Soon!

Chapter 4 - Hey Baby Girl!

The flight took forever. We left New Orleans late and encountered bad weather all the way. All of a sudden I found myself getting nervous.

I hadn't been at Dulles for over a decade. It was much bigger than I remembered. As I neared the exit, I saw Percy sitting down in the waiting area.

"Chris, it's good to see you."

"I doubt you mean that Sonja" I snarked.

Chrissy do you know who this is? She looked at me with same big eyes of her mothers. – "Da Da" she clearly responds to my great surprise. How does she know me Percy? When you see her room you will understand.

Percy straps the baby in the back seat as I put the stroller and my suitcase in the trunk. Percy asks me if I want to sit back there with her. That was a no brainer. I eased myself right next to my daughter. It's her nap time so she probably will just doze off. I wasn't about to let that happen. I kept her entertained the whole ride.

When we got to Percy's place she told me that the baby really did need to go down. I was able to get her out of the car seat thinking I could just come back and get my suitcase later. Sonja carried the diaper bag and stroller in. Pointing to door on the right, Percy said you can just put her in the bed. I tried, but I found that I wasn't ready to put my daughter down yet. I picked her back up and sat in the rocking chair in the room rocking Chrissy as she looked into my eyes while trying to grab my nose. Slowly her eyes closed and reopened, closed and reopened and in about ten minutes she finally lost her fight with the sandman. After I put her down I looked around the room. There I found more than a half a dozen photos of me as well as the team, Sonja and me together and even one of momma.

Percy where did you get all those photos of me? You had them on your hard drive and I got to them while you were upstairs in a conference with Pride so I wouldn't forget what you looked like. "But you had one of momma." "I asked Cade to e-mail it to me. I told him that I was doing something special for you for Christmas."

As I sat down, I felt my anger returning. "Sonja what the hell were you thinking? If this is my daughter, how could you keep her away from me?" You're out of the country half the time. Well Chris, the 'if' will be determined this afternoon. I have a friend at the coroner's lab and he is going to do a DNA test on the two of you and get the results back quicker than a hospital. I told you Chris, I didn't know what to do. I wondered why you would want to be saddled down by a child you couldn't raise. We made it so plain that we wondered about what could have been.

We talked some more or rather I did. Finally to keep from shouting I went outside and walked around the block. Percy had the bad habit of not only helping me to calm down but to irritate me so much that I wanted to scream.

When I came back in, I had promised myself that I would listen. So I started out "Sonja, I'm not going to talk. I want you to tell me your story." Up and down, back and forth, Sonja told exactly how the past three years had unfolded. She said while she loved her job, she hated the fact that her child was being raised by a nanny. She wished that Chrissy had a stable home. She said just when she decided that she would reach out to me that she reconsidered the decision on a long flight home.

As she seemed be talked out, I called her over to me and pulled her into my lap. Then she began to cry again. The only response I had was to hold her tighter. I never wanted her to cry again. I never wanted her to worry.

About the time she calmed down enough to talk about making dinner plans, baby girl work up from her nap. We went in together to get her. Chrissy looked at us both first extending her arms to mommy and then to Da Da not quite sure how to make the choice. Sonja took her to the potty chair and brought her back and put her in my lap telling Chrissy to tell her daddy about Pepper. I found out that Pepper was the dog next door. I could only understand every two words and the translator, Sonja, had left the room.