one day, Amelia stirs some butterflies in the universe...

December 23, 2083 - Amelia Bradshaw is 28. (Leila Watts is 28, Drew Bruty is 27.)

* warning: little bit cheesy (okay, a lot cheesy, but we could use a little cheese break around here.) *

This is a perfectly innocent visit. Drew is just so hard to shop for. And they're having a baby - she just took the test. She's known for forty-seven hours and she hasn't told a soul. She's just about bursting for someone to know. And with Christmas coming, she couldn't think of a better gift idea, a hand-made teddy bear, with a note wrapped around its neck. So maybe it wasn't entirely her idea. It's just that Corbin mentioned that Leila makes the most beautiful handmade teddy bears, and ever since she just couldn't get the idea out of her head.

Corbin absolutely did not put her up to this. In fact, he has no idea she's even here at all, and she has no plans to tell him either. All he told her, besides all the heart-wrenching stuff, was a name, Leila, and that she worked in this little country pie shop with Charlotte. That was how they met, through Charlotte. In fact, if he knew Amelia was here at all, he would probably pull out that lecture on disturbing the order of fate, about a butterfly fluttering its wings and causing ripples through the universe, or something.

It's just that he told his mom about Leila, and now he's thinking about moving back home. Amelia told him, "You can't just pick up and move any time things get sticky, that's no way to live."

"Actually, it's a fine way to live," he said.

"You haven't wanted to move home in fifteen years," she said. "And now you want to go back? Don't you know what this is really about?"

"I know what it's about," he said.

"But your job."

"I can teach anywhere."

"Your degree?"

"I've had plenty of extra time these past couple months," he said. "I turned in my dissertation early."

"But you're doing so well here."

"I don't feel very well."

"You can't," she said. "There are people here who need you." She might have blushed a little then.

"Nobody here needs me, Amelia."

She just can't understand how a person goes around the world making friends with people, then leaving like they never even mattered at all. "I mean, Justin's all alone with that baby," she said. "And you promised my dad."

He only looked at her with half a sad smile and didn't argue any further. "You're right," he said, nodding his head in one solid movement. She couldn't tell if he was resolving himself to his fate, or biding more time to get his last few duties covered.

So this is mostly an innocent visit. She really does want one of those bears. But also she just wants to see her, to see what all this fuss is about.

The air inside the store smells delicious - cakes lining one wall, and quilts lining the other. There are two women working. The elderly one must be Charlotte's mom, because she looks just like her, which means the other must be Leila.

At first, Amelia is surprised that she isn't more glamorous, with her mousy hair, with her round pink cheeks. But then considering Corbin, this girl's earthy and humble beauty makes perfect sense.

Amelia steps up through the shoppers and lifts a stuffed bear off the shelf. It truly is the most adorable thing she's ever seen.

"Oh, these are just precious," she says. Maybe she shouldn't have spoken to her, but it's too late to take it back now. Leila turns her head. But it's okay, they don't know each other. It's fine. Amelia just tries to act like a shopper. "I mean, but do you have any that are less gender-specific?"

"The green," Leila says. "That's a popular one. If you want, I could take down your name and have one ready by close tonight."

She really kind of wants the green one. "Which kind do your kids like?"

Amelia's own question dumbfounds her. She's supposed to be pretending they're strangers. How would she know this woman has kids? She'd make a terrible private investigator. Terrible! Her heart races in her chest, but luckily, Leila doesn't seem to think much of it.

"They have like twelve of them," she says. "They just beat them all up, really."

Amelia nods. "How many kids do you have?" Amelia already knows the answer - three, a girl and twin boys.

"Three," Leila says.

Amelia holds a blue bear in her hands, hugs it to her chest like a child. "This is my first," she says.

Leila looks up from her clipboard. "First teddy bear?"

Amelia laughs. "No, first baby," she says. "I'm pregnant." She's only five weeks pregnant, not even showing. It's the first time she's said it out loud to another human being, and it's exhilarating. She wants to tell the world. But she hasn't even told Drew yet.

"Oh, congratulations," Leila says.

Amelia puts the bear back on the shelf while Leila continues writing stock on her clipboard. Amelia pretends to inspect the other bears, each hand-crafted and unique in its own special way, a different pattern of fabric, oddly spaced eyes, or one leg longer than the other. She follows the seams with her fingertips. What she wants to ask is, Is this what you wanted then? Is this what makes you happy? Your kids and their teddy bears? But she can't. Instead she says, "So they right everything wrong in the world, and all that? Kids, I mean, they make it all worth it?"

A simple question from one mom to another? Moms do that kind of thing.

Leila only looks at her strangely, confused, but mostly sad, her face full of devastating gravity. "They're great," she says, nodding. "You never knew your heart could fit so much love."

Amelia doesn't know what she's doing here, or what she thought she'd find. Nothing more than he already suspected. Just a bear, and a woman she knows more about than she should. She picks up the blue one again.

"You know, if you're in a hurry, it's a fifty-fifty chance," Leila says. "Leave it up to fate?"

"No, actually, I'll wait for the green," Amelia says.

"Sure," Leila says. "Let me get your name."

"Amelia," she says. "Bradshaw."

She never thought not to.

Leila looks up, startled and scared, her mouth hanging wide open and her hand paused mid-way through the letter "e" in her first name. Dammit, Amelia is thinking, he talked about her? Really? What did he say, and how much? All of it, likely. Even her name. He probably blabbed her whole life history, and then some. Corbin wouldn't know how to keep a secret if his life depended on it.

Then they're both stunned. Amelia digs her hands in her pockets like it might actually hide her. She tries to smile, but she feels it warped into a shriveled grimace. In another dimension, they might have said, Hi, so nice to finally meet you, I've heard so much. But they don't. They just stand there speechless. That he wants to leave - Leila might like to know that, or maybe she wouldn't, but either way it isn't Amelia's business to tell. She shouldn't even be here. But she has her questions, and Leila seems to have questions of her own, but neither of them know how to break that ice.

Amelia finally starts to babble. "Eh, I'm just here for... I thought I'd... the teddy bear?"

Leila only nods once. She smiles, gap-toothed and heartbreakingly genuine, a wide open book. And in the space of that smile, she gets what all his fuss was about.

"You know what," Leila says. "Why don't you try the cherry pie, I bet I could have something whipped up by the time you're finished."

"Really?"

Leila points to a stool at the counter. "I have one already started."

"Thank you," Amelia says.

She sits down. She orders the pie. Amelia never believed in any of that hippie metaphysical bullshit before, but she swears, as shoppers open and close the door behind her, wafting crisp December air into the store, each time feels like a butterfly flapping its wings.

***

The bear comes with a blank gift tag tied around its neck, and Amelia writes her message on it before tucking it into a wrapped box. One thing is right in the world at least. The guy with more money than he knows what to do with, and she'll manage to give him something he doesn't already have.

Drew comes home then. He asks her, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Mostly," she says. "You're really hard to shop for, you know that?"

"You didn't have to."

"Of course I did," she says. "I just hope you like it."

"I'll love anything coming from you."

She grins. "Good. Because I can't really take it back."

She goes to the tree and gets the box.

She hands it to him. "You should open it now."

"Now? It's two days to Christmas still."

"I can't really wait any longer," she says. "I can't stand it."

"It looks big."

"It's definitely big."

He opens the box.

He picks up the bear, and reads the tag out loud. "For daddy," he says. "Me?" His face is still. He doesn't even blink. "A daddy?"

"Yes you." She laughs lightly, definitely the most uncomfortable silence of her day, and that's saying a lot. "I figure I'm about five weeks along."

"Wow," he says.

"You should say something else," she says.

He doesn't though. He only pulls her body to his, quickly, firmly, and kisses her without even barely a breath, the green teddy bear still dangling from his hand.

*******

(footnotes: Corbin // Leila // and what Drew wants more than anything)

notes: all my gift clutter from this story and the next few comes from the Around the Sims 2 Advent package.

Amelia's mini-adventure in super-sleuthing must be a bit inspired by Rachel's Edith Prescott series. Ed's much better at it though - I think Amelia better stick to her investing ;)