HER SCREAMING IS NEARLY MY undoing, and I almost break the goddamned door down to get to her. “Edith!” I growl as I fist the knob.
“Son, let the doctors take care of her,” Father firmly instructs with a hand on my shoulder.
But the problem is that they’re not taking care of her. Dr. Egnater has one foot in the grave, the old man, and he thinks he can help my wife.
She screams out again and then begins loudly sobbing. I can’t handle it anymore. After bursting through the door, I push past the nurses and doctor to my wife’s bedside.
“Alexander!” she cries out upon seeing me. Her normally put-together face is glistening with a sheen of sweat, and her hair is matted to her head.
“Darling,” I murmur before I press a kiss to her chapped lips and take her hand with mine.
“Sir, you should go,” the older nurse snaps. “You’re distracting her. We really need one more push and the baby will be out. Time is of the essence.”
I ignore her and bring my lips to Edith’s ears. “Push, beautiful. I’m here. We’ll get this baby out together. I know you’re in agony, but you’ve waited so long for this baby. You can do it, my brave Edith.”
As if my words ignite her internal fire, she clutches on to me fiercely and screams as she bears down, pushing with all of her might.
“Ahhhh!”
The moment she relaxes, I hear it.
A tiny wail pierces the air, and I drag my gaze from my wife’s toward the little voice.
“Earl, Countess,” Dr. Egnater says proudly, “congratulations. It’s a boy.”
A boy.
The nurse quickly wraps our child in a cloth and sets him on Edith’s stomach. She and I devour him with our eyes while he cries.
“Oh, Alexander, he’s beautiful,” she chokes out through her tears.
And he is beautiful.
His crying stops when he hears her voice. I watch in awe when his eyes lock with mine. He regards me in the same way his mother did when we first met. With one look, he asks, Will you love me forever?
I answer him aloud the same words I thought when I first saw his mother. “Forever. I’ll love you forever. You’re mine now.”
“May we come in?”
My eyes find Edith’s and she nods her head in agreement. Seconds later, Jasper ushers Elisabeth in on his arm.
“We came as soon as we heard you had delivered him,” Elisabeth gushes as she breezes in and sits beside her sister. “Oh my, he’s absolutely perfect.”
“Where’s Gus?” Edith asks about Jasper and Elisabeth’s baby boy that isn’t but a few months older. Elizabeth scoops Xander into her arms and presses a kiss on his forehead.
Jasper chuckles while he stretches out on the sofa in our master bedroom. “Ma has him. One would think he were her own flesh and blood by the way she adores him.”
I smile at his response. My mother was born to be a grandmother. I’ve already had to make her leave every evening since Xander was born so Edith could rest. Each time, Mother cries and tells me I’m a horrible man.
But, every morning, she returns to our room tending to the boy so we can sleep in. I can’t say that I’m unhappy about the arrangement. Originally, I had worried I would lose time with my wife assuming the child would need her continuous attention. That was before I considered the mother of all hens that lives under our same roof and her obsessive need to assist us.
“Gus is family. They’re cousins,” I tell him as I stand from the bed and walk over to him.
Jasper sits up and rests his elbows on his knees, regarding me with furrowed brows. “You do know that these two are going to raise all kinds of hell when they get older being as that they’re both boys and close in age. Not to mention, they’re our offspring.”
My mind briefly flits through times of when Jasper and I accidentally caught the woods on fire and got drunk on countless occasions from old whiskey found in Father’s cabinet. There were times when we stole fruit from our neighbor’s orchards because we were rebellious little bastards and even though we could afford the fruit, it was entertaining to act as if we couldn’t. We were harmless enough, I suppose.
“They’ll manage, brother. We certainly did alright for ourselves,” I wink.
We both regard our wives for a moment as they chat over whatever it is women chat over. Both of us are smiling when we turn back to look at one another.
“What if you have a daughter?” Jasper muses with mischief in his eyes.
An image of a small girl with Edith’s wide brown eyes and fierce personality seizes my heart. No girl should ever be allowed to do half the shit Jasper and I did. Especially no daughter of mine.
“What if you have a daughter?” I challenge back.
His face darkens. “I shall lock her away until her twenty-first birthday.”
“Do you imprison all the females in your life?”
He glances over at Elisabeth and nods as a wicked grin curls the corners of his lips up. “It would seem that way.”
My mind is plagued with thoughts of what having a girl would do to my sanity. At one time, I imagined Edith and I having many children. Now, I’m afraid that we’ll have a mess of girls and I’ll end up going mad with worry in my attempt to protect them.
“Dear God, I hope we don’t have any girls,” I groan, mostly to myself.
Jasper stands and slaps me on the shoulder. “Don’t fret, Alexander. We’ll set to work at dawn on a tower with no windows or doors to house all of your daughters,” he chuckles.
His words are in jest but I nod my agreement.
I wave my hand toward the door and raise a brow at him. “Will you accompany me into town and we’ll fetch the supplies now?”
He laughs. “Lead the way, brother.”
The End.