December 6th 2022

Chapter 340
Our Family in Decoration

Lucas did not lack for assistance in doing this next step of the B&B's transformation. A good portion of the ranch's employees offered to help with the painting. They had many rooms to go through, so it wasn't as though he could, in his right mind, refuse them all, especially if they wanted to move on to actually moving in all the furniture, appliances, and other items that would be coming in over the next few weeks. But he had promised Marianne that she would get to help, so he had compromised by splitting up the task. He left the ground floor and basement rooms to be generously seen to by their volunteers, but he kept the first floor and the attic for himself and his special helpers.

The first group had already finished their part and done a great job of it, and now today it was his group's turn to do the same. While the triplets would be left in the care of their grandparents, along with the little sisters, Lucas would have Maya and Marianne with him. For today, they also had two sets of twins to back them up. Nellie, Gracie, Bobby, and Ethan had been the first to volunteer, and so they got first dibs. They would do as much as they could today, and then they would see where they were at. The plan was not to work into the night or until they dropped. Lunchtime to dinnertime, that was as far as they would go. They already started a little later than planned, thanks to a special delivery from Dora Calahart.

One of the very first things that Lucas had told his firstborn, after she'd shown him her mock-up for the B&B's sign, was that she had to show her mother. And so, she had… as soon as they'd arrived home. Barely a hello, just a paper placemat help up at eye level with a big, proud smile. It was a sentiment soon shared, as Maya looked ready to cry for being presented with her daughter's idea. After that, she'd gotten big idea eyes and she'd grabbed Marianne for a very small field trip. She'd taken her to the Sullivan-Reyes house, and they'd shown it to Michael, who'd loved it at once. Then they'd gone on to the elder Friars' house and Melinda Friar had never been quite as emotionally bonded to her granddaughter as she was in that moment. She'd hugged Marianne for at least two whole minutes. She'd also asked if she could hold on to this drawing when she didn't need it anymore. It was promised to her at once.

They'd made one more trip that evening, the product of which was now making its way toward the future B&B. To hear of it from Sam, she had set everything aside in order to make this happen as soon as possible, and what came of it was easily their favorite thing that Dora had ever done. The sign still needed to be painted in places – which Maya would see to herself – but even the wood and the carving spoke for themselves. The letters had been the most straightforward. The image, for its part, was reproduced directly from an enlarged version of a drawing made six decades ago and left unseen for nearly as long, a drawing of a very small girl traipsing through flowers on her baby legs and picking a couple of them from the ground.

"He's going to cry, isn't he?" Dora asked of her cousin with a grin. Marianne whipped around to look at her father while Maya just smiled and squeezed his shoulder.

"You good there, Huckleberry?" she asked him, because of course the realization of the idea had made the entire plan of even having this B&B feel that much more personal to him, and yes, he would definitely get misty eyed. Marianne hugged her arms around his waist, and he thanked her by hugging her back.

"Can we go paint now?" she asked, and he laughed. She knew just what to say to get him back on track; she was very like her mother in that way.

Passing through the ground floor and seeing the work already done by the ranch crew, it felt sort of invigorating for them to go on and keep this up by doing their part of it. They decided to start with the attic, the better to get that space taken care of. The Hunter and Davis twins were soon on hand, and they got started by preparing their supplies, making sure that they protected the parts that should not have paint on them, especially the recently refreshed floors.

They'd gotten Marianne all set for today, and Lucas had seen to it to show her a bit of what she could do and how to do it ahead of time. She'd listened, and she'd done like he'd shown her to do, and now she was ready to do it for real.

"You got it?" Lucas asked her when she lifted up the roller and brought it to the paint that he'd poured.

"Got it," Marianne nodded. He could practically hear her run back through the steps in her head as she did them, but she got it right, which was what mattered in the end. She looked so happy doing it that it was a wonder she didn't look over at him or Maya to say that she was and end up swinging the roller around in the process. She just kept going, like she'd been shown, and only once she'd set the roller down and stepped aside did she turn around to look at them and point.

"Looks like you got a bit of splatter," Maya noted, pointing at the clothes she'd picked out for the day, knowing full well that this would become their purpose from here on out. Marianne looked down, saw it, too, and she was happy. To her, it made her look even more like a 'real painter.'

As tended to be the case, whenever the four juniors got together to work on a task like this, the routine would go that each set of twins would team up for a while, but sooner or later Gracie and Ethan would want to work together, too, so there'd be a swap, and then Nellie and Bobby would become the second team. That was more than fine by them, too. Long ago, they might have argued, back when they were much more attached to this rivalry of theirs, but then they'd just become much better friends in time, and they had stuck to that.

That was all good and fine except there was… well… the other thing. For a long while, this had been Bobby's secret feelings, which some people in their close circle had very plainly noticed… and others had remained entirely unaware of. Then there had been the accident, and as those tended to have a way of shaking things loose, or into the light, things had started to shift. According to both Maya and Gracie – who had found themselves discussing the matter more times than they could say in the past year – Nellie had now passed into the point where there was for sure a firm part of her mind that was in contact with her heart and knew that she had feelings for Bobby beyond friendship. However, this was also the point where that self-aware part was not yet able to reach the rest of her mind, the one that would allow her to be fully aware and fully admitting it.

That was until about a week or so ago. Now, as Gracie had caught Maya up on 'the change,' there was a chance that the door in between, in Nellie's mind, had started to open, just a sliver. She wasn't sure how long it had been going on, not exactly, because for as much as the twins shared this very close bond, closer than anyone else in their world, there could always be exceptions. And this, Gracie felt, was one of them. In the last week, she'd started to notice Nellie staring at her. Specifically, she'd noticed her looking at her whenever she'd be with Ethan, talking with him, laughing with him, kissing him… She'd have this look about her like here was this mirror of herself and this boy who looked just like his twin. It was like being shown what it might be like if he and her ever…

"You know what we could do," Maya told her little sister when she shared this bit of news, "We could give them a nudge… Just a little one… See what happens?"

"I don't know…" Gracie hesitated. "That might not… Well… What kind of nudge?" she asked, giving into her curiosity, and Maya smirked.

"Could tell them both – separately – about where the witch is," she innocently shrugged. Gracie's eyes went wide.

"You know where it is?" she whispered. To this day, even years onward, they had never completely given up on finding that last long lost Halloween figurine, from the days before they'd learned to number them and map where they'd been hidden. It wasn't so intense as it had been in the beginning, but even now it was an inside joke in their friendship… but also not a joke, because they really wanted to find it, to be the one to find it and claim victory.

"Have known for a while, but it's not my hunt," Maya shrugged again. "Marianne found it when she was… about two and a half?" she recalled, which only made Gracie's shock resurface. That was five years ago! She'd known all that time? "Hey, it's not my fault they haven't found it yet…" she pointed out, then, "Hope no one else has taken it without telling since then…"

It wouldn't be until later that both of them would come to realize that they had been overheard, long after they would have mutually agreed that maybe a nudge wouldn't be a good idea, and that their accidental spy had not heard this last part, instead taking it upon herself to set the plan into action. Whether Marianne really understood what the purpose of it was or not, she wanted to see what would happen if they knew, too, so she found a way. She told her aunt first, and Nellie was at first stunned and then pleased that her niece had been the one to find the figurine, even if no one had ever known. She was very proud. But then Marianne knew that it was important to Nellie, so she didn't want to go and claim it, so that was that… for now.

Not too long after this, she made a similar revelation alone to Bobby Davis. Crutches or none, he had joined them today for the painting. It had been a year since the accident, and if not for the change to his gait, no one would know that anything had happened to him at all. When Marianne told him about the witch, he was also surprised to hear about it, and he admired the fact that she'd found it, just a toddler at the time and hardly looking.

That was all that Marianne did, just as she'd heard her mother and aunt suggesting. And because no one else was aware that she'd done it, no one could know that Nellie and Bobby were both having to consider this new information and what to do about it. Everyone kept working, everyone did their part to get the attic painted. When they'd finished it, they were ready to call it a day for this round, and Lucas was offering to bring their four helpers back to the house for dinner, which could only be pizza after all of this.

"Where'd Nellie and Bobby get off to?" Maya asked, noticing the absence, and also wondering exactly how long the pair had been gone. Looking at their respective twins, who'd been back working together, they hadn't noticed either. The same went for Lucas. The only one who seemed to have some idea was Marianne… who had a giant smile on her face. "Pumpkin? What's going on? Do you know where they went?"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners