Robin the Wild Fledgling: Prologue, Part 2

 Prologue, Part 2

About a year had passed since Penny first met Clark in the Bramblewood. Priscilla was setting the table for supper when Percival walked in through their cottage’s front door holding an envelope. “It’s a letter from our daughter,” he told his wife. “I’m surprised that rakish Yank she ran off with allows her to write home.”

“You say that every time Penny sends us a letter, dear,” Priscilla remarked. “Do open it, please. You know I always love to hear from her.”

Percival made a neat tear across the top of the envelope, took out the piece of paper inside, unfolded it and began to read the words that were written on it. As he read, his face looked more and more like he was sucking on a lemon. “They’re… expecting.”

“Our first grandchild!” Priscilla cooed excitedly. “I can’t wait to tell Agatha and Virginia — and then, of course, once Virginia hears about it, the rest of Henford-on-Bagley will hear about it before the day is out.”

“I can’t say I’m too keen on the idea of word getting out about this,” Percival commented sourly. “The cad hasn’t done our daughter the honor of marrying her. What sort of girl does he think she is? More importantly, what sort of girl is she allowing herself to become?”

“People make mistakes, especially when they’re young and don’t know any better,” Priscilla replied, attempting to calm her husband down. “They’ll come around eventually, sooner rather than later if we offer them a helpful and guiding hand rather than a stone wall. I wonder how much we’ll have to save up in order to afford round trip fare to San Myshuno? I’m certain Penny will need help taking care of the baby, especially since it will be her first.”

Percival was still reading the letter. “Priscilla, listen to this — Penny says that if they have a boy, they’re going to name him Clark after his father! Why, of all the — I can’t believe — How could they?”

“There’s nothing wrong with naming a baby boy after his father,” Priscilla commented.

“There is if the father is a rake, a cad, and a Yank! Not to mention an insufferable popinjay who fancies himself a journalist. Travel writing isn’t honest journalism, it’s gallivanting about to who knows where and then spouting sensationalist drivel about the places you gallivanted off to.”

“I know you never liked Clark Faulkner, dear,” Priscilla said calmly to her husband, “but Penny sees good in him, he's the father of our expected grandchild, and the way things are headed, it looks quite likely that he’s going to be our son-in-law. I know they’re going about this in backwards order, but you’ll simply have to learn to get along with him.”

“Humph. I hope they don’t have a boy,” Percival grumbled.

About nine months later, on another side of the globe, Clark Faulkner was pacing impatiently back and forth in a hospital waiting room. After what felt to him like forever, a man in a doctor’s coat walked through the door, beaming a smile at him. “Congratulations, Mr. Faulkner,” the doctor greeted him jovially, “you’re a father! Both Penelope and your new daughter are in good health.”

“It’s about time.” Clark almost pushed past the doctor on his way through the door, but then he stopped in his tracks. “Wait, you’re saying it’s a girl?”

“That’s right.”

“Huh. Well, to be honest, I was hoping for a son. But at least the kid’s healthy, and so is Penny. That’s the important thing.”

Clark followed the doctor down the hallway and into one of the hospital rooms, where the exhausted Penny was reclining in a hospital bed with the back winched up, holding a bundle of swaddled pink blankets in her arms. She smiled when she saw Clark. “Meet your father, little one,” she said as she gently turned the bundle to reveal a small cranky face within the blankets. “She has your eyes, Clark.”

Clark took a closer look at the tiny face, and sure enough, the baby’s eyes were exactly the same shade of blue as his. “So she does,” he replied proudly. “But what are we gonna call her? We can’t give her the name we’d been planning on giving her if she’d been a boy.”

Penny thought for a moment. “What about Lark? There’s only one letter difference. Also, the larks were my favorite birds in the Bramblewood, where we met.”

“All right, then, we’ll call her Lark!” The new father beamed with pride to have a child who at least was sort of named after him.

A little over a year passed since Lark’s birth, and one sunny evening, Clark Faulkner strolled past the Casbah Art Gallery with a smile on his face. In his bachelor days, he might’ve stopped at the gallery and perused some of the artwork on his way home from the San Myshuno Times office, but now he had a girlfriend and a kid waiting for him at home. Still, it had been a good day at work, at least for a travel journalist who hadn’t yet climbed far enough up the ladder to reach the cushy assignments.

Clark walked through the front door of one of the apartment buildings, got into the elevator, and took the elevator up. When he reached his floor and the elevator doors slid open, he got out, went to the front door of one of the apartments, unlocked and opened the door and walked in. “Evening, Penny! Has your mom been behaving herself, Lark?”

“Of course I’ve been behaving myself, silly,” Penny replied for her daughter, who couldn’t hold a conversation yet. Penny went over to Clark and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Welcome home. Your timing is impeccable — I just got dinner on the table.”

Clark went out to the living room to scoop Lark up off the playmat she was sitting on and give her a peck on the forehead before gently setting her down in a high chair at the dining room table. A plate holding a hearty but fairly simple meal was waiting at his place at the table — the kind of meal that wouldn’t be too difficult to prepare. Clark would’ve preferred something a bit more exciting for his palate, but since Penny had to juggle cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the baby, beggars couldn’t be choosers. The couple sat down to dinner together and began eating.

After a moment, Penny spoke up. “Clark, I’ve been thinking… perhaps we should start trying for a baby again.”

“But you’ve already got your hands full with one,” Clark replied. “Besides, I thought we decided we were going to give Lark the kind of life we missed out on when we were kids. If she’s an only child, then she’ll have everything.”

“Everything except a sibling,” Penny countered. “You and I both grew up as only children. Of course there were times when I was glad to not have to share my fairly small bedroom, but there were also times when I was lonely and I wished I had a brother or sister. And our apartment does have a room to spare, so we won’t have to force Lark to share her bedroom.”

“That’s not a spare room, it’s a home office.”

“Didn’t you ever feel lonely as an only child?”

“Well, yeah,” Clark admitted. “Growing up in a military family was no picnic. When I was a kid, I often wished I had a little brother who was just like me and shared all my interests so I could have someone to play with even when I had to leave all my friends behind and move to yet another little podunk town with a military base attached to it. But Lark won’t have that problem because my job isn’t going to make us move every couple years or so.”

“You are a travel journalist,” Penny pointed out, “and you take Lark and I along on your work trips whenever you’re able, which I’m very grateful for. But if I try to think about things from Lark’s point of view, when she gets a little older, she might find it boring to have to go on all these family vacations without a playmate close to her own age.”

Clark paused for a moment, thinking. “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad having one more kid, as long as you’re okay with going through another pregnancy so soon after the first. But we’re not having any more than two kids, got it? It’s gonna be tough enough raising Lark, especially if we have to convince her to share everything she has with just one sibling; I — I mean, we — shouldn’t have to deal with more than that.”

A little over nine more months passed, and one day, Clark was pacing back and forth across a hospital waiting room until a doctor arrived to inform him that, once again, reality had decided not to do things his way.

When Clark heard the news, he stopped in his tracks and just stood there for a moment in shocked frustration. “TWINS?!?”