“I want to,” she whispered. “I really, really want to. If you’re sure.”
“Kai, sweetheart.” Now he did pull her into his lap. His body was sure and strong and held in it, maybe, a thread of anger that tightened it, even as he tried to keep it reassuring. “I’ve always been sure.” You were the one who wasn’t. But he didn’t say it. He’d always been so good at mastering his own anger. Not like her, when that alien anger had taken possession of her after the last miscarriage, had whipped her—and them—around like they were debris caught in its twister. Within only a few seconds, that thread of tension in his body calmed, and he just held her, watching the tree.
And it was, she realized. A good Christmas. He was her miracle. She was beginning to understand now that he always had been.
*
Hours later, Kurt lay stroking the length of his wife’s body, from shoulder to hip, quietly, watching the Christmas tree, too contented to go to sleep and risk waking to find her crying and leaving him again. He knew his distrust might not be fair to her, but he probably wouldn’t lose that fear for a long, long time, the same way he hadn’t lost the heartbreak of his parents’ divorce—and what it meant to him, the essential loss of his father—for years and years, the same way she wouldn’t lose the grief over those miscarriages ever, not completely. Life was like that. It dealt you some things that changed you and that you had to deal with, even when you thought they were too cruel, even when you believed that no human should ever have to deal with a blow so cruel. He would have done anything to keep Kai from learning how much life could hurt, but he hadn’t had any more ability to stop those losses than she had.
So he stroked her body, profoundly happy to be able to, yet sad, too, because—well, he knew what day their third try was supposed to be born as well as she did. He was glad she was sleeping through midnight. That damn miracle birth hour. He’d had to turn off the radio the day after Halloween last year and listen to nothing but classical music and audio books—usually on dealing with grief—to get him through until January. All those fucking songs about a sweet child cherished by a tender mother, laying his head to rest in a manger and all that. Fuck God, that’s what he had thought. You can get a virgin to give birth to your kid, but you can’t let my wife have ours? Fuck You.
Fuck Santa Claus, too, while he was at it, and all the songs about him. He would have liked to play Santa Claus. See a little kid’s eyes light up at all the presents under a tree. Fuck.
Those hydra heads rose, and the anger was catching at him, trying to drag him under, when Kai drew a deep breath and started to sing.
Very quietly, her voice so soft. “Silent night—”
Oh, fuck, Kai, don’t. Don’t sing that. Don’t rip us to shreds again. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t do that to me, God damn it.
“Holy night—”
Oh, shit. He tightened his arm around her waist. But she didn’t stop, her voice trembling just a little bit. And so he laid his tenor under hers, giving her voice that support because what else could he do? He couldn’t carry the baby. He couldn’t drown under a tidal wave of hormones when he lost the baby. He could only support.
“All is calm, all is bright.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist, settling his body more closely against her back. His voice nearly gave out on him at the line mother and child. But hers didn’t, soft and quiet and sure.
“Holy infant, so tender and mild.”
And very, very softly at the end, their voices blending: “Sleep in heavenly peace. Slee-ep in heavenly peace.”
A white light from the Christmas tree sparkled once over her golden hair as her voice faded away, a tiny caress of light that only he saw. When he tried to touch it, it was gone, and yet his fingers tingled from it. She gave a very long, slow sigh and turned her body into his, nestling into him and wrapping her arms around him.
And then she really did sleep. And so did he.
Chapter Eleven
Morning dawned quietly happy. The happiness stayed cautious, clinging closely to them, afraid to fling itself about too joyously on this delicate day. And yet, it was there—in the air, in the touch of hands, in the way they didn’t look each other too long in the eyes, in case they scared it away by staring at it too hard.
Kai made hot chocolate and French toast, and Kurt did the strawberry hearts, proving that the model crafting child could branch out from stock paper and glitter when he wanted to.
Then he gave the strawberries funny faces, and then he set a line of them marching across the whipped cream like little strawberry soldiers to attack her French toast fortress, on the snow-cream top of which her heart was guarded.
She started to laugh, a sound that made his face relax in relief, and kissed him. “Merry Christmas, Kurt.”