by Lainey Davis
Juniper squeezes my arm. “They come to plenty of your games, Tyrion. Don’t be a pouter.” Today was my last game before our break for Christmas. I was relieved to see we get four days off in a row. Juniper was able to shift around her midwife appointments so I can go with her tomorrow. We’re probably going to get to hear the heartbeat, and I’m a lying fool if I pretend that’s not the most exciting thing to ever happen to me.
When we roll into Tim’s block, I see how the house looks all lit up in the early darkness of December afternoons. “Oh, Ty, it’s like a storybook,” Juniper says. I have to admit, Tim did a bang-up job hanging those twinkly lights. We didn’t really get a good look at Thanksgiving when it was light outside. It takes me back to when we were young kids, and we used to always decorate. I catch a whiff of the pine boughs Alice hung from the windows and remember my mother, laughing, leaning out the window and asking me if I thought the greens looked okay. The force of the memory washes over me and I pull Juniper in close, spreading my hand across her stomach. I want my baby to know joy like that.
There’s so much love and warmth in the house again I almost forget how grey it felt to live there in my teens. It was absolutely dreary here for a long ass time. No fucking wonder I joined the NHL and didn’t come back home for years.
I lean in and kiss Juniper, inhaling the scent of her. Sometimes I remember that she’s mine to keep, and I get excited all over again. I feel pretty damn lucky as I walk in with her, arm around her shoulders.
Everyone else is done eating and spread throughout the downstairs. I notice Emma isn’t here, and one look at Thatcher tells me not to bring it up. “Is he drunk,” Juniper asks, settling into a bar stool while Alice hands us plates of food she set aside.
“His eyes are glassy and he’s staring into the fire silently, so I’d guess yes,” I tell her, nodding hello at Tim while he and Petey assemble an electric train under their Christmas tree. “Holy shit, Timber! Is that ours from before?”
“Watch your mouth, Tyrion Stag,” Gram yells from her rocker by the fire. She’s taking pictures of Tim and Petey while they assemble the tracks. “And of course it’s your train from before. I kept all that old stuff.”
“We didn’t get it out last year because Petey was still putting everything in his mouth,” Alice explains. “But you know better now, don’t you, angel?”
He nods. I sit on the floor next to them in delight, helping snap everything in place. Tim looks very serious when he hands Petey a beat up old engineer hat and shows him how to work the train controls. “This isn’t a toy, young man,” he says, sternly.
“Of course it’s a toy, Tim.” I punch his arm. “Petey, dude, it’s a toy train. Don’t listen to him.”
“Ty, please don’t undermine me when I’m trying to tell my son he cannot crash his trains into each other, or into his toy cars.”
Tim and I dive into a heated argument about the fun of running over toy action figures while Petey manages to get the train going on his own. Juniper watches it all with a smile on her face, one hand on her stomach, and I want to float away thinking about how this will be us with our kid in such a short amount of time. Then Gram asks me about flying out to our next game in Vegas, and I feel an icy dread in my stomach. I have to leave in the evening on Christmas to get to our game on the 26th.
When Petey starts to yawn, Alice declares it’s past his bedtime. I guess that’s our cue to go home.
I look over at my brother, who still hasn’t said anything. “Thatcher, you want a ride home?” As I help Juniper into her coat, she starts yawning, too, and Thatcher shakes his head. He still doesn’t say a word. I sigh.
Alice scoops Petey up the stairs and Tim walks us to the door, shivering a bit in the drafty entryway. “See you two tomorrow night?”
Juniper smiles, her eyes twinkling in the glow of Tim’s holiday lights. “We’ll be over as soon as our appointment’s done at the midwife center,” she says. “We’re going to hear the heartbeat!”
Tim pulls her in for a hug, and I love seeing how genuinely happy he is for her. For us. For our family. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and while I love actual presents, I can’t shake the sense that all I really want is to be over here with all of them. Not just tomorrow, but every day. I definitely understand why Alice insisted on living walking distance from her dad and siblings. I drop a final glance at Thatcher by the fire and send out all my hopes that he and Emma will work shit out tomorrow. Nobody should be in a fight on Christmas.
There’s no traffic in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, as it turns out. Juniper and I find a parking spot right outside the Midwife Center for our appointment. I know Carol the midwife stayed late and penciled us in as a special favor, so I made sure to make a hefty donation to their fund for healthcare for low-income women, which probably goes a long way to explaining the smile Carol gives when she sees us.
Carol opens the door as we walk up, shivering a bit. “Looks like snow,” she observes, and as we walk past she dips a scooper into the bin of rock salt near the door, scattering some on the sidewalk out front. “Can’t have our pregnant mamas slipping, now can we?”
We walk up the stairs to the exam room and on the way, I stop and stare at the rows of photographs. Decades of women and their babies smile down along both sides of the stairwell, including my own mother and me, moments after I was born. I kiss my fingers and touch them to the glass covering the photo, following my wife up to the exam room while Carol asks Juniper about her symptoms and talks about her transition to her new role as a judge.
Juniper gets herself situated on the couch in Carol’s office while Carol whips out a stethoscope, checking out JJ’s heart rate and blood pressure and stuff. “Everything seems to be going well,” Carol says, massaging her hands around Juniper’s abdomen. Carol grins at me as I wring my hands. I know all this stuff is important, but I wish she’d get a move on with that doo-hicky that lets us hear the heartbeat. That’s the only part I can really experience, the only connection I have to the baby at this point. I’m jumping out of my skin wanting to hear that sound.
“I think maybe Dad is a little anxious to hear what’s going on in there,” Carol says, leaning over to grab her microphone thing. “Juniper, can you slide your pants down a bit and pull up your shirt? You should be far enough along today that we can hear Baby Stag’s heartbeat with the Doppler.”
And then, Carol grabs hold of my hand and wraps it around the wand. She squirts some goo on my wife and asks if I’d like to try to find the heartbeat. I shake my head, terrified, and Carol says, “You aren’t going to hurt a thing. I promise. Here.” She guides my hand toward Juniper’s stomach and together, we press the wand against her taut skin. Juniper smiles as we start to hear the swirling static from the machine and then there it is.
“Aha!” Carol says, as Juniper blinks back tears. The static clicking sound makes way into thumps. An unmistakable, magical connection into the life my wife’s body is building. Carol drapes her other arm around my shoulder as I start shaking, trying to hold back this wave of emotion washing over me. I don’t want the sound to end, never want to break this connection with my child, but Carol turns off the machine, smiling, saying, “Heartbeat sounds just perfect. Perfectly healthy, like all the Stag babies I’ve seen.” She cups my cheek. “Including you.”
I feel so grounded right now, here with my family and this woman who literally caught me as I came into this world. I tune her out as she putters around, talking about Juniper’s hormones. I lock eyes with my wife, not bothering to wipe away my own tears that fell while we listened to our baby’s heart. “JJ,” I whisper. “I’m going to retire from hockey. I want to stay home with our baby.”
19
TIM
“What time are they all coming again,” I ask Alice from the dining room table as she flies through the house. She’s been a little off lately, nervous and on edge. I keep telling her to relax, that this is just like any other family party we host every week. “It’s like…” I look a
t my watch. “Babe, it’s 8am.”
Alice has her arms full of wrapped gifts she stacks by family unit. I see a six-pack of our favorite hazy beer from Grist House on the coffee table and curse under my breath that her brothers get the good stuff since I never remember to drive out there and buy my own. “I’m just excited,” she says, but her eyes don’t quite seem joyful. After she arranges all the gifts, then rearranges them, she flicks on the stereo and blasts a Christmas mix from the radio. She and Petey start dancing as he crashes his trains into his toy cars. I grit my teeth and curse my brother Ty under my breath.
“Hey, Alice,” I pat the chair next to me. “Come sit with me for a minute?” She shakes her curls over one shoulder and sighs. She bites her lips and walks over. As she plunks onto the seat next to me, I run my fingers through her hair and inhale the citrus-sweet smell of her. I plant a kiss on her cheek and say, “I want to give you your present early.”
She shakes her head. “No way, Tim Stag. What am I going to open tomorrow morning?”
I laugh, but lean over to get the box I have sitting on the floor by the wall. “Don’t worry about that, Mrs. Stag. But I want you to open this before you get too deep into your kitchen operation for today.”
She cocks her eyebrow at me suspiciously and begins to tear open the wrapping paper. Petey runs over, wanting to help, and Alice grins as she lets him. Then she sees the label on the box and squeals, jumping out of her seat and clapping her hands. “Oh! Timmy! Yes!!”
I bought her one of those electric pressure cookers. The woman at the store said they’re very popular right now and even “real” chefs like my Alice would appreciate them. I’m thrilled to see she was right. “Tim! It can do so many things. I wanted one so bad. How did you know?”
I pull Petey up on my lap and he laughs, watching his mother dance around with her kitchen gadget. “I’m going to make yogurt for the kids for tonight,” she says. “Ooh, or should I use it for oatmeal for tomorrow morning? Oh! I wonder if I can pull off both…”
She sets it on the counter and sits on the floor with the instruction manual. I lean back in my seat, watching my wife enjoy herself, feeling like king of the world. I see my phone out of the corner of my eye and notice a text from Nicole. A glance shows me the thumbs up icon, and I chuckle. In the few weeks she’s been at Stag Law, Nicole has written a strategic plan for the next 5 months, 5 years, and 5 decades. She’s got systems for everything and has been talking to me about something called Human Centered Design and how she wants to apply it to our law practice. I pretty much do what she tells me in between sinking my teeth into big clients I suddenly have more time to prepare to meet. I spent this entire month fostering relationships with people I’ve been unable to touch base with for a long time.
Alice shakes me out of my reverie when she squeals. I look over and see a plume of steam escaping from the pressure cooker. “Petey, you must never touch this, ok,” she quips. “Look! I’m manually releasing the pressure from my practice run!” We joke about the page she holds from the manual, sternly advising us to never put our face over the steam release.
“Good thing your sister Amy specializes in burn care,” I say, pecking her on the cheek. “I’m going to walk over and see if your dad needs any help with anything.” Bob recently moved into the third floor apartment Amy and her family had been inhabiting, deciding the big downstairs portion of the house was too big for him alone, and Amy’s three sons needed more space to spread out. I find that I like going over there and talking with him as I help him move his books and heavy things up the flights of stairs. It’s nice having a father figure to bounce ideas off, talk about parenting. Bob would like me to care more about baseball than I actually do, but we’ve got years to figure it out. I love that he’s not going anywhere. That this world I worked so hard to create feels so stable.
“Morning, Tim,” Bob shouts as I round the corner, puffing out my frozen breath in the crisp winter air. “Looks like snow.” He’s salting the walk as a precaution, pointing to the horizon where a set of grey clouds rolls in. I make a note to check on the guest beds at home. If it does snow later, I don’t want Ty and Thatcher driving home with their pregnant wives. No sense putting anyone at risk. Given our family history with car accidents, I know they’ll listen to me and stay put to be safe if I ask them.
“Amy and the kids going to Doug’s parents tomorrow?” I ask, helping Bob load a bunch of presents into a tote bag to carry over to my house. He nods. Both Alice’s brothers moved out, and I know it weighs on Bob a bit that they left the neighborhood, even if they did stay in the city. “You know you’re welcome over to our house tomorrow morning as well as tonight,” I reassure him. Nobody should be all alone on Christmas day. “You can shoot the shit with my father,” I remind him. “Talk about how the neighborhood’s gone downhill since your day.” He grins. He understands that things are complicated with Ted Stag, but I know Bob appreciates that we’re including him in our celebrations. That’s important to all of us, Stags and Petersons alike. Family sticks together.
As we walk home, I wonder if Alice did make yogurt with her pressure cooker, and I smile, planning to spend Christmas Eve drizzling lemon yogurt down my wife’s chest and licking it off of her. I cough, remembering that I’m standing next to her father. When we get inside, the house looks ready for a storybook party, but Alice is standing in the kitchen weeping.
“Pumpkin!” Bob rushes over to her and grabs her hand. “What’s wrong?” Alice quickly wipes her eyes and looks up at me. She smiles, too quickly, and pats her father on the shoulder. “I was just missing Mom for a minute,” she says. I frown as Alice rushes upstairs to change before my family comes crashing in. While I don’t doubt that Alice misses her mother at Christmas time, I can tell something else is going on.
Before I get a chance to follow her and see if she will tell me what’s up, my family arrives and Christmas chaos ensues.
20
THATCHER
I wake up on the sofa again, groaning when my stiff neck resists me turning my head. But then I see Emma standing over me, holding out a steaming mug of coffee. “Can we talk,” she asks.
I bolt upright, shooting out an arm to drape over her shoulders, and remember that we’ve been fighting. I draw my arm back and nod, sinking back onto the sofa. She starts to cry. “I’m sorry, Thatcher.”
“Hey.” I risk putting an arm around her, and I sigh in relief when she lets me. “Em, I’m right here. And you have nothing to be sorry about.”
“What are we going to do?” she asks, and I think about the past few weeks, making sure I enter this conversation in the right place.
“Why don’t you tell me what you need,” I say, and she looks over at me, wide eyed. I pull her in closer to me, loving that she’s letting me give her some affection. We’ve been distant and cordial, but haven’t really had any big talks. Emma has had a few appointments with her medical team—it’s been hell trying to schedule the neurologist along with the high-risk OB, but once we had our big meeting, they both reassured her that things seem very stable. She’s not even risky enough to stay with the high-risk OB, which gave me a lot of relief even if Emma said she wanted to stick with the higher level of care. Just for reassurance, she said, and I admit I feel safer knowing we have a baby expert on our team.
I don’t know how to help Emma feel less frightened about growing our baby, but I keep looking on that app to see what size fruit our little Stag compares to, and reminding her that her body has magically produced bones and organs and skin. Emma ditched wearing jeans a few weeks ago when they got too tight, and I wish like hell she’d let me run my hands over her growing stomach.
But I know that will come. I just need to be patient.
After I decided to tell her dad about my courthouse stunt, he pulled out a bottle of whisky from his desk and we got drunk in his office, talking about how poorly the Cheswick women handle uncertainty.
He’d said, “Emma likes to plan everything,” and I told hi
m how I foolishly tried to rush into a plan so everything would be tidy, taken care of.
“Hey, Ems,” I say, tucking her red hair back over one shoulder and running it through my fingers. “Remember that time you helped me babysit Petey?” She nods and smiles as I recall his epic diaper blowout, and how we’d had to call poison control when he somehow managed to eat some diaper cream in all the mayhem. “You stayed so calm while all that was going on,” I say. “I loved that about you. Even before I really knew that I loved you, I loved how you took action and did what had to be done.”
Her eyes dance back and forth as she listens to my words. I tell her, “You know that you’ll be an amazing mother, right? What you don’t know, you’ll research the hell out of until you do.” I kiss the tip of her nose. Her breathing is ragged.
“I just…this isn’t how I envisioned my life,” she says, holding up her hands and gesturing around our apartment. “I mean, maybe this is. I don’t even know what’s going on in my head, Thatcher.”
I hold out my fingers. “Let’s see,” I say. “You’ve got a hot fiancé.” I grin. “You’ve got a ferocious best friend, an amazing job, an award-winning feature series.” I open my palm and drop it to her belly, feeling a tingle through my core as I wrap my hand around the firm little bump. “And you’ve got your health under control, Emma. With people helping you keep it that way.” She nods, letting me rub her stomach, explore the life blossoming inside of it. “You know,” I tell her. “The Royal Baby will be born before ours, so you don’t even have to worry that you’ll pick some lame name that matches some duchess.” She laughs, and I know I’ve got her with me, even if it’s just for a minute. Even if it’s just for right now.