August 21st 2023
Chapter 233
We Write Fleeting Tales
Dear Mrs. Friar,
You told me before how I could come to you if I needed help with anything. I think I'm going to need that now. My eighteenth birthday is coming up, and I need to move out. My foster parents and I have been having a rough time for a while, and I know they would have booted me by now if I'd been younger. I guess the fact that I was almost eighteen made them decide to go ahead and let me stay, but that courtesy won't last much longer, so I need to be ready to leave as soon as possible. I've been looking into it all, but it's a lot, and I don't have anyone I'd feel okay to ask about any of this, except I thought of you. I hope this is okay.
I've been in foster care since I was two years old. When I was younger, I swore I could remember my parents, but now I'm not sure if any of them were real or if I made them up. What I know about them couldn't even fill this sheet of paper. I know my mother's dead, but I don't know what happened to her. I could probably look it up, but I'm not sure I want to know. It won't bring her back. My father's dead, too, but I didn't know about that until I was eleven, when I tried to find him. He was killed in a hold up, at the store where he worked, months before I became a foster. Finding that out, it convinced me I never wanted to find out what had happened to my mother.
They must have had family out there, both of them, but I'm not sure I'd want to try and find them. I mean, I've been out here for all those years. They could have found me by now if they wanted to, right? The point is I've never had anyone out there looking for me, and that made me sure of one thing and one thing only, which was that I'd be able to take care of myself. I've been doing my best with that all my life, and I thought I'd be able to do that when it mattered the most, but it all feels like I'm failing. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but I don't know how else I'm supposed to feel right now. It's like I'm running straight at a brick wall and I'm supposed to figure out how to run up over it, or through it, or something, anything other than break my face and all my teeth against it. That wall is getting closer and closer every day, and I'm running out of road.
Maybe it would be better if I came and talked to you in person, but if that was the only choice, I'm not sure I'd ever work up the nerve. I could never get the words out. At least here, I can make myself heard.
Thanks for reading, for whatever you might write back. I appreciate everything you do, every day.
Freddie Jacek
.
Dear Freddie,
I'm glad you took my invitation. Like you said, you and all your classmates are always welcome to come to me if you need someone to speak to, if you need more than talk, too. I'm going to leave you my number, so if you want to keep writing with the added immediacy of text messages, you'll have the means to do so. I might not respond right away, but I promise that I'll answer as soon as I can, and I will answer.
I will admit, I have wondered about you, your parents… For a while, it came from a place of not knowing, but then once our Ezra came into our lives, it sort of changed. I started to think about what it might be like someday, when he'll start to wonder where he came from. He's our son now, and he always will be, but we don't want to keep him from knowing that he had another family before us. It's going to feel near impossible, having to explain it to him, and I'll leave it at that. What I'm trying to say is that knowing what I know now that you told me about your family, I've never wanted to see to it that you end up right where you need to be more than I do now.
I know you've been looking into colleges already, and scholarships, and that's really good, but it won't solve things for you right now, with your home situation. I had a feeling that things weren't going well for you with your foster family, but I didn't know it was this bad for you, and I'm sorry to hear it. I can think of any number of quick fixes just to get you out of the house when you need to be, but there's more to it than that. Wherever you land when you head out on your own, I think we both want it to be about more than the one thing. So, let's work on that you and I, yeah?
I'll be waiting to hear from you,
All the best,
Mrs. Maya Friar
X
"Hey, how was that nap, huh? You were gripping so tight, bud, look at my shirt," Lucas grinned, pointing to the spot where Ezra's little hand had been clamped on like his life depended on it. The baby boy just looked back at his father with that fixed sort of curiosity, with enough of a show that he'd only woken up that he was what Maya would call 'at peak adorable.' Lucas cradled the back of his head, kissed the top of it. "Your mama and your sisters will be home soon, that'll be fun, yeah? Yeah, come on, let's go wait for them outside."
They were sitting out there for no more than seven minutes by the time Lucas spotted the minivan at the end of the road, just a tiny little thing he knew to carry so much of his world, and growing more and more the closer it came. He liked to imagine them all out there, driving along. The girls would be singing along with their mother already, but now that they'd be able to see the house in the distance, they'd get even more excited, enough so that it would get to feel as though they could make the vehicle go faster on the power of their giddiness alone.
The minivan came up to and made the turn around the mailbox, pulling up to be parked in its usual spot. When the back door opened, out came Marianne, and she was off at once, jogging toward the porch steps. Lucas opened his mouth to greet her, but she just ran right past him, through the unlocked door and into the house without so much as a hello.
"Someone's in a hurry," Lucas told Ezra, who only squealed and gave a sneeze.
One by one, the other girls climbed down, even as their mother came from the driver's seat, and now he had to wonder if he'd miscalculated Marianne's dash. He saw his girls, one by one, pass him by and disappear inside the house, until all that was left was his wife.
"Hi, sweet boy!" she crooned as she scooped up Ezra from him and held the baby close. "I missed you today. Did you miss me?"
"What's up with all of them?" Lucas had to ask, interrupting the pair's reunion. Maya looked at him with a sigh that said it all easily enough. It didn't happen nearly as much as they might have thought it might, that their girls were in a big enough of an argument that they wouldn't talk to each other, but apparently that was where they were now, coming home from their activities.
Maya tried to explain it, but honestly she hadn't caught the start of it, and by the time she had realized that something was upsetting them all, it was too late. The best she could piece together was that they were upset at the whole process of their pick up times that day. It was all part of how things worked, how they had to work, with all of them doing different things and their parents having to collect them to bring them home. They might have been left feeling rushed that day, which couldn't be helped, and from that, several more layers of injustice had gone and revealed themselves. After that, they'd just sort of turned on one another, and that was where they were now, having made it home.
They'd learned from past arguments like this, they knew better than to try and force them out of it like it was nothing, and they were sure that it would all resolve itself in time. They just hated this part because it was still in the bad part.
There had been no time where they considered just enrolling them all into the same activity. Sure, it would have made things so much easier for all of them, not having to go to six different places every week, but that would only have been convenient to them, not fair to their girls. They all deserved to do something they loved, that felt right for them. Maybe in some cases Maya and Lucas had helped to lend a guiding hand, but regardless. Their daughters loved going out and playing soccer, or doing figure skating, or karate, or swimming, loved doing gymnastics or learning to dance. Would they also have been happy doing some of what they others were doing? No doubt. But trying to switch things around wouldn't help anyone at the moment, and that was what they were going to have to figure out.
Maya slowly but surely coaxed the triplets and the little sisters from their hiding spots and into the kitchen to help her with dinner, which left Marianne. Lucas had as good of an idea as his wife did about where their firstborn had ended up, and so he went to bring her back around ahead of dinner being served.
He found her in the Hex, and much as she had tried to make it look as though she was working on something and she should definitely not be disturbed by anyone, he knew better. He let himself in and found her sat on the couch, running through one of her practice songs on the guitar. It was something they'd seen her do plenty of times to calm herself down and they were glad that she had this mechanism in place.
He didn't say a word. He went and picked up one of the other guitars and sat opposite her, on one of the big chairs. He watched her for a bit and he started to match her, note for note. She was completely aware of him, even if she tried not to show it. He was getting through to her, and that was what mattered. Eventually, she stopped playing and she looked at him, so he stopped, too.
"You know, I didn't grow up with siblings, not the way you are. Neither did your mother. We're both doing the best we can to keep up with all of you. As far as I can tell right now, there's a lot of misplaced animosity between all of you. You know what I mean?" Marianne shrugged. Kinda. "This isn't about all of you, and I think you know it." She sighed. "You girls hardly ever fight. It's enough to make anyone worry when things don't work out the way they usually do. And I'm not trying to tell you what to do, I just…"
"I know," Marianne cut in. "You worry about us."
"I do," he told her, and her little smile brought one to him, too. "I can't help it."
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
