November 1st 2022

Chapter 305
Our Hands to Raise

Rare were the nights where Lucas found himself flying solo with the young Friar sisters, but parent nights were usually good for it. Emma and Eliza were out, which left him alone to see to Marianne, Kacey, Remy, Lucy, Mackenzie, and Aubrey, and that was fine by him. He had plenty of offers, especially from the grandparents, for some form of back-up, not because they believed him incapable, more out of a feeling that it would be less overwhelming that way, but Lucas kindly refused. He could see to his daughters just fine, and the only assistant he could want, or need, was already on the premises in the form of his firstborn.

There was the briefest thought, when he'd made it back home with Marianne and the triplets and his grandparents left from their day seeing to the littlest two, when all six of the girls were staring at him, and all those blue eyes seemed to be asking him 'now what are you going to do?' But he smiled, and they were on. First, they had to get dinner ready, and he had loads of help there, too. They had been doing their best to show the triplets how to do certain things as they grew, just as they'd been doing with Marianne. It was still a work in progress, but they were getting by, and that was what mattered. Mackenzie was still much too little for some of those tasks, but they never struggled to find her little things to do, so she would be involved somehow. At five months old, Aubrey could only be relegated to watching from her seat, but oh, she was invested, and she followed their progress with rising curiosity.

When the food was about ready, it was a small line-up for everyone to get their hands washed, then to the table they went, where they were served and soon sitting together, the seven of them. Dinner time was always full of conversations, primarily about what had happened throughout the day, but as had often been the case in the past, with one of their parents missing, the girls were momentarily uncertain about where to start. They wanted to tell their stories to their mother, too. Lucas promised she would listen to them in the morning, and he wouldn't mind hearing them again, and that worked well enough. He was regaled with tales of pre-school from the triplets, and what Marianne had learned about in class that day… Mackenzie couldn't say more than a few words at this point, but she was yawning in between bites, twisting merrily in her seat, suggesting that she'd had a fulfilling day that now left her sleepy. They couldn't have asked for more.

Then, it was bath time. Marianne immediately was set to help her father, which she could do, mostly, by keeping an eye on those who wouldn't be in the bathroom with Lucas at any given time, while she wasn't having her turn. He saw to Aubrey first, who always looked so happy to be in the water, serene to the point where she had been known to fall asleep even as they washed her. She did so that day, so by the time Lucas got her out of there and got her dressed and into her crib, she'd slept through most of it. He kissed her goodnight and went on to the next step.

For about as long as they were big enough to use the normal bathtub, the triplets had been getting their baths together. At three years old now, they were getting to a point where putting the three of them in there together could be a bit of a tight squeeze and lead to chaos, so they had started splitting them up. On alternating bath nights, any one of the triplets would get her turn along with Mackenzie, while the other two still had theirs together. That night, he had the twins together first, so he saw to them before turning them over to their big sister for a bit of pre-bed play time, and then he got Lucy and Mackenzie for their turn. Once they were out of there, Marianne finally had her turn; she was old enough now to take care of her own cleaning needs, and so she did, while Lucas got everyone's PJs and hair taken care of. Mackenzie was the next one down for the count, now the proud resident of her very own little bed, which had actually been Marianne's old bed, kept in storage. The sheets were new, and she'd picked them out herself. It wouldn't be long now that there'd be a baby in her old crib, too, with three girls in one room and three in the other, and their parents all on their own.

"Daddy, Daddy, the monster!" Lucy called out, tense, as he returned to the triplets' room to see how they were getting along. She pointed to under the dresser, her other arm kept tight around her doll, which obscured half of her face. Recently, all three of the little blondes had become convinced that a monster resided under the dresser and would come out to scare them in the night, this due to a story they had overheard at preschool. Of the three, Lucy was definitely the most overtly spooked, while the twins were sometimes almost curious to see this beast. They all insisted that they had seen it with their own eyes at one time or another, though for some reason all of their descriptions were completely different. In jest, it had been suggested to them that the monster was a shapeshifter, which only made matters worse.

Tonight, Lucas had a thought. He looked at his daughters' faces, all of them intent on the dresser, and nodded to himself before crouching and then kneeling on the floor. They scrambled over to him, hanging on to his back as he looked under the dresser, like they wanted to protect him as much as they wanted to be protected by him.

"Excuse me, Monster?" he spoke, as normally as he might to a stranger on the street. "I'm sorry I don't know what else to call you. Maybe you're not actually a monster, maybe you're just a normal creature, and you're just as scared as they are, huh? You don't have to come out, it's okay. If you want to come and hide out in my room, too, you can do that. You're more than welcome, okay? I'm Lucas, and these little girls climbing on top of me here are my daughters. You got Lucy back here, and there's Kacey, and then the one there, stepping on my butt, that's Remy." Remy giggled, grabbed hold of him. "We can be your friends," Lucas told the 'monster.'

With this narrative, the girls were intrigued enough that there was no more talk of being scared of the monster. In their eyes now, it might have looked like a frightened puppy. So long as they didn't start leaving food under there, they would be fine.

Once Marianne was out of the bath, Lucas took care of cleaning up the room while she got dressed and then he combed out her hair, which was kept as long as ever. The only times it had been cut in the last few years had been less than an inch each time, just to maintain the ends. It would be kept in a braid while she slept sometimes, as it would be tonight, so Lucas braided her hair. Before long, it would be time for her to go and read her sisters their bedtime stories.

"I want to say good night to Mommy when she comes back," Marianne told her father as he took her back downstairs with him. It would be past her bedtime by the time Maya came home, but he could see the merit in keeping her close, maybe letting her fall asleep and then waking her briefly to see her mother. In that spirit, they sat together on the couch, where he encouraged her toward a position that would hopefully help her doze off.

"Check it out," he told her, and she looked to the laptop he held. On the screen, there was a floorplan of each floor as it currently stood, over at the ranch house. She didn't realize that was what it was until he told her, and once she did, she was very intrigued and possibly unlikely to fall asleep very soon after all. He'd drawn this up himself, taking measurements, and notes… "These right here, these are the blueprints, they're from when the house was first built," he explained when he moved to a new set of images. Marianne wanted to see them, back and forth, and after looking at it all enough times, she could notice…

"They're not the same," she noted.

"Not exactly, no. Juliet had some work done, after she moved in. Not a lot, but still. She wanted her office to be there, so they made it that way, here," Lucas pointed to the floorplan, then showed on the blueprints. "I was thinking we should put it back the way it was. Whoever is going to look after the place, they're going to need a place to live. That could be their room." Marianne seemed to like this idea, although it did raise a question.

"Who's going to live there?" she asked.

"We don't know yet," Lucas admitted. "I'm hoping maybe someone we know, maybe a couple. That'd be easier, but it's a big ask." She seemed to understand this as she contemplated the matter. "Who would you want it to be?" he asked her, and now she had to think even harder, which she seemed to like. The question spun around in her head, even as she was joined on the couch by Jax, who seemed to embrace the possibility of falling asleep there a lot more than the seven-year-old did. Marianne hugged the dog, and pet him… Who could they get to look after the bed and breakfast?

"What if they got kids?" she raised her head to look at her father.

"Well, that wouldn't be impossible either, we'd just have to know that before we do the work. We could make two bedrooms in there," he pointed to the screen. "After that, well, we might have to do things differently." Again, she considered the matter, but then Jax licked her face, and she laughed, and it got to feel like she'd forgotten all about his question.

He had a few ideas in mind, truth be told, though they all at the moment felt like him scouring his brain for any and all potential candidates, as likely or unlikely to jump in on this as they could be. His first criteria had actually been not so far off from Marianne's question of whether they'd have kids or not. He thought of Rosa and Jenna, or Morgan and Paul, who were childfree by choice, but then running the B&B would clash with some of their jobs, wouldn't it? He wasn't sure they would be up for that. Then he thought of his uncle Hank and aunt Tanya. With Maggie heading off to college in the fall, it could have been an ideal time for them to take this on but, again, it might clash with what they were able to do. He'd gone so far as to consider his grandparents. Pappy Joe and Patty were still out in Houston, and this would have been as good of a way as any to get them back to Austin, but then it wouldn't have felt right to saddle them with this at their age, would it?

After that, he did consider a couple of people with kids. He thought about Leona. If they were to put her in charge of the B&B, she could live there with Evangeline, and Bishop could move out to Austin, too, cutting on his commute by a long shot. He even thought Leona might enjoy this job. But if he was going to offer this to her, then he'd have to have a good sell. The same went for his last pick, and this one felt either like the most… risky, or most random. He wanted to ask Rafa's mother. It would be a great opportunity for her, and it would allow the boy to be right where he'd always wanted to be. But would it feel like he was pushing for them all to be tied to the Sullivans and Friars more than she wanted? Whatever they chose, they'd really have to think it through, and they would.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners