Page 21 of A Stag Family Christmas

He puts one hand on her stomach and Emma smiles shyly. Everyone looks back and forth between Ty and Thatcher and their pregnant wives. Then Gram starts cackling. “What the hell is in the water that’s got you boys losing your damn minds?”

“Gram, did you just do a swear?” One of Alice’s nephews is stuffing popcorn in his mouth watching while all the adults come unhinged. Everyone titters, realizing the magnitude of Gram using a curse word. And then they all look to me, waiting for direction on how to proceed I guess.

I clear my throat. “Ok, so, maybe we should all sit down and talk about all of this? Ty and Juniper, you were here first, so you can begin.”

And then instead of passing out gifts, my brothers tell us about their plans, that turn out to be not so hasty after all. Ty has been feeling misplaced for a long time, sore after games and practices, and badly missing his family. “I could barely get to the hospital when Emma had that seizure,” he says. “Ems, I’m real sorry I blurted that news to you like that.”

“No harm done, Ty,” she says, her arms crossed over her bump. I smile, seeing the round protrusion. She’s not very tall, short like Alice, so I know it won’t be long before she blooms into a fully pregnant-looking person. I wonder if she and Thatcher know the sex of their baby yet…and then I remember that we are mid-trial, with my brothers each outlining their major life events.

Ty continues, explaining how he had an epiphany while listening to the baby’s heartbeat and doesn’t want to miss a single minute, not for hockey, which he calls “Just a dumb-ass game in the end. Besides,” he says. “Even if we make the playoffs, JJ isn’t due until late June. This guy will stay in there until I’m back to take care of him while Mommy goes out and dispenses justice and shit.”

Juniper rolls her eyes at this. “Ty, come on,” she squeezes his hand. “You can’t swear like that around our son.” I try very hard not to bring up Ty’s contract with the Fury. This isn’t about work tonight. This is Christmas Eve and we are supposed to be gathered up to celebrate family. Juniper looks over at Emma and Thatcher and asks, “Care to tell us how you two made peace with one another?”

Before Ty can crack a sex joke, Thatcher dives into his side of the story, talking about how Emma is going to be able to take things easy while she works on her book, which should give her a lot of flexibility in case her pregnancy and her epilepsy get dicey. “And you all know I don’t do anything but sit around and play with glass all day,” he says. “Seriously, though, it sounds like Ty can just watch our kid along with his and we don’t need to worry about daycare.”

Emma tells us a bit more about how she eventually calmed down and stopped being angry with Thatcher for dragging her into the courthouse so hastily. I scratch my chin and wonder if everyone is just drunk on eggnog or if there really is something to the idea of Christmas spirit driving people to make rash choices. I must be caught up in it all, too, because soon enough, a Christmas wedding sounds like a fine idea.

“Hey,” I interject. “Emma, would you like me to call Nicole? I mean, if you’re going to get married right now. Do you want her to be here?”

“Oh!” she claps her hands. “That’s such a great idea. I guess I should call my family, too. They probably won’t come. They’re at the country club Christmas dinner…”

I’ve already texted Nicole by the time Emma’s done talking and received back a string of profanity, followed by an emoji of a lightning bolt and a car. I look over at Thatcher, who is grinning like a fool, and ask him if he plans to get married in his Christmas pajamas or if he wants to borrow a suit. “Fuck no, I don’t want a suit,” he says. “Sorry, Gram. But when do I ever wear a suit?”

“Apparently you wore one to go talk to my dad,” Emma teases, hanging up the phone. Her mother’s hysterical shrieks echo through the room as Emma slides her phone into a pocket in her dress. “My parents are on their way. Alice, Tim, thank you so much for letting us barge in your house with my family.”

“Barge? Are you kidding?” Alice is crying again, wearing an apron, and frantically whisking a bunch of things at the kitchen island. “This is amazing. It’s fine. It’s all fine. I’m going to make a wedding cake in my new pressure cooker!”

My family looks at me, wide-eyed, and I chew the insides of my cheeks, remembering Alice crying earlier. I suggest that they all break into groups to make wedding arrangements while I see what Alice needs.

When I walk into the kitchen, she’s leaning over the pressure cooker, which keeps beeping as she struggles to fit on the lid. “Damn it,” she swears, slapping the device. “Come on!”

“Babe,” I walk up behind her, placing my hands on top of hers. “Can I help?” She shakes her head, curls sticking to her tear-soaked cheeks. “Is there a recipe I can read over with you, Al? Or maybe you can let me help you with the lid for this thing?”

Alice throws the heavy lid down on the kitchen floor and I step back so it won’t land on my toes. “Hey,” I try to soothe her. Her nostrils flare out and I place my hands on her shoulders. “We are a team, Alice Stag. Now tell me what’s going on.”

She puffs out her breath, blowing a few curls out of her eyes. “I’m pregnant, that’s what.”

I feel my heart actually stop beating for a moment and wonder if I maybe heard her incorrectly. “Come again?”

“I said I’m pregnant. And now they’re all going to think I did it on purpose to steal their thunder and this was going to be your Christmas news tomorrow morning because I just don’t want to take away from anyone else—”

“ALICE!” I place a finger on her lips for a minute. “Baby, let me have a second.” I breathe slowly in and then out again, remembering how it felt to become a father. Remembering, too, how it felt to have my world ripped into chaos and uncertainty, and how that all turned out to be so fulfilling in the end. “I thought I had everything figured out,” I said, looking up as Nicole bursts into the house and storms over to Emma. “And really, I have nothing figured out.” Alice starts to cry again. But I continue, saying, “That’s so fantastic, Alice.”

I pull her into my arms, enveloping her in my body. I start kissing her head, rubbing my hands up and down her back. “Are you really happy about it,” she asks, her voice muffled in my sweater.

“I’m terrified! And overjoyed! I feel so many things at once, Alice.”

She sighs. “Me, too,” I hear her say. And we bend down together to pick up the lid so I can help her finish making a wedding cake.

22

THATCHER

I can’t believe I finally get to marry Emma. It feels like we’ve done absolutely everything backwards. Pretending to be engaged when we barely knew each other. Getting pregnant. Hauling her into the courthouse. But this? As we stand around Tim and Alice’s backyard, this feels absolutely perfect. A light snow falls as Ty lights tiki torches around the perimeter of the yard. Alice’s brothers brought over the some leftover strands of twinkle lights from the Peterson house and sort of draped them over the apple tree, so everything looks really pretty.

Nicole is inside fixing Emma’s hair and finding her a warm wrap to wear with her dress while I work on getting Amy’s sons to stop digging holes in the yard where Emma will walk up to meet me at the makeshift archway we made from a bunch of old hockey sticks and some zip ties. Ty, smirking, hangs a sprig of mistletoe from the middle of the arch and claps me on the back. “Let’s get this moving. I’m freezing my nuts off out here.”

He jogs inside and shouts for everyone to come out in the back yard, and Emma’s mother and sister bustle out, chirping about how unconventional all of this is and wondering how they will ever look their country club friends in the eye again. My father helps my grandmother into a lawn chair near the archway and walks over to me. “Thatcher,” he says, setting a hand on my shoulder. I don’t flinch or brush him aside, which feels like progress. “I want to thank you for letting me be here to see you married,” he says and bites back a sob. I realize I’m the only Stag brother who will have a parent present at his wedding, and that makes me choke up a bit, too.

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