The night of the fireflies.
"I want to show you something," Daniel said, taking her hand.
"What is it?"
"It's a surprise, come on..."
Deanna stood up, feeling she was in the final stretch. With some difficulty, she let her husband lead her by the hand to the door of what would be their daughters' room.
"You mustn't look," he warned.
Deanna covered her eyes with both hands, and he made sure she wasn't peeking. He opened the door and, with one hand on her back, guided her inside.
"Okay, you can look now."
In the center of the room, between the two cribs, Daniel had placed a low table. On it, a lamp spun on its base, emitting colored lights, and with each light, the shape of a firefly was reflected on the ceiling, walls, and furniture. It looked like a starry sky.
"Oh my God... It's beautiful," Deanna said with a smile.
And he looked proud of his achievement, of his little gift.
"Explain one thing to me," she said.
"What?"
"Where did you come from? How do you make such beautiful things with that serious face? Don't you realize you make me love you more?"
That was the Daniel she knew was hidden beneath all that ice. She knew it the moment she met him. "There was something more," and it was this: the warm love of a passionate man. It was just asleep, like a forgotten giant. Deanna had barely sung a note with her voice and managed to wake him. It had taken time to shake off the frost, but finally, he had emerged as what he was: a mountain, imposing.
She remembered those early days when he tried to go all out for the little details, when the simplest things seemed magnificent and he pulled her towards him without hesitation.
"Do you remember the day I met you?" Daniel asked.
"Yes, of course I remember. Harry's apartment..."
"You walked in and filled the place, since that day I couldn't stop thinking about you."
"You were distant back then."
"Yes, I was still hurting. And now here we are, counting the days until they arrive... That's what you did to me," he said, pointing to the lights.
"My poet..." she replied with a smile.
"I must be getting old because that no longer sounds like you're teasing me."
"I never teased you, I always believed it and still do. Look at the things you do for us, for all of us... This comes from a poet's soul. You're a businessman, you always work late and put on a stern face and an expressionless look, but inside you're as warm as those colored lights."
Daniel helped her sit in the rocking chair and ran one of his hands over the wood of the crib. He was amazed at himself, amazed at Deanna; sometimes he couldn't believe it and would sneak into that room for a few moments. As if all the things for their daughters reminded him that he had achieved it.
Becoming a father again at his age was a challenge, but he couldn't imagine it any other way. He had longed so desperately for a child with her, and now they would have two; all the cries of failure and defeat as the months passed with no news.
He had resigned himself to giving up that dream because he couldn't bear to see her fall apart each month with disappointment. Hearing her cry bitterly broke his heart a thousand times until he decided that pain wasn't necessary for them to be happy. Deanna was by his side, and that was what he wanted most.
But the balance had tipped; so many mistakes for so many successes. He just hoped life would give him enough time to see them grow, to become beautiful women like their mother; to give him the years he needed to feel like there was nothing left to do. Sometimes fear would invade him at the thought, at the thought of his own mortality. Deanna was young, she would remain so, their daughters were little, Jonathan; it was inevitable.