves from the last Winter Festival Great Snowman Competition.
“You’re very competitive for a granola girl,” Michael said with a chuckle. “Or is that Henry?”
Henry didn’t seem competitive at all. He was absolutely the best poker player in town and yet she’d watched him scrub hands he could have won. He’d said it was because he’d known whoever he was playing against needed the money or needed a win.
Or had he done that so no one would question him?
“I think that’s me.” Henry wanted to go under the radar, for obvious reasons. “I’ve always been a little type A when it comes to some things. Not with sports. With academic things, though, and certain artistic pursuits.”
“I can see you being incredibly studious,” Michael agreed. “You were probably in your class’s top ten.”
She sighed, the wistful memory overtaking her. “I would have been my class valedictorian.”
“Would have been?”
“We moved a lot.” When her mom got nervous, they moved. Sometimes it was because she claimed she saw someone she knew from the old country. By old country she’d meant the faery world she’d come from. Sometimes it was because people looked at her funny and she worried the authorities would show up again and take her daughter. “At the high school I graduated from you had to be at the school for at least three semesters in order to qualify. I’d only been there two, so they didn’t rank me.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
She shrugged. She’d agreed. “I protested them. They didn’t care. I was in a state that’s not a great place for protests. Colorado is better. Not that most people listen, but there are fewer guns pointed your way.”
“Cool. I’ll remember that for the future. We’ll keep the protesting schedule to Colorado for the time being. I consider any protest where you get completely ignored to be a successful one.” Michael obviously wasn’t terribly interested in social justice. He’d tried to talk her out of her protest of a neighboring school board who were trying to ban several important children’s books from not only the school’s library, but also the town library. He hadn’t seen the point, but she’d managed to gather together a group of parents who were even louder than the ones who thought books about magical creatures would send their children into satanic worship.
She’d only been ignored at that protest because she’d handed it over to the parents with more to lose. That was how most of her activism went. People didn’t see the problem coming at them because they weren’t paying attention or didn’t truly understand what was going to happen. Nell pointed it out. The people who were affected took over, and Nell helped them fight.
Henry did, too. Henry could spot a problem a mile away. He was the one who’d found the problem with a township’s water and connected it to a nearby company’s use of chemicals and utter disregard for EPA regulations. He was so sexy when he was connecting dots.
“Hey, Miss Nell, how are you doing today?” Mel Hughes walked up wearing his normal uniform of jeans, a T-shirt, and a trucker hat lined with tinfoil, his girlfriend at his side.
Cassidy Meyer had her steel gray hair in a long braid, one hand in Mel’s and the other holding a big insulated tote.
Nell could remember when the tin foil routinely stuck out of the hat. Since Mel had started dating Cassidy Meyer, she’d taken over the management of his hat shields, and most of the time no one would know Mel was protecting his brain from alien death rays.
“We missed you earlier.” Cassidy smiled so much more these days. Years ago Nell had Cassidy’s tiny cabin on what she liked to call her “rounds.” She’d identified people who lived alone and visited them. Sometimes only once because they truly wanted to be alone. But Cassidy had been isolated, and she’d welcomed Nell.
Nell had mentioned that Mel knew a lot about aliens, too, and now Cassidy was a part of the community.
Couples made each other better. The ones that truly worked did. They shored up the deficiencies in the other. Holly smoothed over Caleb’s rough edges and helped him navigate social functions. She helped Alexei with his college work. Both men lifted up her confidence and supported her in everything she wanted to do. Stef Talbot gave his wife all the help she needed,