“I say fake so we don’t have to remember to water it, and we don’t have to worry about keeping Raja out of the water. We also won’t have to put the lights on it.”
“They come with lights already on them?” What did she know? It never would have occurred to her to water a tree that had been cut down.
“I did some research. I had no idea until this morning.”
Esther just shook her head and sighed. “Okay. So fake tree.”
“Colored lights or white ones? How many trees do we want? One for the living room, obviously, but do you want one in our room?” Darius leaned forward, resting his weight on his forearms against the steering bar.
She hadn’t considered that. “I think I might like one in our room. My mother does white lights with silver ornaments for our family tree. It’s nice but a bit...”
“Sterile?” Darius finished for her.
“That’s a good word for it.”
“Then let’s find ornaments we like and don’t worry too much about if it matches or not.”
They moved slowly down the aisle until the basket at the front of Darius’s cart was nearly full of small ornament boxes.
“Maybe we can go to the HEA store on our way home after classes tomorrow?” she asked him. “I’ve heard they have all kinds of collectible ornaments and stuff.” Maybe even one of those cheesy “our first Christmas” ones would be in order.
“Fine with me.” He looked over at Ian who nodded.
“Then we just need a couple of trees.” They walked toward an open section a couple aisles away.
Trees in all shapes and sizes overwhelmed Esther. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“How tall is your ceiling?” A blue-vested employee looked up from where she was fiddling with one of the trees.
Esther and Darius sort of looked at each other.
“Twelve feet,” Ian answered. “Both of them are.”
“That’s an odd height for a house.” The employee frowned. “Unless it’s a vaulted ceiling.”
Ian nodded. “That may be, but the ceilings in both places where they’ll be placed are twelve feet.”
The employee sort of shrugged. “Twelve feet it is.”
They seemed shorter than that to Esther, but then, she was still used to palace ceilings which were taller than most.
“Then you want a tree that’s eleven feet or shorter. That gives you room for a tree topper. You want at least six inches, but, since we don’t carry any eleven-and-a-half foot trees, eleven feet tall is probably your best option.” She started down the row. “They’re over here.”
They stood in front of seven different trees the right height.
“Now what?” Esther asked her. “We’re total newbies at this Christmas tree thing.”
She smiled at them and went over the different options for colors and widths. All of the trees they carried came in either white or colored lights. The employee confided that she’d found the perfect tree at another store once only to discover it only came with white lights. She’d bought it anyway, but had to hand string colored lights on her pre-lit tree.
An empty flatbed cart nearby took the two identical boxes. They’d put in a doggy door - mostly - by themselves. Surely, they could figure out how to assemble a couple of Christmas trees.
After spending far longer than he thought possible at the HEA Christmas Extravaganza store, Darius hoped the whole shopping for Christmas decorations thing was over. His ankle ached. Esther looked like she needed a nap when they got home, and she’d likely be in bed early again.
Between her continuing recovery from the flu and the pregnancy, she was worn out. Maybe by the weekend, she’d be feeling better. At least she still showed signs of pregnancy and none of miscarriage. After her visit to the doctor in a couple of days, they’d both feel better.
At the house, Esther excused herself for a nap, just as he’d expected.
His phone rang as he eased the footrest out on the recliner. After digging it out of his pocket, he swiped across the screen. “Hello, Mother.”
“Good afternoon to you, too. How are you?”
Darius hesitated. “I’m okay. I hurt my ankle pretty badly a few weeks ago, and I’m still getting over it.”
“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry to hear that. What happened?”
“A car accident. It wasn’t bad,” he hurried on at her surprised gasp. “The car was totaled, and we went to the hospital to get checked out. My whole body was sore for a while and my ankle is still pretty beat up, but otherwise I’m fine.”
“We? Who was with you?” He should have known she’d pick up on that.
“A... friend.”
“A girl?”
He closed his eyes and prayed that she wouldn’t push too far. “Yes. A girl. No, she’s not my girlfriend.” Not technically a lie. “She’s fine, too, though she was diagnosed with the flu at the hospital.”
“Where was your security team?” Her concern turned to anger.
“In the car behind us. I do know how to drive, Mother,” he told her gently. “I learned years ago, but just got my license recently. It wasn’t my fault. The roads were slick, which was going fine, but a deer jumped out in front of me. Hitting it would have been just as bad if not worse for us. Deer versus passenger vehicle rarely ends well for either.”
“I’m glad you’re both all right. I wish...” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“I know, Mother. I promise, at Christmas, I’ll tell you all about where I’ve been and why.” His heart ached as much as his ankle did at the thought of her continued trauma.
“You’re coming home?” The hope in her voice nearly caused him to break down completely and tell her everything.
“No, but all of you are coming here. The arrangements are being made.” Did Benjamin really not tell her about the plan?
“When I talked to him about it, he said it wasn’t confirmed, and he’d let me know, but he never did.” Darius could hear her tapping on her computer. “I see a trip in the calendar. I’m listed, along with all of your siblings, but it doesn’t say where to.”
“You’re coming to see me, where I’m living.”
“Where’s that?”
He closed his eyes and blew out a breath. “Please wait until I can explain everything, Mama. Don’t press me to tell you more over the phone.”
He could hear her sigh. “All right, but I expect to hear everything.”
“You will. I promise to tell you everything you need to know.” That is, enough of everything. He didn’t think she needed to know about the Treaty of 1702. “I love you, Mama.”
“I love you, too, Dare.” She hadn’t used the nickname for him in years.
“I’ll see you in a couple weeks.” He needed to check with Jonathan about the house he thought they could use. If it wasn’t going to work out, they needed to reserve something else, and fast.
“Where are we going?”
Darius just grinned. “You’ll see. It’s an early Christmas present.”
“I didn’t know we were doing Christmas presents with each other.” It should have occurred to her, but with the stress about the families coming for a visit in a couple of days, she hadn’t even thought about a present for Darius. Great. Something else to do in the next week. Maybe she could order something online and pay for expedited shipping if she had to.
“This is kind of for both of us, actually. It can count. Promise.” Darius reached over and took her hand as he drove the new SUV her father had bought to replace the other one. “After we’re done, I want to go shopping for our families. Like we talked about before. Nothing big, but Kensington told me he gets your mother a little something every time he goes out of the country. Something completely ridiculous, and she loves it. I wanted to get everyone something from around here.”
Esther laced her fingers through his. “We can find baseball hats and Serenity Landing Patriots t-shirts and stuff.” Their collection of local paraphernalia had grown since the first foot
ball game. As had their understanding of local sports customs. Their latest venture had been to a basketball game. This time the band was in the mezzanine playing tunes between quarters and games and halftimes.
“Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“It’s a surprise when we get inside.”
She closed her eyes with a fake huffy sigh. “Fine.”
He pulled off the road they were on and, presumably, into a parking spot. “Wait here. I’ll be right back to get you.”
His door opened, then closed as she waited. A few minutes later, he returned.
“Keep your eyes closed,” he warned.
“Then make sure I don’t trip.”
His hands gripped hers as Ian told them he’d get her door. “There’s a ramp.” Darius moved to her side, one arm tight around her waist. It seemed Ian opened the door to the establishment.
Whatever it was.
“Right this way,” a woman’s voice told them.
“Just stay by me.” Darius’s breath was warm on her skin. They walked for a few more seconds then he maneuvered her through another doorway, a few more steps then turned her around and backed her up to something about waist high. “Have a seat, then you can open your eyes.”
Esther hitched one hip up then the other until she was fully seated and blinked her eyes open.
She was sitting on a bed of some sort with a paper runner on it, much like a doctor’s office. “Where are we?”
“An ultrasound boutique.” He wore the biggest grin she’d ever seen on him. “I didn’t even know they were a thing until I overheard someone talking in the doctor’s office a couple weeks ago while you were in the bathroom.”
A glance around showed a massive screen on the wall opposite the bed. A smiling woman sat next to a machine much like the one in the doctor’s office. “We can see the baby? My ultrasound isn’t for another few weeks.”
The woman’s smile widened. “What we’re doing today is a gender reveal ultrasound. It’ll take about ten or fifteen minutes to make sure we get some good pictures for you. All of it will be given to you on a DVD.” She gestured to a wall nearby. “You’ll get to choose a stuffed animal that we’ll record the baby’s heartbeat on. You can also get jewelry made with the heartbeat, so it’s your baby’s.”
Esther blinked again as she tried to absorb it all. “You mean we’re about to find out if we’re having a boy or a girl?”
The grin on Darius’s face vanished. “We never talked about this, did we? Whether we want to know. I just thought with our families coming this weekend a big reveal thing could be fun.”
She reached out at hand and rested it on the side of his face. “I hadn’t really thought about it, that’s all. I thought we still had a few weeks to decide.”
“I don’t mean to interfere,” the woman said, “but if you’re not sure yet, we can still do the ultrasound. I won’t mark any of the pictures or the DVD that you get, but I can put a couple of pictures you don’t see and the information in an envelope for you to decide later. It’s not that uncommon. Some people give the card to a friend or family member so they don’t know until the gender reveal party either. Or this time of year, they save it for Christmas morning.”
Esther looked back at Darius. “What if we did that? Have her write it down or tell Ian, and he can take care of letting Louis or Vesta know, because they’ll be the ones helping with the planning anyway. They can take care of getting blue or pink, whichever we need. Then we can find out with our families.”
Darius’s smile returned as his shoulders sagged in relief. “That sounds like a great idea.”
He helped her lay back and get situated on the bed. The technician started to pull up her shirt when Ian cleared his throat.
“Would you like me to wait outside, ma’am?”
Esther didn’t think he wanted to, for her protection, but he also didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. “No, that’s all right. Just don’t tell my mother you were here with us until after she finds out if she’s having a grandson. This would be the second after three granddaughters.”
Ian chuckled. “Of course.” He took a seat farther away where he could see the screen but didn’t necessarily have a direct line of sight to her stomach.
The tech finished getting ready and placed the wand on Esther’s stomach. Across the room, the screen came to life, but a hundred times the size of a normal ultrasound screen. Darius gripped her hand.
As the wand moved around, tears began to streak down Esther’s cheeks. The tech used a laser pointed at the large screen to show them arms and legs and toes and even some of the internal organs besides the heart and heartbeat.
“Are you all right?” Darius whispered.
She nodded. “Just so different than last time.”
He leaned over and kissed her temple. “It’s pretty amazing.”
“Wait a minute.” The tech clicked a few buttons. “Come out, come out wherever you are.” She slid the wand way to the side. “Gotcha.”
Esther glanced at Darius as she tried to make sense of what she saw on the screen. “What?” she asked.
“There are two in there, though one is playing hide-and-seek.”
She tried to absorb what the tech was saying. “There are two babies?” she clarified.
“Yes.” She used the laser pointer on the wall across from them. “See here?” There were two spots of fluttering on the screen. “That’s two heartbeats in there.”
Esther just stared in awe as the tech took a second set of measurements.
Darius kept whispering, “Wow,” over and over.
Fifteen minutes after that, the tech said she’d seen what she needed to and was certain she knew the gender of the babies. She printed off a couple of photos that would show the gender and put them in an envelope with a card before sealing it. “Now who gets this?”
Esther pointed to Ian. “He’ll take care of it for us.”
The tech handed it over and turned back to Esther and Darius. “Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Quatremaine. We’ll see you again in a few weeks for your first 3D ultrasound. Come on out whenever you’re ready.”
She left the room with Ian in tow, giving them a moment alone.
“Thank you,” Esther whispered, leaning over to give Darius a kiss. “Shock of twins or not, I can’t think of a present I’ve ever liked more.”
23
Pulling into the parking lot of Serenity Lake Souvenir Shop on the other side of the lake from Serenity Landing, Darius tried to shake himself out of his shock. The town of Trumanville was more of a tourist town than Serenity Landing, though both boasted a quaint, old-fashioned downtown.
“Are you doing all right with this?” Esther’s voice filled the car for the first time since they left the clinic in Springfield.
Darius turned into a parking spot and put the car in park. “I guess we have to be, right?”
“That wasn’t my question. Are you okay with all this?”
He rested both hands on top of the steering wheel. “It’s a shock. It probably shouldn’t be. I have two sets of twins in my family.”
“Don’t twins generally run in the woman’s family, though?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.” He took a deep breath before turning to Esther as he released it. “What about you? How are you handling it?”
She reached out and took his hand off the steering wheel to link her fingers with his. “First, thank you so much for arranging that appointment. It was super sweet. I didn’t even know those sorts of things existed.” She looked down at their joined hands. “Second, I’m not sure how I’m feeling about twins. Shocked, of course. I figured being a duplex was going to be uncomfortable enough in a few months, but a tri-plex?”
Those were words neither of them had heard of until recently. How far they’d come.
“It is what it is,” she went on. “We have the room and the finances. We’ll have Vesta and Louis to help when we need it. We can
hire a nanny to help if we want, especially when we get back to our real world. It’ll be overwhelming, but we’ll be fine.” She gave him a smile that told him she meant it. “Now, are we ready to shop?”
“Local gifts, here we come.”
She unbuckled her seatbelt. “Let’s go.”
They spent over an hour wandering around the shop, finding gifts for almost everyone. Esther even picked out one for her family to take home to her grandmother. Not all of them were Serenity Lake items. Darius found a St. Louis Cardinals hat for his brother. He’d discovered a baseball-style hat went a long way in obscuring one’s identity. Maybe Benjamin would appreciate it, though Darius didn’t hold out much hope of his brother actually wearing the thing.
“Anyone else?” Darius asked as he placed another item on the pile near the register. It was easier than trying to carry it all.
“Your mother.”
Right. He’d been looking for something, but hadn’t found it yet.
“What about jewelry?” Esther looked in a display case.
“I don’t know anything about jewelry.” He stood next to her and stared at the pieces.
“Do you see anything she might like?”
He leaned closer. “My mother has access to all the jewelry in the vault. Do you really think she’d want something from here? I’m sure it’s nice and all, but...”
She turned and looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “Do you really think your mother is a jewelry snob?”
“I have no idea.”
“She wears a lot of dark colors.” Esther’s finger traced over the glass. “I wonder why that is. I’ve looked at older pictures, and she didn’t used to.”
“I’d guess she started after my father died and never stopped. I don’t really know.”
Finally, she tapped on the glass. “That one.” With a wave of her hand, she called an attendant over. “What can you tell me about that set.”
The attendant opened the back of the case and pulled out the box. “The whole thing, including the copper chain on the necklace, is made locally. The stone is Mozarkite, found here in Missouri. The colors in these pieces run from light blue to purple. The pendants on the necklace and earrings were all made from the same piece.” She pointed to random lines etched into the stone on the necklace. “This is actually Serenity Lake, though you wouldn’t know that unless you knew what you were looking for. Otherwise it just kind of looks like a design. The artist is a friend of mine,” she explained. “She just brought this one, along with a few others, in yesterday. I told her it wouldn’t last long.”
A Royally Beautiful Mess Page 18