A/N: I don't own Miracle, which is quite obvious by my intense level of poverty, which was only increased by the fact that my prom date is so poor he couldn't afford to pay for my ticket. I really want to thank everyone who reviewed.
Klinoa: Wait and see; wait and see. (And you may have to wait quite a while because I'm a busy little girl.)
Emador: Don't worry; I'm pretty busy so I understand. Thanks for the advice and the review.
Meadow567: Maybe, you'll just have to wait and see. But I loved that line too.
CapriceAnn Hedican-Kocur: Probably
Vickitori: I'm sorry; I just closed a play and I had two AP tests, the SAT, and prom this past weekend.
Darkdestiny2000: Mrs. McClanahan is based on a very close, beloved relative, so I do feel sorry for her, but I understand where you're coming from. Yeah, I have three protective older brothers who inspired Mac and Mark. Plus, three of my friends at school act a lot like them.
CandieBabie30: Thanks for the review. I'm sorry the update took so long to update.
Shelbers: Where did I go? I went to school, the SAT, the AP US History test, the AP Biology test, prom, church, and to the theatre to work on the production of Oklahoma I was doing tech work on.
Staceygirl: I'm a busy woman.
Ellie's POVI picked the phone up off the floor. "Mother, did you just say that Dad's threatening to leave you?"
"He's says I'm a drunk," she slurred from the other end of the phone. I seriously doubted that she even realized that I'd dropped the phone. "And he says he can't be married to a drunk. Lizzie, doll, tell your father I'm not a drunk."
"I'll think about it and see what I can do," I told her. "I'm not sure that Dad will listen to me. He's probably made up his mind already and he's not likely to change his mind. And besides, he'll let you keep Kathie; we all know she's your favorite." I knew there was malice in my voice as I said that last bit and I didn't care.
"Oh, darling, you know that I love all of you equally. It's just that Kathie does what I tell her to do; she's not as stubborn as you and your brother are. You're so stubborn, just like your father. I can't understand that. How did that happen to me?" I could hear her pouring another drink. It was either a martini, scotch on the rocks, or wine; those were the only things she ever drank in the morning.
"I don't know," I muttered. It was nine o'clock in the morning, I was tired, and Heidi wanted attention. This was one person I didn't want to be talking to, not now especially.
"Lizzie, you know I love you," my mother slurred and I sighed. When she was drunk and trying to win my affections, she would say anything. My mother is what you might call a functioning alcoholic. For the most part she can be pissed out of her head and still behave like a reasonable person, but when she starts mixing different kinds of liquor, things just go to hell in a hand basket. I really needed Jack.
Heidi took a long nap that afternoon and I was bored, so I took out my ballet slippers, leotard, and skirt and found a record I wanted to dance to. I was spinning and leaping around the living room when the doorbell rang. "Just a minute," I yelled before I turned off the record player and ran to the door. Kathie was standing there.
"I took the bus," she said walking in without asking my permission.
"What do you want?" I gasped.
"Dad's leaving Mother," she announced, thinking she was dropping a bombshell.
"I know," I said nonchalantly. "She called me about it this morning."
"Elizabeth, you've got to help her," she sighed. "She needs you. You can't let their marriage crumble."
"I can't?" I asked. "Katherine, I've sat by and watched that marriage crumble for twenty-two years. There's not much I can do at this point. I can admit that Mom wasn't cut out to be a mother; that's true. Dad isn't around much; I'll admit that one too. If they both wanted to work at this, they could still fix their marriage, but neither one of them wants to fix this marriage anymore. Mom just wants to stay with Dad for his money and Dad would only stay with her because of you kids. This marriage is over and done with, and it has been for a long time."
"But you've got to help them," she whined. "They need to stay together until I graduate from high school."
"Kathie, that's another six years together; they've already been through twenty-four years together."
"But then they'll have been married for thirty years," she protested.
"If they wanted to stay married for thirty years, they would fight for this marriage. But they're not going to do it. They've had it with each other; the marriage is over."
"But they still love each other," she insisted.
"No they don't," I said sadly. It was so hard for me to admit to myself that my parents' marriage was finished but I knew it was true. My mother's drinking had frustrated my father for years and it had finally driven him away; he wanted her out of his life.
"People can be married without love," Kathie suggested.
"Not happily," I replied. "I'm sorry, kiddo, but it's true. They would grow to hate each other over time and it would destroy them. When a marriage dies, you have to let it go."
"What if you marry Jack and then your marriage dies?" she asked me.
I looked at my sister and thought about what she asked me. What would I do if I was married to Jack and then our marriage fell apart? "I'd die," I whispered.
"Ellie, I'm sorry," Jack said softly. "I love you so much."
"She's twenty-two years old, Jack. That's more than half my age. What were you thinking? Were you thinking? Can you control yourself at all?" Once I started saying things to him, I couldn't stop. "Why did you do this? Why did you do this to me, to our children?"
"I don't know why I did it," he whispered, sinking into the bed. "I wasn't thinking. I thought I…I don't know what I thought."
I looked at him. "You thought you loved her. She's younger than me, prettier than me, thinner than me. She hasn't had five kids, your five children. She isn't fifty years old. Jack, I'm sorry that I'm not as perfect as you'd like, but I thought that the last twenty-six years actually meant something to you."
"I'm sorry," he said again. "And I do love you more than ever. Ellie, she's nothing like you. You're a million times more amazing than she could ever be. You're the mother of my children."
"So is she," I muttered. He'd gotten that little Barbie pregnant.
"Ellie, we've been married for twenty-six years and we've been together for twenty-eight. We have six children together. I spent four months with her, and I never was as happy with her as I am when I'm with you."
"She made you happy enough that you got in the sack with her," I retorted.
"I'll go to counseling; I'll do anything you want to me to do. I want to save our marriage." Jack was crying and I knew he was serious, but I also couldn't trust him.
"So do I, but I don't know if I can trust you anymore. You cheated on me, Jack, and you got your little Barbie pregnant. You have to take responsibility for your other child."
"I'll do what I have to, but I'm going to fight for our marriage. I'm not going to let Kylie ruin things."
"She's pregnant. I wish that baby could be mine," I sobbed. "I haven't had a baby in seventeen years. She doesn't even want that baby but I want it. I know I'm fifty years old, but I want to have one more baby. I want to be pregnant!"
"Oh, Ellie," Jack cried out as he pulled me into his chest. "I'm so sorry."
"I want that baby," I wailed again.
"I'll see if she'll carry it to term and then let us adopt it."
"I want to be pregnant," I sobbed.
"Aren't you too old?" he whispered.
"Oh, right remind me of another way I'm not like that Barbie. She can get pregnant, but I can't."
I woke up just then. I was still twenty-two and single. Jack was nowhere in sight and as I far as I knew he wasn't cheating on me. But I still had problems. My parents were getting divorced, my sisters were lost and confused, my brother's fiancée was pregnant, and I had no clue what my family was going to do for Christmas, which was two weeks away. Oh, and I had to clue what to give Jack for Christmas.
Yep, life was great, absolutely great.
Jack's POVI picked Mary up and kissed the three-year-old's cheek. "All right, Maribelle, let's get you up to bed."
"But, Daddy, I'm not tired," she whined.
"Maribelle," I said. "It's Christmas Eve and Santa won't come unless you're asleep."
"But Heidi, Stephen, and Davie aren't in bed," she pointed out. "Why do I have to go to bed?"
"They are going to bed soon," I told her. Davie was five, Stephen was seven, and Heidi was ten. Our baby, Anna, was fourteen months old. Mary's full name was Mary Isabelle and my mother had nicknamed her "Maribelle" about ten minutes after she was born.
"But why do I have to go to bed before them?" she whined.
"Because," I replied.
"Why because for?" she asked.
"Because I'm the daddy and if I say go to bed, you go to bed," I told her.
"But I want to stay up and wait for Santa."
"Mary, stop whining and just go to bed," Heidi said, walking into the room. "Christmas morning always comes a lot faster if you go to bed."
Mary looked at her older sister and sighed. "Will you put me to bed?"
Heidi smiled. "Sure, but I'm just going to help Daddy put you to bed."
"Fine," Mary consented. She reached her little arms out to her older sister. "But only if Heidi carries me upstairs."
I handed my three-year-old to my ten-year-old and smiled. Heidi settled her little sister on her hip. The two girls looked so much alike; someone who didn't know them would never know that they weren't related. They both had dark brown hair. They had fair skin and were petite. And they were my little princesses.
When Heidi, Mary, and I got upstairs, Ellie was in Mary and Anna's room, rocking the little girl to sleep. She smiled at me and I smiled back. After eight years of marriage and four children, I'd discovered that I couldn't live without my Ellie. She was my light and my music. And the fact that she was the mother of my children only made me love her more. "You're beautiful," I told her as Heidi led Mary over to the dresser.
"Ah, well, you're not so bad looking yourself," she replied.
"That's all you can say about me?"
She thought about it for a moment and shrugged. "You have a nice nose."
"I have a nice nose?"
"Yep; Stevie and Mary both inherited it. Davie and Anna have my nose, which is rather unfortunate." If Davie and Anna did have Ellie's nose, it was impossible to tell except for in pictures of Ellie as a child. When she was nineteen, Robbie had hit her in the nose with a hockey puck and broken her nose. (A/N: This is all based my very nastily broken nose, but I fell off the kitchen counter when I was two.)
"I love your nose," I said, kissing her nose. "It's a cute nose with a delicate bump in it that suits you."
"Yeah, well watch out or it'll match the bump in your head."
I stuck out my lower lip as Mary started trying to climb me. "Daddy, weed me a thowie."
I sat down on the floor and settled her on my lap. "Mary, can you go get me 'Twas the Night Before Christmas'?"
She nodded and ran downstairs to where we kept a book of Christmas stories for children. My mother had given it to Ellie Christmas, 1979. After being in our family for the past ten years the book was tattered and some of the pages were ripped, but our children loved it and they wouldn't hear of our getting rid of the book, not even if Ellie and I promised to get a new copy of the book.
I looked up at Ellie holding our baby. Just then Heidi dropped the book in my lap and Mary screamed.
I woke up just then to the realization no one was screaming. Rizzo was snoring loud enough to wake the dead, but what else was new? That was how I woke up every morning-to the sound of a crazy Italian from Boston snoring.
Robbie's POV"Emily, wake up; the baby's crying," I said, shaking my wife.
She mumbled something incoherent and rolled over.
"Emily, the baby wants you," I repeated.
"But I'm tired," she moaned.
"Honey, this is our baby were talking about."
"I don't care," she whined. "I want to sleep."
"Emily, Meghan needs you. She's hungry."
"Fine," Emily sighed getting out of bed and going to the baby's room to feed her. Meghan Joy Sibley-McClanahan was our now eight-month-old daughter. She had been born in late April, two months after the Olympics. She had my brown hair and eyes, but Emily's bright smile was her most stunning feature. She was beautiful, my little princess.
Emily and I had tied the knot in August when the little princess was four months old. My psycho twin sister had followed her heart and Jack to Chicago in June; Ellie was crazy about Jack and he was even more nuts about her. They were so in love and he had asked her to marry him on their one-year anniversary; they were getting married in June. Jack promised me that their children would all be conceived after the wedding.
Emily came back into the room with Meghan in her arms and sat down next to me. "She's a hungry little girl tonight," my wife said with a sigh.
"She's a beautiful little girl," I said.
"And she's ours," Emily replied. "She's our beautiful little princess."
Some days I couldn't believe all of it was real. In the past year, I had been in the Olympics, seen the birth of my first child, and married the love of my life. Now it was almost Christmas and it seemed like there was no gift that could make me happier than the woman sitting next to me and the little girl in her arms. Meghan's birth and marrying Emily had been the two most amazing events of my life. I couldn't have been happier. But if I had to pick the best Christmas of my life it would have been last Christmas when I was with Emily, Ellie, and the guys for some of the best memories of my life.
I woke up then because my alarm was going off. Rammer was throwing things at it but most of them were missing and hitting me. "Rammer, cut it out," I yelled, throwing his shoes back at him.
"Tell your retarded alarm that it's Christmas Eve and we don't have practice today. We're going over to Doc's for dinner and Herb got a soul so we have today and tomorrow off."
"I have to go see Emily," I said.
"Why?"
"Because she's my fiancée and I'm going to marry her after she has my baby."
"Well, then I'm glad Erin doesn't want to see me at eight o'clock in the morning," Rammer mumbled.
"Emily has a doctor's appointment at nine that I'm going to with her," I explained.
"Well, have fun with that," Rammer said before rolling over and going back to sleep. In some ways I envied him. He was young and carefree. He was in love with Erin and they were just enjoying their relationship, just having fun. Of course, Emily and I had been "just having fun" when she got pregnant, so…
I picked Emily up from her apartment at eight-thirty. "Why did you have to schedule a doctor's appointment for nine o'clock in Christmas Eve? Why is your doctor's office even open on Christmas Eve?" I asked her as I pulled into the parking lot.
"Because Dr. Rosen is Jewish and doesn't believe in Christmas," Emily explained. "And my appointment is on Christmas Eve because I'm not working today. This is one of the only days off I'm getting until April. My boss isn't crazy about my pregnancy and he isn't giving me much time off until my maternity leave in April."
"Well, Rammer's mad at me for waking him up this morning with my alarm."
"Tell him I'm sorry and this will all be over in two long months."
I smiled at her. "All of what?"
"That hockey crap," she said.
"Hockey crap?"
"Yep," she said.
I knew she was teasing but it still wasn't nice to call my favorite sport crap. "That's what I do for a living."
"Well, get a new job after the Olympics," she said.
"Or you could get used to the fact that you're in love with a hockey player."
"And I agreed to marry you for some reason."
"I think it was because you love me."
She kissed me as I turned the car off. "You are pretty amazing."
"So are you," I replied, giving her a kiss.
"We should go in now," she said.
"Okay." I nodded.
After we left the doctor's office, where they told us we're going to have a healthy baby, Emily asked me what I wanted to name the baby. "I was thinking we could each come up with one name for a boy and one for a girl," she told me.
"I hadn't really thought about it," I told her. "Do you have any ideas?"
"I was thinking about Logan David for a boy and Ashley Marie for a girl," she said. "But I'm not quite sure about Ashley for a girl."
I hate the name Ashley; it's a long story, but I hate the name. It has to do with this girl who was in my American Lit class in high school. We were reading Gone with the Wind but she was a girl named Ashley, so it was a little weird. I decided to tell her about the baby's name in my dream. "Actually, I was thinking about Meghan Joy for a girl," I told her.
"Meghan Joy McClanahan," she said, letting it roll around on her tongue. "I like it. What do you think about Logan David?"
"It's a good name," I said. "Logan David Sibley-McClanahan, it has a good sound to it."
She smiled, and then stopped short. "Sibley-McClanahan? Our kids are going to just be McClanahans; we're getting married this summer and we'll all be McClanahans."
I smiled at her. "That's wonderful. I thought you would want the baby to have a hyphenated last name since we aren't getting married until after the birth."
"No," she said. "We are getting married; we don't need to be worried about things like that."
"You're an amazing woman," I told her.
Jack's POV (yeah, I bet you guys completely forgot that this story is all about him and Ellie; Emily and Robbie are just for fun.)
The whole team plus Ellie, Heidi, Herb, and Craig was invited to Doc's house for dinner on Christmas Eve. Instead of everyone getting everyone else a present, we each picked a name and we had to get a present for that person. I had picked Coach Craig, and I bought him a multi-colored whistle in honor of that wonderful night in Norway.
Rizzo had bought me a fake cigar. "You're practically a father already," he said. "And when a man becomes a father, he's traditionally given a cigar. Well, no one ever gave you a cigar to celebrate Heidi coming into your life, so here you go."
I smiled and laughed. After Herb left, Silky and Rammer stood up. "We have something for Heidi and Ellie," Silky said, pulling a bag out from under the tree.
"Heidi has become our little princess over the past few months," Rammer added. "And we really love her, so we decided to get her something. Don't worry, Ellie; Erin and Nina picked it out for us." Then he handed a wrapped box to Ellie.
She wrapped it and opened the box to reveal a pink teddy bear with a big white ribbon around its neck. Heidi immediately grabbed it and squealed as Ellie laughed and said, "Thank you boys. And tell Erin and Nina thanks for me too."
"And we got you something to," Rammer said.
"What is it?" she asked.
"It's something you've always wanted," Silky told her.
"We're going to hire someone to kill Jack for you," Jimmy said.
"Thanks a lot, boys," she said. "But I'm really not interested."
"What if we buy you a dog?" Silky suggested. "Would that replace Jack?"
"Nope, no dog could ever replace the man of my dreams."
I kissed her for that. "I love you," I whispered in her ear and she smiled.
"This is for you," Rammer said, handing her a box. "Nina and Gabby picked it out."
She opened it to reveal a necklace. "It's a locket," she said, lifting it up. She opened it. "Oh my gosh! Look, Jack," she said beaming and showing it to me. "They put a picture of you and a picture of Heidi in it."
I smiled as I looked at the pictures. "This is a really nice gift," I said. "Guys, why did you get the girls serious gifts?"
Silky sank into the chair next to Ellie and said, "We love your girlfriend and we only want the best for her, which is why we're trying to find her a new boyfriend, someone who will treat her better."
"Who could treat me better than Jack?" Ellie asked.
"Prince Charles of England," Jimmy suggested.
"He's ugly," was my girlfriend's reply. "Jack's so much better looking and I love him more than I could ever love some ugly British prince."
I kissed her again. "You are the most amazing woman in the world and I adore you."
"I love you too," she replied, kissing me.
"There are young impressionable children present," Rizzo yelled.
"That's never stopped you from sucking Gabby's lips off in front of me," I retorted.
"Well, that's different; you're used to that kind of thing," he told me. "You do it with Ellie all the time."
"We're in love, Michael," Ellie said. "Although love is something you know nothing about."
"I'm in love with Gabby," he protested.
"Let's play some football!" I yelled to stop the argument.
Everyone else seemed to like the idea and we all ran out to play. Ellie stayed in the house to help Doc's wife, Velta, with the dishes. "And," she told me as I tried to convince her to come outside. "I need to get Heidi to sleep. It's not good for her to stay up much later."
I kissed her neck. "Well, just as long as I get you to myself tomorrow."
Tomorrow, it was just going to be Ellie, Heidi, Emily, Mac, Jennie, Natalie, Mr. McClanahan, and me. Kathie and Mrs. McClanahan would be someplace else; Ellie didn't know or care where. And all I cared about was being with the love of my life.
A/N: I'm sorry this took so long to write, but I've been busy. Please review! I can't believe there's a new Pope! Well, he's been the Pope for almost four weeks, but still… I'm so happy! (I'm a conservative Catholic so Pope Benedict XVI is one of my favorite people ever!)