Nina turned over the gift and started on the mess of tape. ‘Did you wrap this all by yourself?’ she asked.
‘No, Daddy did.’
‘Oh.’ Nina tried her damnedest not to smile.
But when Poppy added, ‘He didn’t do a very good job,’ the smallest giggle escaped from between her lips.
Maverick caught it, and this time when Nina met his eyes, he was grinning. ‘It’s hard,’ he insisted. ‘The paper never stays put. And the tape always gets stuck everywhere.’
‘Get a gift bag,’ Sierra said.
‘Wrapping paper shows that you put more time and thought into it,’ Mav argued.
Nina kept unwrapping the gift and listened as they continued their back-and-forth. It was the strangest thing, to listen to grown siblings bicker like children, over something as small as gift wrapping. Nina loved it. They were so comfortable with one another, sothemselves. She’d never really had a family, and loved experiencing all those little nuances that made one now.
She tore off the last bit of paper and opened the recycled Amazon box Mav had put the gift in. It took her about five seconds to figure out what it was, but when she did, Nina gushed, ‘A flower!’
It was a craft project, one of Poppy’s little hands stencilled, cut out and coloured, and then glued upright onto a painted kebab stick like the head of a flower. Leaves, coloured in bright green crayon, had been glued onto the stem.
She took it out of the box and held it up for everyone to see.
Poppy beamed. ‘It’s for your garden. You stick it in flowers.’
‘I love it,’ Nina said, but she knew she’d never put it outside for the sun and rain to destroy. Maybe she’d frame it. Or put it in an indoor potted plant. But not outside. She gave the five-year-old one last hug, whispered, ‘Thank you, Poppy. This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten.’
‘Welcome,’ she chirped.
‘You’re welcome,’ Mav corrected.
‘You’re welcome,’ Poppy parroted.
Maverick didn’t give Nina time to get emotional. He handed her the next one, a huge, flat, rectangular gift wrapped in gorgeous linen cloth with a white silk bow. ‘Sierra?’
‘I wish,’ she said. ‘Mav and I split our gift –unfortunately, he wrapped it.’
‘You—’ he pointed at Sierra ‘—need to go and get your coffee.’ But he turned back to Nina, explained, ‘Markus left that with me over the weekend. He didn’t want you to wake up without it on your birthday.’
‘He’s thoughtful like that,’ Nina commented as she undid the bow. The linen cloth fell away easily, revealing the back of a photo frame. ‘Oh, a photo!’ She used both hands to hurriedly flip it over.
And then simply stared.
She wasn’t sure how Markus was so easily able to capture the essence of a single moment, but the photo did just that. It was of her and Maverick on that first day, standing in the stall with Barbie. He had somehow managed to pick a second in time when they had been looking at each other, Mav smiling softly, Nina trapped by his gaze. The photograph was in contrast, with her and Maverick in a patch of filtered sunlight, the horse and the dark stall behind them.
‘That’s Daddy!’ Poppy said and touched Maverick’s face in the photograph.
‘Wow.’ This came from Sierra, who had come around the bed to look, the cake still in her hands. ‘That’s legitimately incredible.’
‘It is.’ Nina ran her fingers lightly over the frame.
Maverick was being polite, or, maybe, conscious of how he behaved in front of Poppy. He hovered at the foot of the bed, so Nina flipped it around and held it up for him to see.
‘It’s a great shot,’ he said.
‘Yeah.’ But because she heard the caution in his tone, she added, ‘Markus always frames his best ones for my birthday.’ It wasn’t true. It was an outright lie. But she didn’t want him to worry, didn’t want him to read too much into it. After all, they had come up with ground rules for a reason.
‘While you open that last one, Poppy and I are going to cut this cake,’ Sierra said.
Poppy, in her excitement for cake for breakfast, didn’t argue. She hopped off the bed and ran after Sierra, her happy little voice chatting all the way down the stairs.
