Page 19 of A Stag Family Christmas

“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 him 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.

“Maybe I want the baby to have a lame name,” she jokes. “Maybe I want to name it Prince. Prince Stag.”

“I was thinking more like Duke Stag,” I counter. We share a laugh for a few minutes and she curls toward me.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch,” she says. I kiss the top of her head.

“That’s not what you’ve been,” I assure her. “I came on way too strong at the court house,” I tell her, remembering how Tim basically did the same thing when Alice got pregnant. Tried to drag her up to his penthouse and plan everything out without consulting her. I think about the plan I had in place to try again to get Emma to marry me. I had had this whole elaborate scheme to ask her in front of my family at Tim’s house tonight, make a public display of my devotion to her. But that suddenly doesn’t feel right, either.

I’ve got the box with my mother’s ring on top of the dresser in my room, but I don’t want to break contact with Emma to go get it, scared the moment will slip away if I leave this couch for an instant. “Chezz,” I whisper, twirling her hair around my finger again, nervous.

“Hm,” she grunts, seeming to almost drift off in peaceful sleep now that we’ve chipped through the top layer of our baggage.

“I still want all those things I was muttering that day at the market,” I tell her. “I still very much want to be your in case of emergency person.”

“Thatcher, I changed the paper—“

I cut her off with a finger to her lips. “Let me finish. I want to be your partner. I want to make a life with you, no matter what. I want to figure out communication skills together and learn how to manage my temper with you and maybe even figure outyourtemper someday…”

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