Once Will braved Charlie’s house, but he discovered that, if anything, Charlie had been downplaying the craziness of his sisters. Caroline was sly, and Lisa was a prankster who couldn’t stop giggling. They were only ten, but they were already worse than anybody the boys knew at school. Will had had the foresight to leave his backpack at home, but he’d still spent a week trying to wash the Sharpie off his leg from when he’d been distracted watching a movie.
March 2004
The new baby was due in April, so Will was worried when Uncle Henry and Aunt Temi picked him up from school on the third of March.
“The baby’s coming?” Will exclaimed. “But he’s not due for over a month!”
Uncle Henry clapped him on his shoulder. “I know, bud. But Anne’s at a great hospital, and they’re going to do everything they can to make sure Anne and the baby are okay. Okay?”
Richard’s lame idea to play Monopoly didn’t distract Will in the slightest, nor did Edward’s hefty sighs and obvious checking of the clock.
Will got ready for bed when he was told to, but he couldn’t sleep. He lay in the spare bedroom staring at the ceiling, the wall, the window, the weird shadows the desk made on the wall. Nothing helped. He was gripped with a terrifying fear that he was about to lose another mother.
At four a.m., he got up and paced around the room, then went downstairs to the kitchen. He wasn’t hungry, but he went digging through the cupboards looking for snacks anyway. He was still staring vacantly out the kitchen window when his uncle came down in the morning for breakfast.
“Will,” he said sympathetically. “Up all night?”
Will nodded.
“Well, we should hear something soon, I’m sure.”
The phone finally rang at eight a.m. Uncle Henry didn’t even answer it, just handed it to Will.
“Dad?” Will gasped.
“Mom’s okay,” Dad assured him. “And so’s the baby. Will, you have a baby sister!”
“She’s . . . okay? She’s okay?” He couldn’t wrap his head around it. “But she’s so early!”
“She is early, but the doctors say that thirty-four-week babies usually do very well. She’s almost five pounds, which is great for her age. She needs a little help breathing, so she’s going to have to stay in the NICU for a while, maybe a few weeks.”
“What’s a NICU?”
“It’s the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. It’s the part of the hospital that’s for sick or premature babies.”
“Can I come see her?”
“You sure can,” Dad said. He asked to speak to Uncle Henry, and they made arrangements for Will to go to the hospital to see her.
Will was thrilled to learn he had a baby sister. He’d hoped for a boy for himself, but he thought his mom would probably be pleased with a little girl.
It wasn’t until he was in the car with his aunt, uncle, and cousins, that he realized he had forgotten to ask the baby’s name!
“Georgiana Catherine Darcy,” Dad announced the moment they met him in his mom’s room. Will was too busy hugging his mom for the name to register at first.
“Mom,” he whispered. His throat felt tight. “Oh, Mom, I love you.” She hugged him close and stroked his hair, and when he pulled away, he saw that there were tears in her eyes.
“I love you too, Will, my darling.” Her voice was soft, and he closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a few moments, then gave Mom’s hand a squeeze.
“Georgiana,” Will said, the baby’s name finally returning to his thoughts. “Georgie.” A sudden memory came to him, of his mother calling him “Georgie-Porgy” and asking him to run to the corner store for him. He swallowed hard. “Georgie.”
He was allowed to see his new sister briefly in the NICU since he was over twelve, but only for a few minutes. She looked so small in her incubator, with tubes and wires taped to her little body. He took a shaky breath.
She was sleeping, her tiny little face squinched up and red, her light hair plastered to her scalp and looking, aside from the color, like his did when he hadn’t washed it for days and it was soaked with sweat. There were some spots that looked like bruises on her head and cheeks. He supposed that she would probably look better after she’d had a bath and a couple of days to adjust to the outside world. He hoped.
When they stepped outside, Dad gave him a hug. “Really, Will, it’s not as bad as it looks. The doctor really thinks she’s going to be okay. She just needs extra help for a little while.”
Will nodded. A baby sister. He had a baby sister! He was still reeling over that delightful thought, as he got back into the car with his aunt, uncle, and cousins. Just as the car started up, he heard Uncle Henry say softly to Aunt Temi, “Georgiana? What were they thinking?”
April 2004
Will couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so uncomfortable.
Georgiana seemed perfectly comfortable, lucky little thing. She didn’t even know she was attending her own baby shower, as she was sleeping through it. She’d only been home from the hospital for a little over a week, and already she had the entire Darcy family wrapped around her little finger.
The phrase evoked a memory briefly, and he remembered another little girl saying it about her father. Lizzy. He missed her.
Unlike Georgiana, Will was feeling overwhelmed, and he was most certainly not allowed to sleep through the shower. There were so many women! The men had taken themselves off somewhere, but apparently he didn’t count as a man yet, so he was supposed to help throw away wrapping paper and bring people drinks and occasionally hold Georgiana.
Aunt Catherine wouldn’t stop staring at him. He couldn’t figure out why. He’d only met her a few times before, as she and Mom had what Mom called a “contentious relationship.” Which meant that she yelled a lot, and Mom didn’t really like to be yelled at.
Her latest complaint was Georgiana’s name. “What were you and George thinking?” she asked Anne. “Naming her after yourselves. Poor thing doesn’t even have a name of her own!” Will would never admit that he agreed.
It wasn’t until after the baby shower finally ended that he finally figured out Aunt Catherine’s staring.
“Anne,” Aunt Catherine hissed in what she probably thought was a whisper, “the boy . . . that one you adopted . . . how old is he?”
“Our son just turned fourteen,” Mom said. She glanced at Will. He pretended to be collecting confetti from under the table and not listening to their conversation, but he doubted she was convinced.
“He’s about the right age for Anne, then,” Aunt Catherine went on.
Will blanched. Anne? That whiny eight-year-old with teeth that stuck out? The right age for what? He was not getting stuck playing with her. He crawled under the table to look for more confetti, figuring they might forget his presence.
Mom rolled her eyes. “Catherine...”
“He’s adopted!” Aunt Catherine said, not even bothering to whisper any more. “They’re not blood relations.”
There was some muted conversation between the two of them that Will didn’t catch. He sighed internally. He was going to have to come out if he wanted to hear what was going on and what exactly Aunt Catherine expected him to do with his annoying little cousin.
Will climbed out from under the table and shook the confetti off his hands and into the trash, then wandered over to the food table and picked up the empty fruit bowl. Of course, now he’d have to go into the kitchen. Maybe if he slowly collected a bunch of items to go the kitchen before he made the trip?
“I’m not arranging my son’s marriage,” Mom said firmly.
Will’s eyes went wide, and he met Mom’s gaze. She gave him a weak grin and made shooing motions.
He sighed, put the cups he’d been holding onto the tray, and walked as slowly as he could into the kitchen.
Aunt Catherine was crazy.
June 2005
Will was reading on his bed when both of his parents walked into his room. He sat up quickly. One parent c
oming in was a chat. Two was a “talk.” What had he done now?
“Will,” Dad said, “we’ve been wanting to talk to you about volunteering at the shelter.” His parents sat down on the bed, one on each side of him.
He tensed and swallowed hard. He’d known this was coming eventually. His parents owned the shelter; his mother had been involved with it since she was a teen. They spent a couple of evenings a week and time on the weekend there, and he never, ever went.
He wondered if they thought he was selfish. That once he’d left that life, he never wanted to look back or be reminded of it at all. That he was happy to sit spoiled and aloof in his rich and fancy home and go to private school and give nothing back to people who had so little.
Wasn’t that true, though? He didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to see the place he’d once called home.
“We’ve tried not to put pressure on you,” Mom said, “but it’s been two years now.”
There was silence for a minute, then Dad said, “Could you try to explain it to us, maybe? Why are you so reluctant to go back?”
He shook his head. How could he explain it? It didn’t even make sense to him.
Mom put her arm around him, and he sank into her. With her hair covering his face, he couldn’t see his parents. Somehow that made it easier to talk.
“I was so lost there. I was scared all the time. Scared I’d lose my stuff, scared somebody would hurt me, scared we’d make one wrong step and I’d end up in that group home again where . . . where the other kids hit me and ruined all my things.” He took a deep breath. He would not cry. He wouldn’t. “I can’t stand to go back there and feel like that again. I hated being scared all the time.”
Mrs. Darcy gave him a squeeze. “I had a feeling it was something like that.”
“They weren’t all bad memories, though, Will,” Dad said. “I know it was rough for you there, but it’s also where we met you. You read Lizzy’s book for the first time there. You . . .” He trailed off uncertainly.
Will couldn’t help but smile at his Dad’s attempt to find the positive. He supposed there had been one big good thing that came from the shelter: meeting the Darcys. But there really wasn’t much else.
“Wasn’t there anything else good?” Mom asked, mirroring his thoughts. “Did you meet any other kids there? Play any games?”
Will shrugged. “Nah. The playroom is just kid toys and board books. I pretty much just stayed in my room with Mom and read Lizzy’s book over and over. It was the only one I had.”
Dad stood up from the bed and paced towards the window, then back. “I thought the playroom was pretty decent. We had donors give us lots of great toys and games.”
Will shrugged. “Nobody over the age of ten is going to go in there, no matter what toys you put in there. I mean, big kids don’t really play with toys, anyway, especially kids who have grown up like I did. They grow past toys pretty fast. You could get video games in there, maybe.”
“I’m not sure that we want to push video games, though,” Mom said. “Then we might end up with challenges about what games are appropriate for what age.”
“What about books?” Dad said. “Will just said that Around the World in 80 Days was his only book. Maybe we need to have more variety of books, including books for older kids.”
“Maybe.” Will was doubtful. “I don’t think a lot of the kids were big readers. I wasn’t, until I met Lizzy.”
“Sports, then?” Dad suggested. “Some activity centers have a basketball court. We could spare some space in the parking lot, I think, at least for a small court.”
Mom stood up. “Will, why don’t you spearhead that?”
Will frowned. “Spearhead?”
Dad chuckled, but Mom explained. “Yes, start something. Why don’t you see what we would need to set up a basketball court? Maybe talk to some of the kids at the shelter and see if they’d really want that, or what they’d like?”
“Books, too,” Dad said. “See if they’d like books, and what kinds of books. Maybe we could have a teen shelf and a kid shelf.”
Trust Dad to think of books. Will smiled.
“All right?” Mom said. “Will you come tonight and get started?”
Will sighed. They were good at this manipulation thing. He could almost hear their train of thought. Give the kid something to do, and he’ll be too distracted to be freaked out. It was true, though. Now he couldn’t stop thinking about what would have made his time at the shelter better. Books, certainly, but what if he had never met Lizzy? He might have liked playing basketball. He would have liked video games, but those were already vetoed. He’d keep thinking, maybe there was something else. Maybe games like Settlers of Catan or something?
“Okay.” He’d do it. “Just this time, though. At least for now.” He could always stay outside in the parking lot the whole time and pretend that he was thinking about the basketball court if it came down to it.
“Fair enough,” Dad said, holding out his hand to shake Will’s. “Good choice, son.”
Will just hoped he didn’t have some sort of freak-out and make a fool out of himself.
September 2007
“Oh, this is so sweet!” The mother of the family who had just arrived at the shelter peeked inside her daughter’s welcome bag to see what was included. “Look at all this! It even has a coloring book, crayons . . . such a great idea. Say thank you, Emmy.”
The little girl thanked Will without looking up from her bag. He smiled. Georgie had ducked behind Will when he had first greeted the family and given them their introduction to the shelter, but she now peeked out and smiled at the little girl, who was about her age.
“Hi,” Georgie said softly.
Emmy’s eyes lit up as she looked at Georgie. “Bear-Bear!” she exclaimed, pointing at Georgie’s beloved Pookie. She reached out a hand towards the stuffed bear.
“No!” Georgie said, clutching her bear and darting back behind Will’s legs. “My Pookie!”
“Bear-Bear!” Emmy wailed.
“I am so, so sorry,” the mother said, scooping up her crying daughter. “She had a bear just like that, but when we had to leave our apartment . . . well, we don’t know exactly what happened to it, but it’s gone. Emmy still misses it.”
Will nodded and watched as the mom, carrying the girl, disappeared down the hallway that led towards the family rooms.
He had an idea, but he had to wait until his mom came to relieve him at the desk at five.
“Hey, Mom,” he said as she approached. “Any idea where Georgie’s bear came from?”
“Pookie?” She looked puzzled. “I think it was a gift at her baby shower.”
Will sighed. “Oh.”
“But Franklin’s Toys still sells them, I think. Why?”
He grinned. “Georgie and I have an errand to run!”
Will fretted as he loaded Georgie into her car seat and drove to Franklin’s Toys. Was Mom right? Would they have the bear there? He supposed he could always try to find something close, and maybe Emmy would accept it. Still, he couldn’t help but think how cool it would be if he could actually find the right bear.
Georgie was thrilled when they walked into the toy store and she saw all the toys. She was less thrilled when Will told her they were there to pick up a gift and not to buy anything for Georgie. Will had second thoughts. Why hadn’t he just borrowed Pookie, or taken a good look at him, and left Georgie with Mom?
He snorted. He hadn’t wanted to leave Mom with a crying, Pookie-less Georgie, for one, and he wasn’t entirely confident in his ability to match bears without Pookie on hand, for the other.
Fortunately, Georgie was quite good at spotting the bin of stuffed bears when they found the right aisle.
“Pookies!” she squealed. “Lots of Pookies!”
“Let’s pick out just one for Emmy, Georgie,” he said. Georgie dug through the bin looking for a blue Pookie that would match hers. She pulled it out triumphantly an
d waved it at him. “Pookie’s twin! This is Sookie!”
“No, Georgie,” he said, taking her hand. He tried to grab the new bear with the other hand, but Georgie wrapped her arm around both of the bears and glared at him with all the ferocity of a three-year-old bear herself.
Will sighed and headed to the register. She’d figure it out sooner or later, but he was really, really regretting having brought her along now.
When they got back to the shelter, it was nearing Georgie’s bedtime. “Come on, Georgie,” he said. “Let me take Soo—the other bear, and you can take Pookie home to bed.”
“No! Sookie is Pookie’s twin! They have to both come home with me!”
“This other bear is for Emmy, Georgie. It’s not nice of you to keep two bears when she doesn’t have a bear at all. Let’s go take it to Emmy and see.” Maybe if she saw Emmy with the bear, it would help. He just hoped he wasn’t going to have to take her away kicking and screaming. His gift would not go over so well then.
When they knocked on the door, Emmy’s tired mom answered. “Oh!” she said with surprise when she saw them both. Then she saw the bear, and her eyes widened. “Is that . . . is that Bear-Bear?”
Emmy appeared behind her in an instant. “Bear-Bear?” Her eyes widened in a way that comically mirrored her mother’s. “Bear-Bear!” She snatched the bear out of Georgie’s hands before Georgie could protest. “Bear-Bear!” Emmy hugged the bear, her chin low on the bear’s head as she squeezed him so hard that her knuckles were white.
Georgie gasped when the bear was torn from her arms, and Will glanced down at her. She watched Emmy, her lower lip trembling. Then she sniffed. Will was just about ready to scoop her up and say goodbye to avoid a meltdown when she said, “Mine’s Pookie. Bear-Bear is his twin.”
Emmy looked up. “Twins?”
Georgie nodded. “They want to stay together all the time.”
A Good Name: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Variation Page 10
