He shook his head. Kissed her quiet. “Gram sees him for what he is now, Harper, or at least sees enough of what he was. Loving Elmer showed her the difference between dependence and love. And she sees you for what you’ve always been, too. She asked me this afternoon if I thought you’d ever forgive her.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Harper said. “How do you blame a heart that was only doing its best to love?”
Her words hit him hard.
With her usual wisdom, Harper had just sent Bruce on a new journey away from them where, hopefully, his spirit would find, and be able to accept, real love.
Loving wasn’t easy. It didn’t guarantee there’d be no pain. But its promise, that it would be stronger than pain, stronger than evil, that it would be everlasting…was the ultimate truth. A truth that even Bruce couldn’t reframe.
* * *
“YOU READY?” MORE nervous than she’d ever been, Harper looked down at her daughter a couple of months after her walk on the beach with Mason, loving the red velvet dress, the curly blond hair, the black patent shoes, but mostly, loving the open, engaging, trusting grin on Brianna’s face.
“Yep!” Brianna said, “You ready?”
In a short black, figure-hugging dress with a big red satin bow on one hip, and wearing black two-inch heels, Harper squeezed Brianna’s hand as they approached Mason’s front door. “I’m ready,” she said. There was no doubt in her mind about what they were about to do, about a choice she’d already made. But the emotion that accompanied everything these days was still a bit hard for her to get used to.
Why jittery knees and breathlessness, butterfly stomachs and rapid heartbeats had to go along with something so incredible, she had no idea.
“It’s the best Christmas present ever, huh?” Brianna said, her voice almost a whisper. Harper just wanted to pick her up, hug her and never let go. The moment she’d given birth, she’d been introduced to Magic.
Mason deserved the same. “Yes, it is.”
“Because you’re the mom I always wanted,” Brianna said, and Harper started to cry. She’d stop. She had to stop.
And had a smile plastered on her face as Mason opened the door. “I thought you’d never get here!” he said, swinging Brianna up and giving her a hug before putting her down, saying, “The tree’s all bare and waiting for you.” He motioned toward the other room, the family room where the three of them had spent a few evenings over the past couple of months. They’d decided to keep the place, so they could stay in a home of their own when they came to visit Gram and her parents in Albina. So they could entertain both sides of their family at the same time. As they were doing during this first Christmas together.
“I think we should do presents first.” Brianna hadn’t moved from the doorway. “Don’t you, Mommy?” The look she gave Harper was clearly a hint.
“At least one,” Harper agreed, standing back.
Brianna tugged Mason’s hand. “Can you come down here?” she asked. Of course he bent immediately, putting himself on eye level with her.
Harper knew what was coming, what Brianna was going to tell him, but she didn’t know exactly what the little girl would say. The idea had been Brianna’s, so the gift was hers to give.
Brianna looked back at Harper as though for reassurance, and she smiled, nodded, in spite of the tears already in her eyes.
“I have a present that isn’t like one you open,” she told Mason, her tone steady and unmistakably serious.
“Okay.” Mason smiled at her, waiting patiently.
“My present is you are the daddy I always wanted.”
Love exploded around Harper, bathing her, healing her. Filling her.
Leave it to a four-year-old to know the perfect words.
Or…leave it to Brianna.
Harper started to sob. Bent over with the exquisite pain of loving—with the pain of letting go of the bad.
Mason hadn’t moved. He had tears on his face, too. He was smiling at Brianna. And he hadn’t moved.
“Mommy used to say that to me when I was a baby.” Brianna just kept right on talking in her matter-of-fact way. “I don’t ’member that part, but she says it to me when I’m sick or sad and it always makes me feel better, and I say it to her and she feels better, and now your present is to feel it, too.”