Title: Blink
Summary: When B.J. stepped off the plane and into the airport, Peg almost didn't recognize him – but Erin does. The second in the Homecoming Series
This is the second installment of my one-shot series called "Homecoming". You can find the first instalment, Drain, on my Profile, featuring Margaret.
This is a big gooey, sticky mess, dipped in chocolate with a caramel center. You're welcome.
"Daddy."
"Daddy!"
"Daddy?"
Erin attracted grins and the occasional grimace of sympathy attached to nostalgia as she tottered through the terminal, fingers hanging limply onto Peg's.
People pressed in on them, people in beige and khaki uniforms and people in dresses wearing red carnations. Peg looked at each of the passing faces, searching for the one she had come for, the one whose eyes would sparkle when they saw her face, whose arms would wrap around her shoulders –
Suddenly Erin's hand had slipped out of Peg's grasp. Peg realized she could no longer hear her sweet daughter's melodic chanting among the chattering of the crowd. There was no sign of Erin's pink frock among the many brusquely walking legs.
Peg's chest constricted. Her throat tightened as something covered her brain in a white, blinding sheet of panic. Where was she? She had been there only a minute before. Only a minute before. How could she have disappeared so quickly –?
"Daddy!"
Peg felt her throat clog in unspeakable relief, brief but fierce panic subsiding and leaving her weak, deflated, already weepy as she was given the occasion. She stuffed herself through the crowd until she saw Erin's pink dress, raised to Peg's height by some friendly stranger who had lifted Erin out of harm's way and, no doubt, hoped to return her to her mother.
Peg rushed forward, fingers shaking.
"Erin! Don't do that to mommy, sweetheart!"
"Daddy!" Erin insisted, something she had been repeating incessantly ever since Peg had loaded her into the car for the forty-five minute ride to San Francisco International Airport. Erin had christened every man in a uniform with the name since they'd met that nice boy Walter O'Reilly.
"Erin, you mustn't do that ever again. You gave mommy quite the scare –"
"Peg?"
Peg stopped, blinking, looking passed Erin's pigtails to the face of the man who held her.
"B.J?" She hadn't meant to whisper but her throat didn't seem to be working correctly. Her eyes were not working properly, her mind not processing the information –
He was tall, taller and thinner than she remembered. His voice was soft, wavering. The wholly unfamiliar mustache on his upper lip was quivering from the breath of his nostrils. His eyes were shining unnaturally bright from the glow of the airport's artificial lighting built into the ceiling.
"Oh…Peg."
"B.J?" She – couldn't believe it was him. Surely this was a dream. A very good, wonderful dream and Peg never wished to wake up. Erin was fiddling somberly with the buttons of B.J.'s uniform.
"Oh – B.J." Peg breathed, and felt a smile tug against the tears blocking the air from rushing up her throat. The tears spilled down her cheeks, overflowing from the building pressure inside her head.
"B.J." She was in his arms and she couldn't remember how, when, or how long ago. "B.J. B.J. B.J."
She breathed into his ear, rubbing her cheek against the whiskers on his chin, feeling his trembling fingers between her shoulder blades through the fabric of her blouse.
"Peg. Oh, Peg. Darling, Peg."
His warm breath tickled her neck, set goose bumps down her arms, made her want to squeeze him harder, closer, don't let him slip away….
Erin squirmed between them and B.J.'s arms loosed. He pulled away gently but still close enough so that his forehead could rest against Peg's, craning his neck, holding Erin in the oval their bodies made.
She could still feel his wobbly breathing on her face, see the trickling tears clinging to his eyelashes, see their daughter's inquisitive face reflected in his gleaming irises.
"Erin, sweetheart, meet your daddy."
"Hello, Erin, you probably don't remember me but we met when you were about the size of one of my shoe boxes." And whispered to Peg, who felt her stomach twist in pain and guilt because she had been there and Beej had not, "Oh, Peg, she's gotten so big."
But he was going to be there from now on, 'til death do us part or onward.
Erin grinned and fumblingly grabbed B.J.'s nose, prodding his mustache.
"Daddy," she turned to Peg and smiled, as if afraid her mother might not understand.
"That's right, sweetheart," B.J. whispered, "Daddy's home now."