Bethany Campbell - The Baby Gift

“Honest. He’s finished his assignment in Khanty-Mansiysk. He’s in Moscow, ready to start back.”

“And he’s coming here?” Nealie’s body seemed so charged with energy she looked ready to bounce. “Here? To see us?”

“Yes. To see you.”

Nealie bounced in a sitting position. “When? When?”

“As soon as he can catch a plane. He should be here by the end of the week.”

“For how long?” Nealie asked, bouncing harder.

Briana’s heart wrenched. “I don’t know. We’ll see. Don’t bounce, sweetie. You’ll make your nose bleed again.”

“Maybe he’ll stay,” Nealie said. She stopped bouncing, but she wriggled. “Stay and never go away again.”

“No. We’ve talked about that. Daddy can’t stay in one place. But this time, maybe he can stay—a longer time.”

“Till my birthday?”

Nealie’s birthday was in April, more than two months away. God willing when spring returned, the child’s strength would return with it, and she would be better, not worse.

“Could he?” Nealie asked. “Still be here for my birthday?”

“I don’t know. He’ll tell us when he gets here. Now lay down and close your eyes and go to sleep. When you wake up, it’ll be morning, and he’ll be one day closer.”

She slipped her arm around her daughter, leaned back with her against the pillow. Nealie’s little body, warm and lithe, snuggled against hers.

“Why didn’t you wake me up when he called?” Nealie demanded. She was tired. She tried to hide her yawn as she said it.

“Shh. It was late. It’s a different time in Moscow. He would have called earlier if he could. You know that.”

Nealie nestled closer. “What time is it in Moscow?”

“Moscow time,” Briana said, and they both giggled. She smoothed the child’s hair and kissed her cheek again. She stayed until Nealie was asleep.

Then, because Briana couldn’t bear to let her go, she switched off the light and slipped under the quilt with her. But she could not sleep. She lay in the darkness, holding on to her child.

ON SATURDAY, Josh watched the airport loom beneath the plane as his flight descended into St. Louis. A light snow fell, dusting the runways, but after Russia, he saw such a snow as insignificant. It was like a season of buds and bluebirds, practically springtime in Paris.

His head, however, felt nothing like the merry month of May. It felt like hurricane season in hell.

For three days he’d lived in a nightmare of bad airline connections and endless delays. He’d spent too many hours crouched in cramped plane cabins, missed too much sleep, been able to stomach too little food.

Truth be told, he’d also nursed too many Scotches and vodkas to dull the pain. The pain came not from his physical discomfort, but out of fear for his daughter.

Along his jerking, twisted journey, he’d kept in touch with Briana as best he could. He told her he’d rent a car in St. Louis and drive to Illyria, for her not to drag Nealie out into the cold.

But when he got to the gate, his heavy camera bags slung over his shoulder, he saw them both, his ex-wife and his child. It was as if the rest of the sea of waiting people parted and vanished.

They stood at the edge of the walkway. Briana looked beautiful but pale and tense. Nealie, his little, bespectacled elfin Nealie, looked radiant.

His daughter grinned at him. She had lost a tooth. For some reason, this nearly undid him. He ran toward her, and she ran to him, her arms out wide.

Then he had her in his embrace, and she seemed to be both clinging to him and climbing him like a little monkey. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” she cried, her arms tightening around his neck.

He kissed her all over her face, knocking her glasses askew. She laughed and kissed him back.

“Daddy,” she said again with such deep contentment that the words tore his heart.

She tried to wrap her skinny legs around his waist, but she was too small, and his parka made him too big. He let his camera bags fall to the floor and held her as tightly as he could. She buried her face in the harsh fur of his new parka, giggling.

He stared over the top of her head into Briana’s dark eyes. She was holding back tears, he could tell.

For a few seconds, everything that had ever gone wrong between them disappeared. For those few beats of his jittery pulse, once again he loved her, and she loved him.

But he knew it was an illusion and he knew that it couldn’t and wouldn’t last. There were some things in life so broken they could never be fixed. His marriage was one of them.

FOR A MOMENT Briana’s gaze locked with Josh’s. There was a wildness in his hazel eyes, a desperation she’d never before seen. In that look she read the depths of his love and fear for Nealie.

She understood his feelings, shared them. She had an impulse to join him and Nealie in their crazy embrace. But she did not. Instead she turned away and let them have their moment.

She bit her lower lip and wished her heart wouldn’t beat so hard that its every stroke felt like a stab wound. The airport looked blurry through her unshed tears, and she gave all her will to blinking them back.

But then she felt Josh’s touch and, helpless, she turned to him. Nealie clung to his neck, and he carried her in his left arm. His right hand gripped Briana’s shoulder.

He said nothing, only stared. His looks had always been a paradox to her, his face both boyish and rough-hewn. The jaw was pugnacious. The nose had a thin scar across the bridge from having been cut in a street fight when he was twelve.

But the eyes under the dark brows were alert and sensitive, and she had never seen such vulnerability in them. Still, his mouth had a crooked, slapdash grin that she knew he put there for Nealie’s sake.

His brown hair was long and not quite even. He had a close-trimmed beard, and the harsh winter had burnished his cheekbones and etched fine lines at the corners of his eyes.

He put his free arm around her. “Briana,” he said. He bent and kissed her on the mouth. His beard tickled and scratched. He smelled of Scotch and airline peanuts. His lips were chapped.

None of it mattered. Something turned cartwheels inside her, and to steady herself, she put her hand on the thick gray fur of his parka.

He drew back too soon, or maybe not soon enough.

He shook his head in mock disapproval. “You weren’t supposed to come for me.”

“She insisted,” Briana said, giving Nealie a shaky smile. “You think I could keep her away?”

Nealie’s arms tightened around his neck. “You came all the way from Russia. We just came from Illyria.”

He shifted her to hold her closer. “It doesn’t matter where we started out, does it, shrimp? We ended up together.”

She smiled and buried her face in his shoulder. He hugged the child and pressed his cheek against her hair. “I love you,” he said. “I’ve missed you. Every day, every night, I’ve missed you.”

NEALIE CHATTERED on the way home, bombarding Josh with volleys of questions. “The people really have reindeer that pull their sleds?”

“Indeed they do.”

“Just like Santa Claus?”

“Pretty much. Except Santa lives in one place. And these people move around.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re nomads.”

“What are nomads?”

“People who move around,” Josh said. “They have to hunt. They have to have fresh grazing for the reindeer. They change places when the seasons change.”

“Why do the seasons change?”

“Because the earth goes round the sun.”

“Why?”

“Because of gravity.”

“What’s gravity?”

“It keeps things fastened down.”