The Girl Next Door

"Now don't get too worried if he doesn't latch on right away," the nurse warned. "Sometimes it takes them a bit to figure it out."

We needn't have worried. He began to suckle almost immediately.

There was a knock, "Come in," I called out softly.

Angie stuck her head in the door. "Accepting visitors?"

"You're not visitors, you're family," Kim said. "Come see the little guy."

The nurse looked a little concerned when Angie and Jack came in, since Kim was unclothed from the waist up, but to the rest of us it was perfectly natural. Our home had pretty much been a clothing optional zone in the last nine months since we'd come back from Vietnam. Jack rolled up close to the side of the bed to see what he had wrought.

"This is Connor Angus O'Leary Jr.," Kim said by way of introduction. Junior took the moment to let his face roll away from the nipple, giving Jack – and Angie, over his shoulder – a good look at his face.

"Oh my God," Jack murmured softly, "he's got red hair."

"Just like his daddy," the nurse interjected.

"That's very true," Angie said, winking at me surreptitiously. Like Jack's daddy, not Junior's. "He's got Kim's face big-time, too."

"Lucky kid," I said. It was true though. He was the spitting image of my wife.

"I'll be back in a bit, folks," the nurse said, bustling out and closing the door behind her.

Junior got himself reattached and began to eat with gusto, while Angie reached out and began to lift the thin blanket up over Kim's exposed breast. "You never know who might walk in next," she said.

Kim smiled and shook her head. "Actually, I think I'm going to need that one too in a minute."

"Huh?" Angie said.

"Yeah. Check out the girl next door."

Jack and Angie's brows furled in perfect unison. "The girl next door?" Jack asked.

"Look in the other crib," I said, motioning with my head. They hadn't noticed that there was a second one in the room.

Jack led the way around the foot of the bed, Angie hot on his heels, and they discovered the little pink-wrapped bundle. With almost divine timing, Junior's older sister began to fuss.

"Holy shit!" Angie exclaimed. "You had twins? But..."

"Damn I'm good," Jack murmured with awed pride.

"Would you hold her, Angie?" Kim asked.

Almost as if in a trance, Angie reached down into the crib and gingerly lifted the little girl out, awkwardly cradling her in her arms. "Oh my God, Jack," Angie said softly, wonder in her voice. "She's got your eyes."

"But she's got your hair," he said. This was true. It was nothing like her brother's, and darker than any other in the room save Angie's. Probably from Rhonda, though I intended not to think about that too much.

Angie gingerly sat down in Jack's lap so that he could see better. I could see the envy in both their eyes'. We were all quiet for a while, the miracle of birth seeming to overwhelm mere conversation.

Finally, the little pink bundle began to fuss again. "I think she's hungry," Jack judged.

"Bring her on over," Kim said. "I think we know what to do about that."

Carefully, Angie stood up from her husband's lap and brought the infant to Kim's other bare breast. "Would you hold her while she eats?" Kim asked with a kind smile. She scooted over to the edge of the bed. "My arms are kind of full at the moment."

Angie perched herself on the tall bed and brought her husband's progeny to Kim's breast. The little girl was as quick as her brother and latched on for the first time without any major difficulty.

Kim nodded for Angie to move her head closer, then whispered in her ear. Angie's eyes got wide, but then she nodded.

Still holding the little girl with one arm, Angie undid the buttons of her blouse and moved the bra cup up and away. She lowered her small breast down to where it rested on the little girl's cheek, right next to her mouth. The infant turned her head just slightly, instinctively latching onto Angie's nipple and suckling.

Angie gasped and tears began to stream down her cheeks. Not getting what she was looking for, the little girl went back to Kim's nipple, but the effect had obviously been profound.

Kim looked at me significantly and nodded. I nodded back.

"Jack, Angie," I said softly, "there was a reason that we never told you we were expecting twins." Soft suckling noises were the only sounds in the room. "We didn't even want the idea to go through your heads until Kim and I were certain we could go through with it."

Jack gave me a hard stare. "You're not actually saying..."

"Yes," I said. "We're certain now. We'd like to offer you a child of your own."

No one said anything for a long moment.

"Look," I continued, "there's a clipboard with two applications for Washington State birth certificates, sitting right there on the table. Nothing has been filled out yet, so you would be the birth parents. I've already discussed it with the doctor. Once I explained the circumstances, he said he'd be willing to sign off on it."

"But I'm just the accidental sperm donor," Jack said. "Kim has gone through nine months of carrying those two around. You guys took parenting classes, did Lamaze, ultrasounds, and decorated a nursery."

"Doesn't matter," Kim said. "We'd have done those things anyway. We've been hoping this would work out so much that we even bought two of everything and stashed the second set in our third bedroom. Crib, changing table, complete diaper bag, monitors, you name it. Your nursery could be set up and ready to go in less than an hour."

"But we can't just walk in and take one of your children away," he protested.

"Jack," I said, "it seems like that to you because you hadn't even contemplated becoming a parent this way. But Kim and I have had six months to get used to the idea that she was creating a gift for you."

"We'd name her Emily," Angie said, still with tears streaming and completely immersed in the ecstasy of having a newborn at her breast. "We always said we'd name our first girl Emily."

"But Angie, you're not her mother," Jack said gently.

"And I'm not Junior's father," I told him. "You and Kim are the biological parents, so both of the kids are as much Angie's as mine."

"I'd hate to separate a set of twins," Jack said, his arguments growing less strong. I could tell that the radical idea was growing on him rapidly.

I shrugged. "They'll grow up in the same house. We could try to determine what their relationship should be when they're young – friends, cousins, siblings – but I'd bet they'll develop their own ideas on that. When they're old enough, we'll explain to them how they're related."

"That'll be an interesting conversation," he said, grinning. We had him now.

"So... deal?" I asked.

Angie tore her eyes off of her daughter to look over at her husband. "Please?" she pleaded.

Jack nodded, then looked up at me. I reached down and took his hand.

He gave me as big a squeeze as he could. "Thank you, brother."

* * * * *

"Dad!" he exclaimed. "I think I can see Seattle from here!" He had his eight-year-old nose pressed firmly to the glass.

"Connor," his twin sister said, exasperated with him as she often was, "you can't see that far. That's only Denver."

Kim stifled her laugh. The Windy City Tower was the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, but even from the observation deck on the 146th floor you weren't going to see that far.

Jack rolled up with Angie. The kids had raced from the elevator, leaving them behind in their rush to see the view. "Wow," Jack said, looking out over Lake Michigan to the far shore. "That's really something."

With his mechanical engineering background, he'd been more interested in the active mass dampers (which I planned to show him next), the circulating elevators based on my own patents (which we'd ridden up on), and the carbon fiber diagonal bracing which kept the building's sway to less than half of what the shorter Sears Tower experienced on Chicago's windiest days.

"Dad," Emily yelled, as eight-year-olds are wont to do, "isn't it cool? Uncle Connor designed this skyscraper." She ran to her father, who reached out and helped her climb into his lap, then rolled his manual chair right up next to the glass. It seemed that he regained more use of his hands and arms every month, due to the new therapies, and was even driving his hand-controlled van to work at Boeing nowadays.

He and Angie wandered off a bit, looking out to the north. I snagged our little Aileen and put her up on my shoulders, which she always loved. "I'll bet you can see Seattle," I said.

"Yeah, I think so," she said seriously in her little four-year-old's voice.

Kim moved next to me and handed me a small envelope. "What's this?" I asked.

"I don't know. When we came down the steps of the dais after the ribbon cutting, some guy in the crowd handed it to me. It has your name on it though."

I opened it and pulled out a short, handwritten letter.

Connor,

I saw on TV that you were one of the guys that designed the Windy City Tower. I told Kevin and Diego about it to. I guess we were wrong about you not getting out and designing big buildings. Were all amazed at what you done and were big enough to say when were wrong. Sorry for the stuff we did to you. You did real good.

Sincerely,

Nate Malloy

p.s. Sorry we always called you Foster.

"Good news?" Kim asked, seeing my smile.

"Just a note of congratulation from an old acquaintance," I said, slipping it into my pocket. I hoped she wouldn't notice the misty eyes that accompanied my smile.

Kim moved up against me, hip to hip, and wrapped an arm around my waist. I did the same, noting how much bigger around she had gotten recently. Then I felt a kick. Jack and Angie's little boy was likely to be a varsity soccer player, I figured.

"You do realize that this is it, don't you?" Kim said softly.

I nodded, now worried that my voice might give me away.

"You made that promise to your dad because you wanted him to know that you'd turn out the way he'd have wanted you to," she said. "You were going to build the tallest, most beautiful building and take your own son there."

I swallowed hard and tried to relax my tensed vocal cords. "Yeah, that's what I promised."

"Well, you did it, Connor. A lot of people have big dreams when they're kids, but very few of them keep that dream alive and do what it takes to achieve it. But you actually did it."

I could see by the reflection in the glass that Junior was following our conversation with interest. I hadn't told him about the promise and didn't know if I ever would, though I had told him about what wonderful people his paternal grandparents had been.

So where did I go from here? What do you do when you finally realize your lifetime goal? Some people fall to pieces when they don't have a mission to keep them aimed anymore, but I had good people around me, supporting me like I supported them.

Now, more than ever, Kim was the center of my universe. We made sure that our children were loved, treasured, and well cared for, but our first priority was always our relationship. The kids would eventually move away and hopefully have families of their own, but Kim and I would be together for life.

Angie and I still slept together on occasion, more to keep up family ties than due to any lack of sexual prowess on Jack's part. The nerve regeneration had reached far enough that his equipment was working normally. The diapers were gone and he could use his hands the way a woman wants a man to, a fact that was reported to me by Kim, who still enjoyed rocking his world once a month, or so.

I had some new goals now, like making sure my kids turned out to be happy, healthy, well-educated, and valuable members of society. I was encouraging Jack in his own goal of leaving the chair behind forever, and I was a big supporter of Kim and Angie's latest successful enterprise, selling local arts and crafts over the internet.

Of course my old personal dreams were still in effect. There was always a new tower to design and build, and I had just become the first architect in the long history of I.P. Sloane to become a principal before the age of forty, if only barely.

Right now we were doing structural analysis for a tower in Mumbai. We were planning on incorporating a new technology that would embed photovoltaic cells in the glass outer walls of the building that would act as tinting as well as make the building a net energy producer. My aim, as always, was to make sure the look of the building acted as a great ambassador for its city, the new high-tech center of India.

Kim, Junior, and Aileen would be coming along for the first time, now that Jack and Angie were finally back to being self-sufficient. Kim could handle the online portion of their business from India, while Angie handled the purchasing, packing and shipping from Seattle. As usual, everyone would stay very busy.

At the moment, though, I was totally satisfied. I had my son in front of me, my daughter on my shoulders and my arm around the best woman in the world.

"I couldn't have done it without you, Kim." I meant that, too. If she hadn't sat down next to me in English class that day, I would never have gotten the scholarship that made my education possible, I would never have had the mental and emotional support I'd needed to keep pushing, and I'd certainly never have had two red-headed children of my own.

"I love you, Connor," she said, tipping her head up and softly kissing my lips.

"I love you too, Kim," I said, kissing her back.

END