The BabyMakers’ Shared Property

by Hollie Hutchins

  The head of the house’s security was a large weare who wore a serious expression to match his serious demeanor. They met him in Bartholomew’s study, which was the most secure room in the house. They wanted to make sure the mansion staff didn’t hear what they were discussing, just in case. He had come up with an incredibly detailed plan for keeping the party safe and secure.

  All the guests would have to enter through a metal detector upon arriving. Each attendee may or may not be subject to a random pat-down. There would be a dozen security guards posted around the mansion premises, five uniformed guards inside the party, and ten guards who were not in uniform posing simply as party guests. One security guard would be personally assigned to Alex. Charlie, per special request, would also be keeping guard over her.

  “And what about Miranda?” said Alex. “I would like to keep her with me if possible.”

  “The safest place for her to be, we think, would be with you,” said the weare. “With all this security and so many eyes on you, you’d have to be a complete idiot to make a move against you.”

  “She was taken from a hospital room full of people,” said Uma. “Don’t underestimate these idiots.”

  “I can assure you,” he said, “we have everything under control.”

  Alex nodded. “Okay, this all sounds pretty secure to me.”

  “Now, for the actual ceremony,” the weare started to say, but stopped once he noticed Uma glaring at him.

  “What ceremony?” Alex asked.

  “It’s nothing,” said Uma. “Just a little surprise the brothers cooked up. You aren’t supposed to know about it, so please don’t ask any more questions. It’s really not a big deal at all.”

  Alex frowned. “Is it something for Miranda? Because I’m not sure I want to have any sort of ceremony which brings a lot of attention to her.”

  “It’s not for Miranda,” said Uma. “Ugh. I’ve already said too much. Please, let’s just drop it.”

  “Okay, fine.” Alex put her hands up. “I’ll find out soon enough, I guess. Is that all you have to show me?” she asked the weare.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m going to go check on the baby and probably take a nap,” said Alex. She made her way towards the door. “Then maybe I’ll go for a nice swim later.” She wasn’t going to let this secret ceremony thing stress her out. Her life, she decided, was stressful enough.

  The trial was short, sweet, and crowded. Hundreds of people from both Swan City territories attended. The sheriff didn’t have any family, so his side of the courtroom was pretty barren. He was booed as he was brought in, handcuffed and accompanied by a weare territory police officer. It was a joint trial, the first in Swan City’s history. He faced multiple charges of abducting, abusing, and illegally trafficking multiple women and babies.

  When asked how he plead, he stood up, quietly said “guilty” and was again seated.

  Alex and the Armstrong brothers were shocked. They had anticipated more of a fight. She thought for sure she was going to have to testify, along with Charlotte, Mary, and Sasha, who were all in attendance as well. Mary was in a wheelchair, but otherwise looking bright and healthy.

  In fact, the only person on the prosecution’s side who did not appear to be shocked by the plea was Bartholomew. He looked completely unsurprised.

  The judge sentenced Brown to life in prison, with chance of parole after forty years, but given the man was already pushing sixty, it was unlikely he would live to see that day. He kept his head down as he was taken away. Nobody in the courtroom knew what to do. Most of them had carved out their whole afternoon for this. Alex and the other woman had carved out nearly a whole week.

  “How did you know he was going to plead guilty?” Alex asked Bartholomew on the drive home from the courthouse.

  “My lawyer got him to take a deal,” he said. “We told him we’d take the death penalty off the table if he pleaded guilty and told us the names of the people he sold the babies to.”

  “That’s all it took?” said Alex. “I really thought he would have fought harder.”

  “Well, the death penalty would have come from the weare courts. It’s illegal federally in the human courts.” Bartholomew shrugged. “Personally, I’m against the death penalty. I think outlawing it was one of the best decisions you humans have ever made. But, he didn’t know that. After I explained that it would not only be incredibly easy to convince a judge in our favor, that we had mountains of physical evidence and witness testimonies, he started to get nervous. Then I told him it would be the weare-court’s greatest pleasure to sentence him to death and that sent him over the edge. Never underestimate the pride of a man like him. He couldn’t tolerate the idea that he would be killed as a form of justice for the weare community. He took the deal.”

  “Wow,” said Alex. “That’s... amazing. I can’t believe it’s all over.”

  “Finally,” said Charlie. “Although I wish we had gone for the death penalty anyway.”

  “Then we would have run the risk of him not talking and us never finding those babies,” said Xavier. “Speaking of, any luck finding them?”

  “Not yet,” said Bartholomew. “But we have all our best men working on it. We will find them, I know it.”

  “Let’s just hope we find them alive,” said Teddy. “Not to be morbid or anything...”

  “It’s a bit late for that,” said Alex. She looked out the window and counted the seconds until she was home and could hold her baby girl again.

  It had finally arrived; the long anticipated night of the grand Armstrong ball. Somewhere along the line somebody had referred to the party as a ball and the name just stuck. Bartholomew, Xavier, and Uma had been up to their necks in party-planning duties for the past two weeks, which left Alex with some much needed alone time with her daughter. Charlie and Teddy spent all their free time with Alex and the baby, but they were often being ordered by the makeshift party planning committee to go on some errand or another, or clean out a gutter, move furniture, etcetera. The only person they didn’t demand anything of was Alex, which was exactly how she wanted it.

  She had relaxed into a nice routine with Miranda. They would wake up together, eat, then Miranda would sleep while Alex read by the pool. They would eat again sometime in the afternoon, then Alex would take her for a walk in her stroller. Miranda would fall asleep sometime along the journey. They’d return home, at which point Alex would also take a nap. They both woke up just in time for dinner, and after that, Miranda and her fathers would spend some quality time together.

  When they didn’t have work, one or a few of her dads would come visit her at the mansion. Clark came often. He and Miranda had become fast friends. He was the only one who could make her smile just by looking at her. Joel was around a lot as well, drawing up plans for the guesthouse expansion. Uma decided she wanted to stay in the guesthouse, at least until Miranda was a year old. Her husbands would still be basing from the house in the human territory, where Hera and her family were also still living, but they would spend their designated nights with Uma on the Armstrong property.

  Alex saw Pete, Adam, and William sometimes. Pete liked to sit with Miranda and talk to her about the ins and outs of tracking deer and other game. Adam bought her a bunch of picture books about animals, hoping to foster a love of critters at a young age so that maybe she could one day take over his veterinarian practice. William just liked sitting with her. He said her calm, newborn energy was intoxicating.

  It was nice; near perfect.

  As long as Alex didn’t think too much about the outside world, she could pretend everything was perfect. In the moments during which she forgot what was going on the other side of the tall, cement walls of the Armstrong house, Alex felt as if her life couldn’t possibly get any better.

  As guests began to arrive and Alex slipped into her flowing, floor length purple dress, however, she knew the pretending was over. In a matter of minutes, she would be walking out to greet a sea of party goers, human a
nd weare alike, dressed as a woman and announcing her relationship with the Armstrong brothers loud and proud.

  There came a soft knock on the door. “Alex? Can we come in?” It was her mother.

  “Yeah, it’s open.”

  Uma was carrying a sleeping Miranda. Alex reached out for her daughter and brought the bundled up wonder into her arms. Behind her mother, a skinny and frail woman walked in, also carrying a baby.

  “Mary?”

  “Hi, Alex.” She was wearing jeans and t-shirt, which hung baggy from her slender frame. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “How are you?”

  Uma went to Mary and put a hand on the small of her back. She guided the nervous woman further into the bedroom and offered her a seat. “Oh, that’s alright,” said Mary. “I won’t be bothering you long. I just wanted to say thank you.”

  “Mary, there’s no need to thank me,” said Alex.

  “But there is,” said Mary. “Your family came to rescue me.” She smiled at Uma. “And the Armstrong family paid for all of my medical expenses, which I know you must’ve had a hand in.”

  Alex looked down at Miranda, feeling shy. She hadn’t told anyone, save Bartholomew and the brothers, about paying her bills. She didn’t want to make Mary or her family feel like they were some sort of charity case. “It was nothing, really.”

  “It was everything,” said Mary. She paused. “This is my son, by the way.” She held her baby out for Alex to see. “We just got him back a few days ago. He’s perfectly healthy. In fact, whoever bought him may have taken better care of him then I could have.”

  “Oh, I doubt that.” Alex looked into the baby’s sweet, chubby face. “He’s adorable. What’s his name?”

  “Alexander.” Alex drew herself back and looked at Mary. She had tears in her

  eyes. “You told me to be strong when they were hauling me away, and I kept telling myself that, over and over again, until you came busting through that attic door. You are the reason I got through it all. You’re the reason I have my son back.”

  “I may have given you a mantra,” said Alex. “But you gave yourself the strength.”

  The two hugged, gently and around just the shoulders, so as to not squish their

  babies in between them. After they broke apart, Mary excused herself, saying she was going to go search for some food and left Alex and her mother alone.

  “Hopefully she won’t fuss much during the party,” Uma said pointed to Miranda, who was asleep in Alex’s arms.

  “I’m not planning on staying out there too long anyway,” said Alex. “I was going to wait until Bartholomew gives his welcome speech, make an appearance, then go to bed.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be an option,” said Uma.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Okay, look, I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but I’m starting to think this night is going to be chaotic enough without having the added surprise.” Uma sat down on the bed and patted the spot next to her. Alex sat as well, carefully, so as to not jostle Miranda. “Besides, I think you should be given a chance to decide if this is really what you want.”

  “Are you talking about showing off Miranda and my relationship with the brothers?” asked Alex. “Because I’ve thought about it a lot and I really do think it is the right decision.”

  “No, not that.” Uma took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. She put a hand on Alex’s knee. “I’m talking about marriage.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It was Teddy’s idea,” said Uma. “They wanted to turn the party into a surprise wedding where you can marry all three of them and everyone would be there to witness it.”

  Alex felt her arms going numb. She quickly handed Miranda back to her mother and stood up. She paced the rug in front of the bed and muttered to herself. “That’s ridiculous! You can’t surprise someone with a wedding. I’m not even dressed to get married. I can’t, I don’t...” she trailed off, not able to stay on course with any of the trains of thoughts.

  “I told them you wouldn’t like to be surprised,” said Uma. “But Teddy insisted it would be romantic. And they figured if they told you, you would stress out and want to help plan, and they didn’t want you to have to worry about a single thing.”

  “I have to talk to them.”

  “They are downstairs with your dad.” Alex went for the door. “Wait, some guests are already here. You shouldn’t have this conversation in front of them.”

  Alex nodded. “You’re right. Can you go get them and send them up?”

  “Sure,” said Uma. “I’ll be right back.”

  She left. A few minutes later there came an even softer, more tentative knock at the door. “It’s Teddy,” he said. “And Charlie and Xavier.”

  “Come in.”

  They had their heads bent, like dogs who just got yelled at for peeing on the carpet. Sheepishly, Teddy stepped forward and rubbed the back of his neck. “So, your mom said she told you.”

  “Yes, she did.” Alex didn’t even try to hide the anger in her voice. She wanted them to know exactly how she felt. “You were going to surprise marry me!?”

  “It was supposed to be romantic,” offered Teddy. “I thought you would like it.”

  “We all did,” Xavier added. “We knew if we asked you to marry us, you would say you didn’t want anything fancy and demand we go to the courthouse or something. We wanted to give you a beautiful, special day like you deserve.”

  “But how do you know for sure I even want to marry you?” Her phrasing ended up being slightly harsher than she intended, but she decided to go for it, double down. “I might’ve said no.”

  “You don’t want to marry us?” Charlie asked. He sounded very hurt. His tone of voice served to douse some of Alex’s fire.

  “Of course I want to marry you!” she said, sitting on the bed and pushing back the tears. “But I would have appreciated having a choice.”

  “You do have a choice,” said Xavier. “We would never force you to––”

  “I know you wouldn’t force me, but you did make a decision for me,” said Alex. “You all got together and decided you knew what I wanted and you knew what was best for me. You went behind my back, and I know you did it out of love and in an attempt to be romantic, but the point is you decided for me. For years, that’s all my family did, make decisions for me. And if it wasn’t them, it was society, deciding that I was a valuable commodity as a woman and therefore I was forced into living a life I didn’t want to. For the first time since I can remember, I feel like I’m in charge of what happens to me. I decided I wanted to have a baby with you, I decided I wanted to move in with you, and goddamnit, I will be the one to decide if I’m going to marry you.”

  The brothers were silent. It was clear they felt ashamed of what they had done, and now that Alex had said her piece, she was able to look past her anger. “Listen,” she said. “I do want to marry you.” She stood up and walked towards them. They finally looked up from the floor. “And if you’ve got it all set up for a wedding down there, then I guess now is as good a time as ever.” They all three smiled. “But I swear to god, if any of you ever try to pull something so monumentally stupid like this again––” Her threat was interrupted by the three brothers pulling her into a group hug.

  “We won’t,” said Charlie. “We promise, in the future, we will always consult you first before doing something monumentally stupid.”

  Alex laughed. “That’s all I ask.”

  From now and for Eternity

  “Alex Natalie Greenford, do you take Charles, Theodore, and Xavier Armstrong to be your husbands, from now and for eternity?” Bartholomew was marrying them. He had gathered all the guests of the party into the backyard, where chairs had been set up, all facing a beautiful, hand carved arch, under which the soon to be newlyweds were standing.

  “I do,” said Alex.

  “Do you, Charles, Theodore, and Xavier Armstrong take Alex Natalie Greenford to be your w
ife, from now and for eternity?”

  “I do,” said Charlie.

  “I do,” said Teddy.

  “I do,” said Xavier.

  “Then.” Bartholomew took Alex’s hand and brought it up between her and the brothers. They each placed one of their hands on top of hers. “By the power vested in me by the Weare Council of Swan City, I now pronounce you wife and husbands.”

  Her new husbands each kissed her cheek and Bartholomew led the whole group down the aisle and to the dance floor that had been set up.

  “You’ll have to excuse my two eldest sons,” said Bartholomew. “They are not dancers and have requested that my youngest, Charlie, take the first dance with their lovely wife.”

  Alex looked over her shoulder. Teddy and Xavier had stopped and taken a seat. They smiled at her and motioned for her to get on with it. Charlie was waiting for her on the floor.

  Hand in hand they made their way to the center of the dance floor as the music flooded the backyard. It was a live string quartet. Charlie put his arm around her waist and led her around the dance floor with a grace she had not yet seen from him. “You are very good at this,” she said.

  He smiled in reply.

  “Can you believe how much has happened in just a few months?” Alex stole a glance at the other two brothers, then looked back at Charlie. “I can’t believe I’m here, married to three weares, and I’m a mother! It’s all so surreal.”

  “It isn’t hard for me to believe,” said Charlie. “I knew we’d make it here eventually. The day I met you, I knew we’d be together.”

  “No way.” Alex shook her head, but she was smiling. “You’re full of it.”

  “It’s true,” he said.

  Alex looked down at their feet. “So, now that I’m an Armstrong, I’ve been thinking... Maybe I could have some sort of position, at the council. Having a human on the team could make a huge difference. What do you think?”