December 20th 2022

Chapter 354
Our Future to Grow

Lucas hated to think that he'd dropped the ball with this year's exchange campers, but it couldn't be helped. Everything had been going well enough in the first half of the year, but then all of a sudden January had happened, and they'd been forced to send Matt home. And after that… After that, he felt, he'd sort of lost track on Lupe. The senior girl may have been staying with his uncles, just as Matt had been, and coming to the ranch just about every day, but he didn't think, even as she was about to head home, that he'd really gotten to connect with her in the way he'd done with the previous XCs. That wasn't on her, not in the slightest, just him.

He'd mentioned this much to her the day before, and she'd been baffled. She didn't see it that way at all. She admitted that, of course, after what happened with Matt, things got a little weird in places, but not so much that it had ruined her experience. She'd had a great year, and she was really happy that she'd come, happy for her experiences and what she'd learned. She believed that this was a great program, and she was glad that it existed.

"You're still going to do it, right?" she'd asked him, like his concerns suddenly made her fear that he'd go and shut the whole thing down.

"I am, yes," he'd told her. "We've got next year's pair selected already, a brother and sister, actually." It would be the reverse of this year, instead of the hosts being siblings to two strangers, with the siblings being hosted by two separate families.

This morning, Lucas and the Sullivan-Reyes family were on hand as Lupe departed for home. Michael and Keith had definitely doubled down on the girl once Matt had left, wanting to make sure things wouldn't be too weird for her, and she'd appreciated them a great deal. They all embraced before she left, promising them that she'd let them know when she'd arrived home safely.

"Are you guys sticking around for the graduation games?" Lucas asked them, and they promised that they wouldn't miss it.

This was part of the ranch's activities now, every year, and Lucas loved to see it each time, but this year was definitely feeling like a big one, for the second time in the four years that they'd had the afterschool program. The premise remained the same. It was the end of another year, so the program would be out for the summer, and when they'd return in the fall, the groups would have changed. Many children would be moving up a group, from green to blue, blue to red, and red to yellow, while some children would have reached their final eligible year, and they would have aged out. They called this day a graduation, as the ones who moved up would symbolically receive their new colors, and the ones who'd be leaving were noted as well. Then they would have a party, with food, and games with prizes, and music…

This year, his firstborn girl was getting her new bandanna, her third one. He'd seen her go from green to blue already two years ago, as incredible as it sounded, and today she would leave behind blue group in favor of red group, the eight and nine-year-olds. She wasn't eight yet, no, but she would be, near enough to the start of the new year that it put her in red group territory. Already, her old green bandanna had been tied to her schoolbag and continued to go everywhere with her when she was out there, and now she couldn't wait to add her blue one to it, too. She couldn't wait: she'd done it the night before, and she'd been ridiculously happy for it.

"Are they going to get their green ones today?" Marianne asked him, first thing when she and her mother and little sisters arrived. He was getting things ready for 'graduation' when she popped up next to him, curious eyes looking all over. She saw the bundles of blue, and red, and yellow… no green.

"They'll get theirs closer to the fall," Lucas informed her, which didn't seem fully satisfying to her, though not so much that she'd be too upset about it. Instead, now, she was spying the red bundles, knowing one of them would be hers. "Not yet," Lucas told her with a smile, and she smiled back. "Soon."

And it was. Before long, Marianne and her friends were presented with their bundle of four red bandannas each, from which they wasted no time to pull one and fasten it in whatever way they wanted. Marianne put hers over her head, tied at the back, Winnie tied it around the elastic of her ponytail, Harper wrapped it at her wrist, and June did the same. Oh, they were so happy. They kept looking at each other and smiling. They had moved up! They were getting to be part of the bigger kids now!

"Alright, very important, you know the rule, no running off where we can't see you, okay?" Maya instructed the triplets as she saw how eagerly they took in the array of available games ahead of them. She'd have a hard enough time splitting her attention between them, and Marianne wherever she was, and then the two little ones. She currently had hold of Aubrey, while Mackenzie was in the care of her eldest sister.

Ella wasn't going to miss this, and plus it was a good day for Tori, too. Having been in Houston until this year, she hadn't been able to join the afterschool program, but once she'd moved to Austin, to live with her father and go to school here, it had been no sweat for Pappy Luke to get her signed up and present her with her very own green bandanna. But now she would be six in August, and that put her on track to graduate into blue group, which she'd done today. She was out there now, with her little friends freshly adorned in blue as she'd been.

Maya could see the thought in her daughter's eyes, as she watched her daughter. Now that she'd finished this latest semester, a great part of her thoughts circled around one thing and one thing only: one more year. She had made what was easily one of the most difficult choices she'd had to make when she'd sent Tori to live with Theo so that she could begin school where she would continue to go to school instead of allowing her to be ripped from whatever young friends she might have made back in Houston when it came time for them to come back to Austin. It had been the right call, and they could see it right here today, but then Tori was fortunate in that she didn't have to be aware of how terribly her mother missed her and hated being apart from her the way she was. One more year…

One more year and then Ella would be back in Austin, and Taylor would be back in Austin. The two of them would be able to start to think about their wedding, about making a home for themselves and for Tori. It was clear that they would have to figure out a new plan when it came to splitting custody with Theo when that happened. It mattered as much to him as it did to Ella that he got to be involved in raising their daughter, none more so than now that he'd gotten to do it near full time. They would find a way to make it work. Long gone were the days where Ella feared to let him into Tori's life. They were making it work, all on their own terms.

It was too early to say how the Vega family was settling into the house and their ranch life. Cristina hadn't finished unpacking her room – much less focused on this task than her son was – and had instead seen to sorting out their storage in the basement and then seen to those parts of the house that would be hers and Rafa's but occasionally shared with guests to the B&B. Her biggest concern for the moment was the kitchen, stocking everything but also figuring how they were going to make this work, again, once people would be coming to stay. It was one thing to think about it before, but now that this was their home…

Rafa, for his part, was loving this. The house was big enough to fit their old apartment about three or four times over. Yes, there would be parts of it that would not so much be his to use but their guests, but then wasn't that most houses that big? It would have been strange if they were the only ones to live here all the time. Anyway, when they would receive guests, at least for the summer, he knew, a lot of them would be more likely not to mind if he was in those rooms.

It had been one of the first things they'd had to figure out: they still had the summer camp, and they still needed some of those rooms, but they didn't want to make it so that the B&B was completely unavailable to other guests in that time. So, they'd had to work out a system, just as they'd had to make it very clear to anyone who'd want to come and stay with them over the summer that there would be sixteen to twenty kids between the ages of eleven and eighteen at the house, too. They'd wondered if this would turn people off from making reservations, but it hadn't. They were booked through the summer and into the fall and winter already. The first of those guests would arrive before long, just as the campers would.

"Hey, Sneaky, having a good time out there?" Lucas asked when he was accosted by his granddaughter. The soon-to-be six-year-old nodded up to him, playing with her new blue bandanna all the while, wrapping, and unwrapping it from her wrist. "You want it somewhere else?" Lucas guessed, familiar as he was with the maneuver. Tori nodded. "Can I make a suggestion?" he offered, and she handed him the bandanna at once. "Alright," he crouched, maneuvering the fabric until it was as he wanted it and he could loop it under her curly raven hair and tie it at the top of her head. "What do you think?" She reached up, curious, and he pulled out his phone so she could see her reflection. She smiled. "Good?" he asked, and she nodded. "I've got all the tricks by now, so you just let me know if you want to try another one, okay?"

"Okay!" Tori beamed.

"Great," he laughed. "So, the games are good?" he asked, and she nodded. "I see you won a couple of them," he nodded over to Theo, lugging around her prizes, Lea by his side. "Is there anything we should add? What do you think?" He often asked this of his daughters, and the kids from all the groups, wanting to be sure that everyone had a say. Sometimes the best ideas came from his target audience.

"I want the things that go fast and spin around," Tori told him and, somehow, he knew just what she meant. He wouldn't have expected it of her, the way she'd been in all the time he'd known her, which was most of her life, but lately she had developed a curiosity for rides, for rollercoasters… She hadn't even gotten to be on those, really, not at her age and height, but it didn't stop her being fascinated.

"Huh… You're not the first one to mention those," he revealed. Marianne had definitely benefited from her height on that front, and if he put it in her awareness that he could just rent those and have them set up here… He would never be able not to do it. "I will keep that in mind for next summer."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners