"So, what was it like?" Harry said, not wanting to be left out. "All four of you together?"

"Kind of strange," Mattie answered. "It was like all of our feelings and thoughts were together, but still separate when we were in our past bodies."

She looked for confirmation from the rest of them.

"That sounds about right," Xena agreed. "We were together, but apart. I could feel, sense, experience all the anguish, and the worry, and especially the love each of us had for the other."

Mattie and Gabrielle concurred.

"And it was also exhausting," Annie added. "I know it's early, but we didn't have much of a lunch. So, Harry, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind fixing supper now?"

"Not at all," he replied. "I can make baked chicken, or spaghetti. Which would you prefer?"

They decided they would like spaghetti.

"Okay. So, why don't the four of you relax, put your feet up, watch some TV, and I'll call you when supper's ready?"

Harry went into the kitchen and started the browning the ground beef, put in the spaghetti to boil, then took out a loaf of French bread to make garlic toast. As he started to slice it, he said to himself, "I wonder if they would like Parmesan cheese on the garlic toast."

He walked back through the dining room to the living room and saw that they had taken his advice to relax, but not exactly the way he expected. Annie was sitting on the love seat with Gabrielle. Her arm was around Gabrielle, and Gabrielle's head was down on Annie's shoulder with one leg across her lap.

Xena was in her usual spot on the end of the sofa, her feet on the coffee table and ankles crossed. Mattie was lying down with her head on Xena's lap, and Xena's fingers were entwined in Mattie's dark red hair as if she had been running her fingers through it. All four of them were asleep.

Harry stood there for a few seconds, trying to figure out how that had happened, then quietly went back into the kitchen. He stirred the spaghetti, then the ground beef, and picked up the knife to start slicing, but put it back down. And with a sigh, and in a sad voice, he said, "Oh, Meg. You're just like a cop — never around when you're needed."

For most of a minute he let himself think back on the faint and fleeting images of himself and Meg — drinking and laughing together in Meg's tavern, drinking and laughing when they got married, the drunken wedding night, and the farm and their kids being born and growing up. Then shaking himself from his reverie, he picked up the knife again and began slicing the bread to make the garlic toast.

THE END