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“Not anytime soon,” she told him.
“Are you...sure?”
She looked past him briefly, then got stuck there, her eyes on the window. “I am now.”
He looked where she was looking.
Soft snowflakes fell past the darkened window, dancing and spinning as they drifted to the ground. “It’s Christmas,” she told him. “It’s snowing. And you’re alive.”
He dragged his stunned eyes back to hers again, as, from just outside the doors, a group of voices sang Silent Night in perfect four part harmony. They sounded just like angels.
Then his hand moved, as if in search of his pockets, only he no longer had any. “Your present. I had it in my pocket.”
“I know.” She pulled it out of her own pocket. “I thought it might be for me, but I didn’t look. I wanted to wait for you.”
He took the tiny box from her, and turning it to face him, he opened it. “When I came back here, I thought my time was running out. And I made a decision to live what was left of my life doing what was important. Doing what was right. I wanted to spend my time with my boys, building something I could leave behind for them. And I wanted to spend it with you, basking in you the way I should have been doing all along.”
He gripped the bed’s rail and shook it. “Lower this danged thing, will you?”
“You’re not getting up!”
“Gonna start bossing me around already, woman? Lower it or I’ll climb over. I’m gonna do this right.”
She lowered the rail. He sat up, put his legs over the side, and then pushed off the mattress before she was even ready. His feet hit the floor, his knees bent, and he went down onto them so fast she couldn’t stop him.
“Mr. McIntyre!” a nurse shouted.
He held up one hand and sent her a silencing look. Then he lifted his head, and the little black box, its lid open now, the ring winking and twinkling inside. “Sweet Vidalia, you are the love of my life, and I refuse to live another day without you. Will you marry me?”
Her tears were streaming. The carolers had just broken into the third verse in the hallway, and even the nurse was sniffling.
“Say yes, Mom,” Selene whispered. “Make me legitimate.”
Vidalia dropped to her knees too, pressed her hands to Bobby’s cheeks, and kissed his mouth slowly. When she finished, she spoke so close her lips brushed his as she told him, “You bet I will.”
He grinned, plucked the ring from the box and slipped it onto her finger. A loud cheer broke out, and they both turned their heads to see a number of faces vying for a spot outside the door’s glass windows, her daughters and his sons, all of them smiling so wide it was blinding.
They kissed again, kneeling there in front of the window with the snowflakes as their backdrop, and Vidalia knew that her fondest wish, her very own Christmas miracle, had been delivered right then, that very night, on the Christmas when her life began anew.
