"Night, Red."
She heads for her room. I stand in the doorway a moment longer, watching Harper sleep.
Christmas is four days away. I’m still falling; I have no idea where I’m landing, and I think I might be okay with that.
25
NORA
Harper wakes us at six-fourteen on Christmas morning.
Not crying. Babbling. The specific babbling she does when she's awake and content and waiting for someone to come get her, the sound that comes through the monitor like a tiny, cheerful summons.
I'm already awake. I've been awake since five, lying in my bed in the dim gray before dawn, listening to the house, thinking about the present for Tyler I tucked behind the tree last night.
I get up eventually and pull on the cardigan I keep on the chair before opening my door.
Tyler's bedroom door opens at the same time as mine.
He's in soft pants and a t-shirt, his hair doing something terrible, and his eyes still half-closed. He looks at me. I look at him. Harper babbles again from the next room. Neither of us moves for a second.
"Merry Christmas," he says. His voice is rough with sleep.
"Merry Christmas."
He smiles, slow and sleepy. “Let’s go give her the best Christmas ever.”
"Yeah." I smile back. “Let’s go.”
He goes to her first. I follow. Harper sees him and lightsup the way she always does, her whole face transforming, both arms shooting up over her head in the universal demand fornow. He scoops her out of the crib, and she immediately tries to put a fistful of his hair in her mouth.
"Happy first Christmas, baby girl," he says into her hair. "You have no idea what's about to happen to you."
Downstairs, the tree is the only light on in the room.
He turned the lamps off last night before bed and left just the tree lit, and I didn't notice until now. Soft white lights, the ornaments catching them, theBaby's First Christmasone front and center with Harper's photo inside. The room is warm in a way the house has never quite been before.
Tyler settles on the rug with Harper in his lap. I make coffee, two mugs, the way we've made it every morning for months, handing him his without asking and sitting down across from him on the rug.
Harper’s eyes are huge. She’s looking at the tree with the focused seriousness of someone who has just discovered that the world contains lights.
“She’s still obsessed with it,” Tyler says. “I think we broke her.”
"She's processing."
"Is that a developmental thing?"
"Everything's a developmental thing at this age."
He laughs softly, so as not to startle her, tilting his head down to look at her. "What do you think, Harp? Pretty good, huh?"
She points. Her tiny, deliberate point with one whole hand. At the tree.
Tyler makes a sound I haven't heard him make before, half-laugh, half-something else. He looks up at me.
"Did you see that?"
"I saw."