April 5th 2022

Chapter 95
Our Growth Into Birthdays

By the time morning started on the day of the Babineaux family party, it felt as though the last three days had been closer to a week, for how busy they had all been. On that same day when Maya had collected and prepared the new diaries, it had also been Tori's third birthday. After a day spent with her mother, father, and aunt, having about as good of a time as a toddler could ever ask for, the next stop had been to her grandparents' house, where she found the rest of her family gathered to celebrate her. For both Maya and Lucas, it was impossible to decide what was more amusing between watching her go around with Marianne and the other little kids on hand and watching her parents watch her.

Theo had been in his daughter's life for nearly a year now, and while he would always lament the time that he had missed with her, he was with her now, fully involved and fully welcome as far as Ella was concerned, which might have been one of the most important parts. For that, he could genuinely be just as awed as she was to watch Tori in all her three-year-old glory, to take in just how much she'd grown. And Ella, oh…

She was never very far from feeling the weight of those last few years, three of them with her daughter and about half of a fourth spent expecting her. To see how far her baby girl had come already, she also had to acknowledge how distant those hard days were getting, and how long it had been since she'd been part of that old life. She had not seen her old family in so long, and as much as she wasn't seeking to change that, she would not have felt right to suggest there was no part of her that felt upset at that thought. A part of her would always wish they could see how well she was doing, how beautiful, and smart, and kind Tori was, even if they had made it so abundantly clear that they didn't deserve either one of them.

The day after Tori's birthday had been spent for the most part at Sullivan Stables, there to meet and interact with the newly arrived exchange campers and their families. As it turned out, John Michael "Johnny" Talbot had arrived late the night before. He'd been expected today, but he and his uncle had made such good time on the road that they'd made it into Austin early. Johnny's uncle had called Juliet, asking if it was alright for them to at least bring the horse into the stables for the night, after which they would check into a hotel. Juliet would have no such thing. The horse had spent the night in the stables, and Johnny and his uncle had slept in one of the camper rooms as her guests.

With a long lonesome ride ahead of him as he headed back to Seattle, the uncle had already left by the time the Friars or the Days showed up at the ranch, but Johnny was not bothered. He fell right into the rhythm of things and was helping Mariko when they first encountered him. The immediate first impression was that he was of the very polite and well mannered type, and just enough on the rugged side that Maya predicted several heads would turn among the student body when he came along, and that predicted a lot of silliness she couldn't wait to see.

Barton and Michelle Day came along, accompanied by Anton, and met the boy who would be sharing their home and their lives for the next year. Time would tell how they would all fare as a unit together, but the meeting went very well. Johnny did not know much more about his hosts other than their names at first, but by the end of the day he would know about the two older boys who no longer lived at home, and he would know of the one they had lost. Even having never known Lambert or his family before that day, he had shown immediate respect for what they had all gone through, and the Days had appreciated this, especially as they came to learn more about him and his circumstances. He'd lost both of his parents when he was twelve, after which he'd been taken in by his mother's sister and her family. It had been five years now, but he still carried a lot of that weight in his heart and mind.

In early afternoon, even as they were finishing up a lunch with the Friars, the Days, Johnny, and Juliet, they were joined by the Marshalls. Marianne was comically baffled at meeting their mailman in any clothes that were not his uniform, much to Andrew Marshall's amusement. Lucas met his wife and Cody's mother, Laura for the first time. Maya had met the woman once before, at the spring session of parent-teacher night. They were both eager to meet their incoming lodger, while their son was more or less what he'd been through freshman year. He didn't talk much, mostly stood by, though he did fall under the spell of social butterfly Sheriff Annie after a while. She saw him standing there and couldn't stand not to intervene, and in no time she had him talking to her about basketball. She may have been just two months shy of five years old, but she knew her stuff, and it was his favorite sport, so that worked out for the both of them.

There'd been just a bit of uncertainty as to whether or not the sophomore girl would be matched with the Marshalls. Her parents had been unsure about putting her in a home where the only other dependent would be a teenage boy. This was no sleight on Cody or his family, but they were sending their daughter off on her own for a year to live with strangers, so it couldn't really be helped, could it? But then they'd talked it over, the two families having been put in touch with one another, and in the end, they had all been on the same page, so it was settled. Carina Mendoza was flying in today with her mother.

They arrived not too long after the Marshalls. The first they saw of the sixteen-year-old as she trailed forward with her mother, pulling her bags along after getting out of their cab, the impression they were left with was of uncertainty and a bit of shyness. As the day had progressed though, as they'd seen her interact with the others both before and after her mother left for her flight home, they saw how Carina opened up some. With what they knew of her story, the thought was that she was still not sure about being here. Was she thinking of the horse she'd lost, the way she used to ride? Maya's feeling was maybe that the girl was extremely aware that they might be aware of all this, and she didn't want to have to deal with any expectations or assumptions… which was going to be difficult, when the entire purpose of her coming out here was to spend most of her free time at a ranch, surrounded with horses.

Once again, Sheriff Annie was on the case. She knew that they were waiting on a girl that would be staying at the mail man's house, with Cody, and the two of them had been talking about basketball for a while, so when she was introduced to Carina, her first question was whether she played, too. She had tossed a ball around before, though she couldn't say that she ever played basketball. Marianne asked if she wanted to play with them anyway, and in no time, it was Anton and Johnny versus Cody and Carina, with Marianne keeping score. Maya still smiled today, thinking of how Lucas had looked at all of them with one thought in his eyes: their daughter was so like his mother sometimes.

After the day at the ranch, they had spent the next day in a mix of going through both Marianne and the triplets' rooms, sorting through what they might store away, donate, or throw out. This was easier when it came to the nursery, as the girls would see no issue with this. They had a harder time selling Marianne on the process when they ended up in her room. Anything they suggested taking away for whatever reason was stared at as though it was her very favorite thing and she couldn't dream of losing it. Eventually, they were able to make her see it from a better perspective, one she could sort of agree on. She definitely liked the idea of passing some things to her little sisters or Tori as they grew and sharing others with families beyond their own who could need them, too. Anyway, she was getting to be a big girl, and with fall coming up, they'd be going to see about new clothes soon, for her and probably the triplets, too, and shoes, and maybe some toys, and books… By the time they'd come home from that shopping trip, they were even more spent.

So now, here they were, the day after that, and it was party day. Everyone was looking forward to it, especially Marianne, and it wasn't as though it was ever a particularly exhausting event, not at all, but Lucas and Maya were both of a mind that they would go into this day as a nice sort of getaway, where they could sit, and talk with people, eat some great food, maybe take a dip or two in the pool… They'd have plenty of takers as far as looking after Kacey, Lucy, and Remy, and the same would go for Marianne… Oh, she remembered the last party, enough to know it would be a great day. She'd heard so many stories.

Most important of all today, other than the regular staples of the Babineaux party, they would have the August Girls, all in one place. Nellie, Gracie, Megan, Giulia, Kacey, Remy, Lucy, and Tori… They'd all had their birthdays by now, a steady chain of smaller parties over the past couple of weeks, but now they had all been brought together, as Zay and Nadine's guests, and they would get to celebrate some more. Much as they would have liked to do so, not all of them had been able to get together for every single birthday. Now, they were here, and there was a big cake for all of them, and several presents… It was going to be great, and for those of them old enough to look ahead, it would be the start of a new tradition.

"Pappy Luke!" a squeak of a voice called to him, and Lucas turned around, at once shifting into grandpa mode at the sight of…

"Tori!" he matched her tone and she beamed, a miniature copy of her mother.

"It's my birthday again!" Tori told him, reaching up to steady the birthday hat, which did not get along with her curls and kept tipping off her head. Lucas took a knee before her, the better to try and fix the thing in place. She dropped her hands back down at once and let him do it.

"Yeah, imagine that," Lucas smiled. "There, I think that should work. Give it a shake," he invited. Tori hesitated but finally shook her head a bit. The hat stayed in place.

Excited, Tori thanked her grandfather and dashed away to find her mother. All their birthday girls had a hat, the better to single them out for the guests. Well, most of them had one. Maya had managed to get one on both Kacey and Remy. To neither of their surprise, Lucy was not feeling hers. She was generally alright with hats, but this one was not working in her favor, and she was letting her mother know. Maya did not discourage. She just held her snug in her arms, hummed and smiled to her… They weren't going to force it on her if she really didn't want it. She was one of the August Girls, which meant it was her day, too, and she could do as she pleased.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners