E-DAY plus 14 YEARS, 37 WEEKS
[Vectes Naval Base, 1330 hours]
Every spare minute Dom had had in the last five days he'd spent cleaning and furnishing the little apartment. He'd collected linens and furniture and kitchen utensils and trinkets like a male bowerbird trying to win a mate with the attractiveness of his nest. It was probably overkill, but the new Maria did like shiny things, no matter what they were.
When he unlocked the door and let her in first, he saw it with a much more critical eye. He'd left this morning feeling pretty good about the apartment. But fifteen years of living in places that were practically ruins had dulled his sensibilities. With Maria standing in the living room, he was horrified by just how shabby it looked.
The couch's armrests were so worn that they were shiny. The plaid blanket draped over the back of it was almost see-through in places. The lower left square in the six-pane window was cracked all the way through and the white paint was peeling. He hadn't realized that the dining table had one leg shorter than the other three until just now. The chairs weren't even the same kind: one was straight-backed and the other had been a bar stool in a former life.
Dom looked around the main room with outrage burning in his chest. 'This isn't good enough for her. What a dump! These things don't deserve to be in the same room with her, much less touch her. Goddamned Grubs! They took my kids, my parents, my home, my wife's sanity and they couldn't even leave me a frigging armchair decent enough for her to sit in?' The last time Dom had felt this kind of rage at the Locust was in Jacinto when Anya told him that the woman they thought was Maria had been discharged from the hospital just a few days before.
He stared into the kitchen, unable to watch his precious girl stand in such squalor. The pots and pans in there were either warped or singed on the bottoms. A few of the plastic cooking utensils had been melted by being left on the edges of hot pans and the glasses were so scratched they were nearly opaque. In fact, everything factory-made in the apartment was someone's cast-off. The Peluran locals had donated everything they weren't using, and the rest were things the military had left behind because they weren't valuable enough to ship back to the mainland.
'What am I going to do? This is the nicest stuff on the whole base! It's not like I can go down to the commissary and get better things for her. This is the best I can offer her. God damn it!' He was so upset he nearly put his fist through the wall.
"Ooo, pretty!" Maria cried. She rushed to the dining table and snatched up a cast iron trivet Dom had bartered from someone. She traced her fingers over the pattern with something like wonder and practically skipped back over to Dom. "Look, Don, it's a butterfly!" She showed it to him like a child waving a macaroni-art picture. Maria leaned sideways against his chest and admired the looping, curlicued shape. "Can I keep it?"
Dom hugged her loosely, astonished. "Yeah, baby, you can keep it."
She looked up at him with that brilliant, twisted smile. "Really?" She looked around the room, seeming to have less trouble focusing than normal. Maria pointed. "What about the blanket? Can I have that, too? I like the squares and the lines all together."
Dom's eyes stung. "Yeah, sweetheart, you can have it. Actually, everything in here is yours."
Maria gaped at him. "Mine? All of it?"
"Yours. All of it."
Maria squealed and clapped her hands like a kid about to open a pile of birthday presents. She danced away from Dom and proceeded to touch everything she could get her hands on. She put the window up and down, drew the drapes and opened them again, sat on the bar stool and spun around, took every bit of silverware out of the kitchen drawers so she could admire them all at once and ran her hand across the hanging pots like she was playing a xylophone.
"Mine, mine, mine!" she sang. Maria yanked an originally-white apron off a hook and put it over her head. "Tie it for me?" she asked, showing Dom her back. He did, still in a little bit of shock. "Look!" she demanded, twirling and nearly falling over her own feet. Dom caught her. She put her head on his chest and lifted the dingy hem so he could see it.
"It's...it's..." she frowned.
Dom's heart sank. 'She's noticed,' he thought miserably. 'She's seen that it's stained. She's realized what crappy gifts these are.'
Maria looked up at him pathetically, her chin quivering a little bit. "I can't remember what it's called."
"Huh?"
She showed him the scalloped edge of the apron. "This. I...I can't remember. It has a name, but I can't find it in here." Maria rubbed her forehead. "It won't come."
"Lace. It's called lace."
"Yes!" Maria shouted joyfully. Dom nearly dropped her. "Lace! That's it. Lace, lace, lace." She accordioned the off-white edging between her hands in time to her words. "I like lace."
Dom was still getting used to her mood swings. She could go from ecstatic to depressed and back again in a matter of seconds. Doc Hayman said that her emotions might stabilize once her brain had grown new neural connections to compensate for the missing gray matter, but that could take years. Dom kissed the top of her head. He didn't care if it took the rest of their lives. Mood swings were a small price to pay for her presence.
"I'm glad you like it," he whispered.
"I love it!" Maria craned her head over his shoulder. "What's that?"
Dom turned with her in his arms. "That's the bedroom." There was no bed frame, just a very big homemade mattress filled with straw, and a couple of chicken-down pillows. He hadn't been able to scrounge end tables yet.
"A bedroom? Whose bedroom?"
"Yours and mine."
"And who else?"
"Nobody else, just us."
Maria's eyes opened even wider than before. "We don't have to share?"
"Nope. We have it all to ourselves."
Maria gave him a conspiratorial little smile. She whispered, "Can we jump on the bed?"
Dom was pretty sure that would flatten out the straw, but he didn't care. They could always refill the mattress. "Go right ahead."
Maria ran into the little room and fell face first onto the thick mattress like she was cliff-diving. The mattress poofed out like a parachute and the escaping air whipped Maria's hair around her head. She laughed like mad and rolled over onto her back. "Come on, Don, it's fun!" She patted the fabric. "Jump!"
Dom felt an answering smile creeping across his face. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. Jump."
Dom turned around and let himself fall backward onto the mattress. The low-tech cushioning didn't have springs, but his sudden weight still transferred enough force to bounce Maria into the air about an inch. She hooted with laughter when she landed.
Dom was feeling much more positive about the whole apartment thing.
Maria moved her arms and legs like she was making a tiny snow angel and her face grew sleepy. "Don, can I take a nap?"
He rolled onto his side and braced his head in his hand. "You can take all the naps you want. Right here in your very own bed."
Maria hummed happily. He slipped a feather pillow under her head. She hummed again. He reached over her and got the big re-patched quilt they would use for a coverlet. Maria wriggled down deeper into the mattress as Dom tucked her in.
When he moved to get up, however, she sat straight up in bed and grasped his wrist with a surprising amount of strength. "Don't leave! Please. I don't want to sleep alone."
Dom lay back, and the alarm drained out of her expression. She lifted the edge of the blanket so he could shimmy in beside her. "Sure, honey. I don't have to work today anyhow." Maria took his hand and placed it on the pillow so she could rest her cheek in his palm.
"Good. Because I want you to stay." Her words became slower and less clear as she was pulled down into slumber. "I want you to stay for always."
"I can do that." He stroked her silky hair back from her face. "I'll stay for always."
