This my entry for the Cobert Holiday fanfic exchange. Thank you so much for inviting me!
My picture was that of a halfway-opened advent calendar and my word was 'anticipate'. I interpreted the advent calendar rather loosely as a symbol for presents and I hope that is alright.
Please let me know what you think!
Kat
He has been staring at his wife the whole night. He is fully aware of it, just as much as he is aware of his mother's disapproval and his children's approval for doing so.
His mother keeps throwing him looks that clearly say 'stop looking at her like that', while Mary, Edith and Tom keep looking at him and then grinning at each other. He doesn't care about his mother's disapproval, she has disapproved of too many things to count over the course of his marriage and his children's approval of course makes him happy.
Cora is now talking to Tom quite animatedly, he is sure that she is trying to convince him to stay and not go to America. She has always been supportive of his decision, but now that the date that he will actually set sail so to speak is just around the corner, she has started to tell him, almost to beg him, to stay. He knows it is not just because of little Sybbie but because of Tom himself too. He doesn't want the boy to leave either, if he is honest with himself, he wouldn't know how to go on without his only son-in-law. But there is something he has had to keep secret from his wife for two weeks now. They decided to buy Tom a house in Boston so that the boy wouldn't have to stay with relatives but have his own home right from the start. After weeks and weeks of protest, Tom accepted the offer and they started to look at different offers made by a real estate agent they contacted months ago. The day before he wanted to close the deal, Tom told him that he had changed his mind.
"I've decided to stay. So I don't need the house in Boston. Please don't buy it. Unless of course you'd prefer me to leave," Tom said to him while they were out on the estate together.
"Of course I'd prefer you to stay Tom. And it makes me very happy that you will," he told the boy then and then invited him to lunch in the village pub. He has been bursting with wanting to tell Cora about Tom not leaving, but it is Tom's news to share and not his, although he is looking forward to seeing the family's reaction very much.
He is even more looking forward to giving his Christmas present to his wife. Of course he bought her the usual jewelry, something for her to open with the family around, but there is something else that he wants to give to her and he wants to be alone with her when he does. He decided to do it tonight, right after they have gone to bed. Although that might still take a while. He is more than ready to go upstairs, but Cora obviously is not. He knows she enjoys being around their children very much and he loves her for it. She looks so happy, even if she is afraid of Tom leaving. She also looks stunning tonight. Of course she always looks stunning, but tonight her cheeks are more flushed than they usually are, her eyes sparkle even more than they usually do and her smile is a little brighter, a little less restrained. He puts it down to a mixture of the mulled wine and excitement about Christmas. Cora has always loved Christmas and now that they have three grandchildren to spoil, the festivities again have the importance they had when their own girls were small.
She looks at him now and he can't help but smile. When she smiles back at him, an electric current shoots through him and he wonders about how happy she has made him. She now walks over to his chair and sits down on the arm rest, something that makes Tom chuckle and his mother roll her eyes.
"Are you well?" she asks him quite concernedly.
"Of course I am," he says and squeezes her hand.
"You've been very quiet tonight," she says and looks directly into his eyes. He knows she does this to make sure that he really is well. Her apparent concern for him sends his heart aflutter.
"I've been admiring you."
She gives dry chuckle at this and then says "There is not much left to admire about me." He is not sure whether she really believes this, fishing for compliments is nothing Cora usually does but he knows that she needs to be complimented from time to time.
"Of course there is," he says and brushes his fingers across her cheek. The smile she rewards him with is priceless. She spends the rest of the evening by his side and when finally everyone goes to bed, he takes her by the hand, leads her to her room, gives her a quick kiss on the cheek and says "I'll see you in a few minutes darling."
It really only takes a few minutes and when he walks into her room without knocking as he always does, she smiles at him in the mirror again. Once she has dismissed her maid, he walks towards her and helps her to her feet.
"Merry Christmas, darling," he says and she laughs.
"It is after midnight, isn't it?"
"It is time for one of your presents." She smiles at this and then looks at him expectantly. He hands her an envelope, something that makes her raise her eyebrows a bit but he knows that she will like what is in it.
He watches her slender fingers open the envelope and take the tickets out. He sees understanding and then disbelieve written on her face and when she slowly looks up at him, the tears in her eyes betray how emotional she feels about this.
"We are going to America?" she asks in a very small voice.
"Yes. Just you and I. We haven't been there in a very long time."
"You were there not that long ago."
"But without you and it wasn't exactly pleasant. I went there to help your brother. Now we are going because I want to give you a treat." The look on her face speaks volumes and he knows what she is going to say and that she really believes what she is going to say now.
"I don't deserve this. Not after," he has to stop her now because he does not want to hear that art dealer's name ever to be spoken again in his house.
"Cora, stop. Please. Of course you deserve this. None of it has been your fault. Or almost none of it."
"But you hate going to America." She is not wrong about this, he thinks, it is not America that he hates, it's being cooped up on a ship that he dislikes so much.
"But I love being with you and I think we need some time to ourselves. To make sure" he can't go on now. He decided to take his darling wife to America months ago, when he slowly but surely realized how despicable his treatment of her had been. He had taken her for granted and she did not deserve it. The art dealer had been right about that. Cora deserves to be appreciated and loved.
She now smiles at him and the look on her face is full of admiration and love. She used to look at him like that for decades, but then his treatment of her prevented her from doing so for a few months. But ever since he told her why he wanted to sell the Della Francesca, the look has reappeared on her face. While he is staring at her and getting lost in her stunningly blue eyes, she puts her hands in his hair. "I love you," she says and then he feels her lips on his. He gets lost in far more than just her eyes and forgets everything in the world but her.
Later on, when her head rests on his shoulder, his arm holds her close to him and she keeps brushing her hand over his chest absentmindedly, he kisses her again and then says "I love you so very much. And I am so sorry for everything that I did wrong in the past year. I know what I have in you, but sometimes," he can't go on, he can't find the words.
She leans on her arm now, looks at him and says "But sometimes you are just overwhelmed by our changing world."
He nods and says "Yes. And I know it is stupid, but I want to protect you from it. Although I know that you are much more capable of dealing with it than I am."
She laughs, says "you are probably right" and puts her head on his shoulder again.
They stay like that for an undeterminable amount of time and while he absentmindedly plays with his darling wife's hair, he wonders about what intimacy in a marriage really means. It is so much more than doing one's duty. It is in moments like these that he truly knows what he has in his wife, after they have made love but before they fall asleep. He knows moments like these at which he feels completely at peace with the world because Cora is with him, holding on to him and just enjoying being close to him are defining for their rather unusual marriage. It is moments like these that bring them as close as they are, that give him the courage to trust his wife with everything. And in moments like these he regrets not always having given her what she deserves.
"Are you alright?"
Cora's question startles him. "What?"
"Are you alright? You sighed as if the weight of the world was resting on your shoulders."
"No." He then realizes that he has sighed again and he knows that Cora deserves to know what he is thinking.
"I've just been thinking about us."
"Oh?"
"About how lucky I am."
She gives him a squeeze and then a kiss. "I am glad you think you are lucky."
He knows she truly means it, that it really is important to her that he is happy and in love with her and that she regrets their almost fall-apart just as much as he does. So he kisses her too, tells her again that he loves her and then lets her fall asleep in his arms.
They are woken the next morning by Sybbie shaking them awake. Their granddaughter has climbed onto the bed, squeezed herself between them and is now shaking both their shoulders. He sends a silent prayer of thanks to the heavens for Cora and him both having woken up in the middle of the night because they were cold and then having gotten dressed.
"Donk! Granny! Wake up! It's Christmas!"
"And it also is very early in the morning," Cora mumbles and turns around.
"But Granny, Father Christmas has been here. There are presents under the tree." It makes him laugh out loud. Sometimes Sybbie is just exactly like her mother.
"Go, wake your Daddy," Cora says, rather unimpressed and still half-asleep.
"I tried. And he is awake. But he did not let me in the room. But I know that Aunt Mary is in there too."
This causes Cora to wake up.
"What?"
"I saw Aunt Mary go in there when I first woke up. Do you think that is why Daddy and I won't go to America?"
Again Cora asks "What?" and looks at him questioningly.
"What do you think Donk?" Sybbie has now turned to him and he sees the hope on his granddaughter's face is mirrored on his wife's face.
"I don't know. But it is possible." Almost identical smiles break out on his granddaughter's and his wife's face. Now that he thinks about it, he is almost sure that Mary is the reason Tom won't leave. The boy wouldn't tell him why he had changed his mind and he had suspected it having something to do with a woman and deep down he had hoped that it was Mary, but the thought had been buried so deeply, that he only realizes he ever entertained it right now.
"Sybbie darling, why don't you get dressed and then your Grandpapa and I will go downstairs with you and look at the tree? But you can't open the presents yet." The girl smiles even brighter now, gives both him and Cora a kiss on cheek and runs out of the room.
"Is he really staying?" He hasn't seen so much hope in Cora's eyes for a very long time.
"Yes. He told me not to buy the house and asked me not to say anything, not even to you. But he never gave me a reason and I was so happy about him staying that it never occurred to me to ask."
"Let's hope that Sybbie is right, then."
"Yes," he says and smiles at Cora. He can't help but imagine them at the wedding of Mary and Tom and that makes him think about his own wedding.
"I love you," he says to Cora and stops her from leaving her bed. "And if I hadn't married you when I was 19, I'd marry you today." She laughs a beautiful carefree laugh at this and gives him a kiss full on the lips.
"I love you too. And now we have to get up now or Sybbie will have opened all her presents before your mother gets here. And we can't have that."
She is of course right and so he gets up, gets dressed and thinks about the day ahead with happy anticipation.
Sorry for the Tom/Mary bit but it is what I want to happen, although I am 99.9% sure that it won't. :)