Page 4 of Starlight & Dark Nights

“I’ll get Wendy up,” Derek says, kissing Maxine on the forehead one more time before he heads to the nursery.

“Dada,” Wendy says, jumping up and down inside her crib. She’s got a stuffed teddy bear in the bed with her, but she’s thrown her favorite blanket over the railing and onto the carpeted bedroom floor. “Night-night,” she says, pointing with one stubby toddler finger at her pink blanket with its satin edging—the blanket she’s referred to as her Night-night ever since she could form the words. “I want.”

“Well, if you want Night-night, you shouldn’t have thrown it, missy,” Derek says, stooping over to scoop up the blanket. He puts it over his shoulder and then holds out both hands, reaching into the crib to take his eighteen-month-old from the bed. He holds her warm, squirming body in his arms and walks over to the bedroom window to open the curtains. “Look what’s outside,” Derek says, smiling as Wendy nuzzles her face against his shoulder, which is really just her nuzzling up to Night-night. “The sun is up.”

Wendy turns her head to look. “Sun,” she says, pointing at the blue sky the same way she’d pointed at the blanket on the floor. “Down.”

Derek puts her down on the floor, and she pulls her blanket off his shoulder so that it’s clutched in her tiny fist and dragging on the carpet behind her.

“I go Mama,” Wendy says, toddling off in her footie pajamas like she’s the boss of her own world.

Derek stays in the nursery for a moment, inhaling the sweet scent of baby powder, lotion, and of his own child. Being an astronaut is exciting and rewarding and fulfilling in all the ways a person would imagine it to be, but being a father, well…that’s something else. The moment his son—his first child—had been cleaned up, bundled, and handed off to him, Derek realized that he’d never known true love before. Ryan’s big, searching eyes followed him everywhere from that very first time he’d looked at him. His reliance on Derek as sole protector, as guide, was absolute—and it’s a feeling that Derek cannot compare to anything else.

And now: a third baby. He stands there as the sunlight streams through the window and warms the shag carpet beneath his feet. Of course, he and Maxine might have waited a bit longer before giving Wendy a little brother or sister, given the choice, but it had taken longer than expected to have another baby after Ryan, and the magic of life has sparked between them again. He couldn’t be happier. So far, they’ve kicked around a few names: Michelle, Matthew, Bridget, maybe Brock. It almost doesn’t matter, because this baby will arrive and announce him or herself to the world, coming into their family with its own personality, forging its own path through life.

It fills Derek with wonder.

“Hon?” Maxine calls from the kitchen. “Coffee.”

Derek straightens the afghan on the back of the rocking chair in the nursery and gives the room—with its pink walls, its pictures of moons and stars and balloons hung over the changing table and the crib—one last glance.

But now it’s time for coffee; he’ll need a lot of coffee to get through this day after a night of no sleep.

* * *

After Derek is showered and dressed, he walks down the hallway to find his wife and daughter in the middle of the living room, still in their pajamas.

“Lazy morning for my girls?” he asks, surveying the open boxes that Maxine is sorting through.

“I wanted to get the ornaments and decorations out. We’ve got less than two weeks until Christmas.” Maxine stands up, one hand on her hip as she turns around in a circle. “I can’t find the tree-topper anywhere.” She frowns and then looks at Derek. “Have you seen it?”

“I have not.” Derek reaches down to touch Wendy’s white-blonde hair as she clings to his leg and looks up at him. “I was just about to ask you if you’d seen my navy blue tie.”

This snaps Maxine out of her decorations dilemma and she claps her hands together just as the telephone rings. “Oh!” she says, stepping over a box and holding up the long skirts of her nightgown and robe as she does. “I have it. Let me get it.”

As she hurries to the laundry room, Maxine stops and lifts the phone from its receiver in the kitchen.

“Hello?” Derek can hear her say, with that little questioning lilt at the end of the word. There’s nothing that he loves more than calling his house to check in on her in the middle of his work day and hearing that soft, precious, “Hello?”

“Oh, Jude,” Maxine says. “Good morning. I’m good, how are you? I know, very exciting. Yes, yes.” Derek can hear the distraction in his wife’s voice as she chats with their next door neighbor, Jude Majors. Jude’s husband, Vance, is one of his coworkers, and the women have gotten closer to one another over the past year or so, though Maxine is always quick to say that while she loves Jude, no one is actuallycloseto Jude Majors; you have to know a person before you can actually get close to them.

“You’re so right,” Maxine is saying into the phone. Her voice filters out from the kitchen, and Wendy runs around, poking her head and hands into the boxes.

Derek keeps an eye on his little girl closely so that she doesn’t pull out anything she shouldn’t be playing with. How does Maxine do this all day—watch a toddler and keep her safe every moment she’s awake? It seems like an impossible task, and rather than admonish his daughter as she reaches for a glass ornament, he takes three big steps in her direction and lifts her up, turning her upside down to her great joy and amusement.

Wendy whoops with laughter as Maxine comes back into the room holding Derek’s necktie.

“That was Jude,” Maxine says unnecessarily. “She called to wish you good luck, and to ask if I wanted to go with her tonight to Jo Booker’s reading at NASA.”

Derek sets Wendy on the floor again, her face now pink and her eyes dancing from the physical play. He stands still as Maxine puts the tie around his neck, pulling one end longer than the other, folding it over the other side, looping it, knotting it, tugging it into position.

Derek pretends to cough like she’s choking him and Maxine laughs, swatting his arm.

“Are you going?” he asks her.

Maxine shrugs, admiring her husband as she swipes a hand down his arm and then over his chest, brushing off invisible lint.

“I might,” she says casually. “I have a sitter lined up in case I feel like it, and it might be something fun to do. It’s impressive anyway, isn’t it?”

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