Her sleeping face was a celestial wonder: heart-shaped face topped with unblemished skin that was impossibly soft to his tentative touch; a bump of a nose, hardly a nose at all, twitching slightly as she snored so quietly that he barely heard it; soft pink lips pushed out in a gentle pout.
Ichabod marveled at the length of her dark eyelashes, splayed across her round cheeks. Her eyelids fluttered as she dreamed, her little hands clasping and unclasping. He reached out to sweep a stray dark curl back from her forehead.
"Pick her up," Abbie said, startling him. He turned to find her sitting up in the hospital bed, her own dark hair pulled back in a loose knot. He had decided to give himself a front row view of the birth and promptly fainted when Abbie crowned, subsequently getting himself wheeled off to another section of the hospital for a CAT scan. When he came to, everything was done.
He looked down at the little girl in the plastic baby bed, her eyes still fluttering, then back at his wife. "I do not know–"
"Hold your child, Ichabod."
He turned back to the little bed holding the impossibly little baby, then gently reach in and lifted her out, his large hands spanning the length of her tiny body swaddled in a yellow blanket sleeper. He held her to his chest, thinking it the best way to cradle her until she let out a soft whimper. His eyes darted to his wife and she smiled as she beckoned him over. She turned the baby so he cradled her in the crook of his elbow and her eyes fluttered open. He had expected the limpid pools of mahogany that left him utterly besotted when he looked at her mother, but the child bore the trademark soft blue eyes of the Crane gene pool. Still, there was something inherently "Abbie-like" about the way she looked at him. He wouldn't have been surprised if the infant rolled her wide eyes at him and twisted her tiny plump lips in a smirk.
"What is her name?" She wrapped her tiny fist around his index finger, gurgling softly as she considered him unabashedly, as if she was memorizing his face.
"Beatrice," Abbie answered. "That was the name of the first foster mother who took Jenny and me together so we could grow up together. Guess what it means."
"Judging phonetically, I'll wager something about beauty."
Abbie smiled. "No. It means 'bringer of joy.'"
Ichabod smiled as he looked down at the olive-skinned little girl in his arms. "Indeed."