February 15th 2021

Chapter 46
Our Family With Assistance

"Alright, you guys all set?" Lucas turned to look at his cousins in the back of his car. Henry was already good and buckled in, presently flipping open the comic book he'd been reading when Lucas had come to pick him and his sister up.

He wasn't actually looking to read it though. There were two copies stuck together, one inside the other, and Henry was now finding the same page in the second one as had been kept by the first, before combining the two, the better to hold the page in both. As he would explain, one copy was his, and the other was Maggie's. It was a series they had been reading together, part of an initiative of their father's. Each of them was to introduce the other into something they liked, not by force, just sharing. It had all been going a lot better than either of the kids anticipated. While Henry had shared the comics, Maggie had presented her big brother with her favorite books.

"We only read together," Henry told Lucas when he found him looking. Reaching into his bag, he took out a folder and slipped the combined comics inside, the better to protect them. "And she can't read in the car," he nodded to his younger sister.

"I can't," Maggie confirmed with a shy shake of the head over the allusion to her car sickness.

"Alright, well, you guys want to tell me about those?" Lucas suggested.

This request led to a spirited conversation all the way to the Hunter Hart house. When they arrived, Lucas and the Hillard kids got out of the car, taking the duo's bags along with them. The car was to be left here and driven back by whichever of the grandparents would come and collect the little Hunters on Sunday. In the meantime, Lucas would be borrowing the minivan, the better to carry his cousins and his young brother and sisters-in-law. He was seriously starting to consider trading in his car for a second minivan. With how many people they were always driving around, him and Maya, it might not have been a bad idea.

Much like the Hillards, the Hunter kids were not ready when Lucas came for them. Or at least, he should say, neither party had been able to simply pick up their things and get in the car as soon as he came. His cousins had needed to grab a few more things, after they'd gotten to a point where they were able to close their reading with haste, and his siblings…

The mood was strange when Lucas let himself and his cousins into the house, like tension. He found the first evidence of this when he spotted the youngest of the quartet, sat at the top of the stairs with a giant frown dipped in stubborn determination. It was so unlike her, only rarely coming along, in times of distress.

"Hey, Haley girl, you okay up there?" Lucas asked. Almost at once, upon spotting him, the girl got up and started down the stairs, going so fast on her nearly five and a half-year-old legs that Lucas moved up for fear that she might trip and tumble. This only enabled her to more or less leap into his arms. "Hey, hey, what's going on?" Lucas shifted at once from brother to dad mode.

"Can I still go to the sleepover?" she asked, pulling back to look at his face.

"Yeah, of course you can, why do you think I'm here? See?" he indicated his cousins with their bags, and they waved. Haley looked to them and then back to her big brother. "Why wouldn't you?"

"I heard them, they said – they said Nellie and Gracie were staying here," Haley reported.

"Alright, stay here, I'll go see what's going on," Lucas set the girl down, turning a look to his cousins, who both nodded in a promise to keep an eye on her and maybe try to reassure her. He vaguely heard Henry say he'd show her what he and Maggie were reading, to which Haley replied that she couldn't read, something Maggie insisted wasn't a problem, because there were pictures, too.

Up the stairs he went, and the further he went, he started to hear voices, coming from the twins' room. Even from out of sight, he could more or less decipher when Nellie was speaking and when it was Gracie instead. They were in there, and so were their grandparents, both of them, though he couldn't hear MJ, so either he was quiet in there, or…

"Hey, what's going on with your sisters?" Lucas asked, when one look into the boy's room brought him into view, sitting on his bed and tossing a small ball around like he didn't know what else to do to keep busy while he waited. The eight-year-old looked up now and let the ball drop to the floor before standing and moving to look into the hall. When he heard the voices from the other room, he motioned for Lucas to follow him back inside his own room.

"They got in a fight," MJ whispered.

"What kind of fight? Who…" Lucas blinked. Now this was unexpected.

"With each other. They were arguing, at school, and then their teacher sent them to the principal. Grangie picked us up, and they weren't talking, and she was upset. Then we got here, and me and Haley had to come here while they talked with Gramps. Now they're saying Nellie and Gracie shouldn't go to the sleepover. They got more upset. They're still in there," he indicated his sisters' room.

"What did they argue about, do you know?" Lucas asked. MJ just shrugged. He had no idea. "Okay, uh… Haley is downstairs, with Henry and Maggie, if you want to… Okay…" he breathed out when the boy dashed off to go find the Hillards and his little sister. So that was one thing. What was he supposed to do about the twins?

He knocked at the door and heard an invitation to come in, a moment after he'd announced himself. When he walked in, he was presented with a strange but telling image. It was impossible not to be drawn at once to the image of the very tall Tanner Clutterbucket folded in a short desk chair. The man sat and seemed taken with a mood like he didn't trust his own voice. Meanwhile, Angela sat on the edge of Gracie's bed, her hand at her granddaughter's ankle, like she wanted to hold her, but this was as close as she could get. And the twins…

For as long as he could remember, Lucas had seen this room, its two beds on opposite walls but never feeling like a partition. Even now, halfway between ten and eleven, Nellie and Gracie Hunter could sometimes be found having bundled away in a single bed, like they slept better that way. Those beds were islands, floating parallel through life, the girls free to hop from one to the other. Today though… Maya's little sisters lay on top of their respective beds, almost painfully mirrored as they each faced one wall, turned in on themselves and made smaller for it. One of them was sniffling, maybe both, he couldn't say, about the fight or the sleepover, he couldn't say that either.

"Hey…" he addressed the grandparents, finding he didn't know what he was supposed to say. He came to pick up four kids, and now he might only get two, if they got to go anyway, but he couldn't bear to leave these two here either… The twins had heard him, one word and they reacted, though neither seemed able to turn around.

"Lucas, I'm sorry, I'm afraid…" Angela started to say, shaking her head, and it was in no way his habit to cut someone off, but here he almost had to.

"Can I speak to them for a bit? Please?" he asked her and Tanner both, telegraphing his respect with a look. The couple shared a look, and finally they got up and quietly left the room, shutting the door behind them. Lucas moved across the room, pulling the chair where the girls' grandfather had been sitting a moment ago until it sat between the beds. "Alright, look… I don't know what's going on with you two, but right now I have to believe that the best thing for you might be to be with your big sister. That's not going to happen if I can't convince your grandparents to let you go. So, come on, talk to me?"

It took almost half a minute, but they started to move, hard to say who first. Nellie rolled over and sat up, while Gracie climbed on to all fours and rotated until she could plop back down, seated. Both girls looked at him with those faces so similar and different, too, faces that were a harmony of Katy and Shawn, with echoes of their big sister that were so hard to ignore. They weren't looking at each other though, and that was a clear and conscious effort.

"Well?" Lucas quietly asked, looking from one to the other. They didn't know how to start. He had to imagine that, if they'd had this same response with their grandparents, this would be part of the reason why Tanner and Angela wanted to keep them here. They had to get to the bottom of this. "I've never seen you two fight. Not once, and I've known you since the day you were born. Whatever happened, was it really that bad that you're being like this with each other?" This made them look to one another now. They didn't know. They probably didn't understand it any better than he did. And they didn't know the way out. "This doesn't feel good, does it?"

"No," Gracie spoke, barely above a whisper, as she bowed her head, trying to hide an attempt to stall her tears. She could only do so much though, in the silence of the room, where her sniffles might as well have echoed.

"No…" Nellie breathed, looking to her twin. She looked like she wanted to go over there, hop to that other island, and hold her sister, because that was what she did, whenever she was upset in any way, but all of a sudden there was something holding her back and she didn't understand it any better. She looked to Lucas. He tipped his head, and that was all she needed. She sped to rise and go to her… only to trip over her feet and tumble to the ground with a yelp. This, in turn, compelled Gracie to look up and slide to crouch on the ground and reach for her.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah… yeah…" Nellie nodded with an embarrassed look that made Gracie laugh, and this made Nellie laugh along. After a moment, it was like the clouds had cleared, and when the grandparents burst in, likely drawn back by the sound of Nellie's hitting the ground, they found the two brunettes sitting there, hugging tight.

"What happened?" Angela asked Lucas. He just nodded down to the girls. They looked up, seeing their grandparents.

"I fell off my bed," Nellie explained. "I was going to her, wanted to stop her crying," she looked to Gracie, making the quieter girl smile.

They weren't completely in the clear, no. They'd be grounded in the coming week for the whole situation spilling over at school, but Lucas convinced the grandparents to let the twins join their younger siblings and head to see Maya and join the Sleepster. They had to know deep down that, at this point, much as their love was recognized, the one they needed right now, short of having their parents, was their big sister. She would help them through this.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners