AN: Oh man this one's long. I doubt all the chapters will be this long but I had a lot of story to set up. I had a weird dream, that's where this idea comes from. Let me know what you think please, I really appreciate it. I hope you like reading it as much as I liked writing it so far. This entire story is planned out already. So updates will hopefully come pretty quick.
They weren't ever meant to come back to Lima, Ohio. They graduated, they managed to make it out, and it wasn't ever in the plan for them to come back. But plans change. And unfortunately, loved ones die. What you don't think about when you're younger, even when you take the minute to consider that some day your parents might die, they don't tell you that while their lives end, everything they've built up doesn't. Brittany's mother passed, quite suddenly, from a brain aneurism. It was terrible and Brittany is certain without Santana she wouldn't have made it through her mother's passing. She spent so many nights crying in Santana's arms, letting her be all of her strength. When Santana's parents had passed in a car accident when they were still in college, she had broken down exactly once. The night after the funeral she spent the entire night gasping for air on the bathroom floor, Brittany wrapped around her. The blonde had considered taking her to the hospital, possibly calling 911, it was that terrifying, but she didn't. Her decision ultimately came down to the fact that she couldn't reach her phone without getting up and going in the other room and she was positive, with the way that Santana was clutching to her, if she let go, Santana might fall apart. And if nothing else, they will always keep each other together.
They were best friends when they were kids, and that never went away. Even still, at twenty-five, they're still best friends. They're just also a lot more. Things started to change when they started to experiment around fourteen. They experimented with boys and the predominant emotion attached to that was jealousy (although it might have taken them a few years to understand that is what it was). They wrote it off as being easy to kiss each other, and then touch each other, because they were always together. It was practice. It was practice until the night that Santana lost her virginity to a boy that was a little to rough, and didn't remember her name afterwards. After that it became making love. A few more boys came and went for both of them. It was always awkward and not passionate and Santana would lay underneath them and wonder how it was that Brittany seemed to do everything right, how she could make her come so hard it would take her several minutes to even begin to form a coherent thought that wasn't "please hold me tighter." That was another thing; intimacy never bothered her when it came in the form of Brittany. Brittany was for kissing, and holding, and loving. Boys were for popularity, and image. Boys were for everyone else, Brittany was for her. Brittany always felt the same way except that she understood maybe a little earlier that the boys were the least necessary part of the equation. But she stayed patient with Santana, because she knew that they were forever, and everything else was just detail. They'd get there eventually. And her patience paid off.
One night, it was March and it was raining, she remembers so clearly. She knew that Santana was out with a boy, and she just figured Santana would be there when they were done, like she always was. Her mom called and told her that she'd be staying late to take care of things at the daycare center. This wasn't at all abnormal. It was just her mom and her, her dad having left the picture before she was born, and her mom never found time to meet anyone after that so no siblings. So Brittany put on a movie, and laid on the couch knowing that Santana would be there at some point, but the later it got, the less sure she was. She sent a few texts with no response, and eventually fell asleep on the couch slightly worried about why Santana wasn't answering her. Santana always always answered. At around two in the morning, someone knocked on the door loud enough to wake her. She looked through the peephole and saw Santana shivering on the porch, soaking wet, mascara running down her face, in just a dress that barely covered anything. Brittany threw open the door and pulled Santana into her arms. She let Santana cry for a few minutes before pulling away just slightly to look into her eyes begging for an explanation.
"Britt I had the most stupid evening. Nothing terrible happened. It's just… I went on a date with Kyle. And we went to the movies and he didn't bother asking me what I wanted to see, or if I minded seeing what he wanted to see, and then we stopped at a party for a little bit so people could see him with me, and then we went back to his place. Again, he didn't even ask me if I wanted to, he just took me. He started taking off my dress and reaching for a condom and it suddenly occurred to me that I fucking hate this. I hate this fucking game we play with the boys and I don't care if I become a social pariah or whatever but it's like it just hit me that….I could just love you. Fuck school. Fuck what anyone else has to say. I love you."
Their lips crashed together. And while this was certainly not the first time Santana had ever told her that she loved her, it was the first time that she ever came to the conclusion that their love was more important than social standing. And she came to that conclusion all on her own. That was junior year of high school, and they'd been together since.
They went off to college together, more or less. Santana went to school for English, and got a few teaching certificates while she was there. Brittany went to dance. Nobody ever thought Brittany could make it through college, but with Santana's help, she did. She originally went to dance, because that was all she'd ever thought she was good at (other than Santana, she was an expert in her). But she fell in love with child development, and ended up with a degree in that as well. They were living in California, happy, and completely in love when they got the call that Brittany's mother had passed away suddenly. Like they'd just been on the phone with her the day before and she was fine kind of suddenly. So they flew to Lima that day, and Santana made funeral arrangements, called everyone Ms. Pierce had known, and took care of a near catatonic Brittany. A few days following the funeral, the lawyers called. They went to the meeting and learned that Brittany's mother had very little outstanding debt (nothing that Santana couldn't cover with a bit of her inheritance that she'd received when her parents passed) and Brittany was also handed the ownership of her mother's daycare, which had been shut down since her mother's passing.
A few nights later, while lying in her childhood room in each other's arms, Brittany decided she was ready to talk about this and start making decisions. Maybe not this exact second, but they could start the talking part.
"San…can we talk about some stuff." Santana, who had been waiting until Brittany was ready to bring anything up, nodded gently. "What do you think we should do with the daycare?"
"Why don't you tell me how you feel about it first…"? Santana replied as she kissed Brittany's forehead.
"I know what I feel but I don't know if you're going to like it. And whatever happens, no matter what we have I have to do, I want it to be with you."
"Don't get ahead of yourself babe, tell me what you want."
"I think I want to reopen the day care. At least for a little bit. Until I can find someone to sell it to that will run it and love it like my mom did. Lima isn't our forever San, it's just…we can't stay here forever. But maybe for a little bit?"
"Ok." Santana said with a shrug while trying to fold herself in closer to Brittany.
"Just ok? You're not upset. What about our apartment in California? What about your job and stuff?"
"It's not important. I hated that job, and I'll call the landlord tomorrow about the apartment. We can fly back this week and pack what we can, and come back. If this is what you want, I want what you want."
And that was that. Santana called the landlord, who was as understanding as landlords can be said he'd only continue charging them rent until he found new tenants. They went back to California, packed, said goodbye to their friends, and flew back to Lima. On the plane back Santana had brought up something that she wasn't entirely comfortable bringing up, but she knew she had to. A long with the daycare, Brittany also received her mother's very small, two bedroom house. However when Santana's parents passed away years prior, she also inherited their large house. It was paid off and not costing her very much money to keep other than hiring someone who came in and looked after the house, cleaning every once in a while, and making sure things stayed in order. So they were one couple, with two houses less than twenty minutes from each other. "Britt-Britt?" Brittany hummed her response that she was listening. "I know this is hard to talk about, but I think we need to. What are we going to do about both of our parent's houses? I think we have a few options, we could obviously sell one and keep the other, or we could sell both and start brand new."
"I don't want to start brand new. I don't want this to be something that happens to us that gets us stuck here. I want to do what would make my mom proud, and then go back to living our dream because I think that's what she'd want the most. Right?" Santana nodded. Brittany was always the smart one. She smiled at her. "I love my mother, and being in that house reminds me of her in a good way but my mom's memory isn't the house. And if I think about it, in you know…a logic way, that house has a lot of problems. And it's not in the awesomest neighborhood anymore. I think we should stay in your old house. If you think that's best." Brittany brought up all valid points, her house had less issues and was a five-minute walk to the closest neighbor so it was pretty quiet and safe. They continued talking the entire way home about logistics, and came up with a plan.
They'd take a month off. They weren't hurting for money so bad that that would be an issue. Santana had her inheritance and while mostly they tried to save that for a few years off when they were ready to buy a house and have babies, they used what they needed. In that month they'd clean out the house and move into Santana's parents house. They'd keep using her mother's car for the time being, as they'd left their car that they shared in California with a friend for fear that it'd never make the drive to Ohio. They'd find a buyer for the house, and sell her mother's car, which was also having some significant problems, and then they'd buy a new one. And then after that is all done (hopefully in a month or less), they'd start the process of reopening the daycare center.
Things went according to plan for the most part. It took a little longer to move out of the house than anticipated because there were several afternoons where they'd come across something that would have Brittany in tears for the rest of the night. Santana understood. But even with the healing process, they still managed to sell the house and the car (on the same day) three days before their one-month goal was up. They took a taxi to the car lot that they'd researched and drove away in a brand new Toyota Prius. "I feel so incredibly Midwestern-domesticated right now." Santana said. But she said it with a smile. Because she knew things like co-owning a car, and a house and a day care made Brittany really happy. They co-owned most things. But it still made Brittany smile when she'd look at their names on their joint bank account. They'd been engaged for two years now and had just been waiting for the right time to get married. Neither in a huge hurry, just before they started having kids.
The next month was a flurry of paperwork, which Santana mostly dealt with, and hiring people, which Brittany mostly dealt with. They hired a few people that had worked at the daycare center prior, the ones that had worked there for many years and had devoted as much heart into it as Brittany's mother had. It turned out that a few of their friends from high school were still in town for some reason or another, so they hired them too. Their goal was to continue her mothers efforts in not just making it a place to take your children when you went to work to have someone to watch them, but a place where children were educated instead of spending hours a day doing nothing in particular. They also continued her mother's methods of accepting less money from people who couldn't afford good daycare, by way of a scholarship fund of sorts. It had already been a good place, and they were determined to get it back to at least that, if not better.
It was eight months after they daycare had been reopened, and they were doing exceptionally well. They were (and had been for years before her mothers death) the best daycare facility in Lima. There was a waiting list to get your child into the daycare center, and they were working on plans to hire a few more staff so they could take on more children. Ella, and eighteen month old little girl had been coming their daily, seven days a week, from 6 o'clock in the morning until 9 o'clock in the evening, opening till close, for about a month now. Obviously Brittany, Santana, and the rest of the staff had opinions about Ella's parents for leaving her there so often, but they tried not to pass judgment to quickly. All they knew was that they managed to afford that, and that they were "small business owners" which was half of Lima essentially. Santana assumed that to be making enough to send their daughter to daycare that much, as well as afford a house in the area of Lima they lived in (not to far from where she and Brittany lived currently) they must be working really hard to make all of their ends meet.
It wasn't until she had been attending the daycare for a month that Brittany became suspicious of Ella's home life. She wouldn't say that Ella was developmentally disabled in any way, but she was delayed. She was also small for her age. She knew that these were very clear signs of neglect. So she started to pay even stricter attention in her observations of Ella. She seemed to make a fairly normal amount of progress, but Brittany was quick to figure out that everything Ella was learning, they had taught her at the daycare. She wasn't learning at home. Brittany was quickly becoming suspicious of abuse, so naturally she went to Santana with her fears. Santana agreed with her, saying that she'd observed a lot of the same things. Also another clue for her was how upset Ella was to leave them every night. The day before she had clung to Santana's neck and needed to be physically pried off in order for her uncle to take her home. Her uncle, who dropped her off and picked her up everyday even though she did live with her parents.
Santana and Brittany were both very uninterested in small town gossip. Unfortunately, they heard a lot of it when the mothers of their children would drop them off in the mornings. Santana had been setting up an activity they'd read about recently near where the mothers seemed to congregate and accidently overheard the most ludicrous rumor. One of the mother's was talking about "that poor baby Ella" and how she'd heard that her parents were involved with the Mafia. Santana snorted because seriously, the Mafia. Here. In Lima fucking Ohio. Really? Gossip mongers. While she definitely did not approve of their parenting styles, and had she any way to concretely prove that Ella was being neglected she would have reported them in a second, she did not believe there was any possible way they could have been involved in the mafia. Right?
Later that night she mentioned what she had overheard to Brittany who a first laughed but then of course being Brittany then asked "Yeah that's funny. But what if?"
"No what if's B. Even if, by some very very very tiny chance they were in the Mafia, we are in no way going to mess with that shit. Have you seen Scarface?" Brittany laughed at Santana and kissed her on the forehead.
Two weeks had passed, the conversation forgotten, and Brittany and Santana were both, unfortunately, working all day. They really needed to hire more staff because Santana does not enjoy being at the daycare from 5am till 10pm. Not even a little bit. They get there and open up and the first rush of children come in at six as usual. Ella seemed slightly lethargic but nothing you wouldn't just pass off as normal for a baby at six in the morning. As the day went on she seemed to perk up a bit. Dinnertime passed without event and pretty soon it was time to get all the late day kids ready for pick up at nine. Brittany and Santana were exhausted as they talked with parents about progress and behavior and what not until all the children were gone, nearly. It was 9:05 and nobody had come to pick up Ella. This wasn't completely out of the ordinary. Occasionally something comes up and parents can't get their kids on time but they'd always call and say they'd be ten minutes late. Nobody called. So Santana and Brittany turned on some music and started the clean up process, passing Ella back in forth for little impromptu dances. They'd never admit it out loud to anyone (except each other) but Ella was their favorite. She seriously looked like she could be a genetic combination of the two of them with her dark blonde curly hair, blue eyes, and tan skin. She also was there the most so they'd spent a lot of time with her. At 9:20 Santana decided she'd start calling the numbers in Ella's files. Every child is required to have daytime and nighttime number for both parents when available, as well as three emergency contacts. All numbers were tested for accuracy and authenticity so they'd never get stuck in a situation like this where they had no one to contact. So Santana started at the top with her fathers cell phone, and found it to be disconnected. Odd. Same with her mothers. Both daytime numbers were invalid (despite having been checked only a few months prior) and as she made her way down the emergency contact list, one was disconnected, one when picked up sounded like a fax machine, and one just rang and rang. No machine even picked up. So Santana, at this point feeling very uneasy about the situation, made her way to the other room where Brittany was talking to Ella about her favorite animals at the zoo. "Elephants… I think. Or no. No. Polar bears for sure. Or tigers. I love the tigers!"
"Puppies!" Ella yelled. Santana laughed despite the situation, but quickly remembered that she needed to talk to Brittany.
"So Brit…I called all of Ella's numbers in her file, not a single one answered. Weirder than that, all of them were disconnected except two, which one gave me a fax tone, and the other just rang for a while with no machine pick up." Brittany looked at her for a moment, deep in thought.
"I don't know what we should do. Should we call the police? Maybe something's wrong?"
"Well I know you can't even file a missing persons report until they've been missing for 24 hours. And if we call, I'm not exactly sure where they'll take Ella if they can't find her family, and the idea of her staying with strangers upsets me."
"So what do you think we should do?"
"Maybe just stay here with her? So we're not taking her anywhere her parents don't expect her to be, I'd assume if something were wrong this is the first place they'd send someone to look for her. So we'll just lie out some cots, and sleep here tonight and wait and see if someone comes for her. If not, we file a report in the morning. We both have spare clothes in here, and I could run across the street and get us some dinner."
"I think that's an excellent idea Mrs. Future Lopez-Pierce." Brittany said as she kissed Santana while Ella playfully tapped their faces. Brittany spun Ella around who squealed excitedly now yelling "cookie!" as she waves her arms wildly. Santana laughs and kisses Brittany once more before running across the street to a dinner and grabbing some food to go; a chicken salad for her, French toast and eggs for Brit and Ella will get a combination of the two. She heads back over and smiles as she sees Brittany dancing in the middle of the room in front of a bouncing Ella. Santana knew Brittany needed more opportunities to dance. Talent like hers was meant to be seen by more than just her fiancé and a bouncing toddler. Not that Brittany would complain about that audience ever, because she was pretty sure it was her favorite kind of audience. Santana got plates out and separated out a few bites of French toast, some eggs, and some of the baby friendly veggies she had in her salad and then set up at one of the tables. While eating and talking about random things they were both having very similar thoughts about how much they liked this. This family feeling.
A few hours later, however much they liked that feeling, they were both growing more concerned that nobody had come to pick Ella up. Not only that, but they hadn't even called. After dinner they had given Ella their best version of a bath involving the sink that she seemed to think was great fun, put her in some pajamas, and she quickly fell asleep. Brittany and Santana lay on make shift beds near Ella in the back of the daycare, not visible from the street. They quietly discussed their plan for the morning, and then curled into each other and fell asleep. The alarm sounded what felt like five minutes later waking both of them, and Ella. Brittany tended to a crying Ella while Santana dug them some clothes out of the office, and Ella something to wear out of the just in case pile. Nothing that no one had called while they slept, and nobody had come by because Santana is sure she would have woken at any noise, they finished getting dressed. They'd decided that they wouldn't call right away, they were going to talk to the staff first, get things started at the day care center, and then go drive to Ella's house. If nothing, then they'd go to the police. They also decided that they would, in the event that it was needed, take Ella home with them until her parents were located. Santana only very briefly entertained the thought that Ella would be lucky and better off if nobody showed back up for her, as she was still certain, as was Brittany that Ella was most definitely being neglected at home.
When the staff starts to show up, they explain what happened. Luckily working today is two of their oldest friends, Mercedes Jones and Tina Chang. They discussed reasons why no one would have shown up or called, and also discussed perhaps writing out official protocol for if something like this were to happen again. While Tina and Mercedes continued to gossip, Santana and Brittany went through making sure everything was set for the day. They rewoke Ella who had fallen asleep on top of a stuffed dog (she really loved dogs) and fed her her favorite breakfast; bananas, cheerios, and apple juice. After the first round of kids had been dropped off and Mercedes, Tina were set, and another employee called in because both Brittany and Santana were leaving and weren't sure when they'd be back, they left. They slowly drove towards the address they'd gotten out of her file. They knew this was a functional address, like the phone numbers, at least at one point. They often mailed things home for parents to sign, new policy updates etc. and bring back, and they'd always got them back for Ella. So when they arrived at a large house, they weren't surprised. They weren't even surprised when they knocked on the door and no one answered. What was surprising, is when Santana looked in the window into the living room, it looked pretty empty. Not the kind of house people spend any time in. There wasn't even any furniture in the room except a chair in the corner. So they turned back around and got into the car, intent on heading to the police station. Santana wanted to stop on the way and grab her cell phone charger because it was almost dead and she didn't think now was a great time to not have her phone.
When they pulled up however, they noticed a car in their drive way. Which was strange, they never have visitors, especially unannounced visitors. The owner of the car (Santana assumes) is on the porch holding an envelope that he looks to be putting into their mailbox. Santana gets out of the car despite Brittany's hesitancy and yells
"Excuse me but who are you and why are you here. I will call the police!"
She lifts up her phone to dial the number hoping it doesn't die when the man yells back sounding sincere and not at all like he was trying to threaten them "NO! You mustn't call the police! That is the exact wrong thing to do right no ma'am you will regret it I promise."
Why on earth would she regret calling the police?
AN2: Things are about the get crazzzy. Check back for chapter 2. Reviewing would be a most excellent idea.