July 17th 2021

Chapter 198
Our Friends in Town

"Hey, so how late are you going to be out there?" Maya asked him almost as soon as he picked up her call. Maybe it was that he'd had years to internalize the many nuances of her voice, but as straightforward as the question was, to him it said, 'something is happening at the house, and I need you there as soon as possible.'

"Couple of hours at least, why?" Lucas asked. He was at the ranch again this afternoon, which had turned out to be a blessing, if they could call it that. One of the horses had been injured, nothing major, but enough so that Dr. Alvarez was very thankful for his presence to assist him. Lucas had been thankful, too, as this was one of his uncle's horses, and he still felt an extra responsibility toward them. They'd finished taking care of the injured one not too long ago and he was sitting by her side when Maya called.

"I brought Summer back to the house," she told him, her voice now suggesting this was only the tip of the iceberg.

"Is she alright?" He'd heard the girl mentioned enough times in the past few weeks to know that Maya had been concerned about the new sophomore.

"She has a daughter, six weeks old," she revealed now, triggering a similar wave of revelation as she would have felt earlier. He closed his eyes and let out a breath. He couldn't even imagine what this would have been like for the girl, when she'd turned seventeen just at the start of the week, according to Maya. "She's living with her sister because her parents kicked her out." The rest of the story came tumbling out, and after that he barely needed her to tell him what she'd done about it. He knew her, so he knew.

"Do you need me to pick up anything for them?"

"I'm still trying to figure out the sleeping arrangements. I know we've been talking about getting Marianne into a bed, but I don't want to have to force her out of her crib. I was thinking we could try it out and put her bed in our room, see how she does with that, then maybe we can move her into the nursery again. In the meantime, Tori can have the crib and we can get a bed up there for Summer, too."

"Sounds good," Lucas agreed. "Look, I'll see if I can get out of here early to help and get them settled in," he moved off to find Juliet.

"Thank you," Maya breathed. She'd followed her impulses, and she was sure of what she'd done, but she still sounded relieved now that she'd told him, and she knew that he was backing her up.

"How's Marianne doing with this?" he smiled. He had a good feeling he knew the answer.

"Oh, she's in heaven. She's been looking at Tori since we got here, calling her 'baby sissy,'" Maya chuckled. Yeah, that sounded about right.

Shortly after they hung up, his phone dinged, and he looked to find a picture of Marianne sitting on the couch with the infant in her arms. From the tip of her head, he could just guess she'd been making funny faces to try and make the babe laugh. Baby Tori, with a light covering of raven hair on her head, might have been too little to give her the good laughs she was after, but she didn't look like she was about to burst out crying either, so maybe they could call it a success after all.

When he arrived at the house, he found Juliet and asked if he was okay to head out early, briefly explaining his reasons. He would make up the hours over the weekend. Juliet sent him off with a box of baked treats from the kitchen, for Summer. She was waiting on the arrival of Nellie Hunter and Bobby Davis for their regular afternoon session of chores.

The two of them had been coming here, every day after school, for the past two weeks. They hadn't been on a horse in all that time, and they wouldn't be allowed to ride one, Hopper, Jewel, or otherwise, until Juliet was satisfied to allow them. That could take weeks, or months, and even once they got that far, it wouldn't mean that their punishment would be over. They could continue to be made to help around Sullivan Stables for much longer, again until it was decided that they had done enough. Until then, they would continue being dropped off here by their school buses, to do the chores – together, always together – before returning to Juliet's house to do their homework, after which they would be picked up and taken home. The Hunters and Davises would trade off weeks.

After the first week, Gracie and Ethan had started to come along with their respective twins. They were not part of the punishment, and they would leave them to do whatever they had to do that day, but they would be on the premises, as something like moral support or twin solidarity. From what Lucas had seen of these sessions, Nellie and Bobby were not too pleased about having to spend all this time together, and more than once they'd looked ready to clock in for round two. Only the awareness of what would happen if they did so had willed them to dial back for harmless responses, like squinting, or calling names, or sticking out their tongues. A couple of times, it had looked as though Nellie tripped Bobby, or Bobby forced Nellie to start something over. They couldn't help themselves from wanting to get a rise out of the other. So long as they knew where the line was and they didn't cross it, they could get their 'vengeance' in.

Lucas was walking toward the parking lot when he spotted a small boy moving along on his way from the lot. He looked about two or three years old, and actually, he kind of looked like… Hold on… He didn't just look like, he was…

"Bertie?" Lucas called, and the boy whipped around, clutching a plush pony in his arms. When he spotted him, his face lit up and he took off at a run. "Hey!" Lucas laughed, sweeping up the toddler. "Albert Isaac Minkus, what are you doing here?"

"I wanna see horses!" he informed him, holding up his toy. Lucas grinned before looking up again. He wouldn't have made it from New York to Texas all on his own, which would mean…

"Uncle Lucas!" She was almost six years old, as impossible as it sounded. Ada Marie Minkus was the picture of her mother, especially with her dark hair in a pair of braids bouncing along as she ran to him, too. She threw her arms around his legs and nearly knocked him over.

"Hold on, hold on," Lucas crouched and, keeping Bertie in one arm, he lifted her up as well. Both children were awed that he was able to hold them up at once. "Did you two run away to see the horses?" he asked with an exaggerated look of curiosity that got them laughing.

"No, we're little," Bertie proclaimed, his tone showing how obvious this was.

"Of course, yes," Lucas matched this before looking up again. Here they were, their faraway friends, as good as family. Farkle and Isadora Minkus.

They had all grown, all of them, in the years since they'd come together as friends, from the very beginning of adolescence up to now, and for some of them the change was more startling than others. Those two were easily at the top of that list. Who would have imagined, seeing them as the thirteen-year-olds they'd been at the time, that they would be the first of them to marry, the first of them to have children, when somehow it had felt as though they'd be the last? In all this time, they had always been the ones way off across the country. They would speak to them regularly, but they'd see each other in person… once, maybe twice a year, more if they were lucky, and those years had been few and far in between. The distance had never diminished their importance, not in the slightest. It was a mark of how important they were in their lives. They were family.

"I thought you guys weren't flying up until next week," Lucas told them as he carefully set the children back on their feet so he might hug his friends. As soon as Riley had given birth to Emily, it had been on the books that the Minkus family would travel over to meet the newest Orlando.

"Personally, I'm not big on surprises, but they're not half bad sometimes," Isadora shrugged with a satisfied smile.

"Not disagreeing with you there," Lucas chuckled. "So, this is why you called earlier, wasn't it?" he turned to Farkle, the answer to how they knew that he'd be here coming to mind all of a sudden.

"We were at the hotel, settling in," Farkle nodded. "Had to be sure," he smiled.

"Well, you almost missed me, I was actually going to leave early," Lucas explained. "Situation came up at home. Everything's fine, but Maya needs me out there." He hated that he couldn't just bring them along, but things would be complicated enough, with Summer and Tori, that bringing in these four would only complicate things.

"Don't worry about it, we will just take the kids around here for a bit and then we'll be on our way to Riley's," Farkle nodded, he and Isadora both as understanding as he would have expected. "Listen, we will be in Austin for a while, we will have plenty of opportunities to catch up."

"Count on it," Lucas clapped his shoulder. "Hey, come on, I'll take you to someone who will be very happy to take you around," he turned to Ada and Bertie, offering his hands to them. They took hold, and he walked the family toward his grandmother's old house.

After he'd dropped them off, Lucas got in his car and drove on home. The minivan was gone, so he knew already that Maya had gone back to school. Inside the house, he was greeted by Marianne and her gang of pups, all as excited as the last one. And on the couch, Granny Lizzie sat holding little Tori Levesque, while the baby's mother sat at her side, taking in the merry welcoming. Summer Levesque stood, pushing up the sleeves of her borrowed sweater so she might approach and extend her hand in greeting. Lucas took her hand and shook it with a tip of the head.

"Summer," she introduced herself. "Thank you for letting us stay here, Mr. Friar."

"You're more than welcome. You can call me Lucas. Here, these are for you," he pulled the container from his bag. "My boss at the ranch wanted me to pass them on." Summer took the box, which might have looked like one more impossible act of kindness turned on to her in the last couple of hours, going by the look on her face. She was on the very edge of tears.

"Thank you, Mist… Lucas," she corrected herself.

"I'm going to get started on getting the beds upstairs taken care of," he nodded. "Where are your things?" Summer pointed to a pair of bags by the door, sitting next to her school backpack and Tori's diaper bag. That was all she had, for herself and her daughter. Maya had told him how she'd been sleeping sitting up, with Tori wrapped to her chest, since she was born. She'd been saving up for a crib. "Why don't I show you where we've stored Marianne's baby things. If there's anything you need for her, you're welcome to it."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners