Page 41 of If You Were the Only Girl in the World
She took a moment to try to understand what he really asked. Then she bent forward and kissed the bear on his cheek. “Kisses for your new bear. Just like a big ones you give your papa.”
Everett appreciated that idea and blessed the bear with a big noisy whopper.
“We’re off to a good start with that bear, Katrina,” Lily said. “It won’t take our boy long to know the bear from his mama is the first of many gifts he’ll receive from you.”
Nate curled his arm around Katrina’s waist and brought her close. So close that Everett reached out to gather her into his tiny firm embrace. And then he laughed just as hisfather did at the threesome hug. “Shall we go home now, everyone?”
“Home!” Everett announced.
“Where we all belong!” Nate offered on a chuckle.
“Home with Bear!” Everett declared. “And Mama!”
EPILOGUE
May 1926
London
Nate, distinguished in a charcoal suit and bowler hat, stood on the reserved quay for the arrival of the Orient Express. Katrina spied him through her compartment window and waved. He grinned but couldn’t wave back. He had his arms full of four-year-old Eliza, with eight-year old George by his side. George held tight to Everett who jumped up and down at the sight of her. Katrina had been gone for twelve days and she was bursting from her skin to be with the four people she loved most in this world.
Grabbing up her cosmetics case, she headed for the doors.
She’d been in Vienna for a conference of psychologists. Her German language skills had done her proud. So too her French. Her background working in Paris during the war gave her a certain panache with her male colleagues who admired her gumption to have traveled alone to France to serve and at her own expense, too. But the element of her background that gave her a greater edge was her years of devotion to caring for and analyzing the behaviors and emotional patterns and needs of those who had been saved from death but deformed by bullets and bombs. Her insights to their challenges to forming a new and viable identity in the face of their presentation to the world was her calling card.
She’d presented her recent findings on a series of group therapies she’d begun with six patients at a specialized hospital in King Edward’s Hospital, south London. There the staff specialized in skin graft treatments—what some called plastic surgery—of soldiers and sailors with facial injuries. Two years of sessions three times a week had given her results that were very detailed and worth sharing with her colleagues. Only two of the fourteen doctors attending this presidium had begun group sessions themselves. Both of them had initiated the therapy only months ago. Their insights were sparse. They applauded her detail and encouraged her to continue and publish her results.
That she would happily do in the coming months. Now, she could not depart this train fast enough.
“Merci beaucoup.” She nodded to the porter who took her stubs to retrieve her suitcase and trunks from her compartment and complimented him on his service to her on the trip.
“You have been very kind,” she told another porter in German. The man had told her how happy he was to work on such a train. Many, he said, do not favor Germans to work in France or England. Memories of the war inspired prejudice against them.
A chorus of “Mama! Mama!” and children’s giddy chirps welcomed her down the steps and into Nate’s embrace.
“I do believe this is my adorable wife,” her husband said and gave her a big smacker. The other kisses that lingered and teased and fulfilled would fill the night to come. She kissed him back, the promise of leisurely hours and hours together always a treasure to her soul.
Six other arms grasped her close and hugged her tight. Kisses were bestowed by and on each child in an abundance that made them all chuckle.
”Oh, my goodness,” she told her laughing children as she took each one in full regard. “I think you each have grown ten inches taller while I’ve been away.”
Eliza nodded, her golden curls bobbing with her effort. “I am! I am!”
George puffed himself up. With his hazel eyes and rosewood brown hair, he was the image of his father and the shorter duplicate of his older half brother. “I’m tall as Everett soon.”
Everett elbowed his brother. “Not on your life, George! He’s got to eat more, Mama.”
“Hello, my darling,” her husband crooned to her as he held her to him once more. “I’m going to never let you go again.”
“You always say that whenever I return.” She kissed him and ran her fingers through the shock of his hair over his brow. Was he more grey since she’d been gone? If it was so, he looked more distinguished every day.
“I always mean it, too,” he said, his lips against her ear, “until you tell me how very important your new findings are to give to the world. And then I share you for a little while.”
“I always come back.”
“So you do, my love. Always to me.”
“Mama! Hug me!” Eliza demanded, pointing to her chest.
