July 25th 2021

Chapter 206
Our Party For Stables

Maybe in a year or two he would begin to be able and bring Marianne with him, to help in giving Sullivan Stables a flair of Halloween spirit. But as it was, it made more sense to leave her to her fairy merriment and later bring her around to discover what they had done when it was ready.

He would have plenty of help anyway. His parents would be there, his uncles and cousins, too. Baby Leyton would be here, left in the care of John Carson up at the archive. When they would go about decorating that part of the ranch, he'd be standing there, giving his opinion about this garland or that figure, all the while holding the three-month-old in his arms.

Lucas would also have the Hunter and Davis twins. It wasn't even one of Nellie and Bobby's 'punishment days,' but then they'd been wondering about the decorations and how they hadn't gone up yet, and the two of them, like Gracie and Ethan, had wanted to be there when they'd finally do it, so here they were.

At first, they started off doing their own thing, the sisters here, the brothers there. But then Juliet came out to join them and, when she cleared her throat, the reaction was sort of comical in the way it reaffirmed two different pairs across the families. In each duo, one smiled and one huffed. Both Nellie and Bobby started to move toward one another, saw that the other was coming, paused, gestured between themselves and their siblings. Finally, Bobby went toward Nellie while Gracie went toward Ethan, and they resumed their tasks. Juliet was going to insist on those two having to co-exist so long as they were under her arch, and Lucas agreed.

It was like night and day, watching the two duos. Off on one side, Gracie and Ethan were continuing to untangle the garlands as the brothers had been doing. Ethan had draped one of them around the back of his neck and looped it over his arms, the ends dangling, and it had made Gracie laugh, so he took the one he'd just finished pulling apart and gently draped it up around her head and shoulders like a hood or a crown. It made him smile to see how it made her smile. Gracie quickly took her phone from her pocket and asked Lara Sullivan-Reyes to take a picture of her and Ethan.

And then, Nellie and Bobby... The sisters had been sorting out the tiny, numbered figurines from their box. They were to be hidden across the ranch, their hiding places inventoried, and whoever would find them would get a special prize. Most of them would involve some food item, maybe a pin, then there would be hats, and shirts, one jacket, then a few single rides, and the grand prize of a month of free lessons. They were numbered and tracked as they were because of previous incarnations of this game where figures would still be found weeks, months, even years later because they'd been forgotten.

Nellie and Gracie had been working well together, naturally, and they had been so excited about going around to hide the figures together. And now all that had been changed because Nellie had to work with 'Slowpoke.' Whatever system the girls had been developing together, it all started to fall apart, as Bobby had a completely different idea. In no time, they were arguing, their voices floating every which way until the others would look at them. Finally, when it almost looked like they were about to throw down again, Lucas left his parents and moved to work with the pair of twelve-year-old kids.

"Hey, mind if I tag in?" he asked them. He wouldn't call them on the arguing. He'd just show up and hope that they got the message. Nellie and Bobby looked back to one another, and they sighed. They understood.

"Sorry," they both mumbled, to each other or to Lucas, it was unclear, but either way worked.

"Alright, so how's it looking?" he pointed to the small figures.

They would eventually take off, both kids with a large bucket of figures in hand while Lucas followed with a clipboard. He had a list, indicating the numbers and the associated prizes, with a space for him to add the location of the figure. He also had maps of the various areas of the ranch where they were supposed to put them, so he could put the numbers. He'd taken up this task the better to let Nellie and Bobby do the actual hiding. They would alternate, taking a figure from their bucket in turn before hiding it, as they worked their way from one end of Sullivan Stables to the other.

"No one's going to find that," Bobby complained.

"Sure, they will," Nellie replied, her sweet voice showing a hint of heat, suggesting an under layer of 'you idiot.' "We have to hide them, remember? They'll find it if they look."

"Yeah, in fifty years," Bobby shook his head. Nellie whipped around, and Lucas was left to wonder if the thing they'd been calling 'New York Maya' wasn't just genetics passed from Katy to her daughters. He gave his sister-in-law a pointed look and she took a breath.

"It's a good spot," Lucas told Bobby before marking it on his list and map.

"Yup," Nellie beamed before slipping 'ghost 42' in its chosen hiding place.

"You know, I did find one of the lost figures when I was a kid," Lucas told them as they moved along. "One of the ones that wasn't numbered. I was maybe seven or eight, and we were decorating for Halloween, just like today. My grandmother had just told me the story about how they were still missing two."

"The other Marianne?" Nellie asked, smiling.

"Yes, the other Marianne," Lucas chuckled. "She said how Grandpa Jax had the idea for the game one day, and he got so excited that he went out, got the figures, and started hiding them right away. It was all great fun, until November rolled around, and they were still short seven figures. They found three of them in the weeks after, one months later, one maybe six years later. But they were still missing two, and those they never found. They figured maybe they got thrown out by mistake, or they got picked up by someone who took them home without saying."

"But you found one," Bobby nodded.

"I wasn't even trying. We were just walking around, hiding those," Lucas indicated the buckets. "And suddenly, there it was... a pumpkin," he paused, laughing to himself. It was almost like a prophecy, wasn't it? "Oh, I was the hero of Sullivan Stables that day."

"What about the last one?" Nellie asked.

"Huh? Oh, we never found it," Lucas shrugged. "Maybe it's still out here somewhere, or maybe it's like I said, and it's just gone, and we'll never find it."

Even as he said the words, he just knew where they would lead. He could see Nellie and Bobby's faces as they heard and processed this information, and the conclusion was the same on both sides. If that figure was anywhere still on the premises, they would be the one to find it. Oh, but they looked to each other, and they knew they had both had the same thought, which could only mean one thing: competition. Not only were they going to find the figure, but they would find it before the other one did.

"What was it? What shape?" Nellie asked.

"A witch on a broomstick," Lucas nodded in recall. There had been fifty at first, ten each of ghosts, pumpkins, witches, cats, and vampires. They'd all been accounted for except for that last witch.

They continued their circuit of the ranch and hid their figures, even as Nellie and Bobby were also clearly checking up on potential places where the lost witch might have ended up. Sometimes they'd look like they had spotted something, even as they tried to be discreet about it, but then they'd be disappointed and have to move on.

It took them hours, all of them, to finish the task at hand, but by afternoon's end the ranch was finally in fine Halloween form. They had been invited to close out the day with dinner at Juliet's, so Maya soon arrived, with Marianne in her arms to keep her from shooting off like an arrow. Granny Lizzie was with her, too, and so were Summer and Tori.

This was big for her. On the one hand, she'd been invited because she was as good as family to them, and they would have felt badly to exclude her. It would do her some good to know that she was valued in this way, to be included. On the other hand, and Maya had made sure she'd know this would be the case even as she'd invited her, the Sullivan-Reyes family would be there, including Lea, who was Summer's classmate. The only ones who'd been let in on her secret up to now were adults, teachers... This would be one of her contemporaries.

"I want to go," Summer had told her. "I don't want to hide forever. And Lea, she's nice. She won't tell, right?"

"If you ask her not to, she won't," Maya had told her, and this much she felt could be said with confidence.

Even without knowing this part just yet, Lucas had seen the girl approach, lugging her daughter's seat, and the nervous edge was very clear in her, thinking of what was about to happen.

His cousins all came rushing toward them, as they would, knowing that Marianne was here, and she was about to see all the decorations. Neither Lara nor Lydia knew Summer, of course, and they mostly didn't register her presence at first. Lea knew Summer, and as unexpected as it was that she should see her here, in this moment, with Maya and Granny Lizzie, the surprise turned to confusion even as her eyes landed on the baby in the seat. The same raven hair, the same light blue, almost turquoise eyes... It didn't take a genius to understand who they were to each other.

Maybe they hadn't been hanging out, and maybe she'd only been aware of some curiosities, but right then Lea looked upon her classmate and saw not the image she'd been trying to project but her true self. And her response was to go up to the girl and embrace her.

Summer was surprised for a beat, but then whatever emotion Lea sought to pass on to her, she felt it. You are welcome here, you are safe. So, Summer hugged her back.

Lucas knew where this outpouring came from, of course. Lea's own birth mother had been a teenager, no older than she was now. And for what she knew of her, it made her sympathetic in her own way, without having to explain herself, though she likely would in this case.

"Hey, pumpkin, you ready to see what we did today?" Lucas asked his daughter when she was passed over to him.

"Yes, yes, yes!" Marianne wiggled about.

"Steady now," Lucas laughed, kissing her head as he made extra certain not to drop her. "You want to tell me what you and your mom did?" he asked as he carried her off on the tour that would soon include his parents and a couple of his young cousins.

The Hunters and Davises had also been invited for dinner that night, seeing as the kids had been such big helps. As he took Marianne and the others around, he would sometimes spot Nellie or Bobby, still on their 'witch hunt.' They'd try to play it cool, especially when the other was roaming about, as though they were fooling anyone. But it was hilarious, so they let them be, all of them except Marianne, who would wave and call out to her aunt whenever she saw her. Nellie would always stop and wave back, but then if she spotted Bobby looking particularly focused on a new spot, she would dash after him.

"They better find that witch before they tear the ranch apart," Lucas commented to Gracie and Ethan when he ran into them. The two just laughed, a look on their faces saying that they had the same feeling he did. They had a good idea of where this was all headed, whether Nellie and Bobby knew it or not.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners