56. A Dad’s Ruminations (Leon)
Leon carefully navigated the house full of teenaged guests. Vivian was working late with a complicated birth that was early, so as much as she had tried to be here for their daughter's 18th birthday party that was held for her friends and classmates, she just couldn't push this patient off onto another doctor. He understood that this was important to her, and she truly did want to be here for this party for their daughter too, but she had a responsibility as this patient's doctor as well. Liona seemed okay when his wife broke the news to her this morning when she had gotten the call, but he could read his daughter fairly well, and knew that it had hurt her to hear that she wasn't going to be here most of the day.
Despite this, his daughter was strong and was able to shoulder quite a bit, even though it pained both him and Vivian to see her do this. She soldiered on, even when the odds were stacked against her, it seemed. It was both remarkable and worrisome to see. Although their baby girl was officially an adult today, it still felt like just yesterday that his beloved mate and wife had told him that she was expecting their first child together. She had been so calm about the whole thing, while he had been so excited to learn about their child. It had only been a couple weeks after their honeymoon when Vivi had told him the news. They were newlyweds and soon to be parents. Six months to the day after their honeymoon, his lovely wife birthed their daughter, Adeliona Ashlynn Bartley.
She was blessed to have his father's birthday, but they had already settled on her name long before she was born, so her birthdate was purely coincidental to her name choice. She was named after very important people in their families and so they had decided on Ade as a prefix to honor his late great-grandmother, Adelheide Bartley, and his father, Lionel Bartley, making up Adeliona. Her middle name came from Vivian's great-grandmother, Ashleigh Lynn Hendrix as well as following a naming tradition of having an Ash name passed down through the generations. Even though Ashleigh hadn't been his wife's biological great-grandmother, it was the only great-grandmother that she recognized on her father's side of the family. It was for good reason too, but that was long ago and a history he hoped would never repeat itself.
Now eighteen years later, their baby girl was all grown up and celebrating her birthday with her friends and classmates. It was a tradition that his parents had started when he and his twin sister, Noel, were school aged. It was because their family had been large with many extended relatives that were close, and it was near impossible to fit the family and their friends in the same space so it had soon turned into two separate celebrations as they grew. Now he and Vivi continued the tradition with their own children as did his twin sister as well as Vivi's siblings as well.
They both came from large families with many siblings and had both wanted a moderate sized family, but as fate would have it, Vivian was quite fertile and since twins ran in both their families, they had ended up with five children of their own with two sets of twins like his own mother had birthed. He being a fraternal twin, also had identical twin sisters as well as a single younger brother. His wife had identical twin brothers as well as a single younger sister. Again, as if fate was having a field day, his little brother and her little sister had been born on the same day as each other. In fact, his cousin, Yulina, who was here as part of the EEA supervising the party, was also born that day as well.
It had been one exciting Christmas all those years ago when all their parents, who had been best friends growing up, went into labor within hours of each other, and ended up birthing their siblings and his cousin minutes apart. That had been just one more reason his wife had chosen a career in obstetrics. The primary reason was because her mother had a complicated pregnancy with her little brothers and had a difficult birth with them. He had supported his mate's dream then, and still supported it to this day.
As he navigated the house full of teenagers, he couldn't keep an eye on everything, so he had his cousin, Yui, helping out, along with a couple of newbie officers earning a bit of overtime to keep an eye on the party. This was to make sure that no one was crashing it and that no one was causing a ruckus. Although, if they did find someone causing issues, they were to first let Liona handle it unless she signaled that she needed help with it. She was the hostess today and he trusted his daughter's judgment on when she needed help. She could handle herself quite well as he and Vivi had raised her to be strong and a little independent. Although that independence had come at the cost of their relationship with her when she was still a small child, it had been their one regret when raising her and her siblings.
They had thought that they were ready to be parents and thought that they had wiggle room in their careers, but it had ended up that only a couple of years after their children were born that things became very busy for the both of them. He thankfully had a position in the EEA where he could work from home a good portion of the week, but that wasn't the case for Vivian. She had to physically be there for her job and her patients. That meant that by the time Liona was four, she had to go back to work full time. Their younger children, their twin boys had been two and their youngest twin girls had only been a year old at the time. He knew Vivi had wanted more time to bond with their children, but her mentor had retired that year and left her to pick up where she left off.
This led Liona and their other children to sporadically spend time with their mother as they grew up. He had been the stay-at-home dad for a few years, juggling work and looking after their toddler children. It hadn't been easy, but he had been determined to help his lovely mate with whatever she needed and supported her whenever she needed it. They loved all their children equally and so it was a little sad that their oldest child was now an adult and soon would be figuring out her life on her own. She didn't really need them anymore and it felt like he was losing his little princess that had once played dress up and hosted tea parties with him.
He smiled at one of the pictures on the wall as he passed by the foyer once again on his check through the house to see if all was well. None of the officers had anything to report, so he headed back to the kitchen where the caterers had just delivered Liona's birthday cake. All three tiers of cake had a different flavor. The top was death by chocolate, her absolute favorite, just like his mother's taste, the middle was a vanilla cake, like his father's, and the bottom tier was a checkerboard of chocolate and lemon cakes. The layers had distinct fillings with mango between the lemon and chocolate checkerboard and raspberry between the chocolate and vanilla. His daughter inherited her strange tastes from her grandparents, and it often made him laugh as she had learned to cook. She took after them so much, sometimes he wondered if these parts of her had skipped a generation from his and his wife's parents and went directly to her.
On his way back through the house to announce the cake was ready, he heard a commotion. It seemed a troublemaker had found their way past the security check at the front gate and was now crashing the party. From the sounds of it, his daughter was pissed. She had her mother's temperament, and he didn't know if the boy was going to survive the scathing remarks she was letting out. Actually, this was pretty tame for her. She unfortunately could curse in three languages better than he or his wife, thanks to her great-grandparents. The boy seemed a bit of a dunce and had no idea he was being insulted for being an obtuse jerk, which he interpreted from his daughter's slang. As he finally got eyes on which child was earning his daughter's wrath, he realized it was her little ex that she had distinctly told him was not invited.
Just as he arrived, he witnessed his daughter's pheromones explode in a fit of anger and then she grabbed the boy he presumed she had recently made friends with and kissed him. He felt a bit sorry for the kid. He probably didn't know that his daughter was doing this to spite the other boy and to show him she had moved on from him. Raising an eyebrow, he didn't say a word or do anything to interfere, other than nod to Yui to follow Liona's lead. He then announced cake to distract the other kids from the scene unfolding.