He finds her in the nursery doorway, leaning wearily against the door frame as if her body can no longer support the weight of the day. The room is dim, a night light casting a golden glow across the crib and the sleeping infant within. There is quiet, but not silence – the noises of a restful baby filling the space; her chest methodically rising and falling with serenity. Somewhere outside a dog barks and a car rumbles past but their whole world is encased in these four walls, in one small crib.
Maria doesn't move as he steps closer to her, or as he joins her vigilant watch on their daughter from her side. The moments stretch on indefinitely, even the faint ticking of the clock downstairs slows to almost a halt as they stand frozen in the entrance to the nursery. Steve finds that he focuses on the subconscious act of breathing so much that he no longer remembers how, becoming painfully aware of each inhale and exhale. His wife and his daughter's breathing is in sync too; it's Maria's way of reminding herself that they are both here, alive – its helping him too.
But that synchronicity is knocked off course as Maria's breath catches in her throat and he can only watch as the subsequent tear rolls slowly down her cheek, glinting in the soft light. She makes no move to brush it away, and neither does he, as if any shift could break this peace, this moment. Instead it falls, a single drop of pearly moonlight against her flushed cheek.
"Come back to bed," Steve whispers, his voice almost lost in the hushed noise of the world. His tone is soft, pleading, yet she can only shake her head in refusal. She cannot leave, cannot peel her eyes from her sleeping child; she does not want to tempt fate a second time. She shudders harshly, her body and mind reliving the pain and anguish of the last week over and over and over again in heart-breaking clarity.
"Maria." His voice is less of a whisper now; it is firmer but no less kind, no less full of love. "Please." It hurts him to see her like this and he cannot bear it much longer. He knows that as soon as Lucy wakes she will plaster a smile across her face and she will try to pretend she is the same person she was before all of this. Before they lost Anna.
"I can't leave her Steve." There is a stubbornness in her words, she will not be moved and he knows she could out-manoeuvre him, but behind it he knows there is a crippling fear that she will lose her other daughter so soon after the other.
"I know," he reasons. "But the doctors all said she was fine, that it's almost impossible that the same heart condition could occur in both twins."
"But what if they missed something?" She begs, "I can't not be here if something happens, not like last time."
He knows that there is no arguing with her, but he also knows that they can't be with Lucy every moment for the rest of her life. He understands how she feels; he remembers Maria's cry for help in the night, the panicked call for the ambulance, then the call to Pepper who Tony personally carried over to look after Lucy and the agonizing hours spent outside the operating theatre waiting for any news on the fate of their daughter. He remembers the doctor's face, grim and sympathetic, as he came to tell them the outcome of the operation on their baby.
The worst part had been coming home to Lucy, their perfect smiling baby who had no idea what had happened to her twin. The moment she had seen her mother, she had reached out from Pepper's arms, her small fists grabbing at the air; Maria had just stared at her, at the child that was identical to the one they had lost only hours before. Then she had pulled Lucy into her hold where weeping began, Lucy gently patting her mother's wet face, confused but comforting. Mother and child had been almost inseparable since then. His wife is always so strong, so tough that people cannot see through that cold outer shell. But in the days following Anna's death, that whole layer has been stripped, leaving Maria out to the elements, leaving her more vulnerable than she has ever been.
He knows that he should pull her away from the doorway, take her downstairs and make eat something, yet he cannot help but give into that urge to stay here where Lucy is in sight. So, he pulls Maria past the empty crib no one has mentioned moving to the chair in the corner where he sits them down, gently draping a blanket over the two of them. Together they sit, keeping vigil over their daughter as she sleeps on, unaware of them in her slumber. He feels Maria's body softly shake with unshed tears for minutes that feel like hours until they fade as she too joins the world of dreams. The house is quiet once more, just the sound of the clock still slowly ticking, the three of them breathing and his thoughts, drifting to and fro in the still air.