Author's note: Thank you Jamie Mansflied for your kind reviews on my other two "The Catch" fanfics. As promised, I'm posting this little piece here. It was originally intended as a multi-chapter story, but the first chapter will do just as well as a one-shot. Maybe, if one day I'll revisit the Catch fandom, I may add chapters to "the Significance of being Significant" or this little piece here.
Disclaimer: I do not own "The Catch" or its characters.
For as long as Stella could remember, she wanted to be exactly like her mother. Her mother was always dressed to the nines; even while sitting at the breakfast table early in the morning and she always wore shoes with high heels that looked really pretty. She had often asked her father for shoes just like her mother wore, but he told her that only grown up women were allowed to wear them as they were no longer growing. In return she had asked her elder sister, Tessa, how long it would be until she stopped growing, because Tessa was really tall, like her uncle Ben.
"I think I was 16 when I grew taller than Mum, 17 until I was done growing. Why?" she asked, flipping her perfectly styled hair over her shoulder. Like their mother, Tessa was always perfectly styled as well.
"Dad won't let me wear heels like you and Mom do until I'm done growing." Stella replied, instantly hating how much she sounded like petulant child.
Tessa smiled at her. "Don't worry, I wore heels long before that. As will you, I think. However, 7-year olds wearing heels do look ridiculous."
"I'm eight! Nearly eight and a half!" Now Stella was sure Tessa was laughing at her expense when the young woman started laughing out loud.
"Of course, you're eight and a half already! How could I forget! You are so much more wiser than you were at seven!" she added good-naturedly. Stella couldn't help but huff and decided to ignore her elder sister. Having a sister is great - most of the time, she thought. However, having a grown-up sister sixteen years your senior was also so very frustrating at times.
It wasn't as if Stella saw her sister often; or her mother, for that matter. Most of the time it was just her Dad and herself. "You and I, we're a team." He'd always say whenever she started wondering aloud why her Mom and Tessa were god-knows-where and why the two of them were always left behind in Los Angeles. "Your Mom isn't the type of person who likes to stay in one place for long," he'd tell her, but Stella was old enough to know that her Dad was evading the real question at hand. Her mother didn't call very often either. While Stella knew her Dad had ways to contact her Mom if needed, both of them seldom made use of it. It made her mother's visits all the more special to her.
Stella remembered when she had to have her appendix removed at age six. She had been feeling very sick and her Dad had needed to take her to the hospital for surgery. Even though her Dad had been at her side the whole time she had wailed for her mother all the way to surgery prep. Though the hours after the surgery were a bit fuzzy for her, she remembered waking up at night in the dim lit hospital room to find her mother sitting by her bedside holding her hand while her father dozed on a reclining chair in the corner. Even though she apparently had flown in from somewhere in Europe at a moment's notice her mother had stayed with them an entire week until Stella had been feeling much better.
It wasn't until she started school at age five that Stella took notice of how odd her family arrangement was. Most of her classmates lived with both their parents, although a few of them lived with only their mother most of the time after their parents got divorced. Stella's parents, however, weren't divorced, but that was because they weren't even married in the first place. This – apart from her mother's habitual absence – was the other odd thing about her family. Her parents actually liked each other. In fact they always seemed quite happy whenever her mother came to visit. So why did they live apart like divorced parents did?
Normally Stella would ask her sister, because Tessa usually told her of things none of the other adults would. In this particular case, Tessa's answers often left her more confused than before. Tessa hadn't even known who her parents were until she was fourteen and didn't actually meet them before she turned fifteen. Stella had a feeling there was more to this story, but not even Tessa would tell. The part that confused her most was that her Mom didn't even visit Tessa when she was a child. She also couldn't imagine her Uncle Ben - who wasn't really her uncle but Tessa's Dad - not visiting Tessa either, because Uncle Ben was always just as happy as Stella herself was whenever her older sister visited L.A. Also Stella couldn't imagine not living with her own Dad either.
While her Mom's visits were often brief and far in between, Stella was happy whenever she got up in the morning to find her mother already sitting at the breakfast table sipping at her coffee as if she had been home all along. She would patiently listen while Stella told her about everything she and her Dad had done since her last visit and she always brought Stella a present. Sometimes it was just a trinket from one of the many countries her mother visited and often it was a fancy dress or other pretty clothes that were very unlike the blue jeans and t-shirts her Dad usually bought for her.
Stella wished she could wear the clothes her Mom or Tessa got her to school, but there she always had to wear a uniform. Stella didn't quite understand why she had to go a different school than her neighbor Ava, who went to school just down the street where students did not have to wear uniforms but their everyday clothes. Her Dad had tried to explain the differences between a private and a public school but Stella still thought that it would have been awesome to go to the school down the road.
"You wouldn't have the chance to learn Italian in that school, kiddo", her Dad explained. "Remember, you really wanted to learn to speak Italian like your Mom does." That was true of course. Her mother was really smart and she knew how to speak a lot of different languages. Stella would always listen in to her mother speaking on the phone in foreign languages. It often sounded so pretty. Therefore it used to be Stella's favorite game with her mother to ask her to translate things in different languages. Of course Uncle Ben knew just as many languages. At times when she missed her Mom most she would ask him to translate sentences for her, but when Uncle Ben spoke in another language it never sounded quite as pretty.
Sometimes Stella got Uncle Ben to tell her stories of her Mom. Before he met Aunt Alice and before her parents met, the two of them used to live and work and travel together. Like her Dad, Aunt Alice and Uncle Ben were detectives and they worked to help the police find evil people. In fact, Aunt Alice was the boss of both her Dad and Uncle Ben and Stella thought it was funny because she always could order them around.
"Before Alice, Margot used to be my boss", Uncle Ben told her when she asked about their professions. Stella's face brightened at the mention of her mother. "I can totally understand that! That's why Mom always orders Dad around as well!" Apparently her Uncle Ben and Aunt Alice found her revelation quite funny as they started laughing. Her Dad however, didn't look amused at all.
"It isn't quite like that…" he'd said, his hand scratching the back of his head. Dad hated it when people made comments about him and Mom.
"Oh yes, Danny, this is exactly how it is. Margot doesn't know how to not order people around." Uncle Ben replied.
Her Dad had once helped her describing his and her Mom's jobs for a school assignment. Apparently, putting her mother's profession into words wasn't easy even for an adult like Dad was.
"She's a… your Mom is like a… a project manager. There is an… assignment or a… task somewhere in the world and she goes there and… completes the assignment or hires people who help her complete it. Yeah… that's what she does." Her Dad told her and looked at her as if he wasn't completely convinced himself that this truly was her mother's job.
"What kind of assignments? Like homework?" Stella implored.
"Um, no. It's … uh, about financial business, mostly. You know, investments. Money. I don't think you'll need much more details for your homework, kiddo. Just write down that she does a lot of travelling for her job", her father finally said.
"Daddy?" Stella asked. "Yeah, kiddo?" he replied.
"When I grow up, I want to be just like Mom." Stella finally said.
"Well see about that, kid. We'll see about that." With those words her Dad ruffled her dark hair and left her to her homework.