January 16th 2022
Chapter 16
Our Connection to Sisters
While they were at school or working on most days of the week, Eliza and Emma Hart-Lane were fortunate enough to have some free time on weekends, free time which they would often devote to being at the house, with their big sister and her children, so they might lend a hand or just hang out with their little nieces. They helped throughout the week, too, wherever they could, so it would be one or the other, depending on their availabilities. Their greatest contributions, other than pitching in with the cleaning, the chores, and the cooking, came in the middle of the night, if ever Maya or Lucas needed back-up when tending to the babies, and this was appreciated in ways the new parents never missed a chance to thank them for.
On the weekends though, it wasn't about pitching in, not if they could help it. This was just pure fun, bonding between the young aunts and their nieces, and good times between the sisters, no longer geographically challenged as they once were. Today, it was most of them, Maya, Marianne, the triplets, Tori, and Eliza and Emma. Lucas was out on his shopping trip with Ella. Maya would have loved nothing more than to go with them, but she knew why it would be easier this way. She couldn't really leave the babies, and taking them on a furniture shopping trip… No, they were better off staying right here, hanging with their aunties.
"Are you guys going to dress them up for Halloween this year?" Emma asked. She had Kacey in her arms, the baby's tiny hand gripping around one of her fingers.
"Honestly, we hadn't even thought about it," Maya admitted, pinching at her nose as she realized she hadn't even started thinking about any of that. The decorations, the games, the maze, everyone's costumes… Marianne's fourth birthday… Luckily, the birthday girl didn't look too bothered if she noticed. "Why?"
"Well, I had this idea, and I thought maybe we could make them if you like it," Emma explained, stealing a look to Eliza, who held Lucy. Eliza nodded. "Hey, Annie, can you do something for me?"
Marianne was happy to be dispatched. She went and climbed the stairs, careful all the way, as she was taught. Naturally, it took her some time to go in this way up one and then another flight of stairs, and then to climb back down, now with an object to carry, but she was successful, and she presented her treasure to her aunt, who thanked her as she already went and peered at Remy, awake and moving around in their mother's arms.
"You want to take her, don't you?" Maya smiled. Marianne nodded. "Alright, go and sit," she instructed. She didn't have to say much more for the girl to go and get herself ready to receive her baby sister. She had always been excellent at this, but they definitely felt more at ease about letting her hold the babies now that the triplets were a bit bigger than when they'd first been put into her arms, back at the hospital. She would hold them, and kiss them, talk to them, and sing to them, and they would be enthralled under her power.
Now with her hands free, Maya was presented with Emma's notebook, opened out to a page where she had sketched out her idea for the triplets' costumes. As she explained it, she'd been inspired by another creator's work. Not long after she'd been at the house, meeting the Friar girls and spying the discs on their cribs, Michelle Day had gifted Maya and Lucas with a trio of hooded towels, much in the same fashion as the one she'd made for Marianne back in the day. The colors matched those they'd been given, yellow, orange, and purple, but the best part, as indicated by everyone who would be shown the towels, were the ears, up on the hood. Bear ears on the yellow towel for little cub Kacey, cat ears on the orange towel for kitty cat Remy, and bunny ears on the purple towel for bun-bun Lucy. Emma wanted to use these guidelines to create the triplets' costumes for their first Halloween.
"Oh, I love it," Maya beamed the moment she saw the sketch. Eliza had apparently seen the very start of Emma's drawing these, the previous day at lunch, and she looked forward to helping out in the crafting of the three outfits. If they got the chance, they would go and hunt for fabric later on as they headed to work.
"What about you, what do you want to be this year?" Eliza turned to Marianne and Tori. The two-year-old was only now getting to grasp that she might have had a say in this, but not so much so that she knew what to say, so she looked over to her Nana, as she was prone to do whenever her mother was not around. Marianne, on the other hand, looked instantly eager to think of something.
"Here, why don't I take her back," Maya moved to pick up Remy. Marianne gave a look like she didn't want her sister taken from her. "Trust me, you'll have a better shot at thinking out your costume thing," Maya promised her daughter. She was willing to test this theory, so she allowed her mother to take the baby before sitting back down. Now released of the load, Marianne stood up from the couch. Yes, this might have been better. She started to pace around, her brow in a deep, concentrated furrow.
"I think we lost her for a bit," Emma chuckled.
"What about you, Maya?" Eliza asked of her big sister. "And Lucas?"
"Oh, I don't know," she admitted. "No big ideas yet. At least I only have to worry about the one costume this year, no rerun of last year's at school." This only took her back to the previous Halloween's costumes, how she and Lucas and Marianne, on the latter's request, had dressed as aliens, like Katy's character. Maybe they would take their lead from her again… whatever she came up with… provided her toddler brain didn't burst from the effort. "Pumpkin, take a breath, you've got time," Maya called to her, so she'd relax that concentrated face a bit.
Since they'd brought up the subject, Maya asked her sisters if they had any plans yet for the night in question, weeks away as it still was. She knew that they'd want to be here, to celebrate their niece's birthday, as they hadn't really been able to do before. They were already big fans of Hallowannie. But at the same time, well, they were in college, their very first year of it, too. It wouldn't be out of the realm of understanding that they might want to go to some parties out there, somewhere.
They had friends, at school, at work, Maya knew they did, had heard about them from the girls' stories or when they'd gotten a call, but none of those friends had been brought back to the house yet. This was out of respect to Maya and Lucas, knowing that with how everything was stacked up lately, the babies, the exhaustion… It was easier for them to hang out with their friends elsewhere, at least for the time being. One had to hope that, by the end of October, things would have come along to a rhythm wherein Eliza and Emma would be able to have their friends over… say, for a Halloween party.
"We haven't worked it out yet," Emma shrugged.
"It'll depend on whether we group up or just meet somewhere, I guess," Eliza explained. "I did hear about this one party I might want to go to, but it'll be after dinner and everything, definitely," she promised. Maya and Emma exchanged a look. Eliza Hart-Lane could never be said to have a working poker face, not in the slightest. And just now her face suggested exactly what she was really thinking about when she brought up this 'potential party.'
"What's his name?" Maya asked, turning on just a bit of a sisterly tease in her voice. Eliza looked up at her, blinked.
"What's… who?" she tried. It was pitiful.
"Anson," Emma whispered. Eliza's head whipped around at once.
"What? No, gross," she frowned. She'd fallen right into the trap; she could see it now. She sighed. "Ford…" she revealed.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Emma proudly grinned, while Maya tipped her head to her, as though to compliment her on the maneuver.
"And Ford is…" she had to ask.
"He's a T.A.," Eliza replied.
"That class you've been struggling with?" Maya guessed. When Eliza asked how she'd known, she casually shrugged. "Made sense… Any chance you'll bring him over?" she asked, and Emma barely kept herself from bursting out laughing at the look on her sister's face.
"As what, my plus one to a four-year-old's birthday party? We're not that close…"
"Yet," Emma scrunched her face at her, and she was lucky that they were both holding a baby at the moment. "Wait until you see him," she told Maya.
"Em!"
"Any chance you can sneak a picture for me?"
"Maya!"
"I know, I know!" Marianne came dashing back to her mother, inadvertently freeing her aunt from her awkward conversation with her sisters.
"Your costume?" Maya asked with a smile, more so as Marianne nodded excitedly. "Want to tell us?" Maya asked, but this time Marianne shook her head. "No?" When her daughter pointed her finger at her, she understood. "Oh, just me, huh?" That was it.
"We can't know?" Emma 'gasped.'
"Apparently not," Maya told her, happy to maintain this mother-daughter secret, even as she didn't know the answer herself just yet.
She would be told about her daughter's idea very shortly, as Emma and Eliza set the babies back in their bassinet so they could go about getting ready for work before getting lunch prepared. This left Maya with the little girls and the babies. Playing into the secrecy, she joined Remy to her fellow triplets before pulling her daughter and granddaughter into a discreet little huddle, full of whispers. Like the year before, when she'd simply told Lucas that she wanted to be an alien like her grandmother and insisted that it had to be all three of them that way, she presented a loose sort of concept, which would then be up to her parents to bring into being. Again, she wanted everyone to be in it, though this year the 'everyone' counted herself, her mother, her father, her big sister, and her little niece. She wanted the triplets, too, at first, until she was reminded of the costumes Emma and Eliza were planning to make… and of the fact that they would be put to bed earlier than her or Tori. She only had to be encouraged by the fact that they had countless more Hallowannies ahead of them where they could include everyone, and they were back on track.
"That sounds great, pumpkin. What do you think?" Maya turned her smile over to the two-year-old, who just gave a big nod. "Yeah? You want to do like Auntie Annie said?"
"Yeah," Tori nodded again.
"Alright, well, when your mom and your grandpa get home, we can tell them all about it, yeah?" The girls were on board. Was there a mild concern at the back of Maya's mind that this year's Halloween would be the slightest bit derailed by parental exhaustion and a trio of infants? Yes, but then how could there not? They would do their very best, all of them, to make sure that Marianne Friar had a wonderful fourth birthday, one for the history books… or the photo albums.
When Lucas and Ella returned, shortly after lunch, after Eliza and Emma had taken off for work, the anticipation to share the Halloween plan was temporarily derailed once Maya got a look of her eldest's face. Something had happened while they were gone, and she could see it somewhere in Lucas' eyes, too.
"What's up?"
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
