The Spirits of Christmas (6 page)

She looked down at the baby. What had Zane said, five pounds
something? Nora’s daughter had to be smaller than that. She was minute.
Infinitely small. The tiniest thing Akira had ever seen. And yet somehow she
sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Akira dropped to her knees next to the
car seat and looked at the baby’s fingers. That had to be wrong. There was no
way it was possible for human fingers to be so, so, so incredibly tiny. And yet
they were.

Dave and Nora were talking by the door, Nora thanking Dave
and Dave brushing her off.

“Is dat my baby sistah?” Toby asked Akira.

She looked at the little boy standing next to her, soberly
looking down at the newborn.

“Uh-huh,” she said, wondering how Toby felt about the whole
thing.

He crouched next to the car seat and took a long look. Then,
carefully, gently, he placed a red wooden train next to the sleeping baby’s
leg. “You can pay wit James,” he told her in a loud whisper. “When you yake
up.” With that he stood and wandered away, apparently done with the whole
thing, and ready to get back to train-ville.

Akira smiled after him as Nora came into the room and
dropped down onto the hard couch.

“She’s beautiful,” Akira told the other woman.

“Hmph,” Hannah snorted from behind her. “She looks like a
little old man.”

Nora smiled, eyes tired. “Thank you for everything. Taking
care of Toby and—” She gestured as if trying to find words to encompass what
she meant, before adding, “—the other night.”

“It was my pleasure,” Akira answered with genuine truth.
Once over the scary hurdles of his morning dismay and his highly specific
preferences in food, she and Toby had had fun together. They’d set up his train
tracks and played with the trains, walked down to the little park in town and
admired the ducks, eaten dinner at the bistro, even visited Mrs. Swanson and
had their auras read. (Toby’s was a lovely shade of green, which meant,
according to the old woman, “Don’t bother to argue with him, dear, he’s very
strong-willed.” Mrs. Swanson still hadn’t decided what Akira’s deep, almost
iridescent blue aura signified.)

“It was a mistake to come here.” Nora rubbed a hand over her
face. “I thought I had more time.”

“Why did you?” Akira asked.

Nora shook her head as if she wasn’t sure of the answer to
the question, before giving a soft chuckle. “Have you read the pregnancy books
yet?”

“Some of them.”

“When they talk about the nesting instinct, they’re not
kidding. We were in the city, Toby and me, and everything was so busy and
crowded and chaotic. And cold. It started to snow and Toby had the sniffles and
I was miserable. On Thanksgiving weekend, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I
felt like I had to get to a place that was peaceful, safer. Not to mention warm
and sunny. So I packed up Toby and some stuff and headed here.”

“The city?” Akira asked, wondering. None of that sounded as
if Nora was homeless and desperate. Maybe getting evicted wouldn’t be a
problem.

“New York,” Nora replied, as if there was only one city.

Akira blinked. Nora and Toby had come here from New York?
But . . . “Your furniture?” she asked with a look around the room at the
beat-up furniture.

“Oh, that was all in storage down here,” Nora said, as the
baby opened her eyes and started to fuss. “Can you pass her to me?”

Akira, still kneeling next to the baby, looked down at the
little girl’s face. The sweet sleeping peaceful look was gone, replaced by an
uncertain scowl. While she watched, the baby opened and closed her tiny mouth
like a goldfish gasping for air. “You want me to pick her up?”

“I’m a little stiff,” Nora said, sounding apologetic. Akira’s
doubt must have been obvious, because Nora added, “She doesn’t bite. And you
won’t drop her. You are going to have one of your own pretty soon, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” Akira licked her lips and reached for the straps
that kept the baby secure. As she fumbled with the buckle, footsteps sounded on
the porch and a male voice called out Nora’s name.

Where should she put her hands? Akira wondered. Under the
arms? Or sideways under the legs? Weren’t you supposed to hold babies’ heads
up? Something about their necks being wobbly? Oh, dear. She really wasn’t sure
she was ready for this. But as she lifted the baby out of the car seat, one
hand scooping low, the other pressing against the baby’s back and cupping the
soft little head, a breathless smile spread across Akira’s face. The baby was
so light, so little, so warm and alive. Feeling her breathe and her tiny wiggle
of protest at the movement was both amazing and terrifying.

Carefully, still kneeling, she turned to hand the baby to
Nora and paused. She’d been so engrossed in the baby, so focused on what she
was doing that she’d been completely oblivious to what was going on behind her.
Automatically, she pulled the baby closer, cradling her as she took in the
sight of Nora locked in the embrace of a tall stranger, Toby hanging on his leg
like a happy monkey, Hannah standing frozen next to the table that held the
tiny Christmas tree, and Zane, a cheerful grin curving his lips, in the
doorway.

She’d been right.

Zane had found Nick.

And Nick and Nora weren’t strangers.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nick pulled his mouth away from
Nora’s long enough to ask, but didn’t give her a chance to answer, kissing her
again with renewed intensity.

“Dada, Dada,” Toby chanted. “Dada, we moved. To Fyorida.”

 Nora was half-crying, half-laughing as Nick finally let her
go and pulled her down onto the couch. She cradled his face in her hands,
staring into his eyes and stroking his cheeks as if she couldn’t believe she
was touching him. “I knew you’d come home if I told you and it was your big
chance. I didn’t want to screw it up. But what are you doing here? How did you
get here? What about the tour?”

“I didn’t want to miss Christmas with the two of you,” he
said. He didn’t look away from Nora but his arm opened to welcome Toby as the
boy clambered into his lap. “I was on my way to New York.”

“But what about the New Year’s shows? You only had another
two weeks to go.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I have to go back for those.”

“Nick! Are you insane?”

“Yes,” he told her, before kissing her again. “Although not
as insane as you. When were you going to tell me about the baby?”

Nora’s eyes were bright but her expression contrite. “Her
due date was right after you got home and Toby was so late—I figured you’d have
a couple weeks to get used to the idea. I didn’t think I’d be having her
without you.”

“Mama had a baby in her tummy,” Toby offered.

Nick rubbed the top of Toby’s head, leaving his other hand
on the back of Nora’s neck as he rested his forehead against hers. “I was
hoping to convince you to come back with me for the last few shows.”

“To Australia?” Nora’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened. “Okay,
now I know you’ve lost your mind.”

“Nope,” he said, “Just filled our bank account. We sold out
all our shows in Sydney. Tom’s talking money with record labels, serious money.
Dropping a few thou on a spectacular New Year’s Eve would have been cool. Guess
maybe not this year, though, huh?”

Nora’s smile was radiant. “Not this year,” she agreed,
looking toward Akira and the baby. Akira smiled back at her and stepped
forward, handing over the baby with only a little regret at losing the moment.

Zane came to stand next to her, wrapping his arm around her
and dropping his chin onto the top of her head.

Akira leaned back against him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she
whispered.

“Nora didn’t mention him,” Zane answered her quietly. “When
I realized that he was Toby’s father, I didn’t know if she was hiding or
running away from him. I made Lucas come with me to check him out. If he was
any threat to Nora . . .  well, Hannah would have been out of luck.”

“You could have told me what you were doing,” she complained
half-heartedly. It was hard to be angry as she looked at the little family on
the couch, all doting on the baby.

“I didn’t want to take the chance on upsetting Hannah until
we knew for sure.”

Akira’s lips quirked up. She might not like angry ghosts,
but after their experience this summer when a desperate ghost had caused
Akira’s heart to stop beating, Zane was even warier than she was.

“And I didn’t realize it would take so long,” he added.

“Why did it?”

She felt more than heard him yawn above her. “Moving target.
When I first touched Toby, Nick was somewhere around Atlanta. By the time I
headed out, he was north of Charlotte. I realized that he was on a plane pretty
quickly, but I didn’t think we’d have to go all the way to New York to find
him.”

New York. Akira shook her head. Only Zane would think it
made sense to hop on a plane and fly hundreds of miles away to check on whether
a total stranger was a safe person for another stranger to see. “I’ve never
been to New York.”

“Really?” He sounded surprised. “Hmm, maybe we should have
our own spectacular New Year’s.”

Akira started to turn into him, lifting her face to be
kissed. She didn’t know whether she wanted to go to New York for New Year’s but
she loved that he wanted to give it to her. Before she could finish turning,
though, a long drawn-out gasp from across the room had her spinning back out. The
sound was filled with a pain so deep that it hurt Akira just to hear it. Still
standing by the tree, Hannah had her fist clenched against her mouth, tears in her
eyes.

What had happened?

“Dat is heah name?” Toby was asking, putting a gentle finger
on his sister’s cheek.

“It was my mother’s name,” Nick told him. “Your grandma. You
never got to meet her, but you would have liked her. And she would have loved
you.” His tone held a hint of humor, but also a thickening of grief.

 “Dat is da mean yady’s name, too.”

“My mom wasn’t mean,” Nick said, frowning. “She was tough.
Strict and—well, she could be fierce. You followed her rules or else. Like some
other people I know,” he added with an exchange of glances and a smile at Nora.

Ha, Akira thought. She bet Nick had tried to feed Toby more
than once.

“But she was absolutely fair. And she loved me. A lot. She
did her best for me and she…” Nick stopped speaking and Akira could see that he
was choking up. He swallowed, blinking hard a few times, before continuing. “I
wanted to make her proud, but I never got the chance.”

Akira pressed her lips together. She didn’t think of her own
mother often. She’d only rarely wondered what that absent stranger might have
been like. But for perhaps the first time, she wondered now what her mother
thought of her and whether she would have been proud.

“Stop talking, Dada,” Toby ordered. “You are making da mean
yady sad. She is cwying now.”

“Tell him I was always proud of him. Always,” Hannah ordered
Akira, her tears rolling freely down her face. “Please.”

Relatives. Akira hated these conversations, but what could
she do? With Zane a comforting presence against her back, she quietly relayed
Hannah’s message.

“Ha.” Nick’s smile was wry. “That’s a nice thought, but she
hated my music. Oh, she supported it—she paid for lessons, came to my school
concerts, was right there for me. But she—” He put his hand up and rubbed his
chin, hiding the telltale quiver of his lips.

Akira frowned, confused, before she realized that Nick
thought she was offering soothing platitudes, not telling him exactly what his mother
was telling her.

“The mean yady,” she said dryly, then corrected her own
pronunciation, with a hasty, “lady, is your mom and she’s been waiting for you
to come home so she could apologize.”

She waited. Would he be an arguer? Would he want proof? Would
he order her out of the house like Nora had? Would he tell her she was crazy
and needed help?

Nick looked her straight in the eyes, his brown eyes steady
on her own, and then his glance flickered up to Zane’s face. He looked down at
Toby. “Where’s Grandma, Toby?”

Toby pointed at the side of the Christmas tree as Akira’s
eyebrows shot straight up. How unexpected. The corner of her mouth twisted in
amused realization as Zane whispered in her ear, “He did grow up here,
remember. Live in Tassamara long enough and you do develop an open mind.”

Later, although not much later, she walked out of the house,
hand-in-hand with Zane, feeling a quiet contentment.

“So is Hannah going to move on?” Zane asked.

Akira shrugged. “Pretty soon, probably. But I think she’ll stick
around to see a little more of her grandchildren first.”

“Living in a haunted house isn’t so bad,” Zane said
tolerantly, before adding with a grin, “Having a ghost around sure added to the
excitement this week.”

Akira paused, one hand on the door of her car. “I’m not so
sure Rose is a ghost anymore,” she said slowly. She’d tried to talk to the
ghost girl yesterday, but Rose had been entirely unhelpful about the energy.
All she’d wanted to talk about was seeing the baby be born. About
mid-afternoon, she’d wandered off, the way she often did, Akira thought
possibly to visit Nora in the hospital again.

“What does that mean?” Zane asked, frowning.

“I wish you could have seen her,” Akira said. “This golden
light poured out of her like she was some kind of intra-dimensional energy
conduit.”

“Intra-what?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve definitely never
seen a ghost do anything like that before. It was amazing. I’m thinking that ghost
energy, or maybe it should be called spirit energy, is on a spectrum, like
electromagnetic radiation. Ghost energy, the kind that I feel, could just be a
band of the spectrum, a short part of it. Like ultraviolet on the
electromagnetic spectrum. And the rest of the spectrum could contain—I don’t
even know. Other forms of energy.  Other frequencies.” Akira’s words were
starting to spill over one another in her enthusiasm.