A Dream Come True

With a triumphant crow, Molly retrieved the small package wrapped in a faded, blue bandanna. She discovered the bundle exactly where she had buried it years ago beneath a miscellaneous pile of old photograph albums and magazines which had been pushed to very back of her closet.

"Found it," she gloated quietly to herself as she scurried back to her familiar bed covered in an ecru colored, candlewick bedspread.

The room was plainly decorated, all the tones were neutral-white, beige or ivory. The only splash of bold color came from a few landscapes painted by Molly herself which were hung at haphazard intervals upon the walls of the room. It was a room meant for contemplation. She intended for it to act as a counterpoint to the never ending parade of people, (both fictional and real, which were oftentimes blurred together into new prototypes of Molly's own making) ideas and images that crowded her mind from when she first awoke in the morning until she fell asleep at night, exhausted from the ceaseless activity of her ever lively brain.

She had redecorated it during her senior year in high school in an attempt to create an outward serenity which she thought might then be mimicked by an inward ability to control her scattered thoughts. Unfortunately, it was a failed experiment in interior design as a method for regulating an excessively exuberant mind. It was only recently that a slightly older and more mature Molly had managed to slowly learn how to regulate her overactive imagination rather than it being the other way around. Still, she also readily recognized that her vivid imagination was the wellspring of her creativity, her artistic sense and her never ending delighted discovery of the world surrounding her and as such Molly cherished it.

Yet, there were many times when she was grateful to have learned some techniques which enabled her to focus on one thought, on one topic without being distracted. It had been her time at the Sorbonne, where she faced the inherent challenge and daunting discipline of the art history program, which had finally taught her the value of looking before leaping. Somehow though, on this first magical day back in her homeland, all that effort in developing self-awareness and self-control had airily flown out the French doors of her bedroom leaving behind a very familiar jumble of thoughts and emotions which culminated in a not unpleasant sensation of breathless anticipation.

She relished this time alone and the quietude of the house now that her mother and sisters were safely retired for the night. Molly was happy to be home, delighted to see her extended family and was eagerly looking forward to getting back into the routine of living at the lake house. Still, she had long been craving solitude and the opportunity to dwell on her serendipitous meeting with Damian Spinelli, of all the unexpected people, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

She had dashed into the building on an impulse, seeking to get out of the rain than for any other more weighty purpose. After all, she had her fill of museums during her time in Paris and she didn't particularly feel an urge to visit another one, no matter how deservedly famous. Molly really intended to spend the afternoon in Central Park, reacquainting herself with New York and being back in the states in general. It was peculiar to hear everyone around her speaking English albeit oftentimes with foreign accents.

She was accustomed to being surrounded by the liquid and mesmerizing flow of French with accompanying Gallic overtones embodied in body language and hand movements. It was an unexpected shock to Molly's ears to hear the harsher sounds of her countrymen with their eastern pronunciation and borough specific dialects.

'Anyone who thinks Americans speak a bland, neutral form of English ought to spend a few hours in New York City in order to disabuse themselves of that notion,' she thought to herself with overtones of anthropological righteousness.

Meeting someone at the museum wasn't a present consideration in Molly's mind. She just needed to while away some time while she out waited the sudden spring storm. Yet, it was as though destiny had an entirely separate plan from her own intentions set in place for Molly Davis. She recognized him immediately as he stood before the French Peasant Girl, even with his back turned to her. Several years had passed since she had last seen him but that didn't appear to matter in the least. Her heart rate increased and her palms grew sweaty but none of that nervousness showed in the slightest as she approached Spinelli and made her opening comment. Indeed. it was through the innocent agency of her initial remark that Spinelli instantaneously transferred his momentary and fleeting fascination with a painted girl onto the live model standing next to him. Molly wanted to believe the switching of his attention would lead to something which was both more real and permanent in its composition. Most important of all, was that Spinelli's regard be not one of his famed infatuations but truly about Molly herself without any shielding veil of artifice or glamour to cause it to sputter and die in the cold hard light of everyday reality.

It was the simple truth that Diane's shrewd observations about Molly's romantic extra-curricular activities were much more on the mark than Alexis' hopeful denials. Anyone who was young, reasonably attractive and in possession of a healthy sex drive wasn't going to be celibate during a several year sojourn in the City of Light and Molly certainly wasn't an exception to that well validated truism.

Much as she had done for Kristina years earlier, Sam took Molly to get her first gynecological examination and a prescription for birth control pills. The primary difference between this occasion and the first time Sam performed such a private and personal service for her one of her sisters, was that Alexis herself tacitly endorsed her older daughter's guidance. Additionally, in Molly's particular situation, the act was performed for prophylactic reasons rather than for imminent cause. Although, Molly wasn't a virgin when she went to France, she was only the veteran of a single sexual encounter.

Once she was ensconced in Paris, Molly quickly discovered that eating, drinking, voracious conversation and yes, sex, were all considered equally important as was attending classes and completing projects with élan. Amongst her particular group of friends, Molly was neither the most promiscuous nor was she the least. She took her pleasure where she found it, time and inclination permitting. She required her partners to be smart, funny and not overly ambitious. Beyond that she wasn't picky because she was fully cognizant of the fact that they weren't any more to her than a dalliance. Her heart was carefully guarded, a fact she acknowledged to herself but- until today-hadn't quite realized why.

"Stupid little girl," Molly chided herself softly as she peered at the photograph revealed as one of the treasures stored away in the blue cloth so many years ago. She clutched the picture in her hand-her once more sweaty hand-she was mildly dismayed to discover, making that twice today that such an uncontrolled and undignified reaction had overtaken her body without her mind's overt acquiescence.

Molly ran her hand over the smooth glass covering the surface of the picture, effortlessly recalling the craziness of that long ago day. The non-wedding, the non-bride and non-groom, the non-reception had all conspired to make it a memorable occasion. After the non-ceremony, when everyone in attendance had adjoined to Jake's, Maxie, giddy with her unexpected matrimonial reprieve, imbibed glass after glass of champagne and laughed loudly as she danced and smiled and cut the chic designer cake Kate Howard had donated to the non-proceedings.

Superficially, Spinelli had matched Maxie's liveliness but anyone who cared enough to scrutinize his demeanor would catch a series of unguarded glances, his expression one of rueful desolation, sent toward his non-wife before he recalled himself and once again donned a joyful and carefree façade. Molly was one of those unseen observers in conjunction with Jason. She frequently caught the older man looking intently at his young roommate throughout the duration of the reception. It took a keen eye to detect his subtle surveillance as he remained stoically detached from the frivolity of the celebration beyond his subdued concern for Spinelli and a gentle tenderness he would exhibit anytime Molly's sister, Sam, spoke to him.

Molly sighed as she gazed pensively around her bedroom dimly lit by a small, light with a pink, ruffled lampshade sitting incongruously on her night table. The lamp was one of the few relics remaining from her earlier girlhood when she had indulged her shameless tendency to enshrine anything which harbored the slightest tint of romanticism within it. Her thoughts once again drifted back to the reception as she savored her memories of that distant day. Molly fondly remembered the duet she sang with Morgan and the sense of maturity which a first sanctioned visit to an actual bar had engendered within her. Still, her strongest memory was of her sneaking unexpressed delight in the realization that the actual occasion she had come to witness was, as far as young Molly had been concerned anyway, null and void. Maxie and Spinelli could gush on and on about being non-spouses and sharing unwedded bliss all they wished. Even at her tender age, Molly was shrewd enough to know that there was neither a recognized social nor a legal connection between the formally dressed young couple partying the evening away. Maxie and Spinelli were nothing more than what they had been prior to the non-wedding which was a couple in a committed relationship and Molly couldn't have been happier, euphoric really, at such an uncanny and unexpected twist of fate.

At Jake's bar that long ago evening, there were four people who were delighted with the alteration of the occasion from a formal binding wedding ceremony to an outlandish celebration of non-commitment. Mac was so thrilled his little girl wasn't marrying a man he despised for his connections to the mob, as much as his bizarre mannerisms and speech patterns, that in joyful reaction to the happy news, he became a boisterous, loud drunk sharing his newfound bliss with all who would listen and snuggling up to Alexis, Molly's not unwilling mother. Then there was the bride herself, Maxie, who was the undeniable life of the party, second only to her father. Her wild exuberance was due entirely to her overwhelming relief which was wonderfully expressed via her newly dubbed status of non-wife. Jason's gratification with the unlooked for outcome was a muted thing; his reaction was only visible to those few present who were shrewd enough to look beneath his noncommittal visage in order to observe the spark of quiet satisfaction which dwelled deep within his eyes. The final person to be elated that the wedding didn't take place was Molly herself.

She went to the wedding resigned that by the end of the ceremony Spinelli would be even farther out of her reach then he had been when she woke up earlier that morning. Molly's innate common sense oftentimes was entirely disregarded by those around her, so overlaid was it by her endless babble about true love and star crossed lovers. Yet, her practical nature allowed her to acknowledge that she was fully estranged from holding any realistic romantic hopes about Spinelli. The unconquerable chasm between them was not only created by the wide difference in their ages and the fact that Spinelli only ever noted her presence as Sam's precocious little sister but, most pertinent of all, was due to the incontrovertible fact that he was in love with, engaged to and marrying someone else.

Spinelli's unfailing kindness and courtesy toward a pre-adolescent girl was a behavior he essayed purely as a part of his innately generous personality without any attendant awareness of the impact his thoughtful deeds could have on such an impressionable mind. Spinelli was the epitome of all the traits a young, starry-eyed Molly Davis sought in her personification of true love. He was the distant Romeo to her yearning Juliet, the eloquent Robert Browning to her equally erudite Elizabeth Barrett, or perhaps, Molly even pondered, they were fated to become a modern day incarnation of those famous progenitors of tragically forbidden love, Tristan and Iseult.

Molly marveled how it was remotely possible that soulful, sensitive Damian Spinelli could ever truly love the brittle, superficial, fashion maven Maxie Jones who respected and understand nothing of her fiancée's poetic and gentle soul and matchless intelligence. Molly's only consolation was her stalwart conviction that eventually Spinelli would have to recover his senses. Meanwhile, Molly was determined to put the intervening time it took for Spinelli to discover the error of his ways to good use by naturally overcoming the worst handicap in the inequity which currently precluded any likelihood of a romance between them-her age. When enough years passed then it would be time for Spinelli to acknowledge what she, Molly, knew all along which was the irrefutable fact that they were soul mates intended only for one another.

At the not quite adolescent age of twelve, the potential of the years involved in awaiting Spinelli's inevitable epiphany was inconsequential because Molly was incapable of fathoming the awful inevitability of the affects of time. Waiting for Spinelli to be free was Molly's penance, the price she would pay to find happily ever after. Yet, the one thing she never countenanced, never even thought of was that it might not happen precisely as she had imagined it all those years ago, lying in this very same bed with this very same lamp casting a soft and hazy glow onto her starry eyes. Though Molly would never openly admit it, even to herself, it was still an immutable concept which her heart, both softer and less chronologically advanced then her all too cynical mind, held fast in its deepest recesses that true love conquered all.

Molly rather anticipated the day of the wedding with the same perverse degree of masochism which comes from relentlessly prodding at a sore tooth or picking at a scabbed over wound to make it bleed freely once more wherein the pain elicited acts as its own reward. Thus, Molly would force herself to sit quiescently in the congregation and watch her heart's heart be given away freely to that unworthy other who would surely only take it into her careless keeping to one day soon destroy it. The wedding would afterward be followed by a proscribed and lengthy period involving much trial and tribulation on both Spinelli and Molly's parts as they struggled through a fruitless and lonely existence separate from one another. Yet, it was fated that these harsh travails they each endured would only serve to make their eventual union even more poignantly bittersweet. Then finally the time would come when Molly, the heroine of her own story cobbled together from hundreds of more famous and enduring tales, would make her singular romantic mark on history as she rescued Damian Spinelli from the heartbreak of loving both too well and, most definitely, too unwisely.

As Molly sat in her chair at the wedding, she was actually envisioning this triumphant future taking place. She and Spinelli were alone together in a sunny meadow, the verdant grass scattered with the pure white and buttercup yellow accented purity of daisies. Spinelli's head lay nestled in Molly's lap, his green eyes lazily staring up into Molly's golden brown ones. She was wearing a lacy white summer dress and he was attired in a crisp, white shirt, suspenders and tan linen trousers. Both the setting and the clothing were clearly inspired by the Great Gatsby which Molly was currently reading. So, intent was she on her internal fantasy, set several years hence that Molly at first neglected to notice the furor erupting around her. It wasn't until Police Commissioner Scorpio actually fainted that she at last realized something momentous had just occurred.

At first, Molly was peculiarly disappointed at this unexpected turn of events. Her entirely imaginary romance with Spinelli was so clearly delineated within her mind that any deviation from her elaborately constructed fictional relationship perturbed her greatly. After all, she had incorporated the detested marriage of Spinelli and Maxie into the fabric of her dream as one of the major obstacles she and her future lover would need to overcome in their star-crossed progression toward true love and a happily ever after finale. Molly, in her overweening happiness and in a generous forgiveness of spirit combined with the tiniest soupcon of revenge, even planned for Maxie to be at her wedding to Spinelli.

Maxie would play the role of that old stand by without which no wedding ceremony was ever quite complete, a spurned lover. Molly could clearly see Maxie in her mind's eye, crying and dressed in dirty rags. Perhaps she would be clutching a bottle in a brown paper bag as she stood swaying before the lovers, her words slurred and tear choked, while she declared her undying love and devotion for Spinelli. She might even dramatically declare that she would kill herself if Spinelli went through with marrying Molly and then clumsily drag out a gun to support her assertion. The guests would gasp in shock and fear, knocking over chairs as they scampered to get out of range. It might then be possible that an enraged Maxie would change her mind and point the weapon at the bride instead but Spinelli immediately would step between the two women acting as a human shield to protect his one true love. That moment would forever define all three of them as Maxie, realizing all she had lost, would shakily lower her arm and sobbing turn and run from the church, her life an irredeemable ruin.

With shining eyes, Molly would run into Spinelli's arms, crying out ecstatically, "My hero!" and they would kiss passionately as their surroundings dissolved into a soft white mist.

At least that is how the dramatic scenario had always played out in Molly's imagination until the unexpected twist of Maxie and Spinelli's non-wedding intruded upon her carefully orchestrated story. It took her until the reception was well underway before Molly managed to reconfigure this precise vision of hers and Spinelli's preordained future and fit it into the context of the unanticipated and rather annoying outcome of actual events. By that point in the proceedings, Molly had convinced herself that perhaps this day's unforeseen events would work equally well in laying the groundwork for their own individual trials and tribulations which would eventually conclude in their coming together in wedded bliss.

After all, a heart-sore Spinelli, veteran of one non-marriage and several affairs, for the useful benefits of seasoning, suddenly sounded much more appealing than the more sordid prospect of a divorced, marriage-shy, and bitter Jackal. However it precisely played out, Molly was fervently convinced that on one not too hugely distant day, Spinelli would look at her across the room and see her standing there. At that exact moment, Spinelli would suddenly realize that his life had been nothing but an elongated and frustrating search for the very perfection which had lain fallow and carelessly unattended beneath his heretofore unsuspecting gaze.

"That's almost exactly how it happened too," Molly marveled to herself as she unconsciously caressed the picture tightly gripped in her hand.

The photograph was taken at that fateful reception, a memento from an event now almost a decade in the past. Molly was standing next to Spinelli, who was bending down to match her shorter height, his arm was wrapped around her shoulder as he grinned into the camera, a flush composed of equal parts champagne and love coloring his cheeks. Molly was gazing up at him, the full adoration of her crush frozen forever in the imprint of the camera's unbiased eye. For years, Molly slept with this picture under her pillow, hidden from the inimical and suspicious gaze of her mother and the equally dangerous teasing of her older sister.

It wasn't until the night of her sixteenth birthday, upon which occasion Alexis and Sam collaborated in throwing a surprise party for her at the Metro Court, when Molly finally and painfully was constrained to relinquish her girlhood infatuation. Spinelli was in attendance and he wasn't alone. He was there with some brunette girl who possessed the most mesmerizing blue eyes Molly had ever seen but in every other characteristic was eminently forgettable except for the wistful look on her face. Molly belatedly recognized that Spinelli's companion's expression was the identical twin to the one adorning her own face. Together, in their bereft abandonment, they stared at an oblivious Jackal who was busy himself gazing longingly at a nonchalant Maxie Jones while she gaily danced and flirted with Johnny Zacchara.

Something cracked within Molly as a result of this pathetic exhibition on the part of all three of them and she was suddenly furious with Spinelli for leading her on. Then a brief second later her anger was turned inward as she recognized the idiocy of her blaming him for what he could neither know of concerning her feelings nor clearly even control of his own unrequited infatuation. Regardless, Molly found herself to be suddenly emotionally altered, the scales were fallen away from her eyes and it wasn't possible to replace them, nor did Molly wish to. She was done being an impractical dreamer, Spinelli was quite capable of doing enough of that for the both of them. Where had it gotten him but still trapped in Maxie's orbit, worshipping someone who would never see him as more than a dear friend? Well, Molly Davis wasn't going to follow the hapless hacker down such a dreary and unproductive life path. She would live and be open to the opportunities life offered. Most importantly of all, she would demand love which was reciprocated rather than wallowing in the dubious pleasures of being caught upon the whims and fancies of someone who couldn't even appreciate what you were offering him.

That very night Molly removed the cherished picture from beneath her pillow and almost destroyed it without pause as her bruised heart cried out for retribution. She went so far as to remove the fragile thing from beneath its protective glass covering and was contemplating ripping it to shreds when she reconsidered and instead hid it deep away in her top bureau drawer. There, tucked out of sight but not mind, it resided next to a single cultured pearl suspended from a silver chain, a piece of jewelry newly acquired that eventful evening.

The necklace was Spinelli's birthday gift to Molly presented with a sweet smile and a gentle kiss placed upon her smooth, upturned cheek. It was an impeccable choice for a girl on the cusp of womanhood and as such Molly couldn't bear to look at it. She realized everything the lovely and delicate present symbolized in terms of how Spinelli perennially viewed her as Sam's little sister, growing up perhaps but still not registering on his radar as a viable romantic prospect. So, the innocently offending necklace was exiled along with the betraying picture, both locked away in unrelieved darkness for the simple crime of not delivering on love's promise.

Even Molly's angry epiphany wasn't enough of a magical moment of self-discovery to spontaneously cure all that ailed her. The habit of claiming Spinelli's future as her own was too strongly entrenched in her to be exorcised in one fell swoop of revelation. Molly still felt a sharp pang somewhere beneath her sternum whenever she would run into Spinelli at Kelly's or at some social event, both were exceedingly common occurrences which their overlapping worlds frequently generated. Spinelli, perpetually insensible of Molly's inner turmoil, was unfailingly kind to her. As she grew older, they even occasionally engaged in discussions of literature and theater and art, all of which topics were near and dear to Molly's heart.

Nor was Molly above feeling a mean frisson of satisfaction when Spinelli finally repudiated Maxie after she once again cheated on him during one of their numerous reconciliations. This break appeared to be the final one for the two of them as Maxie married Matt Hunter shortly afterward. He and Spinelli had warred for Maxie's fickle affections throughout the intervening years since the non-wedding. Ironically, it seemed that most of the people who were acquainted with all the members of this redundant triangle, viewed Spinelli the true victor in the final resolution of their rivalry. They felt he was well rid of such a faithless paramour even though, at least on the surface, it appeared that Matt claimed the actual prize they had each fought over for so long.

Molly only knew of the wedding through hearsay since neither she nor her family attended the nuptials as their loyalty lay with Maxie's discarded non-groom. Spinelli himself left Port Charles the day of the wedding and he did not return for six months. Sam told her family that Jason was very worried about his young friend because he was entirely incommunicado while he was away nursing his broken heart. With an unerring sense of exactly how long he could stay away without consequences, Spinelli returned to the city just as Jason was about to set out in determined search of him.

Spinelli's return coincided with the time frame when Molly was leaving for college and, as a result of their occupying different physical locations, she hadn't seen him for several years until earlier today though she naturally still occasionally thought about him. Unfortunately, what Molly hadn't realized, until their serendipitous chance encounter, was that every boy and man she had ever dated was being unconsciously compared against the benchmark of Damian Spinelli and each one came up lacking in one capacity or another.

Yet, this insight into herself was entirely irrelevant because Molly no longer needed to compare, consciously or not, other suitors against Spinelli. After all, it apparently was a moot issue since the original template was once again in her orbit and this time he was as interested in her as she was in him. Molly had been euphoric or at least that was the case until the casual mention of Spinelli's engagement by Sam. Her younger self had reappeared and suddenly all those romantic notions of bygone years no longer seemed so silly and unattainable. Still, surprisingly she wasn't crushed at the news, far from it. No, for the first time in years, Molly was filled with purpose outside the world of academia. She wanted something badly enough to fight for it. She was no longer a dreamy, starry eyed girl of twelve but she also hadn't abandoned all her precepts of love and romance. They were gradually awakening within her after years of lying dormant and this time she was determined to follow her heart rather than her mind.

Molly wasn't naive, she was an iron clad melding of both her Cassadine and Lansing heritage and each of those lineages believed in claiming that which was owed them. Idly she ran her fingers through the worn material of the blue bandanna and felt something hard and thin beneath her touch, Curiously, she spread open the fabric and gave a little gasp of surprise as she saw the pearl necklace trapped within the folds of the bandanna.

"I forgot about you," Molly whispered into the still hush of her room.

She rubbed at the blackened chain and looked at her fingers smudged with the transfer from the oxidation of the chain. Molly understood all about the chemical reaction which discolored metals like silver, iron and copper. She had to learn such things to fulfill her studies of the chemistry of paints. Carefully, Molly reached over and placed the necklace, still held safely within its cloth nest, on her night table. Then, she pulled up her pillow and tucked the picture of her and Spinelli back in its rightful place of old. Dreamily, she lay her tired head back against the comfort of the feathered pillow, Molly was weary, exhausted really, but she couldn't sleep. Her mind was too full of the day's events and every beat of her heart echoed deep within her thrumming to a repetitive rhythm of three syllables-Spin-nel-li.

Her thoughts turned to the combined engagement and welcome home party tomorrow night at Uncle Sonny's. Molly could hardly wait for the festive occasion. Her lips curved up in a cat-like smile of pure malice as she visualized the expression of unadulterated envy on the faces of Diane, Kate Howard and, most especially, Kristina, when they would finally get to see her dress. She knew it was worthy of arousing lust in those who worshipped clothing. It turned out that Molly herself wasn't immune to the insidious lure of that siren call because when she saw this dress in the window of a small fashion house located in Provence she knew she must possess it.

Molly wasn't pretentious and, though her family didn't lack for material goods or the funds to buy them, she was raised to not be frivolous with money. Yet, over the course of her life as a child of divorce, her absentee father sent her substantial checks each year on her birthday, Christmas and any other occasion when he was feeling especially guilty in his neglect of her. Most of the checks were promptly snatched from her grasp and sent off to reside in a variety of funds established by Alexis to ensure Molly's future-her education, the ability to buy a home, and even trust funds for her, at the moment, nonexistent grandchildren. Yet, some of the money was placed into an account which Molly was allowed to access on her eighteenth birthday. She seldom dipped into it because her mother's strictures on financial prudence were well ingrained in her younger daughter. However, the dress was just too much to pass up. So, when Molly observed that several other women were also eyeing it, she decided that simply wouldn't do and marched into the store and promptly purchased it, frugality be damned. That was well over a year ago and the dress had languished unseen and unworn in its cardboard coffin lined with acid free tissue party. Tomorrow night would be its debut and Molly absolutely knew that draped within its designer folds, she could and would fight against this mafia princess for Spinelli's heart.

Molly was getting sleepy even as her mind conjured up memories of the parties Sonny had previously hosted at Graystone Manor. Originally, in the earlier years, it had been all four of them hiding out in the shrubs, or later climbing up into the old embracing arms of a majestic oak which overhung the outdoor patio. They were transfixed by the scene before them, their usual incessant chattering and arguing silenced as they watched the glamorous guests mill around. They appeared armored against hardship and deprivation, the women wearing beautiful flowing gowns of silk and taffeta while the men acting as their gallant escorts dressed in designer suits and the occasional tuxedo. Unfamiliar, lush music, that none of them would be caught dead listening to on their own time, swirled through the summer night air and somehow, along with the full moon sailing overhead and the crystalline click of champagne glasses, made the scene complete in its transcendent magic.

"Isn't it romantic?" Kristina would breathe out and not even Michael or Morgan snickered at her girlish wistfulness.

After the first few years, the quartet was splintered into two as Kristina and Michael metamorphosed into young adults and it was decreed they were of an age to join the revelry taking place on their father's patio. Now it was Kristina who wore dresses made of white satin with matching slippers peeping from beneath the sweeping hem. She was accompanied by Michael, her small hand tucked trustingly into the crook of his arm. It was quite obvious to his younger brother and cousin that Michael wasn't as delighted to finally be at the party as his sister was. His face was set in dull lines of duty while he valiantly warred with the impulse to tug off his tie just precisely as his Uncle Jason would be doing on the far side of the patio standing next to Sam.

Up above, hidden from view by lush leaf cover, Molly and Morgan were in sole possession of the secretive branches of the accommodating oak. They stared down with wide-eyed envy at their siblings transformed from their everyday selves into a reluctant prince and his ecstatic fairy princess. Even marking the arrival of Spinelli looking debonair in a suit obviously picked out for the private investigator by his date, Maxie, who was herself exquisitely dressed in a sheath of shimmering silver fabric, wasn't enough to entirely derail Molly's pleasure in the scene unfolding below her.

Tonight, it was Molly's turn to utter, Kristina's stock phrase, "Isn't it romantic?"

Molly might have said it with more wistfulness than would be Kristina's wont as she envisaged herself in Spinelli's arms while Maxie was magically spirited away to a fashion show in Italy but she still meant it. Sonny's parties were the epitome of elegance and even a teenaged Morgan found himself nodding in reluctant agreement, feeling as he did so that he was somehow compromising his manhood.

Molly's lips curved up into a wistful smile of contentment as she drowsily contemplated tomorrow night, "After all," she whispered staring up at the darkened ceiling upon which played a vision of her and Spinelli dancing on the fairy lit patio, "It's only an engagement party, not a wedding." With a final soft exhalation, Molly drifted off to sleep, already dreaming of being held safe and secure in the arms of the man who soon would be hers.

A/N: This is quite probably not the conclusive ending readers were looking for but that is because it is a piece that can be continued and I am planning to do so. Yet, for the moment, Chance Encounter is complete.