Haunted

Rootless Tree

"I think it's awesome," Kylie insisted. "I want to feel."

"You'll get a chance, I promise," Clara said. "They have a long way to go still."

"Alright," Kylie sighed and went back to her seat. Maddox took a handful of cookies and ducked out of the kitchen. He wanted to put the whole thing out of his mind but he just couldn't. It was the first time he'd really had to accept there were actual babies inside that bump.

As he got upstairs Maddox had to pass the twins' room to get to his own. He paused outside the door looking in at everything. There were so many things about babies he didn't understand. How did parents even know what babies would need? Was it the kind of thing you could look up or were you just supposed to know?

Maddox ate the cookies he'd brought with him as he walked around looking at all the things in the room. Most of the stuff at least made sense to him. Cribs, a changing table, rocking chairs. Everything was decorated in tiny baby animals, which Maddox had to admit were really cute. It seemed like everything for the babies was super soft and cuddly which was nice but made him kind of nervous, like maybe the twins would be super fragile.

As he looked at all the stuff he started to get more and more confused. There were things he'd never heard of before, like diaper rash cream, and things that just seemed scary like the special trash can for the diapers. How much could they really smell?

Maddox looked at the toys hanging in front of him. There were four little animals hanging off what looked like an umbrella over the changing table. As far as he could tell it didn't seem to have a purpose and the animals were super small, like maybe they weren't even safe for the babies to have. So why were they there? He touched one of the giraffes and it popped off in his hand.

At first Maddox dropped it but then he scrambled to fish it out of the crib. He couldn't see how it attached but he knew he couldn't just leave it there in case no one else found it and one of the babies choked. There were so many things to worry about that Maddox was pretty sure he could never have his own kids. He'd always figured he'd grow up and just know what to do but now that he saw how many things it seemed to take and how none of it made sense he knew he couldn't do it.

Maddox sank into the rocking chair, trying to figure out how he would tell his mom he broke the baby's toy. He'd never felt quite so useless in his life.

"Dax?" Clara asked. Maddox looked up to see his mom coming into the room. She was all out of breath from doing the stairs - something else that made no sense to him. Clara was in amazing shape when her tour ended but after a few weeks just walking around seemed to wear her out. Was that something else to blame on the babies?

"I broke this," he said, holding up the tiny giraffe.

"It's okay," she insisted.

"I just wanted to see how that worked," he pointed to the thing over the changing table. Clara took it from him.

"It's not broken," she smiled. "Look, it just snaps on," she popped the giraffe back in place like it was just so easy and showed Maddox how to wind up the mobile. It turned slowly and played a little song.

"I'm gonna be really bad at this," he told her as he leaned against the changing table. If he couldn't even figure out the toy how could he figure out what to do with a baby?

"I'll teach you whatever you want," Clara promised. She sat down in the rocking chair where Dax had been a minute earlier. "But I think you'll be a great big brother."

"What if they don't like me?" he asked.

"Are you kidding?" Clara laughed. "Dax, they'll love you. They're going to think you're the coolest person they know."