A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!


March 4th 2023

Chapter 63
We Marvel That The Years

More often than they would care to admit, they would feel a dramatic pinch at the thought of their daughters growing as fast as they did. There would be memories that felt so close to them, so close that they could be fooled into thinking they had happened not so long ago, but then no... Some of them had happened five years ago and more, and there would be a slightly strange balm to this that went like 'well, we have our little ones, too, and they're still small.' Saying that, they could imagine them as babes in arms, barely learning to walk, or talk... but they weren't that, were they? Not anymore... For instance, their funny little Macaroni, on this Saturday morning in April, was a whole three years old. She would be starting preschool in the fall while her older sisters left it for kindergarten, leaving her little sister to hold out by herself for a year before she could join her. Three years old...

By all accounts, she was still very small, sure, but... not that small. Actually, it had only and very suddenly dawned on them that she was as tall as the twins, that she just edged out Lucy, which could lead to a whole new array of 'who's the fraternal triplet?' confusion. It was generally down to behavior for people to stop and realize she was younger or that the triplets deeply belonged to one another.

Height surprises aside, Mackenzie Abigail Friar was still very much the girl she had always been to her parents. The benefits of age came in development, as much as in physical growth, in motor skills, and knowledge, as it did in that she was one wacky little weirdo, and they loved her more each day because of it. They could only imagine what she would become when she got older... Really, she was too unpredictable for them to so much as try and imagine the person she would become. All they knew was that if she carried on the way she was going now - and they would do everything in their power to aid that - she would be spectacular. They tended to have this hope for all their girls, yes, but they all had their own definition for it.

As Mackenzie's birthday had neared, there had been this inescapable beat whenever they thought about it in any way. They'd more or less expected it to come, but expectations had come up short when held against realities. Realities hit much harder. This would be the first of the Friars' birthdays to come and go since they'd lost Melinda, and the idea of it just sort of felt like someone grabbing on to them and squeezing very hard, until they couldn't breathe. It hit some of them harder, and this at least met their expectations. Thomas, Marianne, Lucas… They were all so aware of how much this day would have meant to Melinda, as any of her granddaughters' birthdays would. Each one of them was the most important, as they should be, and they knew how much thought she put into them, none of it last minute by a longshot, as her journals could attest.

Lucas had been captivated by these journals, not just the one he'd first brought home. When they had seen to installing Pappy Joe and Patty into the elder Friars' house after the move, Thomas had indicated a pair of boxes stacked near the door and told his son that they were for him. Inside, he'd found… memories. He didn't have to open a single one of the books neatly set inside to access them. He saw the colors, the patterns on the spines, and he could see his mother, through the years, taking notes inside. It was a small part of her that felt massive, now more than ever, so much so that he'd felt unable to accept them at first. He couldn't possibly, could he? His father should hold on to them… or maybe his uncle… But Thomas insisted that he take them, that his mother would have wanted him to have them, and there was no arguing beyond that. So, the boxes came home.

For Marianne, it was not unlike when Maya brought her students' diaries home every week. She had grown as fascinated with the volumes as her father had. She hesitated at first, like she wasn't supposed to, but sooner or later she'd been unable to resist. Lucas had spied her going into his room and coming out again, clutching one of the journals near to her chest and scurrying back to her room. He could have let her go and pretended like he hadn't seen her, but he also wanted her to know that she didn't need to sneak around, and she was wholly free to look at every single one of those journals, cover to cover. He ended up sitting with her for a while as she looked through the pages of the one that she'd taken, seeing notes, and memories, recipes and plans… This one dated back to when the triplets were on their way, and they could see so much of Granny Mel's excitement and also her concerns, as much for her unborn granddaughters as for her daughter-in-law who carried them, and for her son, knowing he would have worried as well.

Marianne was going to take her time with these journals, they could tell. She didn't want to rush through them all. She remembered her grandmother keeping these all her life, and she would easily spot those that had been kept in her lifetime, but there were so many more, ones from earlier than that, and those she would tackle only once she'd gotten through the last eight years' worth. Whenever she would find something so interesting, she would run to show it to someone, especially if it concerned them. She would always show her father, too, and her Pappy Tom if she could. If she found recipes, she'd want to make them, and so they would. It was an important part of her grieving process, and they encouraged it.

When the time came that they were going to prepare for Mackenzie's third birthday, of course, they brought out the last journal, the incomplete one, and looked over the plans together with Marianne. Mackenzie was her closest sister, which said something with how deeply they knew all the sisters to love one another, and it was very important not only to celebrate her day but to do so in a manner honoring their late grandmother.

Everyone was going to do their part. Maya, Lucas, Ella, the grandparents, they had their things to prepare, while Marianne took it upon herself to rally the younger sisters. She was briefly concerned about how they would make it work without Mackenzie finding out, because it had to be a surprise, but then the solution came to her. The ranch, the groups! She would be able to work on things with the triplets and Mackenzie would never know, so they did that. All that left was Aubrey, and here her parents suggested that they rework the baths. Normally, the little sisters would have theirs together, but for a few nights they switched things up, so that Aubrey could be allowed to make a contribution of her own. It was tricky to ensure that the youngest Friar, one month short of her second birthday, wouldn't spill the beans about what was going on, but the others made it into a game and, aside from a few close calls, they fared a lot better than anticipated. Finally, the day had come, and they could release all the secrets.

It wouldn't be a secret that something was going to happen, of course. Mackenzie was three today, three. That was a Big Deal, capital letters and all, at least that was the impression she'd been given, and they weren't about to argue with the truth. She wouldn't have let them forget anyway. Lucas and Maya both realized that first thing in the morning when they were awakened by the not at all morning-voiced chant that came down the hall and up to knock at their bedroom door. All she'd say would be the number, over and over again, but her tone would make that single syllable sound like anything from 'it's my birthday!' to 'I'm three now!' to 'wake up!' She didn't have to worry about that one. Above and around, everyone heard her.

"I think... she might be three now," Maya turned her head to Lucas. He chuckled, kissed the side of her face, and got out of bed to open the door. On the other side, the chant paused as Mackenzie squealed and bounced on her feet before holding her arms out.

"You want to fly, Macaw?" Lucas happily obliged, lifting their tall little one into a solid hug. "Happy birthday, Mack Attack. Did you sleep good?" he asked, brushing her hair back as she nodded. "So good that you woke up before everyone, huh?" She laughed, flashing those baby teeth, and he pressed many a kiss at her cheeks, this one and that one, keeping her laughing as he brought her over to visit with her mother. She as good as leapt from his hold, on to the bed, and then she crawled over and pounced. Maya received her with her own laughter, a harmony.

"Getting to be a big girl, huh?" she asked, and Mackenzie nodded enthusiastically. "Not a tiny Mackerel anymore?"

"Big, big Mackerel now," the birthday girl agreed, arms held wide to illustrate.

"That big?" Maya gasped.

"Uh huh!"

"Goodness, we're going to need to get you all new clothes for that… and a bigger bed, too… Unless you want an aquarium…" Maya suggested, punctuating with her best fish face, and properly sending her daughter over the edge with giggles.

As sure as they were that the wake-up call would have brought everyone rushing in already, they quickly guessed that perhaps the true answer went the way of 'now we can talk, and she won't hear.' Lucas only had to poke his head into the hallway to catch the sound of several girl voices coming from the room at the end.

"Hey, so, before we go down for breakfast," he turned back to the room, where Mackenzie had gone and pulled the blankets over herself and her mother, plopping herself over Maya and laying her head at her shoulder. She'd hear no complaints out of Mommy here and, at her father's voice, she barely turned her eyes, refusing to dislodge herself in any way. If this kept up, she might end up falling asleep again. "I've got something for you," Lucas moved to his desk, reaching into one of the drawers. Even without seeing her, he was sure that the birthday girl was doing everything in her toddler power to see what he was up to without moving too much. "Your… Your Granny left it with me before she…" He wasn't even sure what he would have said to finish that sentence, but he was saved from it as the mention of his mother compelled his daughter to lift her head.

"Granny Mel?" Mackenzie asked. Lucas turned back to her with the box. He'd wrapped it himself because it had not been done already, and the whole while he'd tried so hard to make it as neat as his mother would have done. He thought he'd done pretty well, all things considered.

"Yeah," he brought the present to the bed, where both Mackenzie and Maya soon sat up, the former on the latter's lap, after casually shutting the door. This was mostly to enable the others to sneak out of the green room if they needed to, but at the same time, he did feel like this was a moment he wanted to belong only to him and Maya and their birthday girl. He was certain that there would have been other presents, because his mother wouldn't have been satisfied with just the one, but unless she'd hidden others very well and never told her husband that they existed, then this was the only one, Melinda's gift for her funny granddaughter's third birthday.

Maybe because of her nicknames, as varied as they were, Mackenzie had gotten to show interest in several topics already. 'Birdies' and 'fishies' had been two of her favorite words, especially as of late but even before, whenever she'd see one of the two. So, off of that thread, Melinda had bought her little granddaughter a very large and impressive book, beautifully illustrated and showing so many varieties of animals, whole rainbows of birds, and wonderful fish both great and small. They could not count on her ever seeing the look of wonder on Mackenzie's face when she discovered her gift, and it would be a strange little regret they'd carry with them, but they would show it to Thomas Friar, show him the video that Maya captured, and they knew it would do him so, so much good.

In planning for the day, because they had enough forethought, in knowing their funny little Macaroni so well, they had suggested to Marianne that she might want to account for a gap between breakfast and lunch in whatever she and the others would do. And because Marianne and Mackenzie were as closely bonded as they were, the plan was as quickly understood as it was accepted, which was good, because before they ever made it downstairs for her breakfast surprises, Mackenzie looked up from where she'd been enthralled with the pages of her new book with a question. She knew that one of the triplets' preschool classmates had a bird in her house, and it stayed there, because they'd told her all about it the other day after coming home. Lucas told her that some birds could live in people's houses, and she said that she knew this, yes, so… so could she have a bird in her house?

Maybe it was an impulsive act to tell her yes, but they chose to look at the big picture, and that was that they were a very responsible family where animals were concerned, and they had a vet on hand at all times. The only hard to predict factor was how the dogs would do, but there again they had cause for optimism. Their faith was proven correct, a couple of hours after they'd gone away, when they returned with a new little friend in tow, a budgie in blue, white, and gray, who had been given the name of Micro. The joke had come to Maya out of nowhere and, when she'd been made to explain it to her, Mackenzie had loved it. Thus, the Friars' bird got his name, and though he was absolutely the birthday girl's pet, there was no question that he would be loved and cared for by the entire household… even the dogs, who soon doted on the house's tiniest resident.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners