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Author's Chapter Notes:
None of this is mine, but not from lack of trying. Or pleading. Or begging. But I'm wearing those who do own this down, and by God, someday I will succeed!

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The front door was red. Bright red. Like candy apple red, the color of a Coca cola bottle or a freshly enhanced lobster.

I chuckled as I reached the door, the morning sun just breaking behind me, casting shades of what Pam would describe as apricot over the newly painted exterior, a soft gray that my wife had spent days… and days… and days deciding on. We’d been discussing the color of the door for probably just as long, and I’d been fighting for a navy blue. Pam had been set on white. This red was a new revelation.

My eyes wandered down to the blooms against the house below me. Pam’s love of gardening had taken over the past year when she was newly pregnant with Cece and it showed in the cornucopia of flowers planted in the space of the old hedges I had pulled up in front of the windows. Hedges I remember my father painstakingly pruning in his younger days, before he was known as Papa and spent his time at the house bouncing my baby on his knee, watching me with a glint in his eye.

I grinned to myself as I slid the key through the lock, thankful that we’d finally ripped off the haphazard, squeaky screen door off last summer, knowing my little girl was sleeping snug in her crib just feet away. I’d hated going away on these business trips when it was just Pam and I; Now, it was near impossible to stop thinking about my curly haired little princess and my gorgeous wife at home while another salesman droned on and on about the newest recycled cardstock.

I stepped into the living room, toeing off my sneakers so as to not walk on our newly refinished hardwood floors, the first thing Pam requested be done when I’d taken her back into the house after she’d jumped into my arms and pressed kisses into my neck the day I’d worriedly told her I’d bought the place. I tossed my bag on the couch and slid my luggage into a corner, under the framed hand prints Pam had Cece do as soon as she could get her hands on some non-toxic, no fume, no stain paint. I stared at the picture for a few seconds longer than normal, remembering the day I’d come home to the tears.

Pam was sitting on the couch, her hands in her hair, her eyes red and wet. I’d worked a full day – my first day back after paternity leave – and although I’d called eleven times and Pam had repeatedly told me she and Cece were fine I could feel in my bones that something was off kilter. Call it a father’s intuition – call it a guy who’d been in love with a girl for a real long time who could tell tension in her voice over a phone – hell, call it paranoia, I’d known something was wrong.

Cece was in her pack and play, her shrill little cry overpowering my eardrums. I’d swiftly walked to her, lifting her into my arms, her sobbing increasing in both power and decibel. I held her against my chest, rocking her back and forth, feeling her little body melt into mine. I inhaled her baby scent – a mix of milk and talcum powder and whatever it was that made my baby my baby , reliving the feel of her in my arms after spending the entire day away from her. I kissed her temple and murmured whispers of love into her ear as she continued to scream, her face still red and blotchy, her body quaking with frustration. Pam looked up at me with tears sliding down her cheeks, her lower lip quivering.

“Jim,” she whispered, her face twisting into something I’d come to determine was uncontrollable crying, “I’m such a bad mom…”

I’d carried the baby to over to her on the couch, sliding Cece to one shoulder and wrapping my other arm around Pam’s shoulders, holding both of my inconsolable girls to me.

“Pamela Halpert, you are NOT a bad mom,” I’d whispered into her ear, not sure if she’d even heard me over her or our baby girl’s tears. We’d sat there for twenty minutes before Cece started to calm down and eventually fell asleep, her shrill screams slowly shifting to a dull sob before tapering off to a soft whimper. I removed the arm that was holding Pam to my chest, her own tears reducing to a mere sniffle, and carried our daughter to her bedroom, gently placing her in her crib and shutting her door with a quiet click. I headed back to the living room where I found Pam in the exact same position I’d found her in when I’d gotten home. I sat next to her on the couch and pulled her into my lap, running my hand over her back and sighing into her curls. She sniffed.

“I don’t know what happened,” She whispered, her lip trembling. “We were totally fine, she didn’t have any problems latching on today, and then I tried to do a little art project with her, and then the shit hit the fan and she was so upset and I couldn’t calm her down and she wouldn’t stop crying and I tried everything, Jim! I tried rocking her and singing to her and snuggling her and I swaddled her but she was struggling to get out of it so bad I couldn’t stand to watch her upset like that!”

I bit my lip and winced. “Babe, why didn’t you call me?”

She turned to me, her eyes watery and red. “I didn’t want you to worry on your first day back at work, and I didn’t want you to known that… I’m a failure as a mommy”.

Her tears started to fall again as I cuddled her against me, whispering words of reassurance that she was anything but a bad mommy, that she was beautiful and wonderful and everything she should be as a mother. Her tears soaked into my shirt and I held her for a few more minutes, before peeling her face from me so I could look into her eyes.

“Pam,” I couldn’t help but ask. “What’s this about an art project with our two week old?”

Her lips turned down at the corners as she pressed her face back into my shirt.

“I wanted your first night back at home after work to be special, so I bought this special paint and I wanted to have Cece do handprints on paper for you,” She said quietly, rubbing her face against the cotton.

I grinned at the idea, picturing Pam holding our baby and painting her little hands with a paintbrush. I stroked her hair.

“I think that’s a wonderful idea, Beesly,” I spoke into her hair, nuzzling my nose into the softness of her curls. “As soon as she wakes up, let’s try again, ok?”

Her smile was the best thing I’d seen all day.

Later that night, after Cece had woken up and been fed and burped and rediapered, we sat at the kitchen table. I held our daughter as my wife painted her hands with bright pink paint and I pressed her palms and little fingers gently onto a piece of our heavy white cardstock. Pam swirled her paintbrush into the gaudy rose and wrote “Cecelia” under the handprints with the date, as a reminder of the day. She’d mounted and framed the handprints the next day and hung them next to the door.

I grinned now as I looked at the prints. Hands that were bigger now, although not by much, but the memory of the day so clearly stuck in my head.

I walked around the living room, picking up random toys that had been scattered around the room, and placed them back into the yellow toy chest that Pam had so meticulously painted three weeks before Cece was born. I smiled as I saw the baby DVDs that sat atop the TV, so different from the usual copies of The Princess Bride and famous old Phillies playoff games. I walked over to the far corner of the room, grabbing an errant stuffed animal, and felt a chill run through me. It was only October, but the room was cold and the weather was certainly getting frosty. The leaves on the trees were a brilliant red and orange and yellow, and while it was comfortable last year since my pregnant wife was constantly hot, this year we had a baby to keep warm. My mind wandered to ideas of snuggling my girls in front of the fireplace, all wrapped in a big, comfortable old quilt, Pam and I drinking hot chocolate, feet on the coffee table as snow piled outside. I realized I was standing in the corner that the Christmas tree was usually in, and grinned to think of my daughter’s upcoming first Christmas. I grinned harder knowing that my own first Christmas was spent in this house. I’d spent every Christmas here I’d been alive, some better, some worse.

I thought to one year that I was a kid, maybe seven or eight years old. I’d begged my parents for a new bike, black with red flames, and under that tree when I awoke was my gift I’d been waiting for. I’d jumped on the bike and immediately was assaulted with thoughts of zooming through the house, my brothers and mother joyously running after me, cheering me on as I pulled wheelies and spun around like a professional.

Instead, I’d gotten about eight feet away when I tried to avoid running over a misplaced wrapped baseball and fell into the coffee table, splitting my head open. I’d been rushed to the hospital, where I received four stitches at my hairline, effectively ruining Christmas morning and instilling a new rule of “even if it’s Christmas morning, there will be NO riding bicycles in the house”.

I picked up another stuffed animal and eyed the hard, wood coffee table in the center of the room. When Pam woke up, I’d talk to her about getting a cushy, upholstered ottoman to replace the dangerous furniture.

Still thinking about my sweet baby, I decided to check on her. I walked softly to her bedroom, stepping over each wooden plank of the floor that I instinctively knew squeaked, and headed in to see her.

Cece was lying in her crib, facing a little mirrored toy that Pam had attached to the slats, babbling to herself quietly.

“Hello baby girl,” I cooed quietly, my voice soft.

Cece’s head swung to the left, her eyes meeting mine and her gurgling becoming louder. I picked her up, her face immediately pressing into my neck, her hands fisting in my collar. I swayed around her room with her in my arms, her bottom resting on one forearm, the other hand stroking the curls she inherited from her momma. Her babbling continued to escalate.

“Shhhh…” I whispered to her, “Let’s not wake momma up yet, ok? Let’s just have some Cece and daddy time…”

I continued to rock her around the room, my nose buried in her hair, my lips pressing kisses to the baby cheeks and forehead and nose and chin and hands I’d missed so terribly in the 48 hours I’d been away. I inhaled her sweet scent as I two-stepped between her crib and the changing table and back to her dresser.

The furniture was new, but the room wasn’t. It had been the room that was mine when I was still living at home. I still remembered how the room had changed.

When I was a kid, the room had been painted baby blue – leftovers from when my brothers had been babies and had moved to the room down the hall, since this one was the closest to the master bedroom. I’d hated it, and as soon as I could, I’d propositioned my parents to paint it Phillies Red. Not wanting to clash with the shag carpet just outside the door, apparently, my mother allowed me to have a red stripe, horizontal across all four walls, but the walls were to remain a neutral white.

Posters came and went, from sports teams when I was in elementary school, to rock bands and more sports teams when I was in middle school, to barely clad women when I was in high school and college. I rolled my eyes imagining my mother coming into this room and seeing her son in all over his under-sexed, wanton glory.

We hadn’t painted the room until after Cece was brought home, since we didn’t know if she was going to be a girl or a boy. Well, Pam had found out pretty close to the end, but she hadn’t squealed until two hours before Cece was born. We had purchased soft green sheets for the crib and Pam had detailed ideas as to what she was going to get as soon as we knew the sex. Since we knew the baby would be sleeping in our room for a while anyways, it wasn’t too important to either of us to have the nursery perfect before we brought our baby home. We knew our little one’s personality would dictate a lot of how the flow of the room would go, anyway.

Now the room was painted a soft lavender, the furniture a distressed white, the sheets still the pale lime green. Her name was hung against the far wall in white, painted letters, and a small, antique crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. It was a princess room for my daughter, soothing and relaxed and perfectly fitting to Cece’s disposition. I quirked an eyebrow thinking about this room someday being covered in posters and championship ribbons and photos of friends. Girlfriends. Not boyfriends.

Boys. There were too many of them. Like, 50% of the population too many. I would have to buy a gun. Possibly from Dwight. I shuddered from the thought.

I pulled Cece away from me and looked into her face sternly.

“No boys.” I growled. Cece grinned and giggled and clapped. Of course.

I spun her around, holding her close to me, as she continued to giggle. I shook my head at her disapprovingly.

“If you keep this up, Miss Hapert, I’m going to have to bring you in to see mommy,” I warned.

At the sound of her momma’s name, my daughter’s eyes lit up. I was certain it was pretty reminiscent to how I looked when I heard Pam’s name, too.

“You wanna go see your momma?” I asked softly. Cece cooed into my shoulder. “OK, we’ll go see your momma.”

I slipped into the hallway and over a door, already open.

Pam was slipped under the covers in our bed, lying on my side. Cece giggled as soon as she caught sight of her mommy’s familiar curls, and I leaned us both down to kiss her awake. Pam’s eyes shot open, a smile glancing across her face as soon as she realized I was home. She lifted her arms to take us into her embrace, pressing kisses to each of our lips.

“Welcome home,” She whispered groggily as I slipped over her and into bed, nestling Cece between us. “I didn’t expect you until tomorrow.”

I rolled onto my side and ran my hand along her cheek, moving closer to gently kiss her properly.

“Couldn’t stand to be away from my family,” I murmured back.

Cece kicked her legs in the air and pulled her foot to her mouth, gnawing on her feet. I laughed and pulled her foot from her mouth.

“No biting, sweetheart,” I admonished. “Someday I’m sure you’re going to want those toes.”

Pam snickered and pressed her face into the pillow. I tangled my hand into her hair.

“What’s this sleeping on my side of the bed?”

My wife’s eyes met mine briefly, then down, as though she was embarrassed.

“Your pillow smells like you, and I missed you a lot…”

My heart clenched at the admission. I slipped Cece onto my chest, where she snuggled into my shoulder, and pulled Pam under my other arm, pressing kisses all over her face.

“I missed you, too…” I admitted. “So much, Pam. God, I couldn’t stand being away from you or the baby. I needed you both right here, in my arms.”

Pam turned onto her side to press closer to me, her hand running over my hair and down my nose, across my lips and onto our baby’s softly heaving back, asleep again, her hand turned into a fist over my heart. She smiled and sighed quietly. I took this as my time to ask.

“Beesly?”

“Uh-huh?” My wife asked, falling back to sleep against me.

“What’s with the red door?”

She stilled.

“It’s not red, Jim. It’s called Persimmon.”

I waited a beat.

“Pam, the door is bright red.”

I felt her breath catch.

“I hate it. I’ll let you take care of it in the afternoon. I’ll spring for the navy paint.”

I grinned.

I would take care of it in the afternoon.
Chapter End Notes:
Fluffity fluff on a cold Boston morning. Reviews are fabulous.


stjoespirit04 is the author of 25 other stories.
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