Alright moment of truth- first person to review this chapter gets to be my 100th reviewer lol. Just kidding it's not a race and I love you all equally, whether you're reviewing or not, whether you write me a paragraph or just a few words. Seriously. Your support means the absolute world to me so thank you all for being magnificent and spectacular. Ugh. I can't express my gratitude enough.

The chapter title comes from "A Drop in the Ocean" by Ron Pope, which is fairly mainstream amongst fandoms so you might know that already? I hope you all have a lovely Saturday and I hope you enjoy this chapter! :)

if you don't love me, pretend a few more hours, then it's time to go

"I don't want to play with Vivian."

Spencer rolls her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"So sorry that you won't make me go?"

"No, you're still going," Spencer informs her and Grace huffs. "Grace, we are all going. Aunt Melissa invited us for dinner and we're all going to go."

"I'll eat dinner but I'm not playing with Vivian," Grace argues. "She's mean to me!"

"She isn't mean to you," Her mother disagrees. "Look, I know that Viv is kind of a brat. I know that. But it's not her fault she's like that."

Grace asks, "Whose fault is it?"

"That doesn't matter," Spencer says, unwilling to throw her niece's indulgent parents under the bus. "She's still your cousin and you're still supposed to love her."

"I do love her," Grace insists. "I just don't like her."

Spencer sighs. "Grace. On your best behavior. Please."

"I will if she will," She crosses her arms over her chest and then after a moment, adds, "Why doesn't daddy have to go?"

"Daddy does have to go," Spencer informs her, pulling into Wren and Melissa's driveway. "But he's still working. He's going to be a little late."

Grace unbuckles her seatbelt, saying, "I wish I was going to be late."

Spencer bites her lip to combat her growing frustration. It's no secret that Vivian has turned into quite the little monster and honestly she can't blame Grace for not wanting to interact with her. But they're family; they're going to have to live with one another whether they like it or not. Wren answers the door, still buttoning his shirt, and grants the two of them entrance into their home. Spencer can already smell something amazing brewing in the kitchen. She has to hand it to Melissa; in her time of being Wren's devoted little housewife, she truly had learned to cook with all the savoir-faire of Julia Child. In a moment, Vivian is yanking Grace upstairs and into her room and Spencer does her best to ignore her daughter's death glare on the way up.

About twenty minutes later, however, she wants to take it all back. She and Melissa have fallen into easy conversation, but all of a sudden there's a crash from upstairs, pounding footsteps on the carpeted staircase, and Vivian's hysterical tears. "Mom! Mom, look what Grace did!"

"I'm sorry!" Grace's voice, just as hysterical but ultimately tearless, emanates a beat behind her cousin's. "It was an accident!"

Vivian's clutching a porcelain doll with a broken off arm and a face that's smashed to pieces. She cries, "Grace called me a brat! She threw my new doll and it broke! Look what she did!"

"She wouldn't let me play with them!" Grace defends. "I didn't mean to! It was an accident!"

Spencer's attention is everywhere at once, but lands directly on her sister when Melissa probes, "How could you let her do this?"

"What?" Spencer exclaims. "I'm sorry- are you kidding me? How is this my fault?"

"She's your daughter!" Melissa shoots back. "You have control over what she does, no one else."

Wren comes in, then, and notes the chaos. "What's wrong?"

"Dad, it's ruined!" Vivian sobs. "My new doll and Grace ruined it!"

"Let me see what I can do, love," He says, peeling her from her mother's grasp and leading her out of the room. "We'll fix it. You'll see."

Spencer's in shock, but somehow manages to turn to Grace and tell her, "Honey, go take a breather in the formal, please. Go."

Grace looks from her mother to her aunt before tearing out of the room. Spencer then whirls around on Melissa, saying, "I can't believe you have the audacity to get angry with me over my parenting style when you have done nothing but enable Vivian towards this kind of behavior. I'm sorry, but I think it's ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous is that I thought maybe Grace might not turn into you," Melissa shouts back. "She's literally exactly like you; doing and saying hurtful things without even realizing it. You better nip it in the bud before it's too late."

"I better nip it in the bud?" Spencer implores. "Are you serious? That's the pot calling the kettle black if I ever saw it. The stupid doll-"

"Spencer, it's not about the stupid doll," Melissa says. "As usual, you're barking up the wrong tree. It's the name-calling. I mean, calling her a brat? I can't think of anywhere else she would have learned that from other than you."

Spencer hesitates. Technically that's true. "Okay, that was an error in judgment and I shouldn't have said that to Grace. I was wrong, okay? But-"

"And it's not just that you said it to Grace," Melissa tells her. "It's that you actually think that. Everyone has different parenting styles, Spencer, and you need to deal with that. You're supposed to be a role model for your daughter; you're supposed to lead by example and if Grace grows up thinking that what she does is right and everyone else is wrong-"

"You have a point," Spencer grits her teeth. "But please, hear me out! Vivian is learning that every time she pitches a fit, she gets what she wants. She always gets what she wants; she never learned how to interact with other kids appropriately because she's been sheltered her whole life! I mean, you guys coddle her and cater to her and what does that tell her? That she'll always be on top no matter what? That she's the most important person in the world? Melissa, life isn't fair and she needs to realize that she can't always get what she wants. That's just the way the world is."

"I was trying to shelter her from that realization for as long as possible," Melissa counters.

"Maybe," Spencer replies. "But you're going about it the wrong way. Look, we're both wrong and Vivian and Grace both owe each other an apology. We might not agree on the parenting stuff but can we at least agree on that?"

Melissa nods. "Of course."

Meanwhile, Grace is pouting in the formal living room when Toby arrives after the blowout. He lets himself in and when he finds his daughter, he asks, "Hey monkey. Why the long face?"

"I'm in trouble," She says quietly.

Toby's eyebrows rise. "You are? What did you do?"

"I called Vivian a brat," Grace says and when Toby gives her a questioning look she elaborates. "She got these new dolls from her grandma and grandpa in England and they're really pretty. They have sparkly dresses and shiny hair and I wanted to play with them. But she wouldn't let me. She said they were special and only she could play with them. She wasn't sharing, daddy! So I picked one up when she wasn't looking and she told me to put it down. I called her a brat for not sharing and she still told me to put it down. But I threw it instead and it hit the wall and broke. And now I'm in time-out, I think."

"Oh Grace," Toby sighs. "That was not the best way to handle that situation."

"I couldn't help it, daddy," She says. "I was so mad!"

"I know," Toby pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. "But calling people names is not a nice thing to do. You know better than that."

Grace bites her lip. "Are you mad at me? I think mommy's mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you," Toby tells her sincerely. "And I doubt your mom's mad at you, but it sounds like you need to give Vivian an apology."

"What a coincidence," Spencer announces, coming down the hall. "That's what I've come to collect her for."

"Mommy, don't be mad," Grace says. "I'll say I'm sorry."

"I'm not mad," Spencer tells her. "I'm not. It's really my fault, anyway. I should not have said what I said about Vivian. A brat is really not a nice thing to call someone and it probably hurt Vivian's feelings."

"I should have known you were behind this," Toby rolls his eyes and Spencer shoots him a look. "Come on, where else would she have learned that word?"

"You, hush," Spencer commands and then takes Grace by the hand. "You, come with me."

Vivian apologizes and promises to share and Grace apologizes and vows not to partake in anymore name-calling. The two hug a bit stiltedly and then everyone sits down to a nice, albeit a bit tense, family dinner. Afterwards, the girls head back upstairs to play as though it never happened; Vivian's still a bit too insistent, Grace a bit too reluctant. Wren announces he'll clean and though Toby would rather gnaw his own arm off, he can sense the stewing sisters need to talk, so he tells Wren he'll join. Melissa is staring daggers at her glass of ice water and the tension is so think, it would take a butcher's knife to cut through it. But Spencer decides to break the ice because they're not kids anymore; they can't afford to act like them.

"I'm sorry," She says honestly. "I love Vivian; I really do. I think she'll be very successful in life because she knows what she wants and she'll do anything to get it."

"Thank you. I'm sorry too," Melissa smiles. "Grace is beautiful and I love her like my own. I'm sorry I said she was going to turn into you… I'm sorry I used it like an insult."

Spencer nods, but Melissa goes on, "I guess you just always kind of… intimidated me as a kid. You didn't give in to mom and dad's bullshit. You rebelled, you became your own person… I was envious of that."

"You were envious of me?" Spencer nearly chokes. "Are you kidding?"

"No," Melissa disagrees. "I'm completely serious. My life was always easier than yours because I did what mom and dad told me to, but I always wondered if I was happy because of that or if I was just happy because they were happy. I always wondered what it would be like to trade places with you."

"Believe me, I would've done it in a heartbeat," Spencer smirks. "But what does that have to do with Grace?"

"Because I've never seen her as a mini-you, you know?" Melissa answers. "Looks-wise, she's your carbon copy. But her personality just always struck me as being more like Toby than you. Every now and then, though, I'd see that Hastings fire come out of her. I saw it that day she came to work with Toby on our guesthouse and I saw it tonight. And I don't know why, but… It just scared me."

"Why?" Spencer pleads. "What is so wrong with me that my daughter can't be like me?"

"Spencer, you don't get it," Melissa shakes her head. "There is literally nothing wrong with you. There never has been. That's not it."

"Then what?"

"You had a rough life, okay? You were in pain for about eighty percent of your childhood," Melissa explains. "And as your older sister, it hurt to see you suffer. You may not believe in hope, but you certainly believed in being other people's hope. And when you couldn't or when it became too much, it killed you. By extension, it killed me. So when I see that in Grace, that same fiery passion you've always had, it just scares me because I don't want her to crumble the way you did. I don't want her to force herself to be everything for everyone like you did and end up… God knows where."

"Look, none of this is news to me," Spencer says. "You can stop worrying about her. Believe me, I worry enough for the both of us."

"I'm not worried," Melissa replies. "I know she's going to be fine. I'm just saying… I don't know. I see a strength and a resilience in her that I don't see in Vivian. I'm just wondering if that's because I was never like you."

Spencer stares at her a moment before saying, "I literally don't even know what to say to all of this."

"You don't have to say anything," Melissa shakes her head. "You're my sister and I love you. I love Grace too."

"I love you, too, Melissa. And I love Vivian," Spencer tells her. "That's not going to change."

"Good," The elder sister grins. "God, I always thought we were too messed up to make amends, but look at us."

"Well it's like dad always says," Spencer counters. "The only person who can knock a Hastings down is a Hastings."

Melissa pulls a face. "So the only person to pick us back up is a Hastings too, then?"

"I guess," Spencer considers. "I don't know. Dad's logic was always spotty at best. We're lucky we found people willing to deal with all of our baggage. I always just figured no one would want to put up with us and we'd end up alone."

"Sisters must share a connection," Melissa says. "Because I always thought the exact same thing."