Breathe

Chapter 18

Carrie arrived back at the loft with Sami and Eric less than forty minutes later. She was nervous. Not because they were there without Roman knowing, but because Sami and Eric were going to meet their mother. The mother they hadn't seen since they were two years old. They had no conscious memories of her. Their knowledge of Marlena came from stories told to them by John and herself.

Carrie was lost in thought when the loft door opened, and Sami screamed as soon as she saw John. Leaping forward, she cried loudly, "Daddy! You live here? Carrie said it was a surprise, and it's you! You're the surprise!"

John lifted Sami in his arms, kissing her on the cheek. He then reached for Eric, saying, "Well, surprise, Peanut! It's me!"

"Daddy, you have a door that slides," Eric said in awe as he stared at the loft door.

"Someone mentioned that to me earlier," he replied with a laugh, thinking about Avi's nearly identical comment. He carried them in, adjusting them both in his arms. "I had Carrie bring you over because I wanted to talk to the two of you about some things."

"Are you gonna get in trouble 'cause we came here?" Sami asked quietly. " 'Cause I don't want you to get in trouble, Daddy."

"I don't think so, Sami," John replied, sitting down on the couch with both of them. He settled Sami on his lap, and Eric cuddled up beside him with his small arms wrapped around his bicep. "I wanted to talk to you about that surprise I promised."

Eric rubbed his face on the cotton of John's sleeve, whispering, "I missed you, Daddy."

"I missed you too, Slugger. So much, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get back."

"But you brought a surprise?" Sami asked him.

"I wanted to show you a picture," John told them. He'd taken the framed photo he kept of him and Marlena on their wedding day out of his closet earlier. It had been a mainstay on the mantle at the house on Sycamore for the years he'd lived there. Since then, he'd kept it in a lock box in the closet of his bedroom. He hadn't been able to get rid of it, even knowing that he wasn't Roman. His marriage to Marlena would always be valid in his heart, even if it wasn't on paper. But when he'd moved on with Isabella, he'd put it away. It was part of his past, and now that he'd found Marlena, he was determined that she would be part of his future. "Carrie, can you hand me the photograph on the counter?"

She lifted it with a small smile on her face, and walked it over to where her Dad sat. She sat on the coffee table in front of them and waited. She was so relieved to have the responsibility of telling the twins about Marlena lifted from her shoulders. She felt ill equipped for more than half of the things Roman expected from her.

John held the photo up, so that Eric and Sami could look at it. "Do you two remember this picture?"

"It's you and Mommy," Sami said with a smile. "When you got married, and she looked like a princess. She was happy because she loved you."

John couldn't help smiling. Marlena was beautiful that day. She was beautiful every day, but on the day they married there was a glow to her, a shine in her eyes that told the world about her joy. "She was happy. We were both incredibly happy on that day. Do you remember her at all?"

"I remember a little bit," Eric said quietly. His memories were fuzzy, and sometimes blurry in his mind, but he could remember her voice. "She used to read us books at bedtime, and she smelled like... flowers."

"I remember, she hugged me a lot," Sami told them. "And she laughed all the time, but she died."

John smiled down at Sami, kissing her head, and then he brushed the hair back from Eric's forehead, before he said, "I wanted to talk to you about that. You know, Hope came home... even after we believed that she'd passed away."