Page 107 of Blue Devil Woman
‘Yeah.’ Willow replied, but they both nodded vigorously.
‘We each get one,’ Wren clarified.
‘Oh?’ Sierra tried to hide her amusement, but it wasn’t easy.
‘Yeah,’ Willow said with the solemnity only a near-three-year-old could muster. ‘We talked about it.’
Sierra nodded seriously. ‘That’s good.’
‘Unless he poops like James does,’ Wren said, and crinkled her nose. ‘Then you can have mine.’
Sierra laughed. ‘Oh, okay. If they poop, I’ll handle it,’ she promised, and because she could feel his loving gaze on her, she turned to Benji.
He was leaning against the truck’s tailgate, his arms crossed over his chest, and a soft smile on his face as he watched them. Sierra winked at him, but instead of winking back, he mouthed, ‘I love you.’
Benji stood and watched them a while longer.
The girls were identical and had his burnt gold hair and green eyes, but that was where their similarities ended.
Willow was calm and quiet and shy with strangers. She could entertain herself for hours doing anything – colouring, riding, or baking mud pies with her cousins. She loved to cuddle, and although she would come and snuggle onto his lap if Sierra was busy, the moment Sierra sat down, Willow would leave his arms for hers.
Wren … Wren was a wildling. With a temper. She was loud and boisterous, and they’d had to warn her not to talk to strangers repeatedly. But from the moment she could walk, she’d been Benji’s shadow. She watched everything he did with an intensity that had taught him to slow his movements so that she could learn. And boy did she.
Though both the girls could already ride in the small arena without much assistance, Wrenlivedfor the horses. She was always underfoot in the barn, wanting to help groom and tack even though, more often than not, she simply did what three-year-olds did: got in the way. She loved to ride, but long before they’d put her on her first horse, they figured out that, while long drives in the car calmed Willow, Wren stopped crying the moment she saw a horse.
Being a father to the two of them was a lesson in communication in and of itself. While Willow needed soft words and gentle encouragement, Wren would have walked all over him if he talked to her in the same way. She needed direction, discipline, and consequences.
Benji loved how different they were. He loved that each of them taught him radically different things about being a human being. But more than anything, more than watching his girls grow, more than being a dad, more than the sun and the moon and the stars combined, he loved watching Sierra grow into motherhood.
She never stopped. If she wasn’t tying a shoelace or baking cookies or giving baths, she was teaching the girls about horses or doing puzzles with them or painting their bedroom wall. She loved with a ferocity that constantly awed him. She had learned to be patient – and it hadn’t come naturally to her. She gave and gave, and the result was that – even though he would have said it to be impossible – Benji found himself falling more in love with his wife with each day that passed.
But the depth of his own experience didn’t terrify him. Because if life had taught him anything, it was that nothing lasted forever – but that he had more than most. He had everything. And he would hold on to them until the day his body was reduced to ash – and then he’d leave without regret. And he’d go and meet Ava.
His first.
His greatest joy Before.
His greatest loss After.
His daughter.
