Dylan's eyes flew to the door when he heard women coming up the walkway into the house. But when the door opened it was only Kayla and Carmen.
"What happened next?" Marcos asked from his place beside Dylan on the couch.
Dylan stifled an anxious sigh, smiled at the boy and turned back to the story he was reading the kids. Jade caught his eye from the kitchen doorway. Hers was the same look that he had given her in the hallway on the night of the fires. She was willing him strength. He smiled at her, telling her that he was all right. She returned the smile and turned back into the kitchen where she was getting things out to fix dinner.
"Where are mis ninas?" she called out.
Carmen looked up in surprise as Isabel and Olivia hopped off of the couch, calling out that they were coming. Dylan couldn't help but smile when he saw Kayla look between the two groups of people. Dylan with the three boys on the couch reading a story and Jade in the kitchen with the girls, instructing the girls to wash their hands before they did anything else.
"You've just got yourself a little family going here, don't you?" Kayla asked, going into the kitchen.
"Absolutely." Dylan heard the smile in her voice when Jade answered.
Again Dylan looked to the door when the deputies entered. Minus his father. Dylan arched an eyebrow in questioning at Bobby.
"He took off early to do something with your mom." Bobby answered.
Dylan nodded. Of course he would have went with her.
"What about the story?" Marcos demanded.
"Oh, sorry." Dylan forced himself to concentrate on the pages in front of him.
It was only a couple of minutes later when Javier opened the door with Amanda right behind him. There was still no sign of his parents.
When they finally did get home, Dylan was a little dumb-founded when his parents walked into the living room, smiling, arms loaded with bags - bags full of pink baby clothes.
"So is it good news or bad news?" he asked.
"It was always going to be good news." Adam informed him.
"True." Dylan clambered up off the floor to take the bags his mother was carrying. "I just can't sat that I was expecting all of" He waved his free hand at the bags and smiles. "This."
"We would have been back much sooner but, we went out to eat after the doctor's office and then we started getting excited, and your mother decided that she wanted to go shopping right then."
Dylan smiled. "Obviously. And, boy, Mom, did you shop!"
Victoria smiled. "Not all of this is my choice. At least a bag worth is your dad's choices."
Dylan laughed. "I don't doubt it. Just one question: Where exactly are we supposed to put all of this?"
Adam and Victoria looked at each other.
"I knew that there was some factor that we were forgetting." Victoria said.
Dylan couldn't help himself. He burst out laughing, all of the day's apparently unnecessary stress coming out in it. He couldn't stop, even though he knew he probably looked like a maniac. It got worse when he noticed the flabbergasted look on most people's faces.
When at long last he stopped, breathless and with a hurting stomach, Jade approached him as though she wasn't certain he was mentally stable. "Feel better?"
He nodded, still trying to catch his breath. "Life… is going… to be… crazy interesting… around here,… you know it?"
Jade chuckled. "Yeah. I'm kind of getting that feeling."
"Anyway," Victoria spoke up. "Clothes. Um, I guess we can put them in the basement for right now."
Dylan nodded and followed his dad down to the cool, crowded "negative-one" level of their house. They dropped the bags onto a shelf.
Adam leaned against the shelf, asking, "So what do you think of all this?"
Dylan shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Everything is happening so fast, I kind of wish it would slow down, you know? But I'm okay." He grinned. "I've got a lot of great co-pilots to lean on."
"One in particular?"
Dylan's gaze drifted to his shoes. "Yeah."
"What do you think about the baby?"
Dylan shifted, accidentally knocking a bag off of the shelf. He crouched down to pick up the spilled items.
"I'm not sure yet. Might as well get used to it though, I don't see that I have any other choice."
He leaned back and looked absently at a sawhorse in front of him. His gaze was drawn to the concrete wall behind the sawhorse. He blinked at what he saw. A child's drawing - drawn on the wall- of a man, woman, boy, and baby. He squinted and leaned forward to get a better look. As he read the labels with arrows pointing to the people, "DAD", "MOM", "ME", and the bundle "ME" was holding, "MY BABY SISTER", the memory of drawing the picture assailed him.
He had been so proud of that drawing at the time, so thrilled to finally get a sibling. His mother, upon finding his art work, had been neither proud nor thrilled. He had been sorry about the drawing later, but staring at the drawing almost a decade later, his main focus was on the thrilling joy he had experienced upon finding out that he was months away from getting a sister - Emily.
He wanted that back - that unbridled joy and anticipation. He had it, only a little of it though. He hung back from caring too much, from getting to close. And Bethany wasn't even here yet. Because of "what if…".
He thought of Olivia, how in the confusion and fear of Monday morning, she had clung to him, and continued to do so. He cared about her. He thought of Jade's words about their fathers. He cared about all of the deputies, and about Jade. About everyone in the house. But there was a "what if…" with each person. What made Bethany any different from any of them?
Nothing.
If he refused this little girl a relationship with him, he would hurt not only her, but himself as well. His relationship with Emily hadn't been anything to brag about, he was ashamed of the way he had sometimes acted towards her, but to deny Bethany- and himself - another brother-sister relationship would be many times worse.
"Dylan,-" Adam never got any further in the sentence before a girl's scream split the air, accompanied by the sickening thuds of someone falling down the stairwell.
Dylan sprinted across the room and somehow managed to catch Olivia before she fell onto the concrete floor. Dylan stood up with her and ran his gaze over her head, arms, legs while she cried.
"Are you okay?" he asked over her tears.
She nodded.
"Okay." He rubbed her back while her tears quieted. "You're all right. It just scared you, didn't it? Yeah… It happens sometimes, but you're all right. Do you want to go back upstairs?"
She shook her head viciously. "I might fall again."
Dylan smiled at her. "We have chocolate cake upstairs. If you don't go back upstairs, you won't be able to get your fair share."
That was when he felt her gaze on him. He glanced up to meet Jade's gaze as Olivia nodded. That's when what he had just said, what it could be applied to, hit him.
When he had set Olivia on her feet at the top of the stairs, Jade said, "You're right, you know."
Dylan smiled at her. "I know I am."
Okay, so this is a reposted version of my original story with the same title, just in case you read that. Please review this! I really need the motivation right now! Thank you in advance! By the way, this is one of those "call me crazy if you want" moments. :)