“Damn it”, Sousa said grumpily upon shaking his wrist when noticing his watch had stopped working.
“Pardon my French”, he apologized to the sleepy lady next to him, who did not seemed offended in the least; in fact, she was quite taken with the friendly man who got seated next to her. Earlier, he shared his baggie of roasted peanuts when the flight attendant told them regretfully they only had one left, and when she nodded off against his shoulder, he made sure to sit still as to not wake her, which was more than her husband ever did for her (may he rest in peace).
“Excuse me, can you tell me the time? My time piece doesn’t seem to work.”
“Oh yes, it’s almost four thirty”, the lady told him after peering at her tiny golden watch for what seemed like forever.
A sigh of relief escaped Daniel, and he leaned back, crossing his arms, knowing the plane would land within the hour.
“What makes you so anxious, young man?”, the lady asked, not even trying to hide her nosiness. “Do you have a girl waiting for you down there?”
Daniel smiled and said with a mysterious eyebrow wiggle “I have three girls waiting for me,” and pretended to look out of the window as if he was done with the conversation. He could almost hear the cogs of the lady’s inquisitive brain turn until she suddenly laughed.
“You’re a father!”
“That I am.”
“Oh don’t make an old woman beg... show me the pictures then?”
With a wide grin, Daniel lifted his cream colored cable knit sweater and recovered his wallet from his shirt pocket.
He stuck his hand out high, and out of the wallet, a ribbon of photographs unfurled, showing many brown eyed faces and happy smiles.
The lady’s hand shot out with a remarkable speed, and grabbed the bottom picture.
“Ah this is an old one, was this your mother when she was a little girl?”, the woman speculated from behind her reading glasses while looking at a sepia picture of a young girl with a crispy white bow in her hair and a cotton dress with a sailor’s collar.
“Oh uh, no. That’s Lottie, my little sister.”
A quick gander got shot at the energetic man next to her, ready to accuse him of being a jester, but something in his sincere eyes made her take it back.
“And who might this beauty be?”
Sousa leaned over to check which one she meant. A radiant smile with shy flushed cheeks looked up at him from the picture: it was Daisy on their wedding day, her loose sweater still over her silk dress.
“That is Daisy”, Daniel sighed, taking in the picture. God, she was beautiful as a bride, down to earth but with a glowing softness that still took his breath away.
“Your girl?”
“My wife.”
He leaned his head in his hand and let his eyes wander over the pictures. He didn’t look at them often, seeing as he was home with the depicted people every day, but he had missed them for a whole week now, and they tugged on his heart. The lonely evenings in the hotel room, these past 7 days, were the longest, and most mornings he startled awake when his sleepy fingers didn’t find Daisy on the pillow next to his. His daughters’ small hands and sloppy kisses on his cheeks were sorely missed when he left the breakfast table to head to the work meetings, and the silence grew more present every day. It truly felt longer than a week, and boy, was he antsy to embrace them all again. In the airport’s mall, he bought stuffed animals for the kids and a necklace for Daisy, even though none of them needed any more belongings to fill their cosy house.
The lady’s voice disturbed his daydream.
“Who might these angels be?”
“This one”, Sousa pointed at the little baby in a laundry basket, “and this one”, pointing at a little girl grinning at him from above the rim of a bathtub, “are the same girl, her name is Charlotte, and she is not exactly an angel... even though she is one of the best things to happen to me in any life!”
The lady nodded and let him take the lead. She knew from her 78 years of experience that once you ask one question about someone’s children, they won’t stop talking.
And indeed, he did not.
“This little goofball is Sarah, matching her big sister in sweetness, but expressing it in a much calmer manner”, he chuckled while showing off a picture of Sarah wearing a honey bee costume.
“Oh these are out of order, Charlie must have played with my wallet, but these are Daisy and I on our wedding, with Daisy’s... our family. That baby is Charlotte again.”
The lady started to get sleepy again and did not object when Sousa carefully pulled the pictures from her lap. He took a closer look at each photograph before folding the accordion of memories back into his leather wallet, and tucked it back safely in his chest pocket near his heart.
Ding! The ‘wear seatbelt’ light went on. Excited to wrap his arms around his loved ones, Sousa put on the seatbelt and sighed.
The landing was a little rocky, but Daniel assumed he was just spoiled from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s futuristic planes and shook his head as his own nervousness.
With his carry-on bag casually slung over his shoulder and the oversized stuffed animals under his arm, he was one of the first to leave the plane and walk down the shaft.
Straining his neck, he was quick to spot Daisy, who conveniently had put little Sarah on her shoulders. The toddler spotted him before her mother did and nearly pulled out a lock of hair in the excitement. Daisy saw him too and smiled and pointed him out to Charlie, who was already distracted from waiting by trying to pet a bomb sniffer dog. Charlie turned around, saw her dad and ran towards him.
“Daddy! You were away for so long!”
His bag and souvenirs rolling on the ground on either side of him, he crouched down and caught the little girl in his arms. He kissed her cheeks all over until she interrupted her own giggles by saying “no more, daddy, it tickles.”
“Alright, let me greet mommy, can you carry my bag for me?”
While Charlie put all her strength into pulling the bag by the strap, Sousa handed a stuffed animal to his youngest daughter.
“Here you go, monkey! Aagh, careful, baby, I missed you too” he said in response to her hand firmly grabbing his ear and pulling him closer. Standing on his toes, he kissed her on the nose, and made sure she wouldn’t drop the stuffed animal.
“Can mommy have a kiss now?”, Daisy said with a happy smile.
Sousa cupped her warm face in his hands, and fully ignoring Charlie’s protest, he took his sweet time to kiss Daisy.
“I missed you so much” he finally sighed, still gazing deep into his wife’s brown eyes, at the same time hooking two fingers in the hood of Charlie’s sweater. Even mid-kiss, his dad-sense knew when she was about to leave for a stroll, causing a whole kerfuffle with security people calling out her name over the speakers for a terrifying hour or so.
Daisy chuckled and put Sarah down on the tiled floor. “Let’s go home”, she said, intertwining her fingers with his.
He kissed her hand and nodded.
“You’d think he went away for a year”, the lady from the plane taunted him and winked.
“A friend of yours?”, Daisy wondered.
“Sat next to me on the flight”.
“And did you bore her with stories about us?”
Sousa blushed. “Maybe.”
Charlie took his hand. “Never leave again, daddy.”
Sousa looked from her small face to Daisy’s and shook his head with a loving smile.
“Never.”