Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~5 min read
Chapter 28: The twins
Nobody had warned her about twins.
This was, she felt, a significant oversight in her preparation. Morag had told her, with characteristic brevity, that there were two heartbeats when she was five months along, and had then moved directly to the practical implications — which were substantial — without pausing to allow for the emotional component of the information. Callum had been told at supper the same evening and had sat very still for approximately forty-five seconds and then said, evenly, “Two.”
“Two,” she confirmed.
“At the same time.”
“That is generally how twins work.”
Another pause. “I’m going to need more wood for the fire.”
She had laughed. He had not laughed, but the slight shift in his shoulders suggested he was containing something. They had sat through the rest of supper with the information between them and then Mairead, who was fourteen months old and had no patience for subtextual conversation, had thrown her cup on the floor and required both their attention, and the evening had resolved itself into the practical demands of a household with a toddler.
He had, true to prediction, become comprehensively annoying.
Not in the way of the first pregnancy — this was different, more experienced, he knew now what Morag could handle and what she couldn’t, he knew that Isolde was strong in the specific and demonstrated way of a woman who had done this before. The annoying was of a different quality: more targeted. He had started doing things without being asked. The firewood, which had been more than sufficient, became more than sufficient and then some more. The kitchen garden wall that had been slightly uneven on the north side was repaired. Twice she found him in the great hall in the evening mending things that had not been broken, which was his version of displacement activity and which she chose not to mention.
She mentioned it once.
“You’re mending things that don’t need mending,” she said.
“The chair had a loose leg.”
“I sat in that chair yesterday and felt no instability.”
He looked at the chair. “It was subtle.”
“Callum.”
“Aye.”
“I’m not going to break,” she said. “You know that.”
“I know that.” He set the chair down. “I also have two children arriving in approximately four months and I would like to feel that I have done something useful with that information.”
She put her hand on his arm. “The firewood is very useful.”
“There is a great deal of firewood.”
“There is. The clan is deeply reassured.” She looked at him. “Come to bed. The chair is fine.”
He came to bed.
The twins arrived in a December that had the full Highland quality of a month that knows exactly what it’s doing and is doing it with considerable commitment. Morag said they were impatient, which was a MacKinnon characteristic. Callum, present outside the door this time rather than the courtyard, said nothing for several hours and then said, when Morag opened the door and confirmed that everyone was alive and there were two of them: “Both alive?”
“Both alive and extremely vocal about it,” Morag said.
He came in.
She was exhausted in the bone-level way of someone who has done a significant thing and is temporarily at the bottom of their resources. She was also, underneath the exhaustion, in the particular state of euphoria that had followed Mairead’s birth and which she now recognized as the body’s reward for having managed something extraordinary.
There were two of them in her arms.
The twins — boys, which made Callum’s expression do something she intended to ask about when she had more energy — were smaller than Mairead had been and entirely furious about their situation, which they were expressing at considerable volume.
“Seumas,” she said, for the smaller one, who had the look of someone with opinions about everything.
“And Rory,” Callum said. “For my father.”
She looked at the second boy. “Rory,” she said. It fit.
He sat on the edge of the bed and she transferred Seumas to him, which required more coordination than either of them had anticipated, and then they were both holding a baby each with Seumas and Rory doing their respective things and Callum was looking at his son.
Not the lost son. This son — this specific person, arrived in a December snowstorm, named for the father who had come before him, beginning his life in a Highland keep with parents who had found each other through a crooked door.
She watched her husband hold their son.
She had thought the name would be weighted. Had thought giving it to a living child might bring the grief back in a complicated way, might sit uncomfortably between what had been and what was.
It did not. It sat exactly right — the honoring of something, the acknowledgment that love doesn’t replace itself but accumulates, that Seumas-who-was-lost and Seumas-who-is-here were two separate people and could both be carried.
“Hello, Seumas,” Callum said, to the baby in his arms. The low voice, the complete presence. “I’m yer father. Ye have an older sister who is going to terrify ye, I’ll warn ye now.”
“She’ll adore them,” Isolde said.
“Aye, and terrify them.” He looked up at her. “Are ye all right?”
“Very tired.” She looked at Rory, who had stopped being vocal and was apparently reassessing. “And very well.” She met his eyes. “We’re very well.”
He leaned over carefully, negotiating the two babies, and kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes for a moment and felt the weight of the boys and the warmth of the room and the sound of the storm outside and thought: *we are full.*
She thought: *we are exactly full.*
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