Chapter 3. Lover

For many months, Joe's small new role in our life was focused on Naomi. She more or less added him to her roster of "uncles," friendly crewmen who can be counted on for a piggyback ride from lift to mess. That first night, in fact, after my tears had passed and I had stepped back from his solid, undemanding embrace, it was Naomi who emerged to take him by the hand and lead him into her bedroom, demanding a story with Flotter cast in the lead role. I was relieved. It let me sidestep a question he hadn't asked, one I wouldn't let form in my own thoughts.

He didn't seem to be interested in more. In me. He was kind to me, often appearing by my side when I was feeling frazzled with Naomi. For a while, he took to walking with us on our way to her sitter after breakfast; his presence a sort of serene buffer between us when we were still raw and finding our way back to normal after the accident … but he and I didn't touch after that first hug, and we spoke only of Naomi's care and activities, or the business of the ship.

Sometimes he made me wonder, though. I had brought Naomi to one of the ship's regular evening musical recitals. Joe was sitting in the same back row, across the aisle. As her bedtime approached, she climbed sleepily into my lap, and dozed through the second half of Harry Kim's clarinet sonata. As the adagio movement neared its end, I looked up from her peaceful slumbering face and caught Joe gazing at us, tenderness and longing written all over his face. As our eyes met, instead of looking away, he swallowed visibly and held my gaze another moment, until the pause between the sonata's movements made us both aware of the other audience members' quiet presence around us.

Twenty minutes later, Naomi was so soundly asleep that even the closing applause and shouts of "Bravo!" didn't rouse her. I was just starting to wonder if I was still strong enough to carry my ever-growing child across the ship when Joe approached us and held out his arms silently to take Naomi. I gratefully allowed him to lift her from my lap. She whimpered sleepily but settled quickly, arms wrapped around his neck.

As we left the holodeck, among the last of the thinning crowd to do so, he smiled sadly at me and said, "The last time I saw my younger son, he was just this size." Both his hands were cradling Naomi to his slim chest. I silently laid one hand on his upper arm. We walked that way for just a few steps, but it was enough, somehow, to build another bridge between us.

Not that night, but not long after, he visited us in the evening, at Naomi's invitation. She and I had saved replicator credits to celebrate her half-birthday. Her full birthdays were a big public celebration, but I felt the need to mark each half-year point as well, since she grew so rapidly. We were having hot fudge sundaes, and Naomi wanted Uncle Joe to be there. I hoped Neelix would not hear of it but suspected he would, and sighed internally. He was on my mind when Joe arrived, and so I was struck anew by the contrast between the two men. Where Neelix would push, Joe simply … accepted. He never undermined my authority with Naomi, never sought to make her life about him. Where Neelix needed to be made to feel needed, Joe simply seemed content to be in our space.

I let Naomi stay up late, in her pajamas, since I was off duty the next day. After I'd cleaned up the mess from the sundaes, I found Naomi sitting in Joe's lap, as he read books to her. It made me smile. She could read them herself by that point, but they were both obviously taking pleasure in this ritual of young childhood. I settled on the other end of the couch with a PADD and listened with half an ear to the stories I knew by heart. Joe read the various characters with different voices, hamming it up for a giggling Naomi, sometimes teasing her by deliberately skipping a page or getting the words wrong, whereupon she would mock-wail, "Noooooo Uncle Joe, you're reading it wrong!" After a time, as she cranked up higher, I could hear the sugar crash about to happen, and intervened.

"OK, Naomi - it's time for bed now. Say thank you to Joe for coming and for reading to you, and go brush your teeth."

Joe closed the book with a snap and a wink, lifted Naomi from his lap, and pointed her towards the bathroom. Again it occurred to me that Neelix likely would have wheedled as hard as Naomi was now doing for "just one more story, pleeeeease!" I smiled at them, but even Naomi could see that I was approving of Joe, not softening towards her. Outnumbered, she gave in with remarkably good grace for a three-and-a-half-year-old, even a half-Ktarian one, and made only one eminently reasonable demand: that Uncle Joe tuck her in. He looked my way for permission and I smiled again and nodded.

Alone for a minute, I made tea. Two mugs. I returned to the couch, placed Joe's tea on the end table, and sat with my own mug. That way, I thought, he had the choice to leave or stay. He emerged from her bedroom, and I saw him see me and then notice the other mug. He didn't stand and ponder, but sat down with me and picked up his tea, as if we did this every night.

We made small talk for a few minutes. Then he started telling me about his family. How he had met his wife, Anne. How they had managed to have two sons around his often-lengthy starship assignments. What his boys were like, what he recalled from their early childhoods. How much being around Naomi and me brought those days back to life for him, how in truth it gave him both pleasure and pain, in a combination he would not alter if he could. He spoke easily of these things in a way that only made me feel glad he was telling me, grateful for his confidence. He made no demands, only gifts of his past life.

We parted that night with a hand squeeze, and life continued on. But he'd left me with a lot to think about. Gres was much less in my thoughts now than he had been in the early years of our journey. But when I did think of him, it was always with a grief and longing that could crush me if I dwelt on it.

Part of that, I knew, was about Naomi. When we'd briefly had the use of the Hirogen relay network, a year and a half previously, Gres had been notified of my survival and Naomi's existence. But based on the short letter he'd been able to write and send me then, he knew almost nothing about us beyond those bare facts. I could not imagine the torment of knowing he had a daughter, but knowing nothing of her life beyond her name and the fact that she was a lifetime's hazardous travel away. My heart hurt for him, the father of my child, every time I thought of him.

There was something, though, in the way Joe had spoken to me of Anne, that stayed with me. He missed her, clearly. It had been obvious to me almost from the first night with Flotter that Joe's loneliness for his family was most of what drew him to us. He missed his wife, and he was sad to be apart from her and their sons. But what I had not heard in his voice that evening was … anguish. No bitterness, no guilt. A hard thing, a very hard thing had happened to all of them, and now he was making the best of it, and doing his best every day by the ship, the crew, the mission.

He hoped to return, to be reunited with his family. But it didn't consume him, nor sap the spirit from his life here, and that somehow freed him to share that part of his life with me now. It was strange, but felt very correct, that in this way, hearing about his wife could bring him and me closer together, could drop a wall rather than throw one up.

A week later, I asked Joe to come over for tea at 2100 hours. He knew Naomi's bedtime was 1930, and in this way I hoped he would perceive that this was about us, not another Uncle Joe visit. I knew he had gotten the message when he arrived wearing civilian clothing. We were shifting gears, moving into a new space. Trying to. Considering it, at least.

I was nervous. I had rehearsed a little speech, trying to tell him how honored I'd felt when he'd told me about his family, and how much I admired his acceptance of the situation. He listened patiently to my slight stammering through safe and polite phrases, allowed me to finish, and then looked at me, and said simply, "Sam. What's on your mind, then? Talk to me."

I blurted it out. "I still love Gres. I miss him and I want to return to him."

He let those words ring in the air for a moment, making sure we'd both heard them. Then he said, "We're in the same boat then, you and I. And so we're both lonely." A beat, as he searched for words. "I think we can keep on, loving them and missing them, without staying lonely."

I searched his face. I hated feeling suspicious. Or was it just … defensive? Was I just projecting my own fears onto him?

"Sam, your face is like watching a holovid with the audio off. Out with it. Just talk to me."

"Before, when you and Anne were apart, did you … stay lonely?" There was a tinge of hardness in my voice. Even so, he answered without a pause.

"I always missed her. But I was never lonely, somehow. Knowing when the assignment would end, when we would be together again - that was always enough for me. I can't truthfully say I resisted temptation, Sam, because I never felt the need then."

"Is that what this feels like now, to you? Temptation?"

He reached out, stroked my hair, caressed my ear and neck. I closed my eyes, trying not to shiver. There was a hunger in his eyes that I hadn't seen anyone turn my way in a very long time. But then he masked it and let his hand drop away from me.

"It feels like need . I want you, Sam. But the question you need to be asking is what you feel this is, between us, and what it would mean, for yourself and for Gres."

I was silent for a time. He waited. He's a patient man, Joe Carey is.

Finally I offered up my last remaining fear. "Naomi would know. Others would find out. This couldn't stay a secret."

At that he smiled, a big slow smile. "Whyever would I want it to? I could never be ashamed of being close to you."

His words rolled over me like a wave. My eyes closed in the face of that simple truth, a truth he had named for us both. I wondered if he knew. My breath came deep and I could not find my voice, but I looked up at him with thanks and wonder in my eyes, and he saw.

He didn't push, and I didn't pull, and after a minute, he said goodnight and left. I stayed on the couch, thinking, for a long time that night.

The next time Joe is in our quarters at Naomi's bedtime, I ask him to tuck her in. I make two mugs of tea and place one on the end table. When he returns to the main room, he catches my gaze, holds it, stands waiting. I set my own mug down and hold out a hand to him. He takes it.

Very little changes in my life, but at the same time, from that point forward, everything is different.