Round Nine - Darwin - Everything You Ever

Sam Darwin and his fiancée Miranda King have returned to the Darwin family home, where Sam's father Harvey and his girlfriend Esther Pasang are awaiting their own first child.

Even though the atmosphere in the Darwin household was distinctly awkward, Miranda was doing her best to fit in. Sam helped, of course. For example, one morning Harvey completely blanked Miranda in his search for breakfast after pulling an all-nighter painting. Miranda felt like she was going to cry, but Sam came to her rescue.

"Hey, did you know that Winston Churchill's pet parrot lived for 104 years?"

"No, I didn't." She smiled. Sure, their distractions were kind of banal, but they kept them grounded.

Esther went into labour during the stores opening hours, sending their cashier into a panic. She hadn't signed up for this!

She gave birth to a little boy named Milo. He was a sweet, healthy little boy and Harvey was surprised by how much love he felt for him even though he hadn't exactly been excited about the idea of fatherhood this late in life.

But then tragedy struck. It turned out that Esther had kept quiet about how difficult the pregnancy was for her, and the strain of birth was too much for her body to take. She died soon after. Harvey completely fell apart and Sam didn't know what to do.

He and Miranda took up the reins of the household. They temporarily closed Darwin Arts - Harvey needed time to recover and mourn and Sam didn't want to let him throw himself into his work and neglect everything else. Sam had always loved kids and wanted plenty of his own and didn't begrudge taking care of his new baby brother. He felt like it was the least he could do.

Miranda had a head for financial matters and sorted out finding new employees for when Darwin Arts reopened. The chaos all around them meant that she ended up conducting some of the interviews wearing her nightclothes but there were more important things on her mind than what people thought of her. Any plans she and Sam had had for an elaborate wedding were canceled. They instead had a private ceremony without any fuss.

Even as Milo grew older and celebrated birthdays, Harvey still had trouble feeling enthusiastic. He stood on the edge of everything, isolated and cold.

Milo became a toddler who looked a lot like his mother, with the same light brown hair. Harvey began to take some of the burden off his son and daughter-in-law... he couldn't stand aside forever.

But he couldn't stay young forever either. He reached elderhood and it all sank in again - he was a pensionable father of a tiny child, would he live to see him grow up?

Note: Angsty update is angsty. Esther didn't technically die of illness, but the pregnancy was terrible and probably would have been even without her getting sick, and then she went and gobbled rotten food. I only just avoided her miscarrying again. In retrospect I maybe should have been more worried about her suffering epic needs failure shortly afterwards but I couldn't go through that again, it's traumatic just seeing it happen to sims... still thinking of getting rid of that particular "feature" (ugh).