Find Me – Chapter 102

In the nearly year and a half that Steve and Kayla had spent jumping through their timeline, they’d been waiting for a phone call like the one they’d just received.  Waiting for someone to claim responsibility like the proud terrorist they were sure he was and tell them exactly what was happening to them and why.  Steve had been far more sure it was Stefano than Kayla was, but when Steve shakily said that the voice on the other end of the phone belonged to the doctor that helped take Steve away from them in the first place, every single haunting thought that had ever threatened to overtake her now did exactly that.  Fear, anger, desperation, and heartache closed in and hovered just above, so within her grasp that she could feel its iciness.  Even the sounds of her baby’s cries through the monitor were muted beneath the water drowning Kayla’s ability to focus on them from under the oppressive cloud of black …

Steve heard the click on the other end of the line where Rolf had very purposely hung up mid-sentence and couldn’t process the sound of the line going dead. He couldn’t accept that their connection, their hope, was severed.  The voice ending the conversation they’d been wishing would come – a conversation that was now ended barely moments after it had begun.  He knew Rolf had not just disconnected their call but had done it on purpose.  We will try again.  What were they going to try again, the phone call or another jump?  How could the little man that held all the impossible secrets of science do this?  How could he call, dangle the carrot in front of them, and then disappear with it into the ether?  But Steve couldn’t give it his real attention.  He couldn’t do it, because the trauma that assailed his mind when one thing led to another from the acknowledgment would take him somewhere he’d never come back from.  And he had to, because he had a baby that needed him …

Emily’s cries finally shook them.

Without a word or continued indulgent hesitation or glance at each other for confirmation that what had happened had truly just happened, Steve dropped the receiver and let it and it’s base hit the floor as he pushed the covers back with an urgency he had rarely known.  Kayla’s delayed response to her daughter’s cries was equally frenzied.  Neither of them would remember actually getting up or the act of traversing across the hallway and into her room.  Neither would see the pale green walls and purple stenciled letters or the Winnie the Pooh mobile and matching stuffed animlas in the corner beside her crib.  They would only be aware that they were suddenly there, desperately reaching into her crib for her, then holding her solidly in their partnered yet terrified embrace.

Emily was four months old.  She wasn’t aware of life on a deep level.  She only knew that her mother and father had come and were now holding her in the warm arms that she knew and trusted, the arms that gave her love and security that she instinctually responded to by ceasing her cries and replacing them with coos.

It wasn’t until Steve had made physical contact with Emily that he released the emotional pressure.  His baby was here, in his arms and those of her mother.  They were all here in their child of this time’s room while their children of another time stood watch over them in the hallway.  The amplication effect was so acute for them right now that the emotion was physically draining.  Tears driven from a place he couldn’t identify if he tried, it was so complicated, pooled in the rim of his eye until he angled his head toward his shoulder to wipe at them, because he was not going to let one of his hands off his girls to do it.  Kayla was still crying, too, the feelings Rolf’s phone call left her with roiling in ways that she did not want to face. 

Very simply, they were terrified.  They’d just gotten what they’d been needing for a year and a half, a human person saying, yes, you are jumping through time, I’m the one who did it, congratulations, you’re not nuts.  But the implications were disaster.  From what he said to what he didn’t say to how he did and didn’t say them, nothing good that way would be coming.  If nothing else was clear, that, certainly, was.

They said nothing, they went nowhere.  Instead, they simply stood infront of Emily’s crib holding her and each other, unable to do anything but exist in these moments and wait for the anxiety to ebb long enough to calm down.  They had no idea how long they’d been there, but eventually Emily began to squirm. 

“Shuh-shuh-shuh-shuh,” Kayla sounded gently as she held the back of Emily’s little neck and bounced.  Steve kissed the top of her head.  It wasn’t very long before she’d had enough of not being fed and started trying to paw at Kayla’s breast.  It was the first time she’d done that, and it made both of her parents smile. 

“My practical little girl,” Kayla said softly.  They were the first words spoken since the phone call.  “You know what you want and where it is and figured you’d just go get it yourself, huh?”  They brought her into their bed, and Steve didn’t leave their side while they nursed.  When she’d had her fill Kayla was disappointed, because she just did not want to leave the safety of this cluster.  But Emily was really squirming now, clearly in need of a diaper change.  Kayla looked to Steve with very insecure eyes.

“I don’t want you leaving my sight,” Steve said in reply to everything her eyes were saying.  Which was, I have to go to work, we have to talk, what are we going to do?

“I’ll call in sick.”

Steve nodded.  “Ok.”

Steve sat on the edge of the bed, his leg bouncing up and down with nervous energy he could not control.  He got up, sat back down, and continuously re-adusted his patch enough times that it started irritating Kayla, who was processing her own nervous energy by pacing back and forth with Emily in her amrs.  The baby enjoyed the movement unaware that her world was in such a precarious position.

“You were right,” Kayla said with clear anger in her voice.  “I can’t believe it, but you were right, it really is Stefano.”  Steve didn’t say anything, he just continued staring in very deep thought, bobbing his knee nervously while he analyzed what had been said.  “Is he after just you again, or is it both of us this time?”  Her words were like venom, and Emily didn’t like it, reacting to her mother’s tone with a change in her own countenance.  “Shuh-shuh, Emmy girl.  Don’t you worry, baby,” she said, softening her tone.

“When?” Steve finally said.

“When what”

“When is Stefano doing this?  Which time is he doing it from?”

“I … I don’t—”

“I don’t think this is Stefano.”

Kayla stopped mid-sway.  “You don’t?”

“Not anymore, no.  I think … I don’t know what to think.  But Rolf seems to be, I dunno, rogue or something.”

“Rogue.” Kayla repeated, clearly not sure what her husband was getting at.

Steve got up and leaned heavily against the door jamb, his back to them.  “Something’s off, Sweetness.”  He closed his eye with with thought.  “It’s not adding up. That call and Rolf are not jiving with me.”

“You think it wasn’t really him?”

“No, it was him. I don’t remember the other guy from the first time,’ he said, meaning his white-maned handler that Kayla had shot in the thigh several jumps ago, “I still haven’t got any memories of any of that.  But Rolf?  I remember that guy just fine.  He was always around when I was doing the soldier thing bein’ the brains behind all the mumbo jumbo.”

“Mumbo jumbo?”

“The science.  Remember the pawn sh*t?”  Of course, she did.  Kayla gave him a look.  “Yeah, none of that happened without him.  Same one who convinced Hope she was some princess.  That’s what Dimera always did, he’d let other men do the dirty work, like Alamain and Toscono, then buy us and turn us over to that Mengela.”

Kayla reacted to Steve’s reference to having been purchased almost as much as his use of the term “Mengela.”  Fiery hot anger shot through her at the thought of the ISA knowing about Dimera’s human trafficking for so long before finally going in and saving her tortured husband.  She resented that it didn’t happen that way in the first place and that they had to live the devastating 16 years that way. What she didn’t know was that Rolf was the very reason Steve was able to be found in that jump, but she hadn’t made that connection yet.  Instead she rubbed her cheek on her daughter’s curly-haired head to ease the rage.

“So you’re saying it is Rolf, then.”

“Yeah, baby, it’s him, but … I’m just not really sure it’s Stefano, too.  The conversation just didn’t add up.”  Kayla still didn’t understand.  “He said ‘anymore.’  He wasn’t our enemy ‘anymore.’”  Kayla didn’t reply as they both let that statement steep a moment.  “And he was talkin’ all quiet.  Like he didn’t want anyone to hear him.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not working for Stefano right now.”

“Right now …,” Steve repeated her words slowly.  “Right … now …”  He got up and strutted around as he rolled it all over in his head.  “… not right now.”  It was starting to gel just a bit for him as he talked it through, trying to remember the details before they evaporated.  “Kayla, right now it’s 1988, and Rolf is definitely working for him.  He was there when I was a zombie, too.”  Kayla cringed.  “His good little soldier.”  Normally Steve would have spat this, but now he let it roll off his tongue thoughtfully as the pieces started to come into a slightly clearer picture for him.  “But he said not in 2009.”

“He said that?  He actually said the year 2009?”

Steve scrubbed a hand down his face and scratched his stubble.  “Yeah, he did.  I think.”

“You think?”

“Right before I went off on him.”  Now he sounded a lot more sure of himself.  “Yeah, baby, he definitely said that year, and he said he was sending us through time, too.  That’s a quote.”

“My God, Steve, how?  How can he do this?  How can anyone do this?”

Oh, how he hated it when she asked him how or why or where or any of the whuh questions like he had any more of a f*cking clue than she did.  “I dunno, the midichlorians in our blood?!” Steve threw up his hands in frustration. 

Kayla didn’t understand the Star Wars reference, but she sure as hell understood that Steve was pissed that she’d asked how and was now pretty pissed, herself.

“Don’t. Yell.  At me,” she said with warning through gritted teeth.

“Then stop asking me that question,” he replied with low tones for Emily’s benefit but a steeled eye for hers.

“Sometimes it’s rhetorical, Steve.  I can’t help it.”  Her voice broke a bit here, and Steve eased up.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  His voice was no more gentle, it was his face that held all the apology.  Kayla sat down next to him, kissed his cheek, and handed him his daughter.  He instantly calmed some.

“I love my littlest girl, don’t I, baby?” he said to Emily.  “I love all my girls and boy.”  Kayla held Steve’s hand tightly and asked him to go on.  “Were you hearin’ him when he said we didn’t have the time?  That we did but we didn’t?”  Kayla shook her head.  “He said to listen ‘cause he didn’t have a lot of time, and I said we have plenty, but then he said that statement was true and false.”

“True and false?”  What the hell did that mean?

Steve nodded.  “That he had to warn us or nothing good will come of it.”

Kayla whimpered.  “What?”

“Then he said something about Stefano being a butterfly.”

Kayla cocked her head and blinked in complete confusion.  “A butterfly?”  Steve shrugged.  “Maybe … maybe he was trying to call him a … monarch or something.”  Steve rubbed at his chin and watched his daughter’s alert gaze.  She was taking it all in somewhere in there, very calmly.  That’s when a shiver came over him, which Kayla felt. 

“Baby …” his voice was very insecure, and Kayla hated the sound of it this way.  It pained her when he was so completely out of sorts that he allowed his voice to sound like this.  Like when they told him Stephanie was raped, that voice sent the worst kind of feeling through her.  The only thing that could take her husband down was this abject fear for his children and for her.  That’s what his voice sounded like right now.  “… he freaked out when he heard Emily through the monitor. Asked me if it was Stephanie.”

Kayla swallowed and blinked.  “That’s what you meant when you said, ‘not Stephanie?’”  He could only nod.  “Wh … what do you mean, freaked out?  He was mad?”

“More like … I’d just given him bad news.”  They both knew what that meant, but neither of them allowed themselves to acknowledge it.  Emily grabbed a fistful of Kayla’s hair.  She calmly extricated it from the baby’s grasp and replaced with her pinky, which Emily was just as content to hold on to.

“And we still don’t know what this thing is we’re supposed to do? 

Steve shook his head.  “Somethin’ happened. He wanted to tell us, what’s the point of callin’ just to hang up like that.”

“Then why did he?” she asked skeptically.

“Hell if I know, baby, but he wanted to tell us something important – to get us home.”  He said that without any enthusiasm.  “I think he just got interrupted.” Something she didn’t want to feel tried to gnaw at Kayla at the mention of trying to get home, but she wouldn’t let it and pushed it away. 

They continued discussing this very significant turn of events and what took so long for it to arrive.  The butterfly thing was puzzling but Kayla felt like something wanted to click.  She dug deep to find meaning there, but she wasn’t so sure Stefano wasn’t driving it and kept coming back to that in her head.  Steve, however, had done a serious 180 and felt in his gut that this was coming from somewhere else.  Maybe Rolf had a new employer, maybe he really was all on his own, but whatever the case, they talked it through till they were blue in the face and finally agreed to put it on hold for a while when Emily started to get serious cabin fever right along with them.  They finally left their room and tried to process.

They did not leave each other’s sides for the rest of the day.  It was like the very beginning; they stayed inside, all doors were left open, and no one strayed from each other’s eyeshot. It was one of the few times they’d allowed themselves to be slaves to their impending jump, but the call from Rolf (and more to the point, the way it was left) absolutely shook them. 

Despite the change in routine, Emily went down for her afternoon nap right on time, falling asleep on her daddy’s chest while he did the same on the livingroom couch.  Kayla sat in the chair nearby and wanted to curl up with them, but they’d run out of real estate.  Steve’s arm held Emily very securely even in sleep, his other arm was draped over his forehead.  Kayla took a mental snapshot of this and filed it in her mind with all the other images she longed to take with her forever.  For Emily, however, she went and got the camera, the one time she left them all day, then ran back to the livingroom with it.  She’d been taking pictures constantly and sticking them in a photo album to go with the journal that she kept every day.  This documentation of their family was important, and this image she’d just captured of her husband and daughter moved her. 

They napped for two hours, and Kayla did not again leave the room.  Instead she got out yet another important collection of papers, a binder she’d started when they got back from their honeymoon re-documenting their jumps.  She called it their jump project.  They’d both already commited their jumps to memory, but this was so much more, and Kayla insisted it be kept.  It wasn’t just a list of locations, it was very comprehensive now.  Part journal part roadmap, it read like a college notebook filled with lecture notes, extraneous thoughts in the margins, and a few doodles, too.  There were 24 sections, one for each of their destinations, and she kept very detailed notes on every one of them, including the short jumps.  The details they’d come up with were staggering.  What they did on every jump that diverged from the original timeline.  Who they talked to, where they lived.  People whose lives changed and how.  Kayla had worked on this project most days since their honeymoon, and that was a whole year now.  It started out as a tool to try to help them find answers, but it had become a legacy for Emily (or anyone else that might come upon it if they jumped away) so she’d understand how she came to be and how special she was.  Steve opened it up almost every day while Kayla was at work, keeping up with it like a serialized story.  He read all of Kayla’s entries; now and then he wrote his own.  She always marked the new stuff with a post-it note, which Steve removed as confirmation to his wife that he’d seen it.  Kayla documented today’s phone call in this jump’s section, which along with their jump to 1979 was huge. 

It was’t the only thing she worked on while her husband and daughter slept.  She also cracked open Emily’s journal and stared at it.  Steve read all of these entries, too.  This was different than the binder, more personal and filled with their thoughts, hopes, fears, and dreams. Everything Emily would need to understand exactly who her parents really were. She was unsure what she should say, so she blindly just let her heart pour out through the pen. 

Today we got a phone call, Emily. From the man who we think sent us through time. He couldn’t finish what he wanted to tell us, but he said he needed to warn us.  We don’t know what he wanted to say, because he hung up on us very suddenly.  We’ve been together, the three of us, ever since.  We don’t want to leave your side.  I’m watching you nap on top of your daddy right now.  It’s a beautiful sight.  You have something very special with him.  I’m so thankful that you do.  You have something special with both of us, but there’s something about the connection you have to your daddy. I think it’s because he spends more time with you than anyone else does. 

Several tear drops fell onto the paper as she wrote these sentences.  She surrounded each one with hearts before she went on.

I wish it were me, Emmy Girl.  I wish I was the one who got to stay home with you like I did with your sister and I’ve been able to do so much with your brother.  But this is important that Steve have this with you.  He was taken away before he could have it with Stephanie, and we were both taken from Joe.  So, when I look at him and how he beams with a pride and a love I never want to stop seeing, I’m grateful, not jealous.  It doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you just as much, it just means that I’m so grateful that my daughter has this beautiful relationship with her daddy. 

I don’t know what this man was trying to tell us, but I know deep down that it’s not going to be something we want to hear.  It’s not going to be good for our family.  When

Kayla had to pause here, as the quiet sobs overtook her.  She bravely controlled them to silence so as not to wake her husband and daughter, but she did cry these heavy tears full of anticipated sadness.She looked back at them and saw they had not stirred, so she finished her entry.

                                                                                                                        your daddy and I have to go, I don’t know what’s going to happen to us or to you.  I don’t know if the timeline just stops or if our bodies continue.  Or if our memories will be the same or go back.  If they go back, then you’re going to have to explain a lot to me and Papa.  Make sure we read this journal I’ve been so carefully keeping for you and for ourselves.  I don’t know how we will react, but I can promise you one thing for sure.  If we go on, then even if we don’t remember you, we LOVE you.  There is no one we love more on this earth than you and your sister and brother, not even ourselves.  Never forget that, Emily. We may not seem to remember you, but our souls always will, and they will love you forever.

Steve stirred before Emily did, opening his eye in a panic of disorientation.  Kayla sensed it from her position on the chair with her binder.  She slid over to him on her knees and placed a safe hand on Emily’s back before calming her husband with a kiss she dropped onto his eyebrow as she stroked the hair off his forehead.  “You’re ok, baby,” Kayla whispered gently, “we’re all still here, we’re ok.”

Steve took a deep breath of recognition and immediately saw the redness of his wife’s eyes.  “You’ve been crying.”  She internally cursed her betraying eyes.  She knew he’d be upset by this.  She gave him a small hunch of her shoulders and nodded slightly. “I hate the thought of you crying all alone, Sweetness.”

“No, I’m fine,” she insisted.  “I wrote in Emily’s journal. It always helps when I write in it.”  Steve reached up and caressed her face.  “How long?” he asked eyeing his daughter on his chest.

“Couple hours.  We’d better wake her or she won’t sleep tonight.”

Kayla picked up her daughter, who began to rouse.  Steve quickly spotted the journal and binder and slid to the floor to begin reading the entry.  They sat on the floor opposite each other, Kayla changing Emily from the nearby diaper bag, Steve against the chair as he read.  Kayla waited for the reaction she knew was coming and wished she’d just not written anything.  He looked up like she knew he would, the guilt in his eye stabbing her through the heart.  He didn’t have to say how touched he was by the words she’d left Emily with, he wore its effects on his soul all over his face.  Steve put his fist over his heart.  “You really know how to tear me up, baby.”  Then he did something very unexpected.  He closed up the book, dropped his eye as he held it to his heart, and really cried.  Kayla was stunned.   This intense outpouring of emotion came on very suddenly and with a ferocity that he couldn’t abate. 

Kayla was starting to understand that their emotions were amplified on these jumps.  She had a singular ability to be very self-aware, and she was pretty sure that their emotions were often more exaggerated than they should have been.; something about the hormones she could feel pump through her with whatever emotion was on high at the time made her put two and two together.  Steve wasn’t so sure when she suggested to him that this was a side effect – kind of like the nausea; but there were times he couldn’t deny that one or both of them were overreacting or hypersensitized for no good reason.  It made for incredible highs, like their wedding; but it also made for devastating lows, like right now.

Kayla put Emily in her swing and scooted the short distance to her sobbing husband.  She immediately brought him into her embrace, and he clutched on for dear life.

“I don’t wanna leave her, Sweetness,” he cried into her chest.

“I don’t either,” she soothed in the most tender voice.  Kayla didn’t cry, because she’d already had her cry, and while she could have kind of used another one, at this moment she had to be the strong one. 

“I’m sorry I’m taking all your time with her from you.”

Kayla held on tighter.  “You are doing no such thing.  You’re not.  Someone has to work—”

“It should be me!  I’m a shitty husband letting you work so hard while I sit on my ass all day!”

“Noooo no no no no, you stop that right now.”  Her voice was still as tender as her words were direct, and she didn’t let him go as she held his crying face to her bosom.  “I know what it is to take care of a baby, and you have the hardest job on the planet, Steve.  Oh, baby, it’s the hardest most rewarding job a person could have.”  Kayla was on her knees as she held him, and now she rocked them gently while Emily did the same in her swing.  “Taking care of our little baby is a full time job that doesn’t end when five o’clock rolls around like mine does.  It’s 24 hours a day 7 days a week for four months now with no end in sight.”  Please, God, don’t let it ever end!

“And I get to see every little new thing she does all day, and you’re missing it when you go to work.  How could I do that to you?  You’re her mama.”  He had pulled back to look at her and was barely getting the words out, he was so beside himself.  “I know how that feels,” he rasped.  “How could I do that to you, Sweetness?  When I know how that feels?”  Kayla wiped his face and finally started giving in and let the tears fill the rims of her eyes.

“Steve, baby, listen to me.  Listen!  We are doing what all normal parents do.”

“She’s not normal!  We’re not normal. We’re not the same, Kayla.  You need to have a turn before we—”  lose her. 

Of course, that’s all Kayla wanted, was to spend their time together as a family every day and never have to separate from them for her job.  That or stay forever.

Kayla shook her head and captured his eye in a gaze so fierce that he couldn’t look away.  “I have never wanted something for you so badly as I want this.  This time you are getting with Emily.  She is your daughter.  And I will never resent the time you have with her.  Yes, I want some, too, but we are not independently wealthy, and unless we want to go on public assistance, we need income to put a roof over our daughter’s head.  Steve, you are the finest man I’ve ever known.  You are selfless.  Your children were stolen from you, and I am …” she broke down now and was sobbing along with him “… so grateful … oh, Steve, I’m so very grateful for her.  That I could give you this child.  So that you can be the father I know you’ve always longed to be.  From the day I found out what you were doing for Max and Frankie, I knew you were put on this planet to be a father.  To be my childrens’ father.  And when I leave every day it’s hard.  I am worried sick every time I leave that I won’t get to see her again …”

“Kayla!”  He held her face in his hands.

“… but I’m giving her everything I have that’s inside me, and part of that is letting her have you while I’m there.  This is the real world, Steve, we can’t just run away with her and be ok.  She needs the pediatrician and diapers and clothes and food. I need the health insurance and the salary for her and for us.  And I’m happy to do it,” she sobbed.  “I’m crying, but I’m so happy to do it so that you can have each other that I feel it … inside me … and it carries me through my day with happiness, not sorrow.  Not jealousy.  Not anything bad.  Only good.  Because that’s how much I love you both, Steve.

You were put on this earth to be my childrens’ father.  They were the most beautiful words Kayla had ever said to him.  More beautiful than their vows, more beautiful than hearing she was pregnant from her own lips.  These words that he was meant to be their father and the way she believed in them were profound and breathtaking.  He’d never felt more treasured, more loved so unconditionally in his entire life.  Ever.

Emily’s swing had slowed down, so Kayla quickly cranked it again then rushed back to Steve. Rather than take up their same positions, Steve brought her in to straddle his lap so that he could hold her against him.  Her body was warm, and her hair was very soft and smelled like the shampoo she always used at this time.  She laid her head on his shoulder and felt his heart beat beneath her hand that rested on his chest. 

“I’ve never felt closer to you,” Steve said as he wiped his eyes.  “I can feel your soul, Sweetness.  I can.”

Kayla sniffled.  “Beautiful man,” she said.

Their tears had subsided now, but they were so affected.  Steve took a shuddering breath, which was so very unlike him, and Kayla became very self-aware again, feeling how badly she wanted to go right back into a fit of sobs.  She had to work at controlling it.  The secure feel of her husband’s chest rising and falling helped ground her, even as her solid weight againt him did the same for him. 

“These high emotions are doing a number on us,” she said, her head’s position on Steve’s shoulder unchanged.  “They make it all so intense sometimes.”

“You’re not sayin’ I’m feelin’ stuff that isn’t there, are you?”

“No, I know it’s there.  I’m saying I think it makes us easily overwhelmed by them.”

“We’ll have to compare it to when we get home.”

Kayla’s tummy fluttered, not in a good way, at that statement. 

That night Emily slept between Steve and Kayla in their bed, which was a no-no as far as Kayla was normally concerned.  As a nurse and doctor she’d seen too many accidents where parents co-sleeping in the same bed with infants rolled over them in their sleep.  Today they just felt too vulnerable to let her out of their sight.  Not a lot of sleep was had that night.

When the next day rolled around, Kayla called in sick a second time.  This was a mistake, as it brought all kinds of attention to them, including Adrienne begging them to let her watch the baby so they could take it easy, and Marcus who didn’t call, he simply showed up.  When he saw that Kayla was clearly not sick he laid on the third degree.  They tried to make excuses, but he wasn’t convinced and railed at them in a very rare but real fit of anger.   Finally, Kayla was done.

“Marcus, enough!  You’re right, ok, you’re right, something is going on.  But we can’t tell you what it is, and you’re just going to have to trust us.”

“How the hell am I supposed to trust you when you won’t trust me?!”

“We do trust you, Homey,” Steve insisted for the umpteenth time, but his patience was about gone, and his tone reflected it.

“Like hell you do, man.”

“There’s no one we trust more,” Kayla said.  “It might not seem that way, but you’re the only one who knows us here as well as you do.”

Marcus paused.  “What’s that supposed to mean, here?”

“You need to watch it, Kayla,” Steve spat

Kayla pulled at both sides of her hair in frustration.  “I’m sorry!” she threw back at him, “I’m only human!”

“You see?!” Marcus accused with a finger pointing right at Steve.  “It’s sh*t just like that, that little language you speak that no one else understands.  I was not born yesterday!”

Steve ignored this entire last sentence.  “Think about it, Homey, how many other people come over to celebrate Stephanie’s birthday, huh?”

“Yeah, and while we’re at it, how ‘bout you tell me just who she is again?”

“Joe’s—”

“—Sister, yeah, yeah, I got that. Whatever the hell that means.  If I didn’t know better I’d say they’re your other two kids.”

Kayla had to turn away, it was too much hearing the words out of another person’s mouth. Steve eyed his wife then the phone and wondered how she was keeping it together, because he was like a live wire, himself, trying to get Marucs to leave before Rolf did as he’d said and tried again.

“Homey, you gotta go.”

Grudgingly, he did.  Without any resolution at all.  He was livid that they were clearly lying to him, resented that they wouldn’t trust him with whatever horrible thing was going on – because he knew his best friends, and whatever it was was definitely horrible – and was worried positively sick.  They hated sending him away like that, but they were not at their best, and that made Marcus the same noise as the rest of the people around them.  Normally, he was the exception and was not noise, but today he was.  Everyone was.  Everyone but Rolf.  Who did not make a second call.

When they woke up on Thursday they locked eyes over their daughter sleeping between them and knew that they were starting to slip into the very subjugation that they’d bravely and defiantly refused to let hold sway over them all these months.  It was the second night they’d gotten little sleep as their thoughts and fears ran away with them.  It was the second night they’d slept without each other so that they could protect their baby between them.  And it was the second night they’d fallen deeper into the slavery of the impending jump.  It had to end.

“You have to go to work, Sweetness, next thing you know Tom Horton will show up.

“I changed my mind, I want to run away,” she whispered over Emily’s sleepy head.

“No.”

“Can’t we make a big bet on some sporting event and live off that?”

“So we’re livin’ in the movies now?”

Kayla closed her eyes.  “No,” she said softly.  “How far away is the Internet?”

“Too far.”

“Are you sure?”

Steve sighed and reached over his daughter to caress Kayla’s hair back.  “If I joined the ISA we could have it right now.”

Kayla closed her eyes.  “Dammit.”  She went to work.  It was one of the longest and most torturous days of her life before she could get home and calm her racing heart at the sight of Steve and Emily.

They spent the next month in real fear.  They waited for the phone to ring, and Steve added call waiting to their phone line, which wasn’t a standard feature in 1988.  It cost more, but he didn’t want to miss the call where Rolf tried again.  Since Google wasn’t a glimmer in Silicon Valley’s eye, he researched Tuscany’s remote islands based on what Kayla had learned during his rescue, trying to find Rolf instead of waiting, but that quickly stalled with nothing usable.  Kayla didn’t spend a single extra moment at work that wasn’t absolutely necessary. She served on no committees, volunteered for no charity events, and covered no one’s hours.  She lived every kiss goodbye like it was the last, and appreciated every single lunchtime visit and kiss upon returning home at night.  They had never existed on higher alert.  They assumed the jump would come any moment and were not at peace with it, but they were absolutely expecting it. 

It never came.

Steve and Kayla forced themselves to go on as normally as they could.  They were angry that the answers they so badly wanted were teased and not followed through on, but they had to move on and actively chose to do so.  They woke up, lived, went to sleep, and woke up again the next morning. 

Emily’s first Halloween was spent as a pumpkin in her mother’s arms handing out candy to the kids that somehow found their way to the door in the sleepy neighborhood where the homes were very well-secluded and not impacted by the suburban sprall.  Still, quite a lot of kids roamed the streets once the school day ended, built into the sunset, and finally tapered off as darkness fell.  The chains of the old porch swing squeaked as they sat with Emily between them, her round pumpkin costume swallowing her up in an adorable orange poof with a jack-o-lantern lid hat to match.

Things were awkward with Marcus for a while but by Thanksgiving much had evened out.  They had worked hard to overcome their abject fear and get back to how they’d chosen to live their lives here once Emily was born, and that was as normally as they could.  They did make sure they got their affairs completely in order, and they continued to wait for another call from Rolf; but they knew they had to get past it or they’d cease to function.  And they didn’t want to cease to function, they wanted to be with their daughter.  So very carefully, and very slowly, that’s what they did.  Marcus knew something very serious was up with them, and they knew he knew, but they tacitly agreed to just get back to normal.

Steve and Kayla had precious few Christmases together.  Considering how many years they’d been together in their hearts, the number of actual holiday seasons they’d had with each other that weren’t spent running, hiding, fighting, in denial, sneaking around, or behind bars could be counted on one hand.  It was kind of strange to be here not just once celebrating Christmas like they belonged to this timeline, but twice.  Last year they’d spent countless days waiting to jump, agonizing over it, and waiting for the signs that hadn’t come then any more than they were coming now.  Last year their beautiful baby was still inside her mother’s belly, and it was the pure definition of a Christmas miracle when they sat in stunned silence as the ultrasound technician announced that they were having a little girl.  Bittersweet glee swept through Steve as he watched his baby move on the screen.  The love surrounded his heart and squeezed.  Much like it did now that she was here live and in person.  Kayla saw what was on the screen and ached to do more than look at the grainy image, she wanted to hold her even then.  And when they’d left the hospital and felt the cold, holiday-infused air on their faces they felt … numb.

Today they were not numb.  Today the season had come for the second time on this jump and forced itself upon any remaining angst that the September phone call brought.  The snow fell in a constant stream of gentle flakes for days, leaving trees, windows, and Kayla’s hair with a glittering blanket that sent warmth through Steve.  Kayla smelled the pine and sweet spices that evoked childhood memories of Brady family Christmases and found herself smiling all the time.  Seeing his wife smile made Steve do the same, and when those moments coincided with the baby’s squeals, life never felt so right.  So real.  So very much the way it was always supposed to be the first time – that maytbe this was the real time.  Last year they weren’t so festive, but this year they sent Christmas cards, put up the ones they received, and brought home a real tree that they took endless photos of while they decorated both it and the baby in ornaments, tinsel, and strung popcorn.  Soon, the bitterness of anticipated loss that overwhelmed them after Rolf’s phone call faded.  It never left completely, but they felt it less and let themselves really live again.

On Christmas Eve Kayla came home from the Emergency Center to a vision of Steve that she hadn’t seen in a while.  Familiar though it was, it had been long enough that she wasn’t expecting it and let out a startled sound somewhere between a snort and a shriek.  Then after just a beat, she let out peels of laughter, making her blue eyes sparkle.

“Just what is so funny?” he asked with absolutely the most fake indignation she’d ever seen Steve muster.

“You, tubby.”

“Tubby?”

“Yeah, and I think you need a shave,” she added as jovially as he looked.

“You like me stubbly.”

“Stubby?  Did you just call yourself stubby?  Buster, you’re the opposite of stubby.”

Steve puffed out his chest, which was such a funny look combined with the Santa suit.  “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know, Mrs. Claus,” he said with enough arrogance to be completely charming.  “Seems the very sight of me has you hearin’ things.  I said stubbly.”

“Oh, I see,” she said playing along.  “Well, this is a little past that, I think,” she giggled, and her smile was infectious.  “So, where’d you find that thing?”

“1988, baby,” he reminded her.  “Had it a long time.  You know where it is now?”

Kayla thought about the last time she saw Steve’s Santa suit.  “Storage in LA,” she said.  Then she went to him as he sat in the chair and arranged herself on his lap.  She still fit perfectly no matter what part of her body she was shoving into any of the crooks of his, Santa suit or not.  She ruffled his Santa hair as she smiled lightly.  “I took over as Patchy Claus, you know.  The year you died.”  This Steve did not know, and he raised his eyebrows.  Even under all that white hair obscuring most of his face, Kayla saw his surprise. She kissed his forehead.  “I had to,” she said softly.  “It helped me feel close to you.  Helping the poor kids on the riverfront was important to you.  Marcus helped me.  I lost my husband, I wasn’t going to let them lose their Santa.”

“Oh, Sweetness.”

They kissed sweetly thorugh the synthetic, white hair.  Half an hour later she and Emily watched from the pier as Steve was in full-on Patchy Claus mode and had given away a toy to every kid that had shown up looking for their North Pole hero.  Unfortunately, there were a lot more kids this year than the first time through 1988; thanks to the lack of low income housing, a lot more families were strapped than the first time around. The two of them didn’t have a whole lot of money, either, so the toys Steve was able to get were mainly from K-Mart’s clearance shelf.

Christmas dinner the next day was a bit more of a challenge.  The family had gotten pretty big, now, and Kimberly had become pregnant again, so Shane asked that everyone come to their hosue for dinner.  This sat well with Shawn and Caroline, as they couldn’t really all fit easily at their home anymore, but neither Kayla nor Steve were very comfortable there.  It had very little to do with Shane and almost everything to do with the fact that they really identified with this house as Stefano’s.  Diana was also there with John, whom at this point was still Roman, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed by her that Kayla had distanced herself.  Then there was the constant stream of everyone wanting a piece of Emily.  Bo and Hope were missing, but everyone else was there, including Marcus and Steve’s entire side of the family, minus Jack, who was still in the dark with his parentage.  Nineteen total people.  It was really a first for them both, because this kind of family get together with this many people had not happened in the first run of their lifetimes for any reason, not even anyone’s wedding.  They never quite got over the creepiness of the place the entire evening, practically feeling the future Dimera aura around them.  But they couldn’t ignore the significance of this much family and so little drama going on for everyone right now.  Things were going mostly well for mostly everyone, and so despite the overall unnerving vibe, they found a way to truly enjoy themselves and their family.

The day after Christmas a jogger found Melissa Anderson murdered on the docks and half stuffed under the boards of the pier.  Kayla was stunned to see the jogger bring her in, but not half as stunned as Melissa was when Harper Deveraux took out a long knife and slit her throat. Brad Windsor couldn’t do anything but pronounce her dead.  Kayla knew exactly what had happened and why as Melissa’s milky eyes stared lifelessly into hers.  There was absolutely no question about it. 

This isn’t how it was supposed to happen …

Visibly rattled, Kayla’s pulse didn’t just race with the significance of this shift in events, she physically felt time changing around her – felt it adapting to this thing that had not happened the first time.  Guilt immediately enshrouded her that some kind of domino effect of their changes had reached this girl that was once her friend, and time was suddenly feeling very oppressive. 

Then the jogger told the police that his first name was Ashton, and Kayla’s head snapped up with an epiphany that stole over her with fierce clarity.

“Oh God,” she whispered aloud, “he was talking about the butterfly effect.”  Kayla was dizzy, and her head was positivey swimming.  She understood now.  She understood what Dr. Rolf must have meant when he started talking about butterflies.  He meant the theory whereby a tiny change in any one place in time could have monumental effects by way of vast changes further down the road.  It was hearing the jogger’s name that made it all click.  Stephanie had a hell of a crush on Ashton Kutcher and could not drag her mother to his film, The Butterfly Effect, fast enough.  Suddenly it all made sense. 

Oh my God, we really did do this.  We really did do every single bit of this.  It all came to her in a mad rush.  That one little change as tiny as stepping on a butterfly – or making love in Cleveland – could alter the course of time so profoundly.  And she was suddenly very sure that she and Steve had stepped on hundreds of them in their trips through time.  One of them resulting in Emily.  And now Dr. Rolf was warning them … to stop stepping on them …  The implications of that sent a panic through her, and all she could see was her daughter.  Kayla thought she might pass out.  Dr. Windsor was at her side immediately, the poor girl laying on the exam table beyond his help.  Once she got her bearings and insisted she was ok, the doctor who didn’t enjoy nearly as much banter with Steve as he unknowingly had in previous timelines sent her home.

When the front door of the house opened so soon after Kayla had left for the day, Steve thought maybe she was sick.  When he saw that her face was completely drained of color despite the wind chill out there, he was sure of it.  Emily was very focused on trying to grasp slices of her morning banana snack as her mother walked into the room.

“Sweetness?” He saw that something very serious had etched itself into the corners of her eyes.  She opened her mouth to reply but could only stare.  “What is it?” he asked in alarm.  “You sick?”

Kayla shook her head.  “Melissa.”

“Melissa …”

“Anderson.”

“I know who Melissa is, what happened to her?”

Kayla swallowed.  “Harper murdered her.”

Steve froze momentarily, then shook away an image of Melissa & Pete’s terrified faces as he cornered them on their cross-country chase.  Kayla could plainly see that he was processing this news, and if it were any other jump they would have comforted each other with the knowledge that it would reset.  But that line of vindication was no longer a viable comfort, as it would now mean resetting Emily right into oblivion.

Emily made some very happy sounds as she successfully got a banana slice into her mouth.  “You sure?” he said with a deliberate and unnerving calm.  Kayla nodded.  “They know it’s him?”

Kayla shook her head no.  “But I do.  Her throat was …,” she trailed off making vague slashing gestures.

“Sh*t.”

“Muuuuuhhh-muh-muh-muh!”  Emily pounded on her tray with a gleeful squeal as she got a banana slice mushily into her grasp before Kayla finally said what Steve had hoped she wouldn’t. 

“We did this.”  He knew she was right but began defending their choice, anyway. 

“Kayla, you were never exposed to the adoption papers.  We’ve stayed the hell away from Jack and that whole Addams Family.”

“The butterfly isn’t Stefano.” She was staring at Emily and said it with such manic quiet that it sent a truly awful chill through Steve.  “It’s everything.”

Steve took a beat.  “Say what?”

“The butterfly effect.” 

Kayla went to her daughter and sank down onto her knees beside her before giving the little girl a loving smile.  That smile lived independent of what was going on in that kitchen, this epiphany she’d come to.  That smile was a separate track that ran in parallel with the words coming out of her mouth.  So, when she’d said the next ones with that smile still there for her third born, helping her with her bananas, it made for an absurd dichotomy. 

“I know what Rolf meant now.”  She moved her fingers gently through Emily’s soft hair, the feel of it precious.  “The changes.  Every single thing we do wherever we are no matter what and when it is.  We didn’t buy these bananas last time.  We didn’t have –”

“Stop.”  Steve couldn’t take it.  “Don’t say it.”

“Unless it’s exactly what we did the first time, then it’s a butterfly we’ve stepped on.  And … and … none of our jumps went exactly like they did the first time. Not one.”  Kayla leaned her forehead to her daughter’s sweet-smelling head to burrow with it just the very tiniest bit.  “Espeically not this one.”

“I don’t wanna hear this,” Steve hissed with a sudden flash of anger driven straight from his denial.

“We have to stop making changes,” Kayla said as if her husband hadn’t spoken.  “I think that’s what Dr. Rolf was going to tell us that we must … .  We must stop making changes.  Because of the butterfly effect.”

“Oh yeah?  You’re an expert on paradoxes now?!” he whipped back at her.

Kayla didn’t react, she knew exactly why Steve was lashing out, it’s how he processed horrible things.  She was processing, too – with the unnerving calm and clear, quiet voice that always precedes a storm.  But she was fragile in the midst of this profound thing that they both feared was true.  Like a stiff wind might break her resolve to put into words what she’d been afraid of from the first moment they realized what was happening to them in the first place and now had culminated into this moment.  She went to him but kept her distance, because he needed it.  Then she explained how she’d figured it out and that she was sure they’d caused Melissa’s death, because they were the only variable in the equation. It had to be them.  But for the fact that any change from a sneeze to the birth of Emily had happened, Melissa would be alive today.  That fact was irrefutable, because it didn’t happen in the original timeline.  Period.  Making big changes, like beating up photographers and leaving the Merchant Marines and having a new baby, matter.  Did the little ones, like not answering a phone where they did the first time, matter just as much?  She had a sickening feeling that they did.  That every change matters.  That every breath matters.  The question was how much?  Apparently it mattered enough to possibly prevent them from getting home.  Enough for the man who’d sent them through time in the first place to try to put a stop to it.  Fate caught up with the timeline now that Harper was killing, but the wrong person got killed when it did.  And they only had their actions to blame for it.

Steve was quiet for several long moments while he leaned against the kitchen doorway, hands on his hips.  Anxiety, anger, and the need to pound that witchdoctor into a bloody pulp roiled within him, spiking his blood pressure and sending an energy into the air that everyone felt.  When it reached Emily she didn’t like it.  She knew without the words to describe it that life was wrong right now.  That someone was upset.  She wasn’t used to this feeling, and she didn’t want to have it.  She looked at her mother and father and saw Steve more easily than Kayla, because he was in her direct line of sight.  And so it was that Emily broke the awful silence.

“Da-da.”

Steve’s heart positively soared at the sound of this on his daughter’s lips, and Kayla’s mouth parted with wonder.  Both of their heads snapped to their seven-month-old, whom they hadn’t noticed had gone silent during Kayla’s explanation.  The look on her little face was … troubled … and they both felt a surge of immense pride in their daughter that she was so perceptive and intelligent; and were horrified that the beautiful empathy she was born with had picked up on how this horrible revelation was impacting them.  Yet, she’d uttered one of the two very simple words that every parent longs to hear.  She’d said her very first word.  It was clear, and it was absolutely not a babble. It was purposeful with meaning and intent.  And suddenly, Emily Gwendolyn Johnson, their oldest and youngest child, made all their troubles seem very, very far away. 

“Da-da!” she said again while looking at Steve with outstretched arms to be picked up.  In case they thought the first da-da might have been a fluke, this more insistent one was quite convincing.

“Oh, Emmy Girl,” Kayla teared up with pride and happiness.

Steve gave Emily a big smile as he came to her.  And he couldn’t help but feel the anger of this very bad turn of events drain out of him when her little mouth turned up into a happy smile for her father whom she’d just called by name for the first time.  “Sounds like my Littlest Sweetness wants to be picked up, doesn’t she?” Steve said with a joyfulness that nothing bad could possibly touch.  Not even the implications of her very existence that were underlying the entire previous conversation.

Kayla’s voice finally broke.  “It’s the first time, isn’t it?”  Steve nodded as he reached for Emily.  Neither Stephanie nor Joe had been able to verbalize Daddy or Papa or anything else before he’d been taken from them.  Other than the adult version of his first born all the many years later, Emily was his only child to do what all children are supposed to do: know who their parents are and call them mommy and daddy. 

“Yeah, baby, it’s the first time.”  Steve picked up Emily out of her high chair and kissed her banana-smeared cheeks as he pushed down the lump in his throat.  “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

And it was.  Not just for him, but for Kayla.  Never in all their years together and children they’d had had she heard their babies call him by name for the first time.  It was another example of an experience they’d been cheated out of.  Kayla could still hear Stephanie calling her Mama for the first time, and it was as beautiful to her as hearing daddy was to Steve.  But for Kayla, hearing their child call to her father, and seeing the effect it had on them both was a gift given to her of this world.  In this timeline that felt far more right than it had any business doing. 

Emily laid her head on Steve’s shoulder needing to cuddle through the negative energy. 

“Daddy’s here, honey,” he said softly with his palm behind her head.  “Daddy’s right here.”  Steve held out his other arm toward Kayla.  “So’s your mama.”  She went to them and felt instantly better.  “We’re sorry we yelled.”

As if she cosmically knew what her parents needed, Emily’s first word served to diffuse their angst and helped them think a lot more rationally.  As a result, they pushed through the utter chaos that they could have easily succumbed to.  Steve agreed that Kayla was right about what she’d figured out and that Rolf’s call was almost certainly meant to tell them to stop making changes.  Until he called back to fill in the details, however, they could only speculate as to what “changes” really meant.  Since they’d spent a year and a half going about their business their way, and the very act of breathing was changing things, they agreed that, yes, butterflies were, indeed, in effect, but hell if they knew what to do about it.  So since they had a family to concentrate on, they put the butterfly effect on a shelf and waited out further contact from that little troll.  In the meantime they didn’t want anyone else killed, so they did write an anonymous letter to Roman, Abe, and the Commissioner implicating Harper Deveraux. Their original plan of doing nothing clearly didn’t help, so they went the opposite route and sent the letter to see if they could at least stem the tide.  Two weeks later, Harper Deveraux was nullified.  It wasn’t their note, it was the bus he didn’t see coming flattening him like a pancake.  All of Salem was stunned, none more so than Jack, who retreated into himself and didn’t come out for a long time.  Harper managed to take three prostitutes with him before the bus got him.  They reflected in a truly surreal conversation about how fate was finding its place for some people despite their presence.  The death of Harper was like a period on it all. 

They moved on.

January froze into February, February melted into, March, and In the blink of an eye infancy had passed them by.   Now in April, Emily wasn’t just a babbling nearly 12-month-old with many more words than just da-da in her vocabulary, she was walking, too.  The strawberry-haired little dynamo squealed in delight every time she was able to let go of her father and toddle like a drunken sailor over to her mother in one step, two steps, four steps, until she was taking whole roomfuls of steps from one to the the other.  Very soon she found the furniture a lot more interesting than she ever had before and toddled from couch to television, then doorway to doorway, and soon Steve had to buy three pet gates to ensure his daughter didn’t end up taking a header up or down any stairwells.  Joey wasn’t even cruising yet, but Emily was now two months older than her nine-month-old brother the last time their parents saw him.  The elation at spending this time with their daughter – this new ground that they hadn’t ever experienced together (and that Steve had never experienced at all) – was so  bittersweet, because they were insanely in love with their daughter but profoundly missed their son, too.  That she was now older than he would ever be if they never returned to their timeline was very hard for them to swallow.  But they were able to, because the joy of experiencing Emily at this stage was stronger than their sadness at not experiencing Joe. 

Carving out this new ground of parenting her made them feel a youth they couldn’t begin to explain.  It was more like an innocence; a purity.  It was another rite of marriage that they’d wanted so much for themselves that had been taken away from them: raising a family.  Kayla had raised a child from infancy, but Steve had stopped at eight months and picked up at 18 years.  Every month was bringing milestones that were new to them as parents.   Before they knew what hit them she was holding up her own head, sitting without falling over, leaving rice cereal behind in favor of solids then fruit then tiny pieces of cut up chicken and cooked vegetables, making quirky experessions, communicating her desire for her daddy to play his harmonica and her mommy to read board books to her, and suddenly they were ready to celebrate her first birthday the following month. 

In all that time, Rolf never contacted them.

On the second day of April Kayla got her period.  She counted out the weeks on her calendar for the tenth time since this year began and quietly went to the picture of Stephanie hanging in the hallway.  She smiled and ran her fingertips lovingly over the glass that covered the carefully drawn portrait. 

“Hi Baby Girl,” Kayla said very quietly. 

“Whatcha doin’, Mama?” a grown Stephanie that wasn’t there asked over her right shoulder.  Kayla didn’t turn around at the sound she imagined in her head but continued addressing the baby portrait while the corners of her lips tugged up slightly.

“I,” she said in her confident, motherly tone, “am trying to figure out just how on Earth I’m going to get you back.”

“You just jump home and I’ll be here.”

“But we’re not home. We’re here, and it’s time to make sure we conceive you.”

The Stephanie that wasn’t standing behind her knitted her dark eyebrows together and held up her palm toward her mother.  “Ew.  Mama, I don’t wanna know what you and Papa are doin’ at night, m’kay?  I mean, I know you did it at least twice, but I don’t need to know the details.”

Kayla smirked at her daughter’s portrait, then sighed and dropped her head into her hand to rub at the bridge of her nose. When she looked back up, she knew her grown daughter was gone.  “I don’t know how I’ll go on here if I can’t get you back,” Kayla whispered. 

That night Kayla was very quiet.  Steve rolled over to her and kissed behind her ear.  She leaned back into him and snuggled her head into the crook of his arm.  It was plain to him that she wasn’t quite right.

“What’s eatin’ at you, Sweetness?”  She didn’t answer right away, and he was patient until she did. 

“I got my period today.”

Steve understood immediately.  Normally he’d assume that explanation meant she wasn’t feeling well and had cramps or something like that.  But he was well aware of the date, and what the implication was, now, of her having gotten her period.  That it was time to make Stephanie.  Getting pregnant with Emily wasn’t planned, but now they couldn’t imagine life without her.  Wouldn’t imagine life without her.  But that didn’t mean it would be ok to be in this timeline without their other daughter.  They’d discussed it several times, and because Kayla was on the pill, they knew the exact date that they should be fertile.  They just hoped the baby they’d be conceiving would be Stephanie 40 weeks later and not a different baby.  Stephanie was born in February of next year, and if the baby Kayla delivered wasn’t her, then she’d be lost to them forever in this timeline.  Emily would never know her, Stephanie would never happen here, and they’d be living the rest of this timeline without her.  How in the world could they possibly recreate that singular moment? They were only getting one shot at this, and she felt like it was going to take a miracle.  Steve had been less worried and insisted that they were going to make her.  Now that the month was truly upon them, his confidence wasn’t quite as high.

“When do we do it, then, two weeks?”  Kayla nodded.  Steve held her tighter.

“We’re going to make her, Sweetness.  I promised you we would, and we will.”

“You can’t know that.  It’s that one egg and sperm.  Those two.  We don’t know for sure that I’ll ovulate, and the odds of getting that sperm again are almost nil.”

“Maybe my body’s been savin’ it up for just the right egg, huh?  Ever think of that?”

Kayla smiled.  “No, I never thought of that.”  Steve liked the smile he heard on her face and kept it up.

“Fate knows things, baby.”  He rubbed up against her and lightly rubbed her breast beneath his palm.  “And in two weeks I’m gonna make sure I send the right swimmer where it needs to go, then nine months later—”

“It’s really ten.”

“—our first born is gonna join her little sister.”

Now Kayla let out a real chortle.  “That sentence made no sense.”

“Ya understood it, didn’t ya?”

“Yeah,” she sighed with mock surprise.  “I’m not sure when I became a quantum physicist.”  Only she wasn’t.  The real one was back in his 2009 lab running new jump formulas for himself that made him want to tear his non-existent hair out.  “I don’t know if our best chance is making love every day I’m fertile or just on the best day.”  She was back to a serious tone now, so Steve pulled back the humor.

“We made love almost every day back then.  We’re not supposed to make changes, so we should do it like that.”  It wasn’t a come-on, he wanted Stephanie just as much as Kayla did and wanted to ensure they did this right.

“We didn’t, actually, right then.  You’d just gotten back from the undercover work with the reverend.  We weren’t trying, like with Joe, we had stuff going on and didn’t have sex every single day.  Saul isn’t here now, I don’t know why they haven’t show up yet –”

“Another damned butterfly.”

“—So, we can’t follow that script, so to speak.  Now I’m just not sure.  If we make love every day, that will be a lot more sperm with equal chances at getting to the egg. If we do it just once, that’s a lot less sperm, and I feel like our chances will be better for the right sperm.

“But still like a million of them.”

Kayla glared up at him.  “Not helping,” she admionished. Steve sighed.

“Whatever you think is best, baby, we’ll do that.  I want her, too.  We’re gonna get her.  Making love to you is no hardship.  Just tell me what the best way is.”

Nearly two weeks later Kayla and Steve did the most important thing they had done to date on any of these jumps – come together in their bed in their beautiful bedroom to make the sister of the baby sleeping soundly in the next room.  It seemed like so long ago that they’d learned they were pregnant with Emily.  The depth of sadness at this revelation eventually became the unbelievable joy of her birth.  She was a child they hadn’t met yet, it was new and beautiful to be her parents.  Now they were very purposefully creating a life that they already knew.  A life that had already grown in Kayla’s womb and been delivered by her and loved for as long as they both were able.  And now the depth of sadness would be if they failed to conceive, rather than if they did. 

Kayla felt her husband’s tongue sweep into her mouth and reacted with aroused anticipation.  His hands held her with promise, and she felt how much he cherished not only her but the life that his promise was going to create.  When she opened her mouth and her legs to him, Steve felt her love just as fiercely as he always did, but tonight there was something more.  Their souls knew where things were supposed to be and he felt like they were guiding them to ensure they got there.  Her touch burned into his skin, and the need to join with her brought tears to his eyes.

Kayla held onto him tightly as he buried himself deep inside of her.  They both moaned with relief when they felt the connection they would never stop aching for as long as they lived.  He plunged into her over and over in only loving strokes, her warm sheath enveloping his erection with the wetness he knew was for him alone.  The sexual pleasure was undeniable, pleasant moans filling the room as they panted their passion.  But the intensity of their love burned so white hot they almost glowed.

Their lovemaking was purposeful but oh so loving.  No words were spoken, nor were they needed, while Steve filled his wife with his steeled length, his arms wrapping around her as she lay beneath him.  She placed tender kisses on his naked chest while he slid back and forth inside of her, licking at his nipples and feeling a surge of warmth every time he gasped in the pleasure she wanted him to have.  He did the same when he gently drew kayla’s breasts into his mouth and felt her arch into him.   She kissed his chin and stroked his face with her soft fingertips.

When Kayla began meeting his rigid thrusts more desperately her mews of pleasure vibrated against the dagger that always drew her lips.  She nipped at him with unrestrained need, and his eyes rolled back into his head as his hips thrust faster.  That coil in Kayla’s tummy begged for release as she clutched onto Steve’s buttocks and pushed him into her.  The feel of her hands on him with such purpose and need for his life-giving essence never made him feel more masculine.  His need to fill her was so fervid, so instinctively carnal that he lost himself. 

Steve finally spoke to his wife just before he exploded.  “Kiss me while I come for you!” he begged in a tone desperate with anticipated pleasure that Kayla physically reacted to with her first convulsions.  Steve crushed his lips to hers and felt absolute euphoria as he poured his seed into his wife’s body in powerful lurches.  Kayla felt herself come with her husband like the planets clicking into perfect alignment.  They whimpered and grunted as their bodies shook in each other’s arms.  The world never felt so perfect as it did when their bodies were joined as one in orgasmic bliss. 

“I love you,” Kayla murmured softly into their sweet, warm kisses. 

“I love you, Sweetness.  God, you don’t know how much I love you.”

They hadn’t released each other and continued to capture one another’s lips long after their bodies had become infused with contented recovery. 

They fell asleep as Steve’s seed flooded his wife’s womb, finding its destination.  Steve dreamed of a little girl with red hair telling him her mommy had a baby in her tummy, Kayla dreamed of her raven-haired daughter left behind in 2009.

Emily turned one year old three weeks later.  They celebrated at the house where Emily enjoyed the company of most of her family, which was actually becoming a bit of a sore subject – the time the family got to spend with Emily.  That is to say, the lack of it.  Her Aunt Adrienne seemed appeased this day, however, when she got a whole lot of hands-on time, much to Kimberly’s chagrin, as she was home on bedrest with this new baby that wasn’t part of the original 1989 timeline.  Emily had doused herself in cake and squealed in serious delight at the mess she’d continued to lick off of herself.  Steve took two rolls of photos this afternoon alone, and all of them would end up in the carefully kept photo album that Kayla partnered with the journal. 

Emily’s bath was filled with a lot more conversation than usual due to the excitement of the day, not to mention the sugar.  Steve marveled at just how much Emily had to say every day, and none more than today.  He loved her expressive little face that looked so much to him like Kayla’s.  Their daughter’s emotions were so innocent and genuine and trusting.  And her demeanor continued to be very mild, yet full of such undeniable wisdom they just knew she was working out in her little head.  Now that she was a year old, she was far more verbal than ever before – more verbal than most babies her age.  Emily had quite a bit to say, too, with a constant stream of chatter that only she understood but that was, clearly, meaningful.  Because they were her parents, Steve and Kayla understood a lot of what Emily was saying; some of it, however, was just as mysterious to them as it was to everyone else.  Kind of like right now.

“She’s just like you, Sweetness,” Steve said with a chuckle. 

“She’s like her sister,” Kayla insisted.  “They both have your eyes. I look at them, and it’s like looking right at you.”

The mention of Stephanie made them both very anxious, and they hurried through the rest of the bath and bedtime routine so they could get to the pregnancy test that they’d been waiting all day to do. Normally, stick tests should be done first thing in the morning, but they didn’t want to be distracted from the birthday party, so they decided to wait until that evening so they could give both of those things their full attention.  

“You sure those things are effective at night?” Steve said nervously.  Kayla grinned; he was kind of adorable.

“When you’re a week late, any pee will usually do.”

Steve insisted on watching the pregnancy sticks – all four of them that Kayla had brought home from work – even as she insisted that a watched pot never boils.  But he was antsy and, literally, watched them, bouncing his eye from one to the next as the seconds ticked by.  Kayla, on the other hand, was a silent mess.  She didn’t feel pregnant, she wasn’t nauseous, her breasts weren’t tender, and she felt nothing going on inside of her.  Then again, she was only a week late, that would be three weeks gestation, and that stage of pregnancy has a whole lot of nothing going on as far as symptoms go.  She couldn’t take it, she went to the bed and layed there while Steve waited, praying that the fate that had been finding the people around them would find them, too.   

Tympanic membrane, maleus, incus, tympanic cavity, cochlea, vestibular—

Steve appeared in the doorway of the bathroom holding a pee stick before she could get to the rest of the anatomy of the ear.   She sat up very quickly and felt her heart race at the look on his face.  She knew before he could even say it.

 “Sweetness,” he said with a slight rasp.  Then he smiled.  “We’re pregnant.”

This time, there were no tears of dread.  This time there was no sinking of their hearts.  This time the panic drained out of them before it could manifest into the intense sadness that plagued them a year and a half ago.  This time, they both lit up in smiles that threatened to consume their faces and never leave.

Her hand went to her belly and rubbed.  It was warm.  “Really?”

Steve went to her and dropped to his knees as hers opened to him.  He nodded as he looked into her eyes.  “Really,” he said.  “All four of them.  We did it, baby.”  She knew she’d have to run a blood test on herself in the morning when she got to work, but she was a week late with four positive tests.  Even without the symptoms, she had a newly visceral certainty that the sticks were right.

Steve took Kayla’s hand and kissed her knuckles, lingering his lips there with an outpouring of love for her.  Then he opened her palm and placed it on his cheek.  “I love you, Sweetness.”  Kayla couldn’t speak and returned the sentiment with her eyes.  He then took a deep breath and lilfted up Kayla’s sweater.  Her belly had flattened to its normal size a few short months after Emily was born, but the stretched muscles of pregnancy had formed a small pooch that Kayla insisted was there but Steve failed to notice.  He did notice the tiny stretch marks that pregnancy with Emily had made, but he loved those as much as he loved the scar from her open heart surgery.  The latter gave him Kayla’s life, and the former gave him Emily’s.  Stephanie was about to add new ones.  Steve immediately rubbed his palm over his baby.  Kayla loved it when he did this – whenever she was pregnant he would rub his hand lovingly and protectively over his child, sometimes even before he knew there was a child in there.  She always loved it when he rubbed her abdomen this way.

“Hey, Little Sweetness,” he spoke into Kayla’s navel before placing a kiss on her belly.  “This is your papa.”

Kayla smiled.  “You sound pretty sure that it’s her we’ve got in there.”  Her wistful tone held a touch of underlying trepidation, but there were no tears.

“That’s because I am.”  Kayla cocked her head in wonder at her  beautiful husband.  “I am, Sweetness.” He said it with absolute conviction.  “That’s Stephanie.  I know it in my gut.”  He really did. It wasn’t a superfluous platitude, he truly knew with absolute certainty that the baby Kayla was carrying was the Stephanie that was originally born first to them.  “This is Stephanie,” he insisted as he gently rubbed, “and in ten more months –”

“Nine.”

Steve paused in real, irritating confusion.  “You said it was ten, before, make up your mind.”

“Oh, that was before!  When a month hadn’t gone by yet.”

 “What month?  She was conceived two weeks ago.”

“Three, actually, and you’re four weeks pregnant when you miss your period, even though you’ve only just conceived two weeks ago.”

Steve stared at her.  “I don’t get it.”

“Nevermind,” she patted his shoulder appeasingly.  Just know, you’re four weeks in the can right out of the gate, then it’s another 36 weeks to go, which is nine months, so there ya go.”

“Yeahp, ok,” Steve smiled.  He quickly changed the subject by laying his head down in his wife’s lap and stroking her thighs.  She threaded her fingers through his hair, and they stayed in that intimate position for several moments, just enjoying that they had somehow been given the gift of creating their daughter.  They didn’t ruin the moment by engaging in their familiar worry that they wouldn’t be there to greet her, they simply enjoyed the miraculous news that they did, indeed, appear to re-conceive Stephanie, just as Steve had promised.

Only a week later Kayla’s symptoms had begun to emerge.  She wasn’t showing at all, but she was feeling queasy pretty much all the time.  Not enough to actually throw up, and certainly not the full blown hyperemesis she had with Emily, but this state of pregnancy was having the same effect on her body as it did the first time she carried Stephanie, and her head was pretty fuzzy.  That didn’t stop them for having Marcus to the house to, once again, celebrate Joe’s birthday.  He didn’t ask any questions but dutifully put on the party hat that was leftover from Emily’s birthday celebration with the larger family and laughed when Steve put the thing over his eyepatch. 

“There is something wrong with you, man,” Marcus teased.  He was playing with Emily, who was more than happy to cackle at Marcus when he chased her on his hands and knees.  She toddled her best version of a run between the silliness of her father and the excitement of Marcus’s chase over and over before, collapsing on her butt every time.   She shrieked in laughter whenever she saw her daddy with the pointy hat on his eye.

“You’re just jealous at my fashion statement,” Steve countered.

“Yeah, that must be it.”

Kayla giggled and cleaned up the dishes before scooping up her daughter.  Marcus gave her a kiss goodnight, and everyone smiled when she waved bye-bye and called him “Ruckus.”

“Yep,” Kayla said, “You know you’ve made it when a baby butchers your name with love.”

Marcus loved her right back.  In fact he adored her like she was his own.  He loved her curly haired head, the mole above her lip, and the smile she always gave him that lit up her face.  And he had no problem whatsoever that she had him wrapped right around her little finger.  One day she was gonna say jump, and he was gonna ask her to just tell him how high. 

“Don’t I know it,” he said to the tot.  Kayla turned to go.  Marcus stretched into the back of the soft couch.  “Yeah,” he let the word drawl lazily from his mouth, “one of these days I’m gonna have one of those, too, man.” Then he got a very different look on his face.  “I think it’s time I went and found out where I came from, Steve.  So I can tell her what and where she’s from, too.  Or him.”

“No.” 

Kayla stopped in her tracks when she heard her husband’s immediate reaction to Marcus’s statement.  Clearly something very important to Marcus, he’d just shared this deeply personal thing with his best friend, and the effect of Steve’s “no” was, on the surface, very cold.  She closed her eyes but didn’t turn around.  Didn’t trust herself not to wear an expression that would only make her friend ask all the questions that she knew were right beneath the surface every day anyway.

“Huh?”

Steve told himself to shut his mouth, but then he went and opened it again.  Fear for his friend drove him, and while he should have just stayed quiet, what he did was the opposite.  “Cleaver, right?  You want to go back to Cleaver?”

“Yeaaah …,” he said, not at all sure he knew what was going through his friend’s head.  Kayla, he saw, had stopped where she was.  “How did you know?  I only just booked a flight this morning.”  Reverend Saul and his band of loonies were far overdue, but he figured that like Harper Deveraux, they were probably going to show up eventually.  But Steve had forgotten about this wrinkle with Marcus poking around Cleaver until this sudden statement.  Which garnered Steve’s sudden reaction.  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while now,” Marcus continued warily, “want to do some digging into my parents’ deaths.”

“No, homey, you can’t do that.”

Marcus was positively stunned at this.  He narrowed his eyes and said, “Why the hell not?”

“You just can’t.  Trust me on this, just stay the hell out of Cleaver, ok?”

Marcus sat up very straight.  “No, Steve, not ok.  How ‘bout you give me a real reason.”

Kayla finally came back into the room to try to bail out her husband.  Marcus didn’t know that Steve was just trying to protect him, but she did.  “I think Steve just means, ah, he just doesn’t want you to—to go through all that, ah, heartache reliving the ch—reliving it all again.”  She stopped short, because she didn’t remember if she knew about the church explosion in this timeline or not.  But Marcus caught that she’d redirected herself.

“Oh, is it secret code time again?  That thing that’s going on that we all pretend isn’t there?  Yeah, I got it.  Wanna ask about Stockholm?  Never been there.”

“Marucs,” Kayla began.

“No, Kayla, look. I’m sorry, but all this double talk like you’re in on some secret from the rest of the world is getting real old, now.” 

“Marcus, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, man, I just meant what Kayla said, why should you have to go open up old wounds.”

“Spare me, Steve, you’re embarrassing yourself.” 

Steve looked away and balled his fists up tight.  You got a big mouth, Johnson.  But all he could really think of right now was that butterfly effect that he was sure Kayla was right about.  A lot of things were happening that shouldn’t have and not happening that should.  He saved Marcus’s life by the skin of his teeth last time, and Melissa Anderson was living a long, full life.  Here Melissa was dead.  He didn’t want Marcus to become another butterfly and had to stop him from going to Cleaver.

Marcus’s anger diffused slightly at the effort he saw Steve using to keep up this charade, because the truth was that his anger came from his immense concern for them.  Worry that they were carrying some kind of awful burden, and not that they had a secret from him.  “Look … if you two are in some kind of trouble … maybe someone can help you.  Maybe I can help you.  Just let me in, man,” he turned to Steve.  “Please, just let me in.  I want to help you, don’t you see that?”

Steve looked up and pumped his jaw, Kayla started to sway in silence, Emily soundlessly took it in. 

“I know what you people look like when you get too close to whatever’s going on, you look like you just did when you said I can’t go to Cleaver.”  His face became imploring.  “So I’m giving you another chance, brother, come on, level with me, here.  You think there’s anything you can tell me that will scare me off?”  Steve stayed silent throwing every last bit of energy into this ruse, because he was just about ready to break, the look on his friend’s face killing him.  “You think I wouldn’t stick by you?” he turned to Kayla.  “You’re my best friends, just tell me what is going on!”

Kayla looked to Steve for direction, here.  He had none to give, so he glanced at her with an imperceptible shake of his head, and Kayla sighed.  “I have to get Em down,” she said directly to Steve.  “I’m sorry.”  She meant for leaving him to this conversation, but Marcus took it another way and hardened right back up.  Steve got up and kissed his daughter, then turned back to Marcus as Kayla went up the stairs, but his best friend was already out of the livingroom and had his hand on the front door.

“Yeah, you go do that, Kayla.  And say hello to Stephanie and Joey when you pass ‘em in the hall.”  He rolled his eyes when Kayla shot him a look of shock from above him on the stairs.  “You think I’ve never been up there?  I figured that out months ago.”  Then he opened the door.  “Still don’t know who they are, but no way that ain’t them.”

“Marcus, please, stay here and let’s talk about this,” Steve said testily.

“You know what, save it, man.  Until you’re ready to let me in on this big secret Stockholm thing you’ve got goin’ on, you can just save it.”  He stormed out the door and slammed it behind him.

Steve looked up at Kayla.  “What the hell just happened?”

Kayla rubbed at her forehead.  “I think the jig is up, that’s what just happened.”  She continued up the stairs to Emily’s room, and Steve followed her.  The day had finally caught up with her; she was about to fall asleep standing up and had little patience for this.  “I’m tired, Steve.  I just want to go to bed, we can figure it out in the morning.”  They very quickly got Emily in her crib, and tonight, of course, when Kayla most needed to just go to bed, the baby protested bedtime. 

“Buuuuh!” she wailed, fat tears gathering in the rims of her eyes.

Steve was on edge but didn’t let on when he tried to soothe her.  “What’s the matter, my Lilttlest Girl?”

Emily repeated her wail, held her small stuffed Eeyore comfortingly to her cheek, and pointed to her wall.  Suddenly it hit Kayla.  “Book.  She wants a story, we always do one before bedtime.”

“Buuh, Mama,” she sniffled. 

Kayla went to the shelf and picked up her favorite, “Babies,” by Gyo Fujikawa.  She knew Emily loved looking at each baby on every page.  She would literally point to each and every one and say, “bee-bee” each time.  This time Kayla went through the book rather quickly, then left it in Emily’s crib with her, which made the tot perfectly content in the short minutes it took for her to fall asleep.  And thank God, too, because Kayla was completely out of sorts.  The fatigue that comes with early pregnancy was really wreaking havoc on her, and all she wanted was for sleep to take her.  She dropped her clothes on the floor, pulled on a nightshirt, and crawled into bed.  Steve wanted to talk to her about what they should do about Marcus going to Cleaver, but her lids were heavy, and she was just this side of dozing off while he was mid-sentence.

That’s when the doorbell rang.  They bolted up and looked beseechingly at the baby monitor, willing it not to sound with rousing baby.  When it only gave them back white noise they headed downstairs.  Steve was relieved that Marcus had come back, because he hated leaving things that way.  Kayla was actually even happier, despite her intense fatigue.  Marcus wasn’t there in 2009, every moment with him was a gift to her husband, and she wanted to make sure this thing got fixed.  They rushed down the stairs half dressed, Steve in his pajama bottoms, Kayla in a nightshirt and loosely drawn robe.

When they opened the door, Rolf was was on the other side of it.

< Chapter 101

Chapter 103 >