Chapter Text
“Y’know, no offense to the Remingtons, but this Christmas party kinda blows.”
Nancy let out a sigh she didn’t know she’d been holding.
“I’m glad you said it, because I felt terrible admitting it,” she chuckled regretfully, looking over at her Dad while the two stood off to the side of the kitchen, leaning against an empty wall. Everyone else was either outside or in the living space downstairs.
Nick didn’t say much else, but looked off for a moment, presumably to stew in his own thoughts.
“Well..” he began, digging a hand into his white blazer pocket and inconspicuously pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “I’m gonna head out.”
“Yeah?” Nancy asked, holding a drink in one hand while she watched him start walking away, already placing a cigarette in his mouth before he’d even made it out of the kitchen.
“Mhm.”
Nancy simply stood there, still leaning against the counter as the double doors shut. Suddenly, it felt so much quieter in there, despite the fact that they’d been quiet beforehand, too.
“Hm,” she hummed, taking a long sip of her iced tea before deciding that... yeah, quiet wasn’t particularly comfortable right now. Not for her, at least, and she wasn’t quite sure why.
Tonight felt different, for some reason. By the time that realization crossed her mind, she was already out of the kitchen doors and headed to the foyer.
The place was extravagantly decorated, as to be expected. Glowing chandeliers, garland across the top of the walls and doorframes, wreaths on every door and every window, and dramatic curtains too. Holly and candles and quilts and statues. Everything. It all made her feel equally as overwhelmed as cozy, and one of the thoughts that crossed her mind was just how jealous Bill was probably feeling right now.
She continued walking through the halls ‘til she found the foyer and called out to Vasquez, who guarded the downstairs living room’s entrance.
“Vasquez,” she said, walking up to him. “You, uh, seen my dad anywhere?” She laughed a little, rubbing the back of her neck.
Vasquez nodded, then pointed to the front door. “He walked out that way. Can’t tell you where he went from there.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “Thank you.”
He nodded once more in response, and she left the manor.
—
"Oh my word, how are you not freezing out here?!" Nancy shivered as soon as she walked out. The icy breeze hit hard, and she immediately found herself hugging her frame. That green dress she wore didn't help, despite the fluffy neckline and the fluff at the ends of her sleeves.
Before she could look at him directly, though, a white suit jacket was shoved towards her.
“Oh, uh, thank you,” she said, genuinely, a little shocked as she took it from Nick and threw it on. Now his red, gingham collared shirt underneath was showing.
She stepped down to the bottom porch step and sat down beside him.
They sat in silence for… what was it? Maybe 5 minutes or so? Nancy honestly didn’t know. She stopped paying attention to the time since she walked out of the kitchen.
“So…” Nick began. “What have I missed out on?”
“‘What have you missed out on?’”
“In the last 15 years.”
Nancy coughed awkwardly, then huffed out a short, small laugh, her breath showing in a cloud of steam in the bitter cold. That’s one part of him she knew well. When he wanted to talk about something, he’d eventually talk about it, no matter when.
Nancy wondered how long he’d been wanting to ask that question.
Well, he wanted to talk.
So she’ll talk.
“Well,” she began, looking out at the Remington's front lawn in all of its beauty. It wasn't particularly her taste, but she could appreciate the artistry. “We can start from the beginning, I suppose.”
—
15 Years Prior
Nancy gripped the edges of the bathroom counter as she looked at the positive pregnancy test that lay there.
“So… it finally happened,” she whispered to herself. She sort of whispered it to Bill, too, who stood behind her, hands on her shoulders.
“I guess it did,” he replied back.
Nancy took that time to look up at him. She smiled at him, despite her worry.
“Well, we’d planned for them, didn’t we?”
“We did, yeah,” Bill said, laying his chin on the top of her head. She could see his expression in the bathroom mirror. “But I just… Nance, I’m so happy, I really am, I’m just terrified. I’m sure you are too, though.”
“Ohhh yeah,” she said, placing her hands on his. “There’s no doubt about it, but things’ll turn out okay.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t, I’m just hoping. That’s all.”
The bathroom went silent for a few minutes. Bill continued to massage her shoulders, and Nancy watched his face intently through the mirror. She could see the fear in his face, and the immense desire to keep it hidden, to keep calm, and make her feel better.
“I love you so much, Bill,” Nancy said, leaning back into his hold, and laying her head against his shoulder.
“I love you, too,” He said, pressing a kiss onto her forehead. He enveloped her in a hug. “How in the world are we supposed to be parents, though?” He laughed a little.
Nancy glanced down. They’d planned for this for so long, yet somehow, it felt like they hadn’t planned anything at all. She understood what he meant. She truly did.
Neither of them grew up with a complete family, nor did they grow up with a necessarily healthy family either. They had… a lot to learn, and so little time to learn it all.
“I don’t really know,” she laughed a little with him. She took a little time to think of something encouraging. Once she did, she turned around, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pressed a kiss to his lips. “We love them, we be there for them, and we protect them. We correct them when they’re wrong and uplift them when they’re right.”
He held her tightly.
“And we tell them every chance we get that we love them,” she said, softly.
Nancy, in the back of her mind, cried at the thought of what she had to do, what she knew she’d do since the first time she and Bill ever discussed having kids at all.
She sighed into his chest.
She’d wait for the day to come.
—
The Next Week
“You’re pregnant,” Nick said quietly, staring at her. It wasn’t so much of a question as it was a statement. He had to say it out loud for himself.
“I am.”
They shared a moment of silence.
“And we’re cutting contact.”
He inhaled sharply and realized he couldn’t look her in the eye anymore. His gaze shot to the floor immediately. He didn’t say a word, and his crossed arms tightened their hold.
“I’m changing my number, and if somehow you find it, all I ask of you is that you don’t dial it. All I ask is that you don’t send us letters or mail or anything like that.”
He heard her sigh.
“I’m sorry, Dad. Really, I am. I know that… I know that you can be better, you just won’t, and that’s what I’m worried about.”
Nancy quieted to see if he’d respond, but he didn’t. She knew he was listening, though. She could always tell.
“You’re reckless, you’re violent, you’re inconsiderate… You always put yourself first instead of me. I felt so unheard by you growing up. I could…” Tears began to stream down her face. She hurriedly tried to wipe them away, but she was never good at hiding that kind of thing. “I could never go to you for anything… You brushed me off and never seemed to care about the things that really mattered to me. You used me to do your bidding, and I always received the consequences of it when I should never have been in that situation.”
She choked out a sob. “I don’t want you to put this kid through what you’ve put me through.”
She shut the door behind her. He kept staring at the floor, listening for her bike to start and drive away.
—
Present Day
Nancy found herself internally grateful at the fact that he’d been listening so far. The Nick she knew 15 years ago wouldn’t have dared sit through something so long if it didn’t benefit him, but here he sat, taking in every word she said. She felt her heart flutter at the notion, the reality, and she couldn’t help but smile through those unfortunate memories that had resurfaced.
“Okay, okay,” she began again, shifting in her spot so her legs didn’t grow numb. “How about we get to the happy parts? I’m willing to bet that’s probably what you meant when you asked what you’ve missed out on.”
She heard Nick laugh a little at the sudden mood change, and she swore she could practically hear the lighthearted eye roll. “Honestly, I was just kind of looking for whatever. Any event, the tone didn’t particularly matter. I just wanted to know what I’ve missed out on, is all. Good or bad. My fault or not.”
Nancy hummed, finishing her glass and setting it off to the side.
“Anyway, Tilly was born not too long after that.”
—
13 Years Prior
Nancy stared up at the ceiling, listening to the faint sound of the TV and the HVAC system harmonizing. She turned her head and noticed Bill’s soft snoring joining in with the choir from where he lay, in the recliner beside her hospital bed. He had his hat laid on his face in that way that made Nancy laugh a little every time he slept like that, though she simply smiled this time instead. She worried any laughter would’ve caused pain, despite the pain meds she’d been given to relieve the soreness in her abdomen and the stinging of her c-section scar.
Nancy took the stillness of the room to realize that her heart beat steadily, and her breathing stayed calm as well. A complete 180° from just 9 hours prior, when she wrestled through a difficult, 22-hour labor with no progress, and was wheeled into an operating room as a result.
She’d kept her eyes locked on him the entire time. Even now, when his own couldn’t lock with hers.
Suddenly, the stillness of the room shifted as her bundle of joy shifted in her arms.
“Hey, sug',” Nancy cooed, fixing the pillow beneath her arm to keep Matilda propped up right. She watched her stretch out and yawn. Nancy wondered if it was the 'new mom' hormones or whatever she expected, but she looked like the most adorable thing ever when she did that.
Nancy then pressed a soft kiss onto her nose. She cradled her in the dim morning light that shone through the hospital windows, and wondered how on board Bill would be with calling her Tilly instead.
“How cute would that be?” Nancy asked her as if she were listening, as if she could comprehend her at all. “Calling you Tilly when your daddy’s out tilling the soil?”
Tilly, of course, didn’t listen, opting to start snoring herself. Interestingly enough, her breathing pattern matched Bill’s to a T, and the harmonies continued throughout the morning.
—
Present Day
“Tilly was the happiest kid you’d have ever met.”
“She still is,” Nick laughed.
“I know,” Nancy hummed with a smile. “The first few months were rough. She had a set of lungs on her, and she knew how to get our attention, but once she’d settled down, she was an absolute sweetheart. She was talkative, too, that first year. She talked and laughed. That’s all she did.”
“Y’know, you were like that too.”
“I was, now?”
“You sure were. Though I’m gonna guess she wasn’t as much of a velcro baby as you were.”
“Oh, no,” Nancy laughed. “She could do pretty well on her own. Cricket, on the other hand, needed to be around you every second of the day. Speaking of him, he wasn’t as difficult a birth as she was.”
“Pregnancy was rough, though, I’m guessing?”
“Nah, not really. I mean, it was rough for Bill at first,” Nancy mumbled. “But for me? It didn’t get rough until the very end, when it really dawned on me that I had to go through all of that again. There wasn’t a guarantee that the same thing that happened with Tilly wouldn’t happen again.”
—
11 Years Prior
“Oh, God, Bill, I don’t think I can do this.”
“I know,” Bill said, cupping Nancy’s face gently. His bandaged finger felt rough on her cheek, but he couldn’t exactly use his other hand with her gripping it so hard. “I know you don’t think you can, but I know you can, because you are doing it.”
She hadn’t even started pushing yet, but she was getting close enough that reality started to settle in, and the weight of the world was weighing on her chest. She had tried to stop hyperventilating a long time ago, and that didn’t really work.
“You got through it with Tilly, I know you’ll get through it with him.”
They hadn’t even picked out a name yet.
“But I didn’t get this far with Tilly,” Nancy said just above a whisper, her voice trembling. She was shaking violently, though the nurses told her that it was normal. “They had to do surgery b-before we even got to this point!”
“I know,” Bill acknowledged, now brushing her hair out of her face comfortingly. “But you’ve made it farther this time than you did then.”
He was right about that. She’d only gotten to 7cm last time. She was around 9 now.
“I’m so proud of you, darling. I know you can do this.”
Nancy kept her eyes locked on his, even when Alice rubbed her shoulder comfortingly and squeezed her other hand.
She couldn’t even tell them how thankful she was for both of them before she was instructed to push.
—
After about 11 hours of labor and an hour and a half of pushing, he was about 6 pounds and 8 ounces. Bright, blue eyes and a head full of light brown hair. He didn’t cry until a good 15 seconds after he’d been born, with Nancy gripping her family's hands even harder than she did during labor. She finally let herself relax when he let himself scream at the top of his lungs.
He wasn’t a particularly loud crier, but he had endurance. He could cry for a long, long time, and needed a couple of gentle blows of air directed at his face for him to remember to breathe. He wanted nothing but to be heard, and they certainly heard him.
“Alice,” Nancy began, her newborn lying in between her legs, half bent as she propped him up with them. She held his little hands in her own. “I don’t think Bill told you, but we don’t… really have a name for him.”
Nancy smiled awkwardly at her mother-in-law, who shot her a confused look in response.
“Well, why in the world haven’t you done that yet?”
“We just couldn’t find anything that fit. I mean, we knew Ernest was gonna be his middle name, but nothing else seemed to stick.”
“Are you wanting a unique name or a basic name? Old-fashioned or new?”
“Unique, definitely. Old or new, either is fine,” Nancy said, pressing a kiss onto his forehead. He squirmed when she did so, despite his eyes being closed. He seemed to be a light sleeper.
“How unique?”
“Very. What’s the most unique name you’ve ever heard?”
Alice thought about it for a moment. A pretty long moment to be exact. She had a lot of memories to go through. She’d met a lot of people in her life.
“Truth be told, the most unique name I’ve ever heard had to have been one of Ernest’s brothers.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm. ‘Cricket’. I remember asking their mama at our wedding ‘where’d you even think of that name’? And she couldn’t give an exact answer. She just said she thought it’d make him stand out, and she wanted a baby that stood out.”
Nancy’s eyes had already been on Alice the moment she said that name.
How perfect.
Bill seemingly thought so, too.
“That’s it,” he said, so confidently that a big grin spread across Nancy’s face. “I mean… if you’re fine with that, of course.” He added, rubbing the back of his neck and smiling at Nancy awkwardly.
“Absolutely. That’s his name. Get his birth certificate out right now.”
—
Present Day
As Nancy finished, she noticed her father staring off at the night sky, though she could tell by his facial expression that he was listening. She could always tell.
Nancy paused for a brief moment. A lot of pausing tonight, it seemed. “I need you to know, the day I told you I was pregnant, that they weren’t Tilly.”
“Mm. They weren’t, huh.”
“Nope. If you do the math,” she began. “Tilly just turned 13 in September. I told you around 15 years ago.”
Nick nodded. Yeah, that sounded about right now that she brought it up. He wasn’t sure why the dots never connected beforehand.
He felt his hand tremble a little as he took the cigarette out of his mouth and breathed out another cloud of smoke.
Neither of them said anything for a while.
“Ernest or Naomi.”
“Hm?”
“We were gonna name them either Ernest or Naomi.”
Nancy looked at Nick and smiled warmly. She didn’t look sad, but he noticed how her voice had deepened as the conversation changed. He noticed the very small signs of her being upset that he had noticed when she was younger. Her voice deepened, her eyes half-lidded, her brows slightly knit together.
Her voice shook a little when she spoke, too, but he couldn’t tell if it did so because of her emotions or the cold in this situation.
“The names lived on, I guess,” Nancy said with a somber chuckle. Her eyes landed on the sky for a split second and fell back onto the snow. She couldn’t find it in herself to believe in God or an afterlife, but she hoped that despite her unbelief, they lived joyfully in Heaven. That God cradled them for her, and gave them kisses and made them laugh. “Cricket Ernest Green and Matilda Metrona Naomi Green.”
Nick finally made eye contact.
“You named her after your mama?”
“I did. Cricket had to be named after someone in the family, so Tilly had to as well. It was only fair. Though, now that I think about it, it doesn’t sound too fair, with her getting two names and him only getting one.”
Nick couldn’t stop staring at her, despite the fact that she’d diverted her gaze from him and couldn’t bring it back.
“I…” her lip trembled. “Some days I wished you were there, as weird as that sounds. I knew that cutting contact was the right decision, but I needed someone to fill in some kind of hole that was missing. It was like… despite the fact that I knew, and still know, that I made the right choice, this little scared kid inside of me wanted my mom, and because there was no way I couldn’t have her, the little kid inside of me wanted my dad, too.”
Nick watched a few tears stream down her face. She quickly wiped them away with the sleeves of his blazer she wore. Her mascara stained it.
That was okay.
Hot, boiling tears suddenly began running down her freezing cold face in droves. Nancy couldn’t help but notice how much steam her breath was giving off in the air now that she was crying so hard.
Before Nancy could even say another word, an arm was wrapped around her back, and she was pulled into a side hug.
Nick lay his head on her shoulder, and she lay her head on his head in return. She curled in on herself and reached up with one hand to grip his shoulder on his other side. As she did so, he took the cigarette out of his mouth and tossed it to the ground, and extinguished it with the bottom of his dress shoe.
Nancy hid her face in his hair as she continued to cry. Despite her tears, the acknowledgement of their embrace didn’t escape her. He’d never been particularly physically affectionate, especially not to her.
“Nance, I’m so fucking sorry.”
He’d never been this vulnerable, either. Maybe he never would be again. She hoped he would be again.
“I’m so sorry.”
The Christmas lights outside made them stand out in the dark. Nancy, in particular, with the sequins in her dress and her earrings that were shaped like holly berries and their leaves. She had a necklace with a holly pendant on it.
They all shone.
She wondered how many eyes watched her from the windows. How many constellations took notice and stared at her too.
His voice lowered to just above a whisper. She listened to the way his words trembled, and she wondered if it was because of him or because of the cold.
“I’ll never be able to take it back, to give you the life you deserved.”
Nancy bit her lip. If she believed in God, she’d be thanking Him.
“And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I can’t reverse it all, and I’m sorry you never got that life to begin with.”
She finally wrapped her other arm around him, pulling him into a full embrace, and she stuffed her face in the crook of his neck. It took a few seconds, but he eventually held her tightly in return.
Nancy swore she felt her shoulder become wet.
“I know it doesn’t make it any better, but I love you, kid. I’m sorry I never showed it. I’m so sorry you never felt it, either.”
All of a sudden, she burst out into inconsolable wails.
—
By the time they’d calmed down and figured it was too cold to continue sitting outside, Bill walked out of the front entrance and quietly closed the door behind him.
“Whoa, it is… so much colder than I expected it to be,” he laughed, then stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the two look up at him.
They looked equally exhausted with redness beneath their eyes. Mascara stained Nancy’s cheeks, and Nick’s eyes glistened.
“Oh… did I, um… interrupt something? I can head back inside if—“
“No, no,” Nancy began, wiping her face with her sleeves. She whispered a short ‘I’ll wash it, sorry’ to Nick, and he replied with a short wave and a ‘don’t worry about it’.
“Everything alright, Bill?” She asked, finally standing up. Nick stood up with her.
“Oh, yeah, everything’s fine,” he said, waving his hands reassuringly. “It’s just, the kids are pretty tired and it’s about, what? 11:45? I was kinda hoping we’d have left before then, but they got me involved in a game of charades, and you can guess how long that took.”
“Right,” Nancy said, taking hold of Nick’s wrist to glance at his watch. It was more like 11:48 now, but that didn’t particularly matter. “I’m not wrangling two kids to bed at 12 in the morning.”
“You won’t have to do much wrangling, they’re pretty tuckered out as it is. I’m sure they’ll be asleep once we get in there,” he laughed. “Well, y’all can go say goodbye to whoever and head to the truck. I’ll get the kids, Ma, and Gloria, and we can head back to Smalton.”
“Did we figure out where Gloria’s sleeping?” Nancy asked.
“Tilly offered a space in her room, so we’ll get the air mattress and she’ll sleep in there.”
“Gotcha.”
They all stood there for a few minutes.
“Hope y’all are... uh, alright and all. It’s not my business, so I won’t ask, but if y’all need to talk anymore before we head out, I’ll step back inside. It’ll be a long drive, so you guys should finish if you need to.”
Nick and Nancy looked at each other.
“Anything we need to talk about further?” Nick asked.
“Not right now,” she sighed with a small, tired smile. “I’m too cold, too tired, and ready to go home. Anything we wanna talk about, it can wait.”
Bill stepped back and opened the door, holding it for them to walk inside. He handed Nancy a handkerchief from his pocket so she could wipe the mascara off as well.
They said their goodbyes, carried the kids to the truck, and went home.