was not it. Maybe that was not it at all. Maybe it was that his strength was replaced with the courage she had talked about. And that courage unfurled within him like a flag that had felt the wind.
The wind was her love, showing him all that he could be and all that they could be and all that their world could be.
Because, instead of moving away from the promise of her touch, he moved toward it. He covered her hand with his, and then he guided her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingertips with the reverence of recognition.
Of who this amazing woman was and what she was offering him.
She felt his moment of surrender. Her eyes widened, and the tears were finally freed. Her mouth formed the most delectable little O. And then she was crying, and laughing at the same time.
He gathered her in his arms and felt the pure homecoming of his heart finding its way back. He whispered his thanks to her and to the universe and to whatever forces had guided them toward this moment.
This exquisite moment, when all the world stopped, when every other single thing fell away in insignificance, when all the world bowed before the glory of it.
When all the world acknowledged that there really was only one truth.
And that one truth was love.
JEFFERSON STONE WENT and stood at the window for a moment. The moody waters of the main body of the lake were swathed in the chill gray cloud of winter, but the water at the edges of the sheltered bays was freezing up nicely.
The wind howled under the eaves of the house and tossed pebbles of slanting snow against the window. Here, inside, the contrast was sharp and delicious. The house was warm and cozy. He could smell pumpkin pie cooking. December would not be everyone’s favorite time to be on the lake, but it was his.
Had December always been his favorite month, with its mercurial weather changes, and with skating on the lake and Christmas right around the corner? Probably it had not been. Once, he had wandered away, like a man lost, from the magic of all those things.
He and Angie had married on Christmas Day. He had offered her the big spring wedding, knowing that dream had been yanked from her once without warning.
But Angie had said no, that wasn’t her dream anymore. She said a big wedding was about a day, but loving each other was about a lifetime. And she had been so impatient! She was not about to wait until spring.
So, instead of a church and a dinner, instead of all those traditions she had once longed for, they had done as his grandmother had once done, and sent out a blanket invitation to spend Christmas with them. It had been like the days of old, the house filled to overflowing with joy and love. The wedding had been a surprise for most of their guests. A few, like Maggie, had been in on the secret.
So, after dinner, with only a few in the know, they had gone outside and lit a bonfire against the gathering darkness. Jefferson stood at the bonfire, down by the shores of the freshly frozen edges of the lake.
He still smiled with remembered delight as he thought of the surprised faces of their friends and neighbors when Maggie’s granddaughter had begun to play the wedding march on her flute. The notes had been so clear and beautiful on the crisp air that it had stunned their guests into silence. And then Pastor Michael had appeared, on cue, in his full vestments.
And then, the music had fallen away, and a pregnant sense of waiting had filled the gathering with a delightful sense of anticipation. Snow had fallen from the limb of a tree and landed with a poof of magic that had drawn all eyes there.
And there Angie had stood, at the edge of the old-growth forest, looking like an enchantment, looking every inch the angel he had always known she was, splendid in a white dress and a beautiful fur cape. Those curls had been sewn with tiny snowdrops, and she had come to him, through a path in the snow, her eyes never leaving his face, holding promises he could not have ever anticipated for himself.
They had spoken their vows on the shores of the lake, and now that spot was, forever, the most sacred of places. He could see it from where he stood at the window, now.
They had lit torches around the lake and strapped on skates, and that was where he had had the first dance with her. That year, the lake had frozen like glass, and they had been able to see the dark water far beneath them as they glided along. They had fire-roasted marshmallows instead of cake, and one of their friends had brought a guitar. They had sat by the fire singing and listening to the guitar and the flute dance with each other as the stars came out. He could not think of that day without his throat closing with pure emotion at how real every single moment of it had been.
Could it really have been three years this month? Sometimes he longed to stop the race of time, to hold each moment in his hand so that he could feel it more deeply, savor what he had been given.
He heard a shriek of laughter and grimaced good-naturedly. He turned back to what he was doing: painting this room a delicate shade of white that had the faintest blush of pink in it.
“It’s the very same color,” he had groused to Angie when she had shown it to him.
“No,” she had said, “it’s not,” and so that had become the color of the nursery. He slid a little glance at the crib he had assembled yesterday and he gulped.
Were they ready for this? Could you ever be ready?
Angie had said to him once, on the most important day of his life, that there was no love without courage. She had said that to choose love, even though it wounded, was the greatest courage of all.
But in a month, they were going to have a baby in this room, in that crib with its bumpers and blankets with vivid pink monkeys cavorting across the fabric as if it was all fun, somehow. Fun? A real, live, breathing, cooing, little girl. He was not at all sure he had the courage for this.
Not just for bringing the baby home, but for the first day of kindergarten, and for wiping away tears because some boy had been mean to her, and for deciding whether she should be in hockey or ballet.
Was he ready to be a daddy? So much potential for love. And so much potential for loss. And so much potential for the place where those two things met.
Because even now, with his baby girl still safe in the womb of her mother, Jefferson ached with awareness.
That there would come a day, when she might want a long, dress of white or she might not, but there would come a day when she would stand in a place of sanctuary, looking at a man who was not her daddy, with an aching love in her eyes.
The laughter came again, floating up the staircases as if the house was overflowing with it.
Jefferson contemplated that. His house, once a lonely fortress on a rock, was filled with the sounds of his friends and neighbors, gathering from far and wide to celebrate Christmas here at the Stone House. It was remarkably easy to breathe new life into an old tradition. But then, really, Angie made so much look remarkably easy.
Angie had never returned to teaching home economics in high school. Instead, after they had married, she had started an organization called Prom-n-Aid.
She remembered, so clearly, being the child of a single
