“We’re here,” Ty hollers as he kicks open the front door to my house, startling all the kids into silence for a moment. They’d been wrestling on the rug, making me nervous about knocking down the Christmas tree, so even though I want to be annoyed with Ty, I’m grateful he at least got the rascals to sit still.
“We can see that, Ty,” I tell him, shaking my head as he takes off Juniper’s coat and hangs it on the hook above the radiator.
He practically skips into the living room, though, looking like he’s about to burst with some sort of news. “Out with it,” I tell him. “What have you got for us?”
He plunks down a stack of gifts on the end table and Juniper rubs his arm. “We heard the baby’s heartbeat today,” she says. “And we got my bloodwork back.”
Alice claps her hands. “That’s so exciting! Which bloodwork was this?”
Juniper dances over to Alice. “The bloodwork that tells me this little Stag is a BOY!”
I grin and jump up, clapping my brother on the back and then looking down at the four little boys sprawled on the rug already. Next Christmas will be brutal. There will be at least six kids here. I make a mental note not to let Alice get any glass ornaments for the tree. “Dude, JJ,” Ty bellows. “That’s not even the exciting part.” He touches my arm. “She’s leaving out the exciting part.”
I lift one eyebrow and look at them. Juniper smiles at Ty and nods, and he says, “I’m retiring from hockey. I’m going to be a stay at home dad with this little dude. Isn’t that awesome?”
The room is silent. My grandmother’s jaw drops. My father stands from his seat in the armchair near the fire. All I can think about is the work I went through to secure Ty’s contract when nobody else in the NHL would sign him since he was such a hothead. “You’re quitting hockey?”
He nods. He opens his mouth to start speaking, when the front door flies open again.
Thatcher and Emma burst into the entryway. I grit my teeth. With those two, you never know if they’re going to be screaming or fucking behind my curtains. Based on the look on Emma’s face, they took care of that second part recently. Thatcher dusts some snow out of her hair and kisses her on the cheek. “Were you all standing around waiting for us?” he asks, confused.
I shake my head no. The room is still silent as we wait for Ty to finish what he was going to say, but I notice Emma is dressed to the nines while the rest of us are sitting around in candy cane pajama pants and reindeer sweaters—Gram’s idea of a Stag family holiday uniform. “Good,” Thatcher says, cutting me off before I can talk. “Because we need Juniper to notarize our marriage certificate and then marry us.”
There’s a long moment where nobody says a word, and then Ty starts laughing sort of maniacally. “Good one, Thatch. Heh heh. So anyway, back to me retiring…”
“I’m not kidding,” Thatcher says. He lifts up Emma’s hand, and I see she’s wearing Mom’s ring. “Emma is on board to marry me. And she wants to do it while she can still fit in her amazing fucking dress, because if you hadn’t noticed she’s growing my baby. Our baby.”
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.