Love for a Lifetime

Chapter 96

"Merry Christmas!" the kids exclaimed crawling into Jack and Jackie's bed.

"What do you think you little squirts are doing!" Jack asked tickling Patrick. Patrick giggled happily and the other children started to laugh too. They hadn't seen their father act this way in a long time.

"Goodness me!" Jackie laughed as Caroline crawled on top of her.

"I love you, Mama," she whispered kissing her cheek.

"I love you, my darling," Jackie replied.

They just laid there all seven of them cuddling with each other until Jack finally said, "What'll we do if we need an extra space here soon?"

"Extra space?" Arabella asked.

"Yeah, if we needed to fit one more person on this bed," Jack grunted as Patrick laid his head on his stomach.

"I guess we'd squeeze," Caroline said confused, "What are you talking about?"

"Jackie," Jack said quietly, "Tell them."

Jackie gulped, "Well, I wasn't exactly prepared for this but... Kids, at the end of April, there will be another Kennedy."

"Huh?" they all said looking confused.

"I'm having another baby," Jackie said breathlessly and with the nerves evident in her tone."

Caroline shrieked and began to cry, "I hope it's a girl!!!"

"Me too!" Arabella cried hugging her only sister.

"I hope they'll play with me!" Patrick squealed.

Harrison sat smiling and John looked at Jackie. "I just can't wait to meet them."

Jackie kissed John's cheek. Tears filled her eyes, but she held them back, "Shall we go open gifts?"

"Uh-huh! And eat Mommy's sticky buns!"

"I'll go put them in the oven," Jackie said getting up, "Dad, why don't you go down to the living room and get the camera out to take photographs of the kids?"

    "Yeah, I'll go down now. Wait here, guys, and then we'll call you down."

    Jackie and Jack walked down the stairs together hand in hand, "Well, they took that totally different than I expected."

"I know. I'm so happy," Jackie grinned.

"Me too, Kid," Jack said with a genuine smile on his face.

"I haven't seen you this happy for a long time, Bunny."

"I haven't been this happy in a long time."

They spent a relaxing morning together eating sticky buns and opening gifts. When it was time to go to the main house for dinner, they all dressed in their matching ugly sweaters and walked to the house. "Mom, are we telling the rest of the family?" Caroline asked as they walked through the snow.

"I don't know. Jack, should we?"

"Of course!" he said excitedly. She had been so worried about telling him, yet the moment she did, he became a different person.

       When they walked inside, the music playing was lively and everyone was talking amongst themselves. The moment Jack got his coat off he yelled, "I'm a Dad!!!"

       "No, shit Sherlock," Teddy laughed as the whole room fell quiet.

      "I guess I should've thought that statement through. I'm going to be a father again."

      Rose Kennedy blinked in disbelief and then began to cry as she ran to hug Jackie, "Joe, would want to be here for this."

      Jackie, despite some of the things he did, had cared deeply for Joe. He was a father like figure for her from a very young age. At the mention of his name, which no one's lips dare utter if they didn't want the room to begin sobbing, Jackie burst into tears. 

      Rose and Jackie just stood crying for a minute. "I miss him, Rose."

      "Oh, me too. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think of him."

      Jack came over with watery eyes and hugged both his mother and his wife. "Dad's going to watch over Jackie and the baby. I know he will."

      Rose choked over her words, "His grandkids were his world. I wish he would've known about this one before he died."

Jackie closed her eyes and cried harder as she bit her lip, "He did. The day he died... I held his hand and said, 'Joe, I have some happy news. Do you want to hear it?' And his eyes lit up and be very slightly nodded. So I placed his hand on my stomach and he began to cry. I whispered, 'I'm having another baby.' He left his hand there for a minute and then shakily pulled it back to his mouth, kissed his hand, and then returned it to my stomach..." Jackie was sobbing at this point at the memory as she gently stroked her growing bump, "Then Bobby walked in and that was..."

The room was dead silent. There were nearly 50 people in the house and one could hear a pin drop. Bobby came over to Jackie and hugged her tightly. "He died like an hour after that, Jackie. He died happy. He died thinking about his grandbaby to come."

Rose was hysterical. Joe had only died a little over a month before and this was too much for her to handle. "Jackie," she hiccuped, "I'm so glad you told him. I'm so glad he knew about him or her."

"That explains so much," Jack chimed in with a shaky voice, "When he died,  I was holding his hand and he just kept saying baby over and over again. I mean obviously he really couldn't talk after his stroke, but he kept saying something that sounded like baby. I just thought that he was out of it."

Everyone was silent and then Teddy raised his wine glass, "To Dad."

"To Joe," Jackie said raising a glass of sparkling water.

The whole house echoed in, "To Dad," and "To Joe". They all paused for a moment and then took a sip of their selected beverage.

"Well," Rose said sighing, "Joe loved Christmas and he wouldn't want us to sit here wallowing and not enjoy it. So let's eat some dinner."