Like If A Tomorrow Will Come
'' They are in love, they have always been in love, although sometimes they would have denied it. And because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures. ''
ERNEST HAVEMANN
on a long-married couple, "Love and Marriage," Life, September 29, 1961
* * * *
The singing of birds outside and the placid torpor permeating the mountain in the noon weighted as a rock on the Adam's tried nerves. Part of him blamed it on his father, the stress through what they were passed that terrible morning. He could not fathom why Nikita had accepted without reservation to house herself in an isolated cottage, with only the help of a midwife.
Curiously the midwife, Ruth, a shorty fat woman with a shrill voice, has been the more serene of all them.
Nikita had exhibited a false exuberance, his father got overprotective and overcontrolling even for him. He himself had felt overobliging, anxious to be profusely useful in anything he could. They were up by the 04.00 am , when the labor began.
It was been an indefinable, terrific experience. He was forced to pace back and forth, alone in the passage, apprehensively knowing of every scream of pain coming from the bedroom where he had not the courage to put feet in.
The labor was long, 12 hours, and Adam had time to feel everything a brother-to-be should feel: helplessness, fear, hope, expectation, fury, confusion, and inclination to run.
Thanking God, everything went for the best and he loved already the newest addition to the family.
They permitted him to see her only for a few brief moments, after she was washed from Ruth. The baby had looked up at him and grabbed his finger. Amazingly strong for a neonate , and that one act had won his admiration over .
She was so little, More little than a doll! When her cries subsided, she was quite pretty. His dad got a dreamy half-smile conducing him to her.
After being assured that her daughter was fine and beautiful, and the bloody sheets were changed, Nikita was instantaneously asleep and hasn't been out of bed since then. She wasn't likely to wake soon, if her normal habits were any indication.
Her face marked with exhaustion with a scaring memory and Adam wondered if all women subjected themselves willingly at such torture and why, if it was like this.
He and Michael sat close on the couch, in the living room, too tired to eat something or attempt any conversation. At least the latter was true to Adam, because Michael wasn't minimally disturbed from the lack of sleep, was exercised to it.
Forcefully removed from his mate's side by a zealous midwife, the older of them was talking himself into being no necessity to hurry upstairs.
It looked like his non-indifferent preoccupation was for nothing. Nikita and Grace were allright , and Ruth was taking care of everything. The tension in his knotty muscles wasn't letting him rest. He felt a tangible need to be close to his woman.
" Dad ? "
" What ? " The syllabe came out his mouth somewhat raspy and bristly. Listening to the sound, it was like someone's else voice. Michael noticed how tired he was in spite of the lightness feeling fluctuating inside him. Adam too, considered for the first time that his father could be so distressed about what had just occurred as he was.
The boy was used to seeing Michael as a super-man, a kind of indefatigable, fix-everything being.
It wasn't a wonder he hadn't given it any thought before. Like many young men, he found himself blaming his father easier than seeing him as a man with his normal exigencies, his limitations and moments of weakness.
Feeling guilty for his earlier childish considerations, Adam inquired with a conciliating tone that only reminded Michael of a woman who he once met on the bumpy road of life.
" Did you know it would be this way? "
"How ? "
" Scaring, life-altering, horrifying ... have your pick. I wasn't expecting this!"
The brio instead, was uniquely Adam's.
Michael smiled indulgently " How were you expecting it to be, Adam? "
The boy pursed his lips to say something, but of all the words floating in his head, none seemed appropriate. Confronted with the flawless logic of his father always managed to make him feel like he had too much to learn.
"Simpler " he squeaked.
Michael, with a condescending smile plastered upon his face for the occasion, appeared to get lost in thought.
A large portion of his emotions were blocked behind the barrier of his inability, or impossibility, of expressing them.
When Adam was born, he was sitting in apparently semi-confortable fashion in the waiting room of the hospital. All he had felt was disgust with himself, panic over the skein Section One was wearing at his expense.
This time, he felt the different mixture of excitement and fear harboring in him during Nikita's pregnancy. The adrenaline pumped in his veins while he held her hand during the childbirth.
He empathized with her pain, his pride showed as he watched her growing belly. He had cried when he felt Grace give her first kick under his fingers and had no shame in it.
Everything was new for him, and he wasn't prepared for it. Just then, he had seen with blinding clarity exactly how much Section deprived him from.
How could he explain to his son, when he, him self failed to understand the reawakening of this powerful will to live inside himself? Not for the first time, he wished he had Nikita's gift for words.
She always managed to send the message loud and clear. Even when she was making a mess of what she was saying, she never hurt anyone's feelings (when this wasn't her primary purpose).
Michael carefully chose his next words.
"I wasn't prepared for the full impact " - he paused, not sure if what he had said made much sense. It wasn't a lie, but not complete sincerity either- " I remember the day my sister Martine was born. I was almost your age and couldn't wait to see her. When I did, I was so scared I'd break her, I didn't dare touch her."
" I have a aunt ?! " Adam lifted his eyebrows in mild surprise and his mouth hung out slightly jar.
"You did. She died in a car wreck along with my parents, a long time ago. I don't like to speak about it much."
He was intrigued at how easily the lie rolled off his tongue with minimal remorse and true sorrow. Whether Michael deceived his son in such a way to protect Adam or himself from the truth was a question that he pushed aside for further contemplation in a more proper moment.
"Oh - And I thought you were always prepared for anything."
Adam was a Samuelle. He was quick to hide any discomfort the recent cognition caused him and filled the silence with easy conversation.
"So was I, Son."
Michael chuckled, mocking himself without finding it amusing.
Afterward, he eyed Adam, hearing him yawn.
"You should rest. If Grace is anything similar to her mother, we may not get the chance to in the near future."
"For your sake, I'm not telling Nikita you said it!" Adam laughed.
Michael smiled, watching his first born going, half-asleep, to his room. He got up and checked on his new daughter, attended to by Ruth. The woman, unusually docile, let him hold her, commenting with misplaced satisfaction.
"In my life, I delivered more babies than I can count, but I swear this little missy is the most beautiful. Right the most beautiful, you can take me on my word.''
Michael registered that her voice was a 2 or 3 inches less strident, almost feminine if you had spent any bit of your time around ladies.
He didn't bother to reply, although he found it impossible not to agree.
His arms cradled the neonate with an ease that surprised him. He had done this with Adam, for many valid reasons.
He looked down at the little baby girl.
Her skin was still spotted with flush, her cheeks puffy and cute. Her nose was tiny and delicate. In Grace' s face there was much of his younger sister, of whom he had known nothing in years.
The nose was Nikita all over again. Michael just stand there, trying to picture the future, the girl becoming a woman, her personality, and her favorite flavor of ice cream.
He thought of the things and people he had lost and those he had gained.
After, he settled her back in the cradle with caution because he didn't intend ruin the peacefulness of the moment.
He informed Ruth that he, in case of need, was to be found in his wife's room. The infamous blank stare silenced the midwife counsel into getting some rest, since the new mother was asleep.
The old woman could not digest it. But she was intimidated by the tall man with gentle, caring manners and eyes cold and hard as steel.
In her imagination, he was a wolf dressed up like a sheep. During her stay there, he gave her polite suggestions pounding in her ears like orders, when the two were alone. Luckily the mother-to-be, Nikita, and Adam, the submissive boy with espresso skin, were totally different, friendly people.
Michael slowly pushed open the door of the bedroom he had shared with Nikita the past weeks.
He silently crept, like a cat, close to the royal sized bed where his lover was laying.
Hovering over the sleeping figure, he bent to press a kiss on her forehead.
He shoved forward a chair to sit close to her, ready to wait until she woke. With relief, he noted she looked better, considerably less run down.
During her sixth month of pregnancy, Nikita surprised him coloring her hair to a orange-blonde shade of red. He was labeled as a boring person with fixed habits for stating his preference of her natural coloration. When he thought he knew her completely, she never hesitated to show him new angles .
He secretly hoped she returned blonde, because he loved how her hair captured the light.
Her new hairstyle exhibited refinement, and he supposed that was what she needed to see in herself while her body started to show her state.
He found this crazy, because he always found her desiderable. Female logic was a challenge.
Michael stayed to look at her until the pace of her breath changed. He could tell she was regaining consciousness.
Absently, she rubbed a tired hand against her eyes, and reluctantly opened them. He was the first thing she saw.
'' Hello. How long have I slept? ''
His Nikita saluted him with a weary, radiant smile and he felt his lips curl up seeing her happy like this.
'' Some hours, How do you feel ? ''
'' A wreck of tired muscles. Positively boneless. So happy that I could touch the Heavens with a finger. Grace ? ''
'' Ruth' s providing for her. ''
'' Adam? Where is he?"
"In his room. He was very tired, but content. ''
Her need for information dissipating, she sighed and licked her dry lips.
Michael filled a glass of water from the bottle on the dresser and offered it to her.
She emptied it hungrily, almost choking on the water towards the end.
With his unwanted assistance, Nikita adjusted her position so she was on her right side and had a better visual of her companion. She looked at him intently, like if she was seeing him for the first time.
She looked at his wavy hairs touching almost his back, his eloquent eyes with freckles of emerald, his kissable lips. She saw the scar on his cheek concealed by his beard of a week, his hands large and elegant, with fingertips lightly callused , and the steady, regular column of his neck.
He looked royal.
She chewed on her bottom-lip and moved.
She had so much: a man who she adored, a stepson very sweet, a daughter heartbreaking beautiful. People to love, money to travel around the world, the diversion to be anything she wanted be. If it isn't perfection, it's damn close.
''Kita?''
Her gaze had become humid, glazed over. ''What's wrong?'' He asked cupping her cheek with his right hand.
She gave him a watery smirk and answered, clutching his hand between both hers.
'' Everything 's okay.... actually so much okay that I feel like crying.... ''
Without hesitation, Michael hurled himself beside her and lowered to kiss away her rare tears, folding her in his arms like something fragile needy of his protection.
She had sounded like a child who had too many broken vows, and as lonely as he himself has been.
If Madeline could spy on them like in old times, even she would have marveled at how a man able to accomplish the most brutal act without blinking, who nourished a passion of such depth, could rock the woman he loved with so chaste and unselfish caution.
Nikita stretched her harms and crossed them around his neck, kissing him full on the lips. While she very, very slowly interrupted the effusion, their foreheads touched.
'' Michael Samuelle, I officially thank you.''
This time her voice contained hilarity, and joyful impertinence. He gave up the attempt to understand the unknowable and constant variability of her mood swings, let her guide him in an incongruous sense of easiness.
Recently Michael had discovered he took pleasure in expanding the thousand diversified emotions and sensations Nikita kindled in his soul. There was much he had neglected to learn about, what he liked and disliked, and he wasn't afraid anymore to stay too close to home.
''For what?''
He had kissed her nape and was scenting her perfume, absorbed in his sensorial investigation.
''For making this real.''
''Ah, I' m afraid I was instigated to do everything I did in this regard.''
''You enjoyed every minute!''
''Do I look dead?''
The boyish grin spread upon his face in that moment. This made her grateful she was already lying down, because it was doing strange and wonderful things to her insides. Sometime during the embrace, Nikita crouched in fetal position, with her head in his lap and his fingers confortably twisted her pale strands. His eyes kissed her eyes and any line of her face, and hers did the same.
A slumberous veil of mercy had rolled down them, translating words in an unnecessary garment. Terse emotion thickened air, and everything was alive in its stillness.
An instant so precious than, if they had been in power to do so, they would bottle it up, a tonic for their sadder days.
There was a knock at the door.
Ruth made her way into their room with circumspection. Her quotidian shriek schooled in a moody and complacent squeak, trowed a benevolent glance toward the mother of the day. This part of her work, in spite of the years passing, gave her the same old satisfaction. There was never any mistaking the awe of the mothers when she brought their babies to them.
''Somebody wants to say hello to her mommy.''
Her embrace protected fiercely a little bundle. When Nikita glimpsed it, a gleam of pure delight blossomed upon her face.
Ruth handed the baby to her parents and they were moved at how perfectly Grace fit within their arms.
The jerky movements and minimal infantile noises she made were irrefutably endearing.
The sight of that little someone, who was and wasn't her at the same time, etched indelibly in the recesses of Nikita's brain.
Although Nikita had loved Josephine, and passionately followed her pregnancy, she knew only now she would make a good mother .
The first mental image she had of her daughter after the childbirth was blurred from her conditions, but now she saw her clearly.
Michael's beautifully shaped fingers brushed her hairs away from her neck, and she leaned into him, while he posed his chin on the crook of her shoulder.
The amnesty they both were searching for, he found in her and she in him.
From that love a baby was born. Looking at her they knew that no miracle was greater.
* * *
Eternity - Robbie Wiliams
Close your eyes
So you don't feel them
They don't need
To see you cry
I can't promise I will heal you
But if you want to I will try
To sing this summer serenade
The past is done
We've been betrayed
It's true
Some might say
The truth will out
But I believe without
A doubt in you
You were there
For summer dreaming
And you gave me
What I need
And I hope you
Find your freedom
For eternity
For eternity
Yesterday when
We were walking
You talked about
Your ma and dad
What they did that
Made you happy
What they did that
Made you sad
We sat and watched
The sun go down
Then picked a star
Before we lost the moon
Youth is wasted on the young
Before you know it's come
And gone too soon
You were there
For summer dreaming BRAnd you gave me
Wh at I need
And I hope you
Find your freedom
For eternity
For eternity
For eternity
To sing this summer serenade
The past is done
We've been betrayed
It's true
Youth is wasted on the young
Before you know it's come
And gone too soon
You were there
For summer dreaming
And you are
A friend indeed
And I hope you
Find your freedom
For eternity
You were there
For summer dreaming
And you are
A friend indeed
And I know you'll
Find your freedom
Eventually
For eternity
For eternity
'' They are in love, they have always been in love, although sometimes they would have denied it. And because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures. ''
ERNEST HAVEMANN
on a long-married couple, "Love and Marriage," Life, September 29, 1961
* * * *
The singing of birds outside and the placid torpor permeating the mountain in the noon weighted as a rock on the Adam's tried nerves. Part of him blamed it on his father, the stress through what they were passed that terrible morning. He could not fathom why Nikita had accepted without reservation to house herself in an isolated cottage, with only the help of a midwife.
Curiously the midwife, Ruth, a shorty fat woman with a shrill voice, has been the more serene of all them.
Nikita had exhibited a false exuberance, his father got overprotective and overcontrolling even for him. He himself had felt overobliging, anxious to be profusely useful in anything he could. They were up by the 04.00 am , when the labor began.
It was been an indefinable, terrific experience. He was forced to pace back and forth, alone in the passage, apprehensively knowing of every scream of pain coming from the bedroom where he had not the courage to put feet in.
The labor was long, 12 hours, and Adam had time to feel everything a brother-to-be should feel: helplessness, fear, hope, expectation, fury, confusion, and inclination to run.
Thanking God, everything went for the best and he loved already the newest addition to the family.
They permitted him to see her only for a few brief moments, after she was washed from Ruth. The baby had looked up at him and grabbed his finger. Amazingly strong for a neonate , and that one act had won his admiration over .
She was so little, More little than a doll! When her cries subsided, she was quite pretty. His dad got a dreamy half-smile conducing him to her.
After being assured that her daughter was fine and beautiful, and the bloody sheets were changed, Nikita was instantaneously asleep and hasn't been out of bed since then. She wasn't likely to wake soon, if her normal habits were any indication.
Her face marked with exhaustion with a scaring memory and Adam wondered if all women subjected themselves willingly at such torture and why, if it was like this.
He and Michael sat close on the couch, in the living room, too tired to eat something or attempt any conversation. At least the latter was true to Adam, because Michael wasn't minimally disturbed from the lack of sleep, was exercised to it.
Forcefully removed from his mate's side by a zealous midwife, the older of them was talking himself into being no necessity to hurry upstairs.
It looked like his non-indifferent preoccupation was for nothing. Nikita and Grace were allright , and Ruth was taking care of everything. The tension in his knotty muscles wasn't letting him rest. He felt a tangible need to be close to his woman.
" Dad ? "
" What ? " The syllabe came out his mouth somewhat raspy and bristly. Listening to the sound, it was like someone's else voice. Michael noticed how tired he was in spite of the lightness feeling fluctuating inside him. Adam too, considered for the first time that his father could be so distressed about what had just occurred as he was.
The boy was used to seeing Michael as a super-man, a kind of indefatigable, fix-everything being.
It wasn't a wonder he hadn't given it any thought before. Like many young men, he found himself blaming his father easier than seeing him as a man with his normal exigencies, his limitations and moments of weakness.
Feeling guilty for his earlier childish considerations, Adam inquired with a conciliating tone that only reminded Michael of a woman who he once met on the bumpy road of life.
" Did you know it would be this way? "
"How ? "
" Scaring, life-altering, horrifying ... have your pick. I wasn't expecting this!"
The brio instead, was uniquely Adam's.
Michael smiled indulgently " How were you expecting it to be, Adam? "
The boy pursed his lips to say something, but of all the words floating in his head, none seemed appropriate. Confronted with the flawless logic of his father always managed to make him feel like he had too much to learn.
"Simpler " he squeaked.
Michael, with a condescending smile plastered upon his face for the occasion, appeared to get lost in thought.
A large portion of his emotions were blocked behind the barrier of his inability, or impossibility, of expressing them.
When Adam was born, he was sitting in apparently semi-confortable fashion in the waiting room of the hospital. All he had felt was disgust with himself, panic over the skein Section One was wearing at his expense.
This time, he felt the different mixture of excitement and fear harboring in him during Nikita's pregnancy. The adrenaline pumped in his veins while he held her hand during the childbirth.
He empathized with her pain, his pride showed as he watched her growing belly. He had cried when he felt Grace give her first kick under his fingers and had no shame in it.
Everything was new for him, and he wasn't prepared for it. Just then, he had seen with blinding clarity exactly how much Section deprived him from.
How could he explain to his son, when he, him self failed to understand the reawakening of this powerful will to live inside himself? Not for the first time, he wished he had Nikita's gift for words.
She always managed to send the message loud and clear. Even when she was making a mess of what she was saying, she never hurt anyone's feelings (when this wasn't her primary purpose).
Michael carefully chose his next words.
"I wasn't prepared for the full impact " - he paused, not sure if what he had said made much sense. It wasn't a lie, but not complete sincerity either- " I remember the day my sister Martine was born. I was almost your age and couldn't wait to see her. When I did, I was so scared I'd break her, I didn't dare touch her."
" I have a aunt ?! " Adam lifted his eyebrows in mild surprise and his mouth hung out slightly jar.
"You did. She died in a car wreck along with my parents, a long time ago. I don't like to speak about it much."
He was intrigued at how easily the lie rolled off his tongue with minimal remorse and true sorrow. Whether Michael deceived his son in such a way to protect Adam or himself from the truth was a question that he pushed aside for further contemplation in a more proper moment.
"Oh - And I thought you were always prepared for anything."
Adam was a Samuelle. He was quick to hide any discomfort the recent cognition caused him and filled the silence with easy conversation.
"So was I, Son."
Michael chuckled, mocking himself without finding it amusing.
Afterward, he eyed Adam, hearing him yawn.
"You should rest. If Grace is anything similar to her mother, we may not get the chance to in the near future."
"For your sake, I'm not telling Nikita you said it!" Adam laughed.
Michael smiled, watching his first born going, half-asleep, to his room. He got up and checked on his new daughter, attended to by Ruth. The woman, unusually docile, let him hold her, commenting with misplaced satisfaction.
"In my life, I delivered more babies than I can count, but I swear this little missy is the most beautiful. Right the most beautiful, you can take me on my word.''
Michael registered that her voice was a 2 or 3 inches less strident, almost feminine if you had spent any bit of your time around ladies.
He didn't bother to reply, although he found it impossible not to agree.
His arms cradled the neonate with an ease that surprised him. He had done this with Adam, for many valid reasons.
He looked down at the little baby girl.
Her skin was still spotted with flush, her cheeks puffy and cute. Her nose was tiny and delicate. In Grace' s face there was much of his younger sister, of whom he had known nothing in years.
The nose was Nikita all over again. Michael just stand there, trying to picture the future, the girl becoming a woman, her personality, and her favorite flavor of ice cream.
He thought of the things and people he had lost and those he had gained.
After, he settled her back in the cradle with caution because he didn't intend ruin the peacefulness of the moment.
He informed Ruth that he, in case of need, was to be found in his wife's room. The infamous blank stare silenced the midwife counsel into getting some rest, since the new mother was asleep.
The old woman could not digest it. But she was intimidated by the tall man with gentle, caring manners and eyes cold and hard as steel.
In her imagination, he was a wolf dressed up like a sheep. During her stay there, he gave her polite suggestions pounding in her ears like orders, when the two were alone. Luckily the mother-to-be, Nikita, and Adam, the submissive boy with espresso skin, were totally different, friendly people.
Michael slowly pushed open the door of the bedroom he had shared with Nikita the past weeks.
He silently crept, like a cat, close to the royal sized bed where his lover was laying.
Hovering over the sleeping figure, he bent to press a kiss on her forehead.
He shoved forward a chair to sit close to her, ready to wait until she woke. With relief, he noted she looked better, considerably less run down.
During her sixth month of pregnancy, Nikita surprised him coloring her hair to a orange-blonde shade of red. He was labeled as a boring person with fixed habits for stating his preference of her natural coloration. When he thought he knew her completely, she never hesitated to show him new angles .
He secretly hoped she returned blonde, because he loved how her hair captured the light.
Her new hairstyle exhibited refinement, and he supposed that was what she needed to see in herself while her body started to show her state.
He found this crazy, because he always found her desiderable. Female logic was a challenge.
Michael stayed to look at her until the pace of her breath changed. He could tell she was regaining consciousness.
Absently, she rubbed a tired hand against her eyes, and reluctantly opened them. He was the first thing she saw.
'' Hello. How long have I slept? ''
His Nikita saluted him with a weary, radiant smile and he felt his lips curl up seeing her happy like this.
'' Some hours, How do you feel ? ''
'' A wreck of tired muscles. Positively boneless. So happy that I could touch the Heavens with a finger. Grace ? ''
'' Ruth' s providing for her. ''
'' Adam? Where is he?"
"In his room. He was very tired, but content. ''
Her need for information dissipating, she sighed and licked her dry lips.
Michael filled a glass of water from the bottle on the dresser and offered it to her.
She emptied it hungrily, almost choking on the water towards the end.
With his unwanted assistance, Nikita adjusted her position so she was on her right side and had a better visual of her companion. She looked at him intently, like if she was seeing him for the first time.
She looked at his wavy hairs touching almost his back, his eloquent eyes with freckles of emerald, his kissable lips. She saw the scar on his cheek concealed by his beard of a week, his hands large and elegant, with fingertips lightly callused , and the steady, regular column of his neck.
He looked royal.
She chewed on her bottom-lip and moved.
She had so much: a man who she adored, a stepson very sweet, a daughter heartbreaking beautiful. People to love, money to travel around the world, the diversion to be anything she wanted be. If it isn't perfection, it's damn close.
''Kita?''
Her gaze had become humid, glazed over. ''What's wrong?'' He asked cupping her cheek with his right hand.
She gave him a watery smirk and answered, clutching his hand between both hers.
'' Everything 's okay.... actually so much okay that I feel like crying.... ''
Without hesitation, Michael hurled himself beside her and lowered to kiss away her rare tears, folding her in his arms like something fragile needy of his protection.
She had sounded like a child who had too many broken vows, and as lonely as he himself has been.
If Madeline could spy on them like in old times, even she would have marveled at how a man able to accomplish the most brutal act without blinking, who nourished a passion of such depth, could rock the woman he loved with so chaste and unselfish caution.
Nikita stretched her harms and crossed them around his neck, kissing him full on the lips. While she very, very slowly interrupted the effusion, their foreheads touched.
'' Michael Samuelle, I officially thank you.''
This time her voice contained hilarity, and joyful impertinence. He gave up the attempt to understand the unknowable and constant variability of her mood swings, let her guide him in an incongruous sense of easiness.
Recently Michael had discovered he took pleasure in expanding the thousand diversified emotions and sensations Nikita kindled in his soul. There was much he had neglected to learn about, what he liked and disliked, and he wasn't afraid anymore to stay too close to home.
''For what?''
He had kissed her nape and was scenting her perfume, absorbed in his sensorial investigation.
''For making this real.''
''Ah, I' m afraid I was instigated to do everything I did in this regard.''
''You enjoyed every minute!''
''Do I look dead?''
The boyish grin spread upon his face in that moment. This made her grateful she was already lying down, because it was doing strange and wonderful things to her insides. Sometime during the embrace, Nikita crouched in fetal position, with her head in his lap and his fingers confortably twisted her pale strands. His eyes kissed her eyes and any line of her face, and hers did the same.
A slumberous veil of mercy had rolled down them, translating words in an unnecessary garment. Terse emotion thickened air, and everything was alive in its stillness.
An instant so precious than, if they had been in power to do so, they would bottle it up, a tonic for their sadder days.
There was a knock at the door.
Ruth made her way into their room with circumspection. Her quotidian shriek schooled in a moody and complacent squeak, trowed a benevolent glance toward the mother of the day. This part of her work, in spite of the years passing, gave her the same old satisfaction. There was never any mistaking the awe of the mothers when she brought their babies to them.
''Somebody wants to say hello to her mommy.''
Her embrace protected fiercely a little bundle. When Nikita glimpsed it, a gleam of pure delight blossomed upon her face.
Ruth handed the baby to her parents and they were moved at how perfectly Grace fit within their arms.
The jerky movements and minimal infantile noises she made were irrefutably endearing.
The sight of that little someone, who was and wasn't her at the same time, etched indelibly in the recesses of Nikita's brain.
Although Nikita had loved Josephine, and passionately followed her pregnancy, she knew only now she would make a good mother .
The first mental image she had of her daughter after the childbirth was blurred from her conditions, but now she saw her clearly.
Michael's beautifully shaped fingers brushed her hairs away from her neck, and she leaned into him, while he posed his chin on the crook of her shoulder.
The amnesty they both were searching for, he found in her and she in him.
From that love a baby was born. Looking at her they knew that no miracle was greater.
* * *
Eternity - Robbie Wiliams
Close your eyes
So you don't feel them
They don't need
To see you cry
I can't promise I will heal you
But if you want to I will try
To sing this summer serenade
The past is done
We've been betrayed
It's true
Some might say
The truth will out
But I believe without
A doubt in you
You were there
For summer dreaming
And you gave me
What I need
And I hope you
Find your freedom
For eternity
For eternity
Yesterday when
We were walking
You talked about
Your ma and dad
What they did that
Made you happy
What they did that
Made you sad
We sat and watched
The sun go down
Then picked a star
Before we lost the moon
Youth is wasted on the young
Before you know it's come
And gone too soon
You were there
For summer dreaming BRAnd you gave me
Wh at I need
And I hope you
Find your freedom
For eternity
For eternity
For eternity
To sing this summer serenade
The past is done
We've been betrayed
It's true
Youth is wasted on the young
Before you know it's come
And gone too soon
You were there
For summer dreaming
And you are
A friend indeed
And I hope you
Find your freedom
For eternity
You were there
For summer dreaming
And you are
A friend indeed
And I know you'll
Find your freedom
Eventually
For eternity
For eternity