March 6th 2023

Chapter 65
We Grow Day By Day

Lucas wouldn't have been surprised if Marianne had tried to convince him or Maya that she wasn't well enough to go to school that morning but somehow would have been well enough to still accompany him out to the ranch for the first day, the opening of the Grand, hosted once again at Sullivan Stables. She didn't do it, but she did spend all morning from breakfast through drop-off talking about the competition and asking question after question, begging for him to take pictures of this thing and video of that thing, making sure that he would come and pick her up and bring her there as soon as school was out. Lucas promised her she wouldn't have to wait a single second.

After he left her there, left the triplets at preschool with a similar promise, he was off to the ranch, and there was not a minute to waste. The competition was officially starting today, but it had been in preparation for some time already, especially in the last several days, as they had been receiving the participants, both human and equine, and getting them settled in. It reminded him of the last time Sullivan Stables had been selected to host the event. Six years felt as far away in one moment as it felt only the blink of an eye away in the next. Six years… Truth be told, it felt like a whole other life, whole other world. Some people were not yet among them, some not yet born, some not yet gone from them.

There were a lot more people he'd first gotten to know back then that he'd kept in touch with, through subsequent, smaller competitions, or through the odd phone call for advice or just conversation. They were of the same world.

If he had to pinpoint one encounter above all others from that day six years back, it could only be Scout Anderson. The boy had been all of fifteen years old at the time, but he'd been a standout, as much out on his horse as just out and about, in the ranch. He'd soon gone on to become a mainstay of their summer camp, as long as he could be, and then he'd moved on. But he'd kept in touch, kept being a presence at competitions, so it was no wonder that he should be back again for the Grand.

He was twenty-one now, and if he'd turned a head or two the last time, today, he walked through the ranch and had people stopping and staring like he was something unreal. The afternoon he'd arrived, the Hunter and Davis twins had been on hand, and Lucas still remembered how that all had gone, the last time. He remembered a twelve-year-old Nellie swooning over the California boy, even as poor Bobby didn't know how to be, harboring feelings for his friend but not knowing how to process those feelings, not yet. They'd all kept in touch over the years, especially when he'd be in Austin for camp, or a competition… So, it wasn't a shock for him to be back for the Grand. They were all friends now.

Scout, Lucas was as proud as he was not surprised to know, was still riding and was now in school to do just as he did. If he kept up the way he was doing, the way he'd done all along, he'd get very far, back in California or maybe right her in Texas. Lucas knew how much Sullivan Stables in particular had come to mean to him, and he'd told him, right on that first afternoon when he'd arrived for the Grand, that there'd be a place for him among them if he ever wanted it; he could see Scout taking him up on the offer in a heartbeat.

He was there, in the audience, for the very first event, at Lucas' side. It was only really hitting the new head of the ranch that they had finally made it, after all the preparations, and he knew that surely this feeling would subside, but there was still that sensation of 'stepping into the big boss shoes,' of not wanting to mess things up. And there was this other feeling, the one that made him lament the fact that his mother wasn't there to see.

When he felt a tap at his shoulder, he turned to find Sylvie, his clinic assistant. She started to sign, letting him know that he'd left his phone behind and there was a missed call from both Maya and the elementary school. She pulled the object from her pocket and handed it over. In no time, he'd stepped away from the competition and called home. He knew why his heart was beating like there was a runaway train in his chest, but it didn't make it easier to wait and know what this was. Marianne… It had to be about her, but what was going on? Was she okay?

"You're kidding…" Lucas breathed, feeling his heart slow back to somewhere normal so fast that it swept laughter out of him. "Alright, I'll go and get her. Want me to bring her here?"

"I don't think she'd accept anything else," Maya chuckled.

Arriving at the school, it was the mayhem of parents coming in and heading out after picking up their children, possibly picking up others for any parents that couldn't get away. Lucas had committed to picking up Winnie Grayson, Harper Beaumont, and June Abernathy along with Marianne, and though Theo was right there to get Tori, once her grandfather showed up and she knew that the rest of them were bound for Sullivan Stables, she asked to go along with them, and so she did.

"Alright, so what happened back there?" Lucas asked the pack of girls as they climbed into the minivan. He'd heard about it through the school's message, and from Maya, but he wanted to hear it from the girls, hear their perspective.

A lot of it came down to hearsay, with them all being much younger than those kids involved, but the beats of truth made it through in the end. It seemed that some sixth graders had decided to prank one of their teachers… and it had backfired. Now, because of them, the school smelled very bad – a lot of the kids, too, the closer they'd been to the event – and there was a mess to pick up… It had all been bad enough for the principal to go ahead and decide to send everyone home.

"I don't stink, do I?" Marianne asked, lifting up her jacket for her father to sniff, and there was such a giddy grin on her face because she knew. She wasn't going home, she was going to the ranch, to the Grand.

"Woah, hey," Lucas instinctively ducked out of the way before taking the jacket and seeing what they were dealing with. He'd definitely picked up that odor lingering outside the school, but it wasn't so bad on the girls. Once they got into the minivan, the five of them together though… "Let's just keep the windows open, yeah?"

It was such an unexpected chance for all of them, like the universe had decided to give them an out, that they needed to be at the Grand far more than school for this one day. He wouldn't have believed it if it wasn't happening. Now, he gladly drove the slightly stinky but very merry band of girls off to see some riders and their horses compete.

"Pop-Pop!" Harper took off running as they left the ranch parking lot. Lee Beaumont was making his way toward them, a giant smile on his face as the girl hurried to him. She didn't jump into his arms, but he had to catch her anyhow, with how fast she went for him. He wrinkled his face in an exaggerated reaction to the stench that had followed her from school, which made Harper giggle as she led him back to their group and they all headed off to figure out what they'd missed while Lucas had gone to the school and back.

"Who's that?" June asked with a gasp that sounded almost much too dramatic on an eight-year-old. Lucas looked to where she was staring and spotted the source of her sudden fascination even as Marianne spotted him. She was much faster in responding to her friend.

"That's Scout. He's one of the riders. He used to come to camp here and he's going to be a doctor like my dad," she reported, and Lucas couldn't help but pick up on a very telltale tone in her voice, one that gave the immediate impression of someone looking at another person and thinking in no uncertain terms that they were… well… kind of dashing and dreamy. It was not unlike the tone out of the Abernathy girl, and as surprising as it was to have it all coming from these young girls, the fact that one of them was his young girl, his firstborn… It came out of nowhere and caught him as completely off-guard as he'd ever been, even more than the saga of Mosi Okafor's Valentine card.

"You know your aunt Nellie used to have a crush on him?" Lucas heard himself say. Marianne and June both turned to look at him. The other three girls looked at him, too, though it mostly looked like they weren't sure what was going on and were seeking an answer.

"No, she didn't," Marianne shook her head.

"Oh, she did," Lucas promised her. "I was there."

"So was I!"

"You were two," he countered, and she frowned.

"Hey, what happened?" Scout asked, coming up to meet them. He looked at the group of girls, zeroed in with recognition on the one that had to be… "You're Marianne, right? You were so small the last time I saw you," he remarked.

"I'm really tall," she blurted out, and Lucas didn't know how he kept from laughing. If Scout picked up on… whatever was going on in Marianne's head right then, he didn't call up any attention to it. He just smiled and nodded.

"Yeah, no kidding. Well, come on, my sister's riding soon. I think you'll really like her. You ride, too, yeah?"

"I do," Marianne told him, quickening her step. "You want to see my horse? Her name's Truffle."

"Yeah, I think I saw her in the stables before. You can make introductions later."

Lucas followed this exchange all the way to the competition, without intervening. Poor Scout was such a naturally friendly person that his whole demeanor only encouraged the smiles out of the smitten girl. Oh, it was all as innocent as anything could ever get, nothing to worry about, but this was all brand new territory for him, and he didn't know what to do about it.

When Maya came along, with Mackenzie and Aubrey, to join them and watch some of the competition, Lucas told her about the Scout situation, and her reaction was somewhere close to his, though maybe more amused than alarmed in any way. The part that was funniest to her was the notion of how this all had a bit of history repeating in it, harkening back to a then twelve-year-old Nellie in the same position.

"It's like a rite of passage or something. Oh, I have to tell Nellie about this," Maya grinned, then paused to look at her husband. "Huckleberry, you're so nervous right now, huh?" she laughed.

"No, of course not. Come on, she's just a kid, it's nothing serious, just…" he waved it off.

"Oh, I know that," Maya told him. "It's not the Scout part that's got you going though, is it? It's what it represents…" She had him there, he had to admit it to himself. Oh, he wouldn't go and tell her that, no, but it would stay with him. Their Hucklebucket was growing up, and the more she did that, the faster it seemed to pass them by.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners