Fic: Pedagogy
Title: Pedagogy
Author: Melyanna
Rating: Teen-friendly
Summary: The learning never really stops.
Notes: Better late than never, right? This was written for the auficathon, filling lilwitchy's request for John and Elizabeth each teaching a class, cheesecake, and beer. What she probably wasn't counting on was close to 9,000 words of fluff. ;) Many thanks to athenaktt for beta reading, and to those who helped me figure out what in the world the point of this was.
The math department of Langford University had a tradition almost as old as the school itself. Every semester, each faculty member, from the lowliest untenured instructor to the dean himself, would throw his name into a hat, and three names would be selected to teach Math for Girls.
Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers, the course catalog called it, as did the class’s hefty textbook. Such trivial details in no way prevented the faculty from calling it other things, such as the Class from Hell, or the If-I-Have-to-Teach-This-Again-I’ll-Kill-Myself Class. John preferred to stick with Math for Girls. The moniker annoyed Elizabeth to no end.
He smirked just a little as he pushed his way through the corridor filled with students. She’d still been in bed when he left the house that morning, though she was awake enough to make him want to skip class. Still, it was the first week of the semester, and it would be very bad form for him not to show up to the first meeting of a class. So he made his way into the hall where he’d be lecturing for this class and tried to push thoughts of Elizabeth that morning from his mind. The thought of her mostly naked and lazily smiling at him while he fumbled with his tie was not going to help him get through this class.
Down at the lectern, he set his briefcase aside and fidgeted with his tie for a moment, then looked up at his class. “Good morning, ladies,” he said, not seeing another male in the room. So far, things were normal. “Welcome to Math 154, Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers. Anyone in the wrong room?”
No one got up and left, so he continued. “This class is required for el ed majors,” he said. “The general idea is that if you’re going to teach math to kids, you might want to be able to do math yourselves.” There was some scattered laughter at that. “So this class will cover the concepts of general math that you all studied in elementary school. Any questions?”
There were none, so John picked up a stack of syllabi and began distributing it around the lecture hall. “I have one more thing before we start going over material,” he said. “This class is not worth crying over. Yes, you’re all in here because you have to pass the class to get your teaching certification, but I don’t want to see any of you coming to my office in tears. I’m perfectly willing to work with you on your grades. I’ll let you take a test up to three times if you feel like you can get a better score on it, and I’ll give out extra credit assignments to those who need it. But this class is absolutely not worth crying over.”
He saw a few girls shifting uncomfortably in their seats. It seemed that he had more than one student this semester who had used that tactic on a teacher before. That had never worked on John, at least with students. Girlfriends, on the other hand. . .
He came back up to the lectern and looked down at his notes. “Having said all that, this class covers a great deal of material. Since we only meet twice a week, we’ll have to move through it quickly,” he said. “Those of you who have the textbook, turn your attention to the first example on page twelve. Those of you who don’t have the textbook, get it as soon as possible, since you have homework for Thursday.”
This was shaping up to be a very long day.
It wasn’t supposed to be. Elizabeth didn’t have a class until ten in the morning, and due to a scheduling fluke, she didn’t have any meetings until after lunch. She’d stayed in bed reading for almost an hour after John left the house. Usually she was up well before he was, so it was a nice switch.
But half an hour before she was intending to be in her office, the doorbell rang. Hurriedly she threw her jacket on over the low white silk shell she was wearing and ran to the door. On the other side, and much to her surprise, were her brother and nephew. “Andy?” she said, bewildered. “Is something wrong?”
He frowned at her. “We talked about this,” he replied. “A month ago you agreed to take care of Joshua while Melissa’s in the hospital.”
It took all her self-control to keep from showing any kind of reaction. “Of course,” she said. Her sister-in-law was pregnant and going into the hospital that morning so they could induce labor the next day. Elizabeth had agreed to keep Joshua for the week, since both sets of grandparents would be coming in from out of town. “Is Melissa all right?” she asked.
“She’s feeling fine, but ready for the baby,” her brother replied. He looked down at his son. “Joshua, you ready to spend some time with your aunt?”
He smiled at her adorably. “Auntie Lizabeth,” he said, “can I really stay a whole week?”
“You really can,” she replied. She held her hand out to him, and he grabbed her fingers. Elizabeth looked back up at Andy. “You realize this week is insane for me, right?”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” he replied. “I swear we weren’t planning on having a baby in the first week of fall semester.”
“I’ll believe you. This time.”
Andy glanced into the house as he handed Joshua’s suitcase over. “John’s not unpacked yet?” he asked, seeing boxes in the living room.
“Not quite. He just got the last of his stuff out of his apartment three or four days ago,” said Elizabeth. “I think he has three boxes left to unpack. It’ll be done by the end of the week, even if I have to do it myself.”
Andy smiled. “That’s the little sister I know and love.” He kissed her cheek. “We’ll give you a call when anything exciting happens.”
“Well,” Elizabeth said, looking down at her nephew as soon as the door had closed, “have you had breakfast?”
“Yep!” he said. “I had Cheerios.”
“Good to hear,” she replied, handing him his suitcase. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come to school with me.”
To her surprise, the four-year-old started jumping up and down. “Yay! Can I play on your computer?”
“Not all day,” Elizabeth said. When he pouted, she cupped his chin and said, “If you’re good, I’ll see if we can watch the marching band practice this afternoon, all right?” Joshua brightened immediately, so she continued, “Now, take your suitcase up to the guest room and get some things you can play with quietly. We can’t disturb the classes in the building, remember?”
They arrived on campus twenty minutes later than Elizabeth had planned, though she was still there in time for her morning class. When she came into the outer office, Peter stood up from his desk and said, “Doctor Weir, I was starting to get worried.” Then Joshua came in sight, and he added, “This should have an interesting explanation.”
“Peter, this is my nephew, Joshua,” she explained. “Joshua, this is Mr. Grodin.”
“You can call me Peter,” said her assistant.
“Hi, Peter,” Joshua answered.
“Peter, I’m so sorry about this,” Elizabeth said. “With everything else going on, I forgot to tell you that I’d agreed to take care of Joshua this week. His mom is having a baby quite soon, so he’s staying with me.”
“That’s not a problem. He can keep me company while you’re in class or battling the dragon.” Peter turned his attention to the boy. “So, you’re going to be a big brother?”
Joshua nodded solemnly. “I’m going to have a baby sister.” Then he looked up at Elizabeth. “Auntie Lizabeth, can I watch you fight the dragons?”
“It’s less exciting than you think,” she replied, steering him toward the inner office.
She arrived at her ten o’clock class three minutes before it was scheduled to begin, which was rather late for her. Her third-year students looked at her a bit oddly, knowing her better than that. “Ladies, gentlemen,” she said to the fifteen students, “welcome to your last year in law school. Pull your desks around in a circle. This is a discussion class.”
The students all started moving their desks around, chatting with each other amicably. Then amid the noise, the door opened again and a young man walked in. “Ah, Mr. Anderson,” Elizabeth said. “Nice of you to join us.”
“Sorry, Doctor Weir,” he said, getting the idea and grabbing a desk to pull into the circle. Then the bell rang.
“You weren’t quite late,” Elizabeth replied with a small smile, “but let’s try to be more on time to this class than you were for my class last semester.”
He smiled at her disarmingly. “Sure thing, ma’am.”
“Well,” she continued, addressing the rest of the class, “welcome to Selected Problems in International Human Rights. I sent you all a syllabus when you signed up for the class, along with your summer assignments.” She took a seat in the circle of desks. “Let’s start off easy. Can anyone define human rights?”
She smiled, knowing it was no easy question. Finally, Alexa Cartwright spoke up. “They’re rights which are intrinsic-”
“Hang on,” Elizabeth interrupted. “No defining a word with itself.”
“Are you this evil with everyone, or just your students?” the girl asked.
Elizabeth smiled wickedly. “You should hear the stories my boyfriend tells.”
John was teaching a graduate-level class in statistical analysis until half-past twelve on Tuesdays, so he was almost to the point of stomach-growling hungry when he walked into Elizabeth’s outer office. Peter wasn’t guarding the gate, but John smelled food. He continued into the inner office.
“Elizabeth,” he said, almost whining, “I thought I was your lunch date.”
She smiled apologetically. “I think we both managed to mix up the dates on when Melissa’s having the baby,” she said, nodding at her preschool companion. “We’ve got Joshua with us this week.”
He rolled that last sentence over in his mind a few times, trying to get used to the feel of it and wondering if it fit him. Elizabeth’s nephew was a great kid and John loved him to death, but it was just the way she’d said it, like this was a joint responsibility.
Three weeks earlier, John had brought a pile of mail over from his apartment and spread it out on Elizabeth’s kitchen table. Late that night, when it had been too hot for anyone but Elizabeth to sleep, he’d wandered down to the kitchen to take care of it. She, however, had been woken by his absence and followed him a few minutes later. They sat in silence for a while, until Elizabeth picked up the new lease for his apartment that he hadn’t signed yet. He half-expected her to suggest some change to the wording of it, as that incredible mind of hers never shut off, but instead she set it aside and said nothing until he prompted her.
In the light of the full summer moon, she’d looked almost girlish and nervous. She’d made the suggestion that he stop spending money on an apartment he’d barely been inside all summer and move into her house. He’d honestly never considered it, but hadn’t required much convincing.
Despite the fact that he’d hardly been in his apartment all summer, he couldn’t believe how different it felt to wake up in Elizabeth’s bed the morning after he told the landlord he was moving out. And stranger still was how natural it felt. It was a little amazing to him that now, such things as the care of her nephew, which had been entrusted to her, had become joint too.
“John?” she said. “You look lost.”
He shook himself mentally. “I thought we were getting Chinese today,” he said. Then, coming up to Joshua and mussing his hair, he added, “Hey, squirt.”
“I’m not a squirt, I’m Joshua,” the boy protested, grinning up at John.
“Yeah, and I’m not actually your uncle.”
Joshua shrugged and returned to his French fries.
“So,” John said to Elizabeth, “McDonald’s?”
She smiled again and opened her desk drawer. “Joshua wanted it. I figured it wouldn’t hurt today, since we didn’t have time to pack him a lunch at home,” she explained. She pulled a sandwich - not something from McDonald’s - from the drawer and passed it across the desk. “I had Peter get you something from the café downstairs.”
John took it and unwrapped it. “Ooh, chicken salad.”
“Didn’t have turkey today, apparently.”
“That’s okay.”
She was eating what looked like a chicken caesar salad, and John reached across the desk to steal a crouton. She poked him with her fork. “How was class?” she asked.
“My grad class looks like it’s going to be a good one,” he replied. “Met with one of the kids I’m advising on his doctorate, too. What he comes up with could have some interesting implications in aviation.”
“I’ll take your word for that,” said Elizabeth, sipping at a can of Coke. John reached for it as she set it down, but then Elizabeth rolled back to her refrigerator and got one for him. “What about your eight o’clock?” she asked.
“I’m reserving judgment,” he replied. “What about you, Joshua? How’s your day been so far?”
With half a chicken nugget in his hand, Joshua said, “I fought a dragon for Auntie Lizabeth today.”
“Really,” said John. “How big was it?”
“Bigger than you,” Joshua said solemnly. “He couldn’t fit in this room. He was orange and green and he tried to steal my chicken nuggets.”
“And what was Auntie Lizabeth doing while you fought off the dragon?”
“Oh, the dragon wanted to kidnap her,” said Joshua. “I had to save her.”
John hazarded a glance at Elizabeth, who seemed to be having a hard time stifling laughter. He took the opportunity to snatch another crouton off her salad. “Well, as Auntie Lizabeth’s boyfriend, I’ll thank you for the favor,” he said to Joshua.
A few seconds passed, and Joshua said, “Auntie Lizabeth.”
“Joshua, you need to eat,” she interrupted. “I have to go to a meeting soon.”
“It’s important.”
John nudged him. “The bathroom’s over there,” he suggested.
“I don’t have to go potty,” Joshua declared, sounding rather indignant. “I want to talk to Mommy and Daddy.”
“Finish your chicken,” Elizabeth said. “Then we’ll call.”
He finished the last piece of chicken in the little paper box a few minutes later, and Elizabeth picked up her cell phone. While she chatted for a moment and then handed the phone to her nephew, John took the opportunity to finish the rest of his lunch undisturbed. Joshua babbled on for quite a while, and Elizabeth had to rush out before he was done, thus leaving her phone behind. Joshua, however, failed to notice this, and eventually looked around the office in alarm. “Auntie Lizabeth?” he said.
“She had to go, Joshua,” John replied.
“Daddy wants to talk to her.”
John took the phone. “Andy, it’s John,” he said.
“Hi, John,” Andy replied. “Where’s Elizabeth?”
“She had to go to a meeting,” he explained. “She was running late. Do you need to leave a message for her?”
“No, it was just something about our parents getting here tomorrow morning.”
John raised a brow. He hadn’t thought about Elizabeth’s parents being in town for this. “Well,” he said, “how’s Melissa doing?”
“She’s fine,” said Andy. “Nothing exciting yet. Can you have Elizabeth call me when she’s got a minute?”
“Sure. Talk to you later.”
“Bye.”
John closed the phone and opened his mouth to say something to Joshua, but found that the boy had left the desk and climbed onto the loveseat across the room, lying down as though to take a nap. “Joshua,” John said.
“Uncle John?”
“Go to the bathroom before you take a nap.”
Joshua got up, and John decided that a nap did sound like a good idea. By the time Joshua came back in, John had settled himself into Elizabeth’s deep leather desk chair and had propped his feet up on the desk. Within minutes, the two of them were both asleep.
That night, Elizabeth probably let Joshua stay up too late, but she found herself laughing too hard at John as he played with her nephew to worry about it too much. Joshua had always had fun when he stayed at her house, but John had the advantage of being approximately the same mental age. Many of her friends had expressed amazement that she had actually stayed with John this long, but when confronted with those questions, Elizabeth would merely smile enigmatically. There were some things her friends didn’t need to know.
John even read a bedtime story to Joshua, joining Elizabeth in their bedroom later. She’d taken to wearing an old one of his dress shirts to bed, and when John came in the room, she had picked up his copy of War and Peace and started reading. “Are you losing my place?” he asked, closing the door behind himself and peeling his shirt off.
“You’re on three hundred sixty-seven,” she replied. “I’ll put the marker back. It’s just been a while since I read this in English.”
“Of course, Doctor Speaks-More-Languages-Than-Langford-Offers,” John said, sitting next to her on the bed.
“I certainly hope not,” Elizabeth answered, putting the bookmark back in its place and handing the book over. “I only speak five.”
“Oh, only,” he said. As he set the book aside, he added, “Well, you know what they say.”
She leaned forward and kissed him softly. “What do they say, Doctor Never-Misses-an-Office-Hour?”
“I was expecting you to know.” Without letting her reply, he cupped her face with both hands and kissed her rather thoroughly. There was no question of where this was going.
Except for when Joshua started shrieking down the hall.
Elizabeth hurried out of the room so quickly that she just barely remembered to grab her robe on her way out the door. “Joshua?” she said, coming into the guest bedroom as she tied her robe closed. “Joshua, sweetie, what’s the matter?”
“There’s a dragon in the closet!” the boy said. “He said his name is Jor and he’s gonna eat me!”
John had followed her to the room, and Elizabeth looked at him as he scratched his head. But Joshua seemed genuinely scared by something, real or imaginary, so she walked over and sat on the bed. “Come here, sweetheart,” she said, pulling her nephew close to hug him. “Don’t you know that this house has a rule against dragons eating little boys?”
“What about girls?” he asked. “I don’t want the dragon to eat you either.”
“Dragons can’t eat people here, all right?”
“Hey, Elizabeth,” John said. She looked up and saw that John had opened the closet. “Did you know there’s actually a dragon in here?”
“John. . .”
“No, I’m serious.” He turned around, holding up a blue stuffed dragon by its tail.
Elizabeth frowned. She’d forgotten that she’d stuck some Christmas presents in that closet. “Joshua, did you find that in the closet?” she asked.
He nodded. “I opened the door and he said-”
”I know, I know, he was going to eat you,” Elizabeth interrupted.
“I don’t know about that,” John said. “He looks like a pretty friendly dragon.”
“He’s not!” Joshua insisted.
“Shhh.” Elizabeth stood up and lifted Joshua from the bed. “John, let’s lock the dragon back up again, all right? Joshua, do you want a glass of water?”
He shook his head. “Can I sleep with you, Auntie Lizabeth?”
Elizabeth wavered, while John shot her an alarmed look, but ten minutes later, the three of them were all in the master bedroom. “If he kicks me,” John said, “I’m sleeping downstairs.”
“Fair enough,” Elizabeth replied.
“Auntie,” said Joshua, “are you and Uncle John getting married?”
“Go to sleep, Joshua.”
John did wake up on the couch early the next morning, and he ended up working on lesson plans to make use of the early hour. The smell of coffee must have woken Elizabeth, though, as she came down after a while and found him with textbooks and papers spread over the bar in the kitchen. “Working before noon?” she said.
He glared at her over his bowl of cereal. “I’ll have you know, I do very important procrastination before noon every day.”
She came around and stood behind him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “I’m sure you do,” she murmured, before tracing a line down his neck with kisses, maddeningly soft.
“Elizabeth,” he said, almost a sigh. He could feel her smiling.
“I’m sorry you ended up on the couch,” she replied, rubbing her smooth cheek against the stubble on his own. “But there’s a first time for everything, I guess.”
“Second time, actually,” John said, picking up a pencil and scribbling down something about L’Hôpital’s Rule in his notebook.
“Second time?” Elizabeth repeated. “I don’t remember -”
“It was last February,” he said, not looking at her. “You had bronchitis. I didn’t really think you needed to be alone all night with that cough.”
She let go of him and sat down on the bar stool next to him. “I thought it was strange that you’d gotten here so early in the morning,” she replied. “I guess I was too strung out on medication to think about it much. But why were you so worried?”
“I’d never seen you sick before,” he stated. “And you were pretty sick that weekend.”
He started writing again, but Elizabeth plucked the pencil from his hand. “Sometimes you’re impossibly sweet,” she said, turning his face to her and kissing him.
“Thought I was just impossible,” he said.
“That’s the rest of the time.” She stood up and rubbed his back briefly. “I’m going to wake Joshua up and send him down here while I take a shower. Can you get breakfast for him?”
“What does he eat?”
“He’ll eat Cheerios, same as you.”
She left, and a few minutes later Joshua entered the room, still in his pajamas, but dragging that stuffed dragon behind him. “Hi, Uncle John.”
“Hey, kid,” John replied. “What’s with the dragon?”
“Jor and I are friends now,” Joshua said matter-of-factly. “It was a mis- a must-”
“Misunderstanding?”
“Yeah.”
John shook his head. “Is Aunt Elizabeth using big words around you again?”
“Constantly,” Joshua replied, with a touch of preschool melodrama. “Jor decided he likes eating pizza better than boys.”
The bar stools weren’t exactly user-friendly for a four-year-old, so when Joshua came around the bar, John had to help him up. “Well, it’s a good thing he’s decided he’ll eat other things. We’ve got a shortage of little boy here.”
“What’s this?” Joshua asked, pointing at a word on the page. “L-H-O-P-I-T-A-L.”
John looked down. He hadn’t realized that Joshua knew any of his letters yet. “Hey, that’s pretty good. It says L’Hôpital.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Well, in this case, it’s someone’s name, but I think it means ‘hospital’ in French.”
“French?”
“It’s another language.” John walked toward the other side of the kitchen, where the refrigerator was. “Not everyone talks like we do. In some places, people use completely different words. You and I wouldn’t understand them.”
“Where? Iowa?”
John resisted the urge to laugh. “We’ll look at the globe in Aunt Elizabeth’s office later.” He opened the refrigerator. “So what do you want, Josh?”
“Cheerios, and my name is Joshua.”
John paused, his hand on the milk. “But ‘Josh’ is short for that.”
“Mommy says that we should call people by their names because if they were supposed to be called something else, they would be,” he declared.
“Okay, I’m not sure I follow that logic,” John said, bringing milk, cereal, and a bowl over, “but what do you call your mom?”
“Mommy.”
“Did you know her name is Melissa?”
Joshua’s eyes widened.
John proceeded to pour cereal into the bowl. “But you get to call her Mommy because you’re her son. You get to call her a special name. Only you and your baby sister, when she’s big enough, get to call her that.” He poured the milk in. “So, since you’re my special little buddy, I can call you Josh. If you’re okay with it.”
Joshua still looked a bit skeptical, even as John slid the bowl over to him. “You want to call me Josh ‘cause I’m special?”
“Yep.”
“Okay,” Joshua replied. “But no one else!”
“No one else. We can swear it over peanut butter later.”
“Okay.” He set the dragon on top of John’s lesson plans. “Jor says he wants to eat your papers.”
“Well, tell him not to.”
During a break between classes that morning, John ran to Cally’s and bought lunch for the three of them, including a whole cheesecake that he managed to fit into Elizabeth’s mini fridge. She’d smiled when she found it with the rest of their lunch. Joshua had never before experienced cheesecake.
At noon her desk was cleared off for lunch, and she had Joshua sitting on top of one of her big reference volumes so he could reach the desktop reasonably and not spill things everywhere. John had returned a favor by getting lunch for Peter too, but Peter told him to keep it in the refrigerator, as he had plans for lunch. This revelation left Elizabeth rather perplexed, and wondering if Peter had a girlfriend and just hadn’t said anything. She wouldn’t blame him if that were true. He certainly deserved a lot of ribbing for the five years of grief he’d given her over John.
Elizabeth didn’t have anything scheduled until 1:30, so she’d have plenty of time to relax before heading off for the first board meeting of the school year. Or “bored meeting,” as John liked to call them in the text messages he’d send her during them. This meant that she got to let Joshua try cheesecake for the first time.
John had found Elizabeth’s chocolate stash ages ago, including the bottle of chocolate syrup she kept in her office. He drizzled that over the plain cheesecake, since they didn’t have any strawberries, and then he smeared a bit of it on Elizabeth’s mouth. She raised a brow in challenge, and he leaned over to kiss it off. She didn’t let him get much further than that, however. Joshua was watching them in fascination.
Elizabeth had nearly finished her first piece of cheesecake - with the full intention of having another - when there came a knock at the door. Before Elizabeth or John could move, however, Joshua hopped down and ran across the room.
“Something tells me that’s not Doctor Weir,” someone on the other side said, once Joshua had opened the door.
“I’m Joshua Weir,” he replied.
“Joshua,” Elizabeth said, “why don’t we let the people into the room?”
“Oh.”
He threw the door open wide and returned to the desk, where John had to help him back up onto his chair with the makeshift booster seat. Elizabeth stood to greet her visitors. “Doctor Weir,” said Karen Ackerman, the new president of the Student Bar Association, “it’s good to see you again.”
“Karen,” said Elizabeth, shaking the young woman’s hand. “How was your summer?”
“Busy. I was with Professor Saguta in Cairo,” she replied.
“Yes, he had quite a lot of good things to say about you and the seminar on Islamic law,” Elizabeth answered. “I’m terribly sorry about all of this. I’m taking care of my nephew this week, and he tends to insist on eating meals at normal times.”
“Obviously not in law school,” said a second-year student name Calvin MacMillan.
“I’m going to be in preschool soon,” Joshua supplied helpfully.
Elizabeth looked around the group and saw a face she didn’t recognize, but the others were all officers in the Student Bar Association, so that didn’t make sense. “And you are?” she prompted.
“Nick Patel,” said the young man. “I’m a first-year.”
“Ooh, ickle firstie,” John said quietly.
Elizabeth shot him a look. “I’m going to make you read more Shakespeare.”
“I’ve read the complete works. How can I read more?”
“Anyway,” she said, turning back to the students, “it’s good to meet you, Nick. Are you part and parcel with these guys, or are you just here at the same time?”
“A little of both,” he said. “Karen and Max were friends with my brother, so they just dragged me along.”
“Your brother,” Elizabeth repeated. “Aaron Patel? Graduated last year?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“Well, this is Doctor Sheppard from the math department,” she said, gesturing to John, “whose office is in this building for reasons that are convoluted and involve asbestos. Why don’t we all take a seat?”
Joshua ended up sitting on John’s lap in order to provide enough seating, and then Elizabeth said, “Any of you want cheesecake?”
After a few slices were passed out on paper plates, Elizabeth said, “So, how can I help you?”
The meeting was quite productive, with the group’s officers talking about ideas they had for the year and Elizabeth giving occasional suggestions and taking notes about things to bring up at the next faculty meeting. But as they were getting into what to do about undergraduates in the law library, Elizabeth’s cell phone suddenly rang.
John reached into her purse and answered it, but handed it to her immediately. “Hello?” she said.
“Elizabeth, it’s Andy,” her brother replied. “Melissa’s in labor. The doctor says it’ll be a few hours yet, but would you mind bringing Joshua up? Mom and Dad are here, and so are Melissa’s parents.”
“Hang on,” she said, turning away from the phone to John. “John, you don’t have class this afternoon, do you?”
“No, why?”
“Melissa’s in labor. Andy wants me to bring Joshua up to them, but I’ve got a meeting with the trustees this afternoon, and there’s no way I can get out of it,” she explained.
“I’ll take him.”
“Okay.” She turned back to the phone, standing to gather some of Joshua’s things. “Andy, John’s going to bring him up there, and I’ll be around as soon as I can. I have a meeting I can’t get out of.”
“All right, Elizabeth,” said her brother. “We’ll see you as soon as you can get here.”
“See you soon.” She closed up the phone and looked at her audience. “Sorry about that,” she said, handing John a bag with Joshua’s stuff.
“Can’t be helped,” John replied. As he stood and took the bag from her, he leaned forward and kissed her, something slightly more than a farewell gesture. “See you later.”
Joshua held John’s hand as they left, and then Elizabeth’s eyes fell on the students sitting on the other side of her desk. They all looked a bit startled. While the faculty knew all about John and Elizabeth’s relationship, the student body was far less attuned to the actual social lives of their professors. Which was as it should be.
“Doctor Weir,” Karen said, “how long has that been going on?”
“Since last Christmas,” Elizabeth replied, a small smirk on her lips. “Shall we get back to business, then?”
The hospital was only a couple miles away, and John thought it was almost a shame not to walk there, as the day was brilliant and sunny. Joshua probably wouldn’t have been up to it, though, and as it was, movies and books had taught John one thing (and probably only one thing) about childbirth. It took a long time. It would probably be well after dark before they left.
The nurse who escorted them to the ward remembered John from that snowmobiling accident two winters ago. He’d ended up with a huge gash on his neck. He remembered Elizabeth handling things pretty well, but everything was a bit of a blur for him. She must have been thrown off before he was, and not into a tree. At any rate, she managed to get him to the hospital in one piece, but later reports said that while he was in surgery, Paul Davis came by and she got about thirty seconds away from losing all her composure. Of course, it turned out that she’d gotten a mild concussion too.
They were nearing the waiting room when a slim woman with liberal amounts of grey in her otherwise dark hair came out of it. Joshua had been holding on to John’s fingers ever since they got out of the car, but now he took off running. “Grandma!” he cried. At that point, John finally realized that he was about to meet Elizabeth’s parents, and Elizabeth wasn’t even there to do introductions, let alone handle the diplomacy.
This was going to be interesting.
By the time John caught up with Joshua, the woman had lifted him from the ground. She kissed his cheek before setting him down again. Then she turned her attention to John. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said. “I’m Caroline Weir.”
“John Sheppard,” he said, shaking her hand.
“Ah, you must be my daughter’s boyfriend,” Caroline replied. “It’s good to finally meet you. Elizabeth’s talked about you so much that you’d think the two of you have been dating for years.”
“It’s good to meet you too,” said John. “And I think most of our friends say we’ve been dating forever, and just finally got around to admitting it.”
They went into the small waiting room, where Joshua ran around and gave hugs to the three adults in there, whom John assumed were the rest of the kid’s grandparents. Then Caroline waved one of the men over and said, “Bill, this is John Sheppard,” she said. “Elizabeth’s boyfriend.”
Elizabeth had evidently gotten her firm handshake from her father. “It’s, uh, it’s nice to meet you, sir,” he said.
“Call me Bill,” the man replied.
“Yes, sir. Bill.”
They settled into chairs that lined the small room, John sitting across from Elizabeth’s parents while Joshua was curled up on his other grandmother’s lap. “I thought Andy said Elizabeth was bringing him up,” Bill said, nodding at his grandson.
“She would have,” John explained, “but she had a meeting she couldn’t get out of.”
“Her brother’s baby is being born, and she couldn’t get out of a meeting?” the other grandmother asked.
“She’s the dean of the law school at the university,” said John. “This is the first meeting with the chancellor and the trustees this year. I’m not sure she could have gotten out of it if she’d been the one having the baby.”
Elizabeth’s father chuckled, and he started talking with Melissa’s father. John took the opportunity to pull out his cell phone and send a text message to Elizabeth.
“No news on baby front,” he typed. “Will update as situation progresses. Have met your parents. Your dad doesn’t seem to hate me. Taking this as v. good sign.”
As soon as he closed up his phone, Joshua hopped down and came over, taking one of John’s hands in both of his. “I need you to color with me.”
“You need me to?” John repeated, getting up, only to sit on the floor, where Joshua was spreading out coloring supplies. “Sounds like we should get to work.”
The meeting lasted three and a half hours, or in John Time, eleven text messages. Elizabeth ended up bringing dinner for the family, even though the hospital probably would have preferred it if they had gone to the cafeteria in the building. When she got to the small waiting room, John was sitting on the linoleum floor, sketching something out with the mechanical pencil he always carried. Joshua was next to him, but jumped up to give her a hug. “Auntie Lizabeth, did you beat the dragon?” he asked.
“He’ll live to fight another day,” she replied. “But everything’s okay for now.”
She kissed her mother and father on the cheek and chatted with them while handing food out to everyone, and then settled herself on the floor next to John. He slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her temple. “Another year of fun?” he said.
She sighed. “I’m just glad that Hammond and Sam’s father are still co-chairing the board. Jack’s going to kill someone if Kinsey ever ends up in control of it.”
“Just make sure you’re not in the line of fire,” John replied.
“Right,” she said, handing him his sandwich. “Don’t let Jack shoot me. Good advice, John.”
“Hey.” The tone of his voice made her stare at him a moment longer, long enough for him to lean in and kiss her. It was innocent enough, but it really made Elizabeth wish they were alone. When he pulled away, he added, “You can’t say I never cared.”
There was a retort on the tip of her tongue, but then she glanced over at her parents and saw them staring. She felt her cheeks warm, and she looked down at her salad and popped the top off the shallow bowl. Promptly, John stole a crouton, and Elizabeth glared.
By eight o’clock, Elizabeth and her parents had caught up on some of the small talk since the last time they’d seen each other. Usually she made a point of visiting them for a few weeks during the summer, but over the past summer she’d been. . . preoccupied. Her mother, at least, had understood, even without Elizabeth having to say much about it. She wasn’t so sure that her father would be so understanding of her newly rediscovered love life.
But now she had her head on John’s lap, her legs stretched over a few chairs, and John was running his fingers through her hair. The sensation was hypnotic, and Elizabeth found herself closing her eyes and relaxing almost to the point of sleep at least once. While they waited, her mother pulled out her knitting, which John had the good sense to compliment and to talk about his sister, who also knitted. Elizabeth’s father, on the other hand, went through his usual, seemingly casual interrogation of her boyfriend.
“John, what kinds of classes do you teach?” Dad asked.
“They’re trying to build up the undergraduate and graduate programs for statistics, so I’ve been teaching a lot of stat classes,” John replied. “I’m the only statistician in the department.”
“Why?”
“The rest of the department is more into pure math,” John explained. “A lot of statisticians these days are outside of the academic world. I kind of fell into teaching, but I’m glad I did.” As he spoke, his thumb brushed against Elizabeth’s cheek. Despite how tired she was, she didn’t miss his implication.
Then the door into the delivery room opened, and a nurse stuck her head into the waiting room. “Excuse me, Mrs. Harrigill?” she said. “Your daughter is asking for you.”
Melissa’s mother set Joshua on his feet and stood. He looked up at the nurse and said, “Can I see my sister? I’ve been waiting forever.”
The nurse laughed. “Not yet, but you should very soon.”
Elizabeth sat up, smiling, and Joshua took the opportunity to climb on John as his grandmother left. “Uncle John,” he began.
Then Elizabeth’s father interrupted him. “When did he start calling you Uncle?” he asked.
John frowned. “About the time he started talking,” he answered. “I don’t know where he picked it up.”
“I don’t either,” Elizabeth added. “He just started calling him that.”
Joshua looked at the two of them and frowned. “Auntie Lizabeth. Uncle John,” he stated, poking each of them in the chest as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. Then he wrapped his arms around John’s neck and sighed. “I want to see my baby sister,” he said.
“Well, you’ll just have wait,” John said. “When my baby sister was born, it took hours and hours and hours.”
Joshua looked at him. “You have a baby sister?”
John nodded, but said, “She’s not a baby anymore, but I have a little sister.”
“Did your parents let you name her?”
John laughed shortly. “No. Or she probably would have been named Leia.”
Joshua didn’t get it, but Elizabeth started giggling. His baby sister was too old to have been named after anyone from Star Wars, and John knew it. He sneaked a glance at her, a satisfied smirk on his face. He loved getting just far enough under her skin to make her lose her composure. Half the time she didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused that he could do it so easily.
“Mommy and Daddy aren’t letting me name the baby either,” Joshua babbled. “They’re naming her Mallory. Mallory Anne. With an E.”
The door opened again, and the same nurse stuck her head into the waiting room. “Joshua?”
He turned around, loosening his grip on John’s neck.
“Would you like to meet your little sister?”
“Yay!” he cried, and scrambled out of the room.
It was late before John, Joshua, Elizabeth, and her parents left the hospital. They hadn’t seen much of Melissa, but had seen quite a lot of Andy and the new baby. Elizabeth had even laid Mallory in John’s arms before he could protest that he’d never held a baby so new before. When she’d explained that newborns didn’t have enough muscle tone to keep them from seeming like rag dolls, he’d glared. That really wasn’t helping him feel less nervous about it.
When they got to the house, however, John carried Joshua from the car. The boy was fast asleep, though still clutching that stuffed dragon by the tail. John carried him up to bed and returned to the main floor of the house, hoping to get a little work done. But Elizabeth called him into the kitchen, and he found her with her parents around the bar. She had a glass of wine in one hand, and held out a beer to him with her other. “Will you join us, John?” she asked.
He took the bottle silently, and somewhat bewildered. Then Bill raised his own bottle, and Elizabeth and Caroline their glasses, and he said, “To Mallory Anne Weir.”
“To Mallory,” the others repeated, bottles and glasses clinking together. John found himself with Elizabeth leaning against him, his arm around her waist.
“Do you have work to do?” Elizabeth asked after a while.
“Nothing that can’t wait,” John replied, pressing a kiss to her hair. “I was going to try to make some headway on that article I’m presenting at the Chicago conference in March, but it doesn’t have to be done right now.”
She sighed. “I don’t know how you can think about math at this time of night,” she said, sipping at her wine. “Never understood how Dad can, either.”
“You’re the same way, Elizabeth,” her father replied. “It was just Russian in your sleep when you were four.”
“Well, that hasn’t changed,” John said. “She still does that. Never with any other language, though.”
“I learned Russian as a little girl, krasavyetz,” said Elizabeth. “Like you learning your multiplication tables by five.”
John brushed his lips against her neck. She was a little surprised that he was being this affectionate with her while standing four feet away from her parents. To their credit, they didn’t say anything that seemed related at first. Instead, her father looked out the French doors and said, “Elizabeth, when did you get that deck put in?”
“John did that over the summer, actually,” she replied. “Designed the whole thing himself and got a few of our friends from the university to help build it.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
“You’re the architect.”
“John,” he added, heading for the back door, “why don’t you show me what you did?”
“Uh, sure,” John said, and followed.
“Well,” Elizabeth said as the door shut behind them, “that was about the least subtle I’ve ever seen Dad.”
“He’s being himself, Elizabeth,” her mother replied. “And it’s not like you haven’t given us and your brother plenty of reason to wonder why you’re with a man like John. He’s not exactly what any of us thought was your type.”
“Mom, have you noticed that all my relationships with men who were supposedly my type went up in flames?” she asked, finishing her wine and taking the glass to the sink.
“Simon was really the only one that went up in flames,” her mother said. “The others resembled train wrecks, but they ended without too much pain and anguish.”
“John’s not like any of them,” Elizabeth replied. “He’s brilliant and exasperating and makes me laugh when I’m feeling awful. He doesn’t care when we get to a party, or even if we get there at all. And he looks at me like -”
“Like you’re the only woman he ever wants to look at again.”
Elizabeth nodded. “He sees me, Mom, and he loves me anyway.”
Her mother smiled. “I’m just amazed that you put up with him long enough to find out that the sex would be amazing.”
Elizabeth felt her face grow hot almost immediately. “Mother!”
“It’s the way he touches you, Elizabeth,” her mother said. “You’ve never been overly affectionate, but. . .”
“He is,” Elizabeth finished. “I don’t mind it from him. I like it, actually.”
“It helps when it’s the right one.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Really, Mom, you’re about as subtle as Dad.”
“I’m just saying.” Her mother came over and kissed her cheek. “Tell your father when he comes in that I’m taking a shower.”
“Good night, Mom.”
“Good night, sweetheart.”
Bill Weir’s point in coming outside was not to talk about the construction of the deck, not that John believed that for a moment. When they got outside, Bill took a drink from his bottle and said, “So you’re presenting a paper at a conference?”
“Yeah, during spring break,” John replied. “It’s on teaching applications in calculus.”
“That seems like an odd topic.”
“Unfortunately it’s not. An old colleague of mine emailed me about six months ago to tell me that at the university where he’s teaching now has dropped all applications from all their calculus classes. The instructors in the engineering school are throwing a fit.”
“I can imagine,” said Bill. “My architecture professors would have thrown a fit.”
“You’re an architect?”
“Mostly commercial,” he said. “Elizabeth’s never mentioned it?”
“She has,” said John. “Just small talk, trying to delay the inevitable grilling about my intentions toward your daughter.”
To John’s surprise, Bill laughed. “You know, John, even a father can admit sometimes that his little girl isn’t so little anymore.”
“That’s good to know.”
“And I’m sure her brother’s already given you the speech about if you hurt her. . .”
“Couple of times.”
“She’s grown up to be a remarkable woman,” her father continued. “There were so many directions her life could have taken.”
“For what it’s worth, she loves what she’s doing now,” John replied. “Feels like she’s accomplishing something worthwhile.”
“She loves being here too. Both my children do.” The older man sighed. “They both grew up in a huge city, and ended up in the middle of nowhere.”
“Elizabeth’s just read too much Willa Cather.” John smiled a little. “Though there’s something to be said for being this isolated. A person can get used to it in a hurry.”
“John?”
John looked at him out of the corner of his eye, bottle at his lips.
“Yeah, I think we both knew we weren’t going to avoid this conversation.”
It felt like at least three hours passed before Elizabeth’s father finally went back into the house, leaving John out on the deck for a moment to collect himself. It had been an incredibly weird day, what with dragons and L’Hôpital and babies and fathers and all. When he came back inside, he grabbed another beer and flopped down on the couch.
His eyes were closed and his head was resting against the back of the sofa when he heard someone coming down the stairs and into the living room. He pretended to ignore it, even when the person came around the couch and stood behind him. It wasn’t until he felt fingernails drag lightly through his stubble that he reacted. “Elizabeth,” he said, “that better be you.”
He opened one eye, then the other, and saw Elizabeth smiling down at him. “Never can fool you, can I?” she said, coming around the sofa. Her hair was all wet, and she was wearing her red silk robe. “Did you survive my father?”
“Well, you know what they say,” he replied, patting his knee. She sat on his lap, and he inhaled deeply. She’d showered with that soap that he both loved and hated, because it tended to be such a distraction to him. “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, but I should have expected as much from my girlfriend’s dad.”
“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
“No,” John replied, pulling her a bit closer. “I was just trying to score some sympathy points. And was I imagining things, or did I actually hear you and your mother talking about our sex life?”
Elizabeth touched her hand to her forehead, her cheeks turning pink. “My mother still takes great pleasure in embarrassing me,” she said.
“That’s what moms are for.” John kissed the base of her neck, and she twisted around to face him. “We embarrass them when we’re little, and they embarrass us when we’re big.”
Elizabeth laughed a little and rested her hand on his chest. “That much I know. I was just hoping she’d get tired of it someday.”
He smiled. “I love you,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I’ve said that enough lately.”
“You don’t have to say it for me to know.”
“But I should.” He ran his hand up her side and kissed her. He’d meant it to be brief, but instead Elizabeth deepened the kiss, shifting and cupping his face with her hands. She was kneeling over him, and John brought both hands to her back to steady her. She seemed so small when she let him touch her like this, small enough to seem fragile, but he knew she wasn’t weak.
Not long after they’d officially started dating, Elizabeth had told him that he drove her crazy, knowing exactly how to kiss her. He hadn’t admitted it at the time, but that problem was very much mutual. This kind of kiss was his favorite. She could probably kill him with it if she put her mind to it, and he wouldn’t care. There was just enough of a hint of desperation to drive him insane, and it was all wet and sloppy and perfect.
When he’d had more than he could stand and yet not had enough, John pulled her off his lap and laid her down on the sofa, breaking away from her mouth only to trail his lips down her long neck. “John,” Elizabeth managed, her breathing heavy as his hand found the sash of her robe, “here probably isn’t the best place for this.”
He froze, his tongue at the hollow of her throat. “You’re probably right.”
“Unless you want my parents walking in on us having sex in the living room.”
Reluctantly, he sat up again. Elizabeth did too, draping one leg between his and resting her hand on his shoulder. “Normally I’d be okay with the risk of discovery,” John replied, “but I’d rather not die today.”
Elizabeth looked mildly alarmed. “Please tell me my father didn’t threaten you.”
“No, but I suspect he wouldn’t be pleased with us doing this in a room where anyone can walk in, even if it is your house.”
“Our house,” she corrected. “Did he manage to talk about marriage without actually saying the word?”
“Yup. Your mom?”
She nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d planned that.”
John looked at her quite seriously, and her smile faded. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it before they brought it up,” he admitted.
“So would I,” she replied. “So where does that leave us?”
“Together, dushenka maya,” he said. He’d picked up one or two of the random Russian phrases Elizabeth used, after all. “In love. And maybe eloping and not telling anyone about it for six months.”
She giggled, burying her face against his shoulder. “My mother would kill us.”
“Yeah, but it’d be funny while it lasted.”
Elizabeth gave him an odd, amused look for that, and she got up, holding her hand out to him. “Come to bed. I don’t think we ever picked up where we left off last night.”
John stood up, smirking. But instead of taking her hand, he swept her off her feet and carried her out of the room, saying, “I like the way you think, Doctor.”
Author: Melyanna
Rating: Teen-friendly
Summary: The learning never really stops.
Notes: Better late than never, right? This was written for the auficathon, filling lilwitchy's request for John and Elizabeth each teaching a class, cheesecake, and beer. What she probably wasn't counting on was close to 9,000 words of fluff. ;) Many thanks to athenaktt for beta reading, and to those who helped me figure out what in the world the point of this was.
The math department of Langford University had a tradition almost as old as the school itself. Every semester, each faculty member, from the lowliest untenured instructor to the dean himself, would throw his name into a hat, and three names would be selected to teach Math for Girls.
Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers, the course catalog called it, as did the class’s hefty textbook. Such trivial details in no way prevented the faculty from calling it other things, such as the Class from Hell, or the If-I-Have-to-Teach-This-Again-I’ll-Kill-Myself Class. John preferred to stick with Math for Girls. The moniker annoyed Elizabeth to no end.
He smirked just a little as he pushed his way through the corridor filled with students. She’d still been in bed when he left the house that morning, though she was awake enough to make him want to skip class. Still, it was the first week of the semester, and it would be very bad form for him not to show up to the first meeting of a class. So he made his way into the hall where he’d be lecturing for this class and tried to push thoughts of Elizabeth that morning from his mind. The thought of her mostly naked and lazily smiling at him while he fumbled with his tie was not going to help him get through this class.
Down at the lectern, he set his briefcase aside and fidgeted with his tie for a moment, then looked up at his class. “Good morning, ladies,” he said, not seeing another male in the room. So far, things were normal. “Welcome to Math 154, Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers. Anyone in the wrong room?”
No one got up and left, so he continued. “This class is required for el ed majors,” he said. “The general idea is that if you’re going to teach math to kids, you might want to be able to do math yourselves.” There was some scattered laughter at that. “So this class will cover the concepts of general math that you all studied in elementary school. Any questions?”
There were none, so John picked up a stack of syllabi and began distributing it around the lecture hall. “I have one more thing before we start going over material,” he said. “This class is not worth crying over. Yes, you’re all in here because you have to pass the class to get your teaching certification, but I don’t want to see any of you coming to my office in tears. I’m perfectly willing to work with you on your grades. I’ll let you take a test up to three times if you feel like you can get a better score on it, and I’ll give out extra credit assignments to those who need it. But this class is absolutely not worth crying over.”
He saw a few girls shifting uncomfortably in their seats. It seemed that he had more than one student this semester who had used that tactic on a teacher before. That had never worked on John, at least with students. Girlfriends, on the other hand. . .
He came back up to the lectern and looked down at his notes. “Having said all that, this class covers a great deal of material. Since we only meet twice a week, we’ll have to move through it quickly,” he said. “Those of you who have the textbook, turn your attention to the first example on page twelve. Those of you who don’t have the textbook, get it as soon as possible, since you have homework for Thursday.”
This was shaping up to be a very long day.
It wasn’t supposed to be. Elizabeth didn’t have a class until ten in the morning, and due to a scheduling fluke, she didn’t have any meetings until after lunch. She’d stayed in bed reading for almost an hour after John left the house. Usually she was up well before he was, so it was a nice switch.
But half an hour before she was intending to be in her office, the doorbell rang. Hurriedly she threw her jacket on over the low white silk shell she was wearing and ran to the door. On the other side, and much to her surprise, were her brother and nephew. “Andy?” she said, bewildered. “Is something wrong?”
He frowned at her. “We talked about this,” he replied. “A month ago you agreed to take care of Joshua while Melissa’s in the hospital.”
It took all her self-control to keep from showing any kind of reaction. “Of course,” she said. Her sister-in-law was pregnant and going into the hospital that morning so they could induce labor the next day. Elizabeth had agreed to keep Joshua for the week, since both sets of grandparents would be coming in from out of town. “Is Melissa all right?” she asked.
“She’s feeling fine, but ready for the baby,” her brother replied. He looked down at his son. “Joshua, you ready to spend some time with your aunt?”
He smiled at her adorably. “Auntie Lizabeth,” he said, “can I really stay a whole week?”
“You really can,” she replied. She held her hand out to him, and he grabbed her fingers. Elizabeth looked back up at Andy. “You realize this week is insane for me, right?”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” he replied. “I swear we weren’t planning on having a baby in the first week of fall semester.”
“I’ll believe you. This time.”
Andy glanced into the house as he handed Joshua’s suitcase over. “John’s not unpacked yet?” he asked, seeing boxes in the living room.
“Not quite. He just got the last of his stuff out of his apartment three or four days ago,” said Elizabeth. “I think he has three boxes left to unpack. It’ll be done by the end of the week, even if I have to do it myself.”
Andy smiled. “That’s the little sister I know and love.” He kissed her cheek. “We’ll give you a call when anything exciting happens.”
“Well,” Elizabeth said, looking down at her nephew as soon as the door had closed, “have you had breakfast?”
“Yep!” he said. “I had Cheerios.”
“Good to hear,” she replied, handing him his suitcase. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come to school with me.”
To her surprise, the four-year-old started jumping up and down. “Yay! Can I play on your computer?”
“Not all day,” Elizabeth said. When he pouted, she cupped his chin and said, “If you’re good, I’ll see if we can watch the marching band practice this afternoon, all right?” Joshua brightened immediately, so she continued, “Now, take your suitcase up to the guest room and get some things you can play with quietly. We can’t disturb the classes in the building, remember?”
They arrived on campus twenty minutes later than Elizabeth had planned, though she was still there in time for her morning class. When she came into the outer office, Peter stood up from his desk and said, “Doctor Weir, I was starting to get worried.” Then Joshua came in sight, and he added, “This should have an interesting explanation.”
“Peter, this is my nephew, Joshua,” she explained. “Joshua, this is Mr. Grodin.”
“You can call me Peter,” said her assistant.
“Hi, Peter,” Joshua answered.
“Peter, I’m so sorry about this,” Elizabeth said. “With everything else going on, I forgot to tell you that I’d agreed to take care of Joshua this week. His mom is having a baby quite soon, so he’s staying with me.”
“That’s not a problem. He can keep me company while you’re in class or battling the dragon.” Peter turned his attention to the boy. “So, you’re going to be a big brother?”
Joshua nodded solemnly. “I’m going to have a baby sister.” Then he looked up at Elizabeth. “Auntie Lizabeth, can I watch you fight the dragons?”
“It’s less exciting than you think,” she replied, steering him toward the inner office.
She arrived at her ten o’clock class three minutes before it was scheduled to begin, which was rather late for her. Her third-year students looked at her a bit oddly, knowing her better than that. “Ladies, gentlemen,” she said to the fifteen students, “welcome to your last year in law school. Pull your desks around in a circle. This is a discussion class.”
The students all started moving their desks around, chatting with each other amicably. Then amid the noise, the door opened again and a young man walked in. “Ah, Mr. Anderson,” Elizabeth said. “Nice of you to join us.”
“Sorry, Doctor Weir,” he said, getting the idea and grabbing a desk to pull into the circle. Then the bell rang.
“You weren’t quite late,” Elizabeth replied with a small smile, “but let’s try to be more on time to this class than you were for my class last semester.”
He smiled at her disarmingly. “Sure thing, ma’am.”
“Well,” she continued, addressing the rest of the class, “welcome to Selected Problems in International Human Rights. I sent you all a syllabus when you signed up for the class, along with your summer assignments.” She took a seat in the circle of desks. “Let’s start off easy. Can anyone define human rights?”
She smiled, knowing it was no easy question. Finally, Alexa Cartwright spoke up. “They’re rights which are intrinsic-”
“Hang on,” Elizabeth interrupted. “No defining a word with itself.”
“Are you this evil with everyone, or just your students?” the girl asked.
Elizabeth smiled wickedly. “You should hear the stories my boyfriend tells.”
John was teaching a graduate-level class in statistical analysis until half-past twelve on Tuesdays, so he was almost to the point of stomach-growling hungry when he walked into Elizabeth’s outer office. Peter wasn’t guarding the gate, but John smelled food. He continued into the inner office.
“Elizabeth,” he said, almost whining, “I thought I was your lunch date.”
She smiled apologetically. “I think we both managed to mix up the dates on when Melissa’s having the baby,” she said, nodding at her preschool companion. “We’ve got Joshua with us this week.”
He rolled that last sentence over in his mind a few times, trying to get used to the feel of it and wondering if it fit him. Elizabeth’s nephew was a great kid and John loved him to death, but it was just the way she’d said it, like this was a joint responsibility.
Three weeks earlier, John had brought a pile of mail over from his apartment and spread it out on Elizabeth’s kitchen table. Late that night, when it had been too hot for anyone but Elizabeth to sleep, he’d wandered down to the kitchen to take care of it. She, however, had been woken by his absence and followed him a few minutes later. They sat in silence for a while, until Elizabeth picked up the new lease for his apartment that he hadn’t signed yet. He half-expected her to suggest some change to the wording of it, as that incredible mind of hers never shut off, but instead she set it aside and said nothing until he prompted her.
In the light of the full summer moon, she’d looked almost girlish and nervous. She’d made the suggestion that he stop spending money on an apartment he’d barely been inside all summer and move into her house. He’d honestly never considered it, but hadn’t required much convincing.
Despite the fact that he’d hardly been in his apartment all summer, he couldn’t believe how different it felt to wake up in Elizabeth’s bed the morning after he told the landlord he was moving out. And stranger still was how natural it felt. It was a little amazing to him that now, such things as the care of her nephew, which had been entrusted to her, had become joint too.
“John?” she said. “You look lost.”
He shook himself mentally. “I thought we were getting Chinese today,” he said. Then, coming up to Joshua and mussing his hair, he added, “Hey, squirt.”
“I’m not a squirt, I’m Joshua,” the boy protested, grinning up at John.
“Yeah, and I’m not actually your uncle.”
Joshua shrugged and returned to his French fries.
“So,” John said to Elizabeth, “McDonald’s?”
She smiled again and opened her desk drawer. “Joshua wanted it. I figured it wouldn’t hurt today, since we didn’t have time to pack him a lunch at home,” she explained. She pulled a sandwich - not something from McDonald’s - from the drawer and passed it across the desk. “I had Peter get you something from the café downstairs.”
John took it and unwrapped it. “Ooh, chicken salad.”
“Didn’t have turkey today, apparently.”
“That’s okay.”
She was eating what looked like a chicken caesar salad, and John reached across the desk to steal a crouton. She poked him with her fork. “How was class?” she asked.
“My grad class looks like it’s going to be a good one,” he replied. “Met with one of the kids I’m advising on his doctorate, too. What he comes up with could have some interesting implications in aviation.”
“I’ll take your word for that,” said Elizabeth, sipping at a can of Coke. John reached for it as she set it down, but then Elizabeth rolled back to her refrigerator and got one for him. “What about your eight o’clock?” she asked.
“I’m reserving judgment,” he replied. “What about you, Joshua? How’s your day been so far?”
With half a chicken nugget in his hand, Joshua said, “I fought a dragon for Auntie Lizabeth today.”
“Really,” said John. “How big was it?”
“Bigger than you,” Joshua said solemnly. “He couldn’t fit in this room. He was orange and green and he tried to steal my chicken nuggets.”
“And what was Auntie Lizabeth doing while you fought off the dragon?”
“Oh, the dragon wanted to kidnap her,” said Joshua. “I had to save her.”
John hazarded a glance at Elizabeth, who seemed to be having a hard time stifling laughter. He took the opportunity to snatch another crouton off her salad. “Well, as Auntie Lizabeth’s boyfriend, I’ll thank you for the favor,” he said to Joshua.
A few seconds passed, and Joshua said, “Auntie Lizabeth.”
“Joshua, you need to eat,” she interrupted. “I have to go to a meeting soon.”
“It’s important.”
John nudged him. “The bathroom’s over there,” he suggested.
“I don’t have to go potty,” Joshua declared, sounding rather indignant. “I want to talk to Mommy and Daddy.”
“Finish your chicken,” Elizabeth said. “Then we’ll call.”
He finished the last piece of chicken in the little paper box a few minutes later, and Elizabeth picked up her cell phone. While she chatted for a moment and then handed the phone to her nephew, John took the opportunity to finish the rest of his lunch undisturbed. Joshua babbled on for quite a while, and Elizabeth had to rush out before he was done, thus leaving her phone behind. Joshua, however, failed to notice this, and eventually looked around the office in alarm. “Auntie Lizabeth?” he said.
“She had to go, Joshua,” John replied.
“Daddy wants to talk to her.”
John took the phone. “Andy, it’s John,” he said.
“Hi, John,” Andy replied. “Where’s Elizabeth?”
“She had to go to a meeting,” he explained. “She was running late. Do you need to leave a message for her?”
“No, it was just something about our parents getting here tomorrow morning.”
John raised a brow. He hadn’t thought about Elizabeth’s parents being in town for this. “Well,” he said, “how’s Melissa doing?”
“She’s fine,” said Andy. “Nothing exciting yet. Can you have Elizabeth call me when she’s got a minute?”
“Sure. Talk to you later.”
“Bye.”
John closed the phone and opened his mouth to say something to Joshua, but found that the boy had left the desk and climbed onto the loveseat across the room, lying down as though to take a nap. “Joshua,” John said.
“Uncle John?”
“Go to the bathroom before you take a nap.”
Joshua got up, and John decided that a nap did sound like a good idea. By the time Joshua came back in, John had settled himself into Elizabeth’s deep leather desk chair and had propped his feet up on the desk. Within minutes, the two of them were both asleep.
That night, Elizabeth probably let Joshua stay up too late, but she found herself laughing too hard at John as he played with her nephew to worry about it too much. Joshua had always had fun when he stayed at her house, but John had the advantage of being approximately the same mental age. Many of her friends had expressed amazement that she had actually stayed with John this long, but when confronted with those questions, Elizabeth would merely smile enigmatically. There were some things her friends didn’t need to know.
John even read a bedtime story to Joshua, joining Elizabeth in their bedroom later. She’d taken to wearing an old one of his dress shirts to bed, and when John came in the room, she had picked up his copy of War and Peace and started reading. “Are you losing my place?” he asked, closing the door behind himself and peeling his shirt off.
“You’re on three hundred sixty-seven,” she replied. “I’ll put the marker back. It’s just been a while since I read this in English.”
“Of course, Doctor Speaks-More-Languages-Than-Langford-Offers,” John said, sitting next to her on the bed.
“I certainly hope not,” Elizabeth answered, putting the bookmark back in its place and handing the book over. “I only speak five.”
“Oh, only,” he said. As he set the book aside, he added, “Well, you know what they say.”
She leaned forward and kissed him softly. “What do they say, Doctor Never-Misses-an-Office-Hour?”
“I was expecting you to know.” Without letting her reply, he cupped her face with both hands and kissed her rather thoroughly. There was no question of where this was going.
Except for when Joshua started shrieking down the hall.
Elizabeth hurried out of the room so quickly that she just barely remembered to grab her robe on her way out the door. “Joshua?” she said, coming into the guest bedroom as she tied her robe closed. “Joshua, sweetie, what’s the matter?”
“There’s a dragon in the closet!” the boy said. “He said his name is Jor and he’s gonna eat me!”
John had followed her to the room, and Elizabeth looked at him as he scratched his head. But Joshua seemed genuinely scared by something, real or imaginary, so she walked over and sat on the bed. “Come here, sweetheart,” she said, pulling her nephew close to hug him. “Don’t you know that this house has a rule against dragons eating little boys?”
“What about girls?” he asked. “I don’t want the dragon to eat you either.”
“Dragons can’t eat people here, all right?”
“Hey, Elizabeth,” John said. She looked up and saw that John had opened the closet. “Did you know there’s actually a dragon in here?”
“John. . .”
“No, I’m serious.” He turned around, holding up a blue stuffed dragon by its tail.
Elizabeth frowned. She’d forgotten that she’d stuck some Christmas presents in that closet. “Joshua, did you find that in the closet?” she asked.
He nodded. “I opened the door and he said-”
”I know, I know, he was going to eat you,” Elizabeth interrupted.
“I don’t know about that,” John said. “He looks like a pretty friendly dragon.”
“He’s not!” Joshua insisted.
“Shhh.” Elizabeth stood up and lifted Joshua from the bed. “John, let’s lock the dragon back up again, all right? Joshua, do you want a glass of water?”
He shook his head. “Can I sleep with you, Auntie Lizabeth?”
Elizabeth wavered, while John shot her an alarmed look, but ten minutes later, the three of them were all in the master bedroom. “If he kicks me,” John said, “I’m sleeping downstairs.”
“Fair enough,” Elizabeth replied.
“Auntie,” said Joshua, “are you and Uncle John getting married?”
“Go to sleep, Joshua.”
John did wake up on the couch early the next morning, and he ended up working on lesson plans to make use of the early hour. The smell of coffee must have woken Elizabeth, though, as she came down after a while and found him with textbooks and papers spread over the bar in the kitchen. “Working before noon?” she said.
He glared at her over his bowl of cereal. “I’ll have you know, I do very important procrastination before noon every day.”
She came around and stood behind him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “I’m sure you do,” she murmured, before tracing a line down his neck with kisses, maddeningly soft.
“Elizabeth,” he said, almost a sigh. He could feel her smiling.
“I’m sorry you ended up on the couch,” she replied, rubbing her smooth cheek against the stubble on his own. “But there’s a first time for everything, I guess.”
“Second time, actually,” John said, picking up a pencil and scribbling down something about L’Hôpital’s Rule in his notebook.
“Second time?” Elizabeth repeated. “I don’t remember -”
“It was last February,” he said, not looking at her. “You had bronchitis. I didn’t really think you needed to be alone all night with that cough.”
She let go of him and sat down on the bar stool next to him. “I thought it was strange that you’d gotten here so early in the morning,” she replied. “I guess I was too strung out on medication to think about it much. But why were you so worried?”
“I’d never seen you sick before,” he stated. “And you were pretty sick that weekend.”
He started writing again, but Elizabeth plucked the pencil from his hand. “Sometimes you’re impossibly sweet,” she said, turning his face to her and kissing him.
“Thought I was just impossible,” he said.
“That’s the rest of the time.” She stood up and rubbed his back briefly. “I’m going to wake Joshua up and send him down here while I take a shower. Can you get breakfast for him?”
“What does he eat?”
“He’ll eat Cheerios, same as you.”
She left, and a few minutes later Joshua entered the room, still in his pajamas, but dragging that stuffed dragon behind him. “Hi, Uncle John.”
“Hey, kid,” John replied. “What’s with the dragon?”
“Jor and I are friends now,” Joshua said matter-of-factly. “It was a mis- a must-”
“Misunderstanding?”
“Yeah.”
John shook his head. “Is Aunt Elizabeth using big words around you again?”
“Constantly,” Joshua replied, with a touch of preschool melodrama. “Jor decided he likes eating pizza better than boys.”
The bar stools weren’t exactly user-friendly for a four-year-old, so when Joshua came around the bar, John had to help him up. “Well, it’s a good thing he’s decided he’ll eat other things. We’ve got a shortage of little boy here.”
“What’s this?” Joshua asked, pointing at a word on the page. “L-H-O-P-I-T-A-L.”
John looked down. He hadn’t realized that Joshua knew any of his letters yet. “Hey, that’s pretty good. It says L’Hôpital.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Well, in this case, it’s someone’s name, but I think it means ‘hospital’ in French.”
“French?”
“It’s another language.” John walked toward the other side of the kitchen, where the refrigerator was. “Not everyone talks like we do. In some places, people use completely different words. You and I wouldn’t understand them.”
“Where? Iowa?”
John resisted the urge to laugh. “We’ll look at the globe in Aunt Elizabeth’s office later.” He opened the refrigerator. “So what do you want, Josh?”
“Cheerios, and my name is Joshua.”
John paused, his hand on the milk. “But ‘Josh’ is short for that.”
“Mommy says that we should call people by their names because if they were supposed to be called something else, they would be,” he declared.
“Okay, I’m not sure I follow that logic,” John said, bringing milk, cereal, and a bowl over, “but what do you call your mom?”
“Mommy.”
“Did you know her name is Melissa?”
Joshua’s eyes widened.
John proceeded to pour cereal into the bowl. “But you get to call her Mommy because you’re her son. You get to call her a special name. Only you and your baby sister, when she’s big enough, get to call her that.” He poured the milk in. “So, since you’re my special little buddy, I can call you Josh. If you’re okay with it.”
Joshua still looked a bit skeptical, even as John slid the bowl over to him. “You want to call me Josh ‘cause I’m special?”
“Yep.”
“Okay,” Joshua replied. “But no one else!”
“No one else. We can swear it over peanut butter later.”
“Okay.” He set the dragon on top of John’s lesson plans. “Jor says he wants to eat your papers.”
“Well, tell him not to.”
During a break between classes that morning, John ran to Cally’s and bought lunch for the three of them, including a whole cheesecake that he managed to fit into Elizabeth’s mini fridge. She’d smiled when she found it with the rest of their lunch. Joshua had never before experienced cheesecake.
At noon her desk was cleared off for lunch, and she had Joshua sitting on top of one of her big reference volumes so he could reach the desktop reasonably and not spill things everywhere. John had returned a favor by getting lunch for Peter too, but Peter told him to keep it in the refrigerator, as he had plans for lunch. This revelation left Elizabeth rather perplexed, and wondering if Peter had a girlfriend and just hadn’t said anything. She wouldn’t blame him if that were true. He certainly deserved a lot of ribbing for the five years of grief he’d given her over John.
Elizabeth didn’t have anything scheduled until 1:30, so she’d have plenty of time to relax before heading off for the first board meeting of the school year. Or “bored meeting,” as John liked to call them in the text messages he’d send her during them. This meant that she got to let Joshua try cheesecake for the first time.
John had found Elizabeth’s chocolate stash ages ago, including the bottle of chocolate syrup she kept in her office. He drizzled that over the plain cheesecake, since they didn’t have any strawberries, and then he smeared a bit of it on Elizabeth’s mouth. She raised a brow in challenge, and he leaned over to kiss it off. She didn’t let him get much further than that, however. Joshua was watching them in fascination.
Elizabeth had nearly finished her first piece of cheesecake - with the full intention of having another - when there came a knock at the door. Before Elizabeth or John could move, however, Joshua hopped down and ran across the room.
“Something tells me that’s not Doctor Weir,” someone on the other side said, once Joshua had opened the door.
“I’m Joshua Weir,” he replied.
“Joshua,” Elizabeth said, “why don’t we let the people into the room?”
“Oh.”
He threw the door open wide and returned to the desk, where John had to help him back up onto his chair with the makeshift booster seat. Elizabeth stood to greet her visitors. “Doctor Weir,” said Karen Ackerman, the new president of the Student Bar Association, “it’s good to see you again.”
“Karen,” said Elizabeth, shaking the young woman’s hand. “How was your summer?”
“Busy. I was with Professor Saguta in Cairo,” she replied.
“Yes, he had quite a lot of good things to say about you and the seminar on Islamic law,” Elizabeth answered. “I’m terribly sorry about all of this. I’m taking care of my nephew this week, and he tends to insist on eating meals at normal times.”
“Obviously not in law school,” said a second-year student name Calvin MacMillan.
“I’m going to be in preschool soon,” Joshua supplied helpfully.
Elizabeth looked around the group and saw a face she didn’t recognize, but the others were all officers in the Student Bar Association, so that didn’t make sense. “And you are?” she prompted.
“Nick Patel,” said the young man. “I’m a first-year.”
“Ooh, ickle firstie,” John said quietly.
Elizabeth shot him a look. “I’m going to make you read more Shakespeare.”
“I’ve read the complete works. How can I read more?”
“Anyway,” she said, turning back to the students, “it’s good to meet you, Nick. Are you part and parcel with these guys, or are you just here at the same time?”
“A little of both,” he said. “Karen and Max were friends with my brother, so they just dragged me along.”
“Your brother,” Elizabeth repeated. “Aaron Patel? Graduated last year?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“Well, this is Doctor Sheppard from the math department,” she said, gesturing to John, “whose office is in this building for reasons that are convoluted and involve asbestos. Why don’t we all take a seat?”
Joshua ended up sitting on John’s lap in order to provide enough seating, and then Elizabeth said, “Any of you want cheesecake?”
After a few slices were passed out on paper plates, Elizabeth said, “So, how can I help you?”
The meeting was quite productive, with the group’s officers talking about ideas they had for the year and Elizabeth giving occasional suggestions and taking notes about things to bring up at the next faculty meeting. But as they were getting into what to do about undergraduates in the law library, Elizabeth’s cell phone suddenly rang.
John reached into her purse and answered it, but handed it to her immediately. “Hello?” she said.
“Elizabeth, it’s Andy,” her brother replied. “Melissa’s in labor. The doctor says it’ll be a few hours yet, but would you mind bringing Joshua up? Mom and Dad are here, and so are Melissa’s parents.”
“Hang on,” she said, turning away from the phone to John. “John, you don’t have class this afternoon, do you?”
“No, why?”
“Melissa’s in labor. Andy wants me to bring Joshua up to them, but I’ve got a meeting with the trustees this afternoon, and there’s no way I can get out of it,” she explained.
“I’ll take him.”
“Okay.” She turned back to the phone, standing to gather some of Joshua’s things. “Andy, John’s going to bring him up there, and I’ll be around as soon as I can. I have a meeting I can’t get out of.”
“All right, Elizabeth,” said her brother. “We’ll see you as soon as you can get here.”
“See you soon.” She closed up the phone and looked at her audience. “Sorry about that,” she said, handing John a bag with Joshua’s stuff.
“Can’t be helped,” John replied. As he stood and took the bag from her, he leaned forward and kissed her, something slightly more than a farewell gesture. “See you later.”
Joshua held John’s hand as they left, and then Elizabeth’s eyes fell on the students sitting on the other side of her desk. They all looked a bit startled. While the faculty knew all about John and Elizabeth’s relationship, the student body was far less attuned to the actual social lives of their professors. Which was as it should be.
“Doctor Weir,” Karen said, “how long has that been going on?”
“Since last Christmas,” Elizabeth replied, a small smirk on her lips. “Shall we get back to business, then?”
The hospital was only a couple miles away, and John thought it was almost a shame not to walk there, as the day was brilliant and sunny. Joshua probably wouldn’t have been up to it, though, and as it was, movies and books had taught John one thing (and probably only one thing) about childbirth. It took a long time. It would probably be well after dark before they left.
The nurse who escorted them to the ward remembered John from that snowmobiling accident two winters ago. He’d ended up with a huge gash on his neck. He remembered Elizabeth handling things pretty well, but everything was a bit of a blur for him. She must have been thrown off before he was, and not into a tree. At any rate, she managed to get him to the hospital in one piece, but later reports said that while he was in surgery, Paul Davis came by and she got about thirty seconds away from losing all her composure. Of course, it turned out that she’d gotten a mild concussion too.
They were nearing the waiting room when a slim woman with liberal amounts of grey in her otherwise dark hair came out of it. Joshua had been holding on to John’s fingers ever since they got out of the car, but now he took off running. “Grandma!” he cried. At that point, John finally realized that he was about to meet Elizabeth’s parents, and Elizabeth wasn’t even there to do introductions, let alone handle the diplomacy.
This was going to be interesting.
By the time John caught up with Joshua, the woman had lifted him from the ground. She kissed his cheek before setting him down again. Then she turned her attention to John. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said. “I’m Caroline Weir.”
“John Sheppard,” he said, shaking her hand.
“Ah, you must be my daughter’s boyfriend,” Caroline replied. “It’s good to finally meet you. Elizabeth’s talked about you so much that you’d think the two of you have been dating for years.”
“It’s good to meet you too,” said John. “And I think most of our friends say we’ve been dating forever, and just finally got around to admitting it.”
They went into the small waiting room, where Joshua ran around and gave hugs to the three adults in there, whom John assumed were the rest of the kid’s grandparents. Then Caroline waved one of the men over and said, “Bill, this is John Sheppard,” she said. “Elizabeth’s boyfriend.”
Elizabeth had evidently gotten her firm handshake from her father. “It’s, uh, it’s nice to meet you, sir,” he said.
“Call me Bill,” the man replied.
“Yes, sir. Bill.”
They settled into chairs that lined the small room, John sitting across from Elizabeth’s parents while Joshua was curled up on his other grandmother’s lap. “I thought Andy said Elizabeth was bringing him up,” Bill said, nodding at his grandson.
“She would have,” John explained, “but she had a meeting she couldn’t get out of.”
“Her brother’s baby is being born, and she couldn’t get out of a meeting?” the other grandmother asked.
“She’s the dean of the law school at the university,” said John. “This is the first meeting with the chancellor and the trustees this year. I’m not sure she could have gotten out of it if she’d been the one having the baby.”
Elizabeth’s father chuckled, and he started talking with Melissa’s father. John took the opportunity to pull out his cell phone and send a text message to Elizabeth.
“No news on baby front,” he typed. “Will update as situation progresses. Have met your parents. Your dad doesn’t seem to hate me. Taking this as v. good sign.”
As soon as he closed up his phone, Joshua hopped down and came over, taking one of John’s hands in both of his. “I need you to color with me.”
“You need me to?” John repeated, getting up, only to sit on the floor, where Joshua was spreading out coloring supplies. “Sounds like we should get to work.”
The meeting lasted three and a half hours, or in John Time, eleven text messages. Elizabeth ended up bringing dinner for the family, even though the hospital probably would have preferred it if they had gone to the cafeteria in the building. When she got to the small waiting room, John was sitting on the linoleum floor, sketching something out with the mechanical pencil he always carried. Joshua was next to him, but jumped up to give her a hug. “Auntie Lizabeth, did you beat the dragon?” he asked.
“He’ll live to fight another day,” she replied. “But everything’s okay for now.”
She kissed her mother and father on the cheek and chatted with them while handing food out to everyone, and then settled herself on the floor next to John. He slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her temple. “Another year of fun?” he said.
She sighed. “I’m just glad that Hammond and Sam’s father are still co-chairing the board. Jack’s going to kill someone if Kinsey ever ends up in control of it.”
“Just make sure you’re not in the line of fire,” John replied.
“Right,” she said, handing him his sandwich. “Don’t let Jack shoot me. Good advice, John.”
“Hey.” The tone of his voice made her stare at him a moment longer, long enough for him to lean in and kiss her. It was innocent enough, but it really made Elizabeth wish they were alone. When he pulled away, he added, “You can’t say I never cared.”
There was a retort on the tip of her tongue, but then she glanced over at her parents and saw them staring. She felt her cheeks warm, and she looked down at her salad and popped the top off the shallow bowl. Promptly, John stole a crouton, and Elizabeth glared.
By eight o’clock, Elizabeth and her parents had caught up on some of the small talk since the last time they’d seen each other. Usually she made a point of visiting them for a few weeks during the summer, but over the past summer she’d been. . . preoccupied. Her mother, at least, had understood, even without Elizabeth having to say much about it. She wasn’t so sure that her father would be so understanding of her newly rediscovered love life.
But now she had her head on John’s lap, her legs stretched over a few chairs, and John was running his fingers through her hair. The sensation was hypnotic, and Elizabeth found herself closing her eyes and relaxing almost to the point of sleep at least once. While they waited, her mother pulled out her knitting, which John had the good sense to compliment and to talk about his sister, who also knitted. Elizabeth’s father, on the other hand, went through his usual, seemingly casual interrogation of her boyfriend.
“John, what kinds of classes do you teach?” Dad asked.
“They’re trying to build up the undergraduate and graduate programs for statistics, so I’ve been teaching a lot of stat classes,” John replied. “I’m the only statistician in the department.”
“Why?”
“The rest of the department is more into pure math,” John explained. “A lot of statisticians these days are outside of the academic world. I kind of fell into teaching, but I’m glad I did.” As he spoke, his thumb brushed against Elizabeth’s cheek. Despite how tired she was, she didn’t miss his implication.
Then the door into the delivery room opened, and a nurse stuck her head into the waiting room. “Excuse me, Mrs. Harrigill?” she said. “Your daughter is asking for you.”
Melissa’s mother set Joshua on his feet and stood. He looked up at the nurse and said, “Can I see my sister? I’ve been waiting forever.”
The nurse laughed. “Not yet, but you should very soon.”
Elizabeth sat up, smiling, and Joshua took the opportunity to climb on John as his grandmother left. “Uncle John,” he began.
Then Elizabeth’s father interrupted him. “When did he start calling you Uncle?” he asked.
John frowned. “About the time he started talking,” he answered. “I don’t know where he picked it up.”
“I don’t either,” Elizabeth added. “He just started calling him that.”
Joshua looked at the two of them and frowned. “Auntie Lizabeth. Uncle John,” he stated, poking each of them in the chest as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. Then he wrapped his arms around John’s neck and sighed. “I want to see my baby sister,” he said.
“Well, you’ll just have wait,” John said. “When my baby sister was born, it took hours and hours and hours.”
Joshua looked at him. “You have a baby sister?”
John nodded, but said, “She’s not a baby anymore, but I have a little sister.”
“Did your parents let you name her?”
John laughed shortly. “No. Or she probably would have been named Leia.”
Joshua didn’t get it, but Elizabeth started giggling. His baby sister was too old to have been named after anyone from Star Wars, and John knew it. He sneaked a glance at her, a satisfied smirk on his face. He loved getting just far enough under her skin to make her lose her composure. Half the time she didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused that he could do it so easily.
“Mommy and Daddy aren’t letting me name the baby either,” Joshua babbled. “They’re naming her Mallory. Mallory Anne. With an E.”
The door opened again, and the same nurse stuck her head into the waiting room. “Joshua?”
He turned around, loosening his grip on John’s neck.
“Would you like to meet your little sister?”
“Yay!” he cried, and scrambled out of the room.
It was late before John, Joshua, Elizabeth, and her parents left the hospital. They hadn’t seen much of Melissa, but had seen quite a lot of Andy and the new baby. Elizabeth had even laid Mallory in John’s arms before he could protest that he’d never held a baby so new before. When she’d explained that newborns didn’t have enough muscle tone to keep them from seeming like rag dolls, he’d glared. That really wasn’t helping him feel less nervous about it.
When they got to the house, however, John carried Joshua from the car. The boy was fast asleep, though still clutching that stuffed dragon by the tail. John carried him up to bed and returned to the main floor of the house, hoping to get a little work done. But Elizabeth called him into the kitchen, and he found her with her parents around the bar. She had a glass of wine in one hand, and held out a beer to him with her other. “Will you join us, John?” she asked.
He took the bottle silently, and somewhat bewildered. Then Bill raised his own bottle, and Elizabeth and Caroline their glasses, and he said, “To Mallory Anne Weir.”
“To Mallory,” the others repeated, bottles and glasses clinking together. John found himself with Elizabeth leaning against him, his arm around her waist.
“Do you have work to do?” Elizabeth asked after a while.
“Nothing that can’t wait,” John replied, pressing a kiss to her hair. “I was going to try to make some headway on that article I’m presenting at the Chicago conference in March, but it doesn’t have to be done right now.”
She sighed. “I don’t know how you can think about math at this time of night,” she said, sipping at her wine. “Never understood how Dad can, either.”
“You’re the same way, Elizabeth,” her father replied. “It was just Russian in your sleep when you were four.”
“Well, that hasn’t changed,” John said. “She still does that. Never with any other language, though.”
“I learned Russian as a little girl, krasavyetz,” said Elizabeth. “Like you learning your multiplication tables by five.”
John brushed his lips against her neck. She was a little surprised that he was being this affectionate with her while standing four feet away from her parents. To their credit, they didn’t say anything that seemed related at first. Instead, her father looked out the French doors and said, “Elizabeth, when did you get that deck put in?”
“John did that over the summer, actually,” she replied. “Designed the whole thing himself and got a few of our friends from the university to help build it.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
“You’re the architect.”
“John,” he added, heading for the back door, “why don’t you show me what you did?”
“Uh, sure,” John said, and followed.
“Well,” Elizabeth said as the door shut behind them, “that was about the least subtle I’ve ever seen Dad.”
“He’s being himself, Elizabeth,” her mother replied. “And it’s not like you haven’t given us and your brother plenty of reason to wonder why you’re with a man like John. He’s not exactly what any of us thought was your type.”
“Mom, have you noticed that all my relationships with men who were supposedly my type went up in flames?” she asked, finishing her wine and taking the glass to the sink.
“Simon was really the only one that went up in flames,” her mother said. “The others resembled train wrecks, but they ended without too much pain and anguish.”
“John’s not like any of them,” Elizabeth replied. “He’s brilliant and exasperating and makes me laugh when I’m feeling awful. He doesn’t care when we get to a party, or even if we get there at all. And he looks at me like -”
“Like you’re the only woman he ever wants to look at again.”
Elizabeth nodded. “He sees me, Mom, and he loves me anyway.”
Her mother smiled. “I’m just amazed that you put up with him long enough to find out that the sex would be amazing.”
Elizabeth felt her face grow hot almost immediately. “Mother!”
“It’s the way he touches you, Elizabeth,” her mother said. “You’ve never been overly affectionate, but. . .”
“He is,” Elizabeth finished. “I don’t mind it from him. I like it, actually.”
“It helps when it’s the right one.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Really, Mom, you’re about as subtle as Dad.”
“I’m just saying.” Her mother came over and kissed her cheek. “Tell your father when he comes in that I’m taking a shower.”
“Good night, Mom.”
“Good night, sweetheart.”
Bill Weir’s point in coming outside was not to talk about the construction of the deck, not that John believed that for a moment. When they got outside, Bill took a drink from his bottle and said, “So you’re presenting a paper at a conference?”
“Yeah, during spring break,” John replied. “It’s on teaching applications in calculus.”
“That seems like an odd topic.”
“Unfortunately it’s not. An old colleague of mine emailed me about six months ago to tell me that at the university where he’s teaching now has dropped all applications from all their calculus classes. The instructors in the engineering school are throwing a fit.”
“I can imagine,” said Bill. “My architecture professors would have thrown a fit.”
“You’re an architect?”
“Mostly commercial,” he said. “Elizabeth’s never mentioned it?”
“She has,” said John. “Just small talk, trying to delay the inevitable grilling about my intentions toward your daughter.”
To John’s surprise, Bill laughed. “You know, John, even a father can admit sometimes that his little girl isn’t so little anymore.”
“That’s good to know.”
“And I’m sure her brother’s already given you the speech about if you hurt her. . .”
“Couple of times.”
“She’s grown up to be a remarkable woman,” her father continued. “There were so many directions her life could have taken.”
“For what it’s worth, she loves what she’s doing now,” John replied. “Feels like she’s accomplishing something worthwhile.”
“She loves being here too. Both my children do.” The older man sighed. “They both grew up in a huge city, and ended up in the middle of nowhere.”
“Elizabeth’s just read too much Willa Cather.” John smiled a little. “Though there’s something to be said for being this isolated. A person can get used to it in a hurry.”
“John?”
John looked at him out of the corner of his eye, bottle at his lips.
“Yeah, I think we both knew we weren’t going to avoid this conversation.”
It felt like at least three hours passed before Elizabeth’s father finally went back into the house, leaving John out on the deck for a moment to collect himself. It had been an incredibly weird day, what with dragons and L’Hôpital and babies and fathers and all. When he came back inside, he grabbed another beer and flopped down on the couch.
His eyes were closed and his head was resting against the back of the sofa when he heard someone coming down the stairs and into the living room. He pretended to ignore it, even when the person came around the couch and stood behind him. It wasn’t until he felt fingernails drag lightly through his stubble that he reacted. “Elizabeth,” he said, “that better be you.”
He opened one eye, then the other, and saw Elizabeth smiling down at him. “Never can fool you, can I?” she said, coming around the sofa. Her hair was all wet, and she was wearing her red silk robe. “Did you survive my father?”
“Well, you know what they say,” he replied, patting his knee. She sat on his lap, and he inhaled deeply. She’d showered with that soap that he both loved and hated, because it tended to be such a distraction to him. “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, but I should have expected as much from my girlfriend’s dad.”
“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
“No,” John replied, pulling her a bit closer. “I was just trying to score some sympathy points. And was I imagining things, or did I actually hear you and your mother talking about our sex life?”
Elizabeth touched her hand to her forehead, her cheeks turning pink. “My mother still takes great pleasure in embarrassing me,” she said.
“That’s what moms are for.” John kissed the base of her neck, and she twisted around to face him. “We embarrass them when we’re little, and they embarrass us when we’re big.”
Elizabeth laughed a little and rested her hand on his chest. “That much I know. I was just hoping she’d get tired of it someday.”
He smiled. “I love you,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I’ve said that enough lately.”
“You don’t have to say it for me to know.”
“But I should.” He ran his hand up her side and kissed her. He’d meant it to be brief, but instead Elizabeth deepened the kiss, shifting and cupping his face with her hands. She was kneeling over him, and John brought both hands to her back to steady her. She seemed so small when she let him touch her like this, small enough to seem fragile, but he knew she wasn’t weak.
Not long after they’d officially started dating, Elizabeth had told him that he drove her crazy, knowing exactly how to kiss her. He hadn’t admitted it at the time, but that problem was very much mutual. This kind of kiss was his favorite. She could probably kill him with it if she put her mind to it, and he wouldn’t care. There was just enough of a hint of desperation to drive him insane, and it was all wet and sloppy and perfect.
When he’d had more than he could stand and yet not had enough, John pulled her off his lap and laid her down on the sofa, breaking away from her mouth only to trail his lips down her long neck. “John,” Elizabeth managed, her breathing heavy as his hand found the sash of her robe, “here probably isn’t the best place for this.”
He froze, his tongue at the hollow of her throat. “You’re probably right.”
“Unless you want my parents walking in on us having sex in the living room.”
Reluctantly, he sat up again. Elizabeth did too, draping one leg between his and resting her hand on his shoulder. “Normally I’d be okay with the risk of discovery,” John replied, “but I’d rather not die today.”
Elizabeth looked mildly alarmed. “Please tell me my father didn’t threaten you.”
“No, but I suspect he wouldn’t be pleased with us doing this in a room where anyone can walk in, even if it is your house.”
“Our house,” she corrected. “Did he manage to talk about marriage without actually saying the word?”
“Yup. Your mom?”
She nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d planned that.”
John looked at her quite seriously, and her smile faded. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it before they brought it up,” he admitted.
“So would I,” she replied. “So where does that leave us?”
“Together, dushenka maya,” he said. He’d picked up one or two of the random Russian phrases Elizabeth used, after all. “In love. And maybe eloping and not telling anyone about it for six months.”
She giggled, burying her face against his shoulder. “My mother would kill us.”
“Yeah, but it’d be funny while it lasted.”
Elizabeth gave him an odd, amused look for that, and she got up, holding her hand out to him. “Come to bed. I don’t think we ever picked up where we left off last night.”
John stood up, smirking. But instead of taking her hand, he swept her off her feet and carried her out of the room, saying, “I like the way you think, Doctor.”