The Arrival

Victor Thomason waited patiently outside the maternity ward of Birch Harbor Hospital, reaching habitually for his wife’s hand.
  She’s been gone almost ten years and I still have the habit, Victor sighed. I’m about to become a great-grandfather, so why does it feel so off?
  The last decade had not been kind to the tight-knit Thomason family. The only bright spot had been that the twins had not been home when the gas leak shattered the peace of Birch Harbor. Their father had been a well respected principal of the high school, their mother the loving matron of the coffee shop and its walls of books that were free to read. The entire village had been shaken by the news, the family devastated.
  While Paul had legal custody of the twins, they had spent most of their time across the street with Victor, both because they felt a close bond with him and because they unconsciously felt he had needed the support following his wife’s sudden cancer. Their uncle cared for them, but he was no parent for the young boys. That fell to Victor, and he willingly took it up.
  Maybe that’s why it feels so off, Victor considered. They’re more like my own children than my grandchildren.
  Victor leaned back in his seat to relax as he waited, smiling as he recalled the last time he had sat in this waiting room.


“Would you just sit down, Victor?” Anna Thomason pleaded with her nervously pacing husband. “You’re even making the staff nervous.”
  “I can’t help it,” Victor said as he obligingly took the seat she sternly pointed to.
  “We knew it could happen at any time,” Anna smiled. “I wasn’t expecting it in the middle of Thanksgiving Dinner, either.”
  “I blame the turkey,” Victor chuckled. “No sooner did I touch it with the knife than her water broke.”
  “It was probably the smell of those mashed potatoes of yours,” Anna scolded him. “You know they never grow right in that back corner.”
  “That walnut tree's been gone for years,” Victor protested.
  “Nothing tastes right that you grow back there,” Anna scowled. “You need to put something else there.”
  “Like what? The burn pit?” Victor shrugged innocently.
  “Anything would be better than foul tasting food,” Anna nodded enthusiastically. “Last year it was the beans. The acid from the walnuts killing the grass is why you got rid of the tree in the first place and stop pretending you really blamed the dog.”
  “Well, the dog really didn’t help things any,” Victor chuckled.
  “Boy or girl?” Anna suddenly asked to change the subject.
  “No idea,” Victor confessed. “They’ve been incredibly secretive about the whole pregnancy and keep the door locked to the spare bedroom.”
  “So that’s why you keep having me distract them,” Anna laughed. “You’ve been snooping around their house for clues.”
  “This is the first time Roger ever kept a secret from me, so I had to know,” Victor smiled. “We saw how well it turned out when Paul kept a secret from us.”
  “That was a little different,” Anna reminded him. “He was terrified of how we’d take it.”
  “It would have been better to tell us than for me to walk in on it,” Victor laughed. “Still, the look on his face.”
  “On his face?” Anna teased. “While you were upstairs soothing Paul, I was downstairs giving the other boy cookies and ice cream to calm him down.”
  “And whiskey,” Victor reminded her.
  “The ice cream didn’t work,” Anna shrugged. “Teenagers…”
  “Teenagers,” Victor agreed. “A pity they broke up.”
  “Don’t give me that, you could care less that they broke up since he’s taken over your marketing department,” Anna laughed.
  “Win for me, loss for Paul, I guess,” Victor smiled.
  “Where is Paul, anyway?” Anna asked. “He was right behind us.”
  “He’s been seeing that emergency room doctor,” Victor shrugged.
  “Probably having a different kind of emergency right now,” Anna smiled knowingly.
  Victor suddenly stood as the door opened, the nurse motioning for them to follow her to recovery. Anna took his hand as they walked to calm her rather high strung husband. The nurse let them into a room where Roger stood cradling a newborn. He turned, smiling widely.
  “This is Andrew Victor Thomason,” Roger smiled, gently passing the child into Anna’s waiting arms.
  “A boy,” Victor beamed, looking over his wife’s shoulder.
  “And this,” Roger said as Victor looked up in surprise, “this is Mark Roger Thomason.”
  “Twins?” Victor asked in shock as Mark was placed in his arms.
  “Surprise,” Roger grinned. “We’ve known for months and have been dying to tell you.”
  “I should have known,” Anna smiled, teasing the baby in her arms playfully.
  “Andrew and Mark Thomason,” Victor said quietly. “I like it.”


“This way, Mr. Thomason,” the nurse said pleasantly, dragging Victor from his thoughts.
  “How did it go?” Victor asked the nurse as they walked down the corridor.
  “The mother is a little…odd,” the nurse confessed. “She seems to want nothing to do with the child and asked when she would be discharged.”
  “The parents don’t exactly get along,” Victor sighed sadly, his expression brightening as they approached the door.
  Victor paused, struck by the familiarity of the pose as Mark stood with his back to the door, so much like his father had almost twenty years before. He approached slowly, placing a hand gently on Mark’s shoulder and looking down at the newborn who reached towards him with interest.
  “Look at that, he knows you already,” Mark grinned, “don’t you Xavier.”
  “Doting already,” Victor chuckled.
  “Of course,” Mark smiled, winking playfully at the infant who smiled.
  “Going to settle down now?” Victor teased.
  “If that offer for the apartment above the store is still open,” Mark nodded.
  “What about your dream island?” Victor asked.
  “I’m still designing that, so it’s going to be a while,” Mark said, unable to take his eyes off Xavier.
  “I think we can arrange that,” Victor smiled. “So, Xavier Thomason. I wonder what kind of trouble you'll get yourself into…”