March 10th 2023

Chapter 69
We Grow Together

Lucas woke up on the morning of his thirty-seventh birthday to the feeling of small hands on his face. He wasn't sure what it was about them that made him think it, but he knew almost immediately that these hands belonged to Lucy. He supposed that, for however long any of them had been alive, he'd come to know them enough to associate each one's style to any number of activities, and that might have included morning visits like this one. So, he opened his eyes, and there she was, the picture of her mother in a much shorter frame, crouched on the mattress and holding his cheeks in either one of her palms as she tilted her head this way and that, staring at him. When she realized that he'd awakened, she was one beam of sunlight in the low morning light.

"Hey, bun, fancy meeting you here," he told her, reaching up a hand to brush at her hair. "You wouldn't happen to know where your mother is?"

"Uh huh," Lucy nodded.

"You want to tell me?" he asked.

"Nooo," she laughed. He prodded her cheek and she squeaked, jumped.

"I see the mischief is coming in nicely," he joked. "So, what's going on here?" he asked, pointing to his face and to her hands where they still rested. Lucy shrugged. "You just like my face?" She kept staring at him. "You just like holding my face?" She smiled. "Yeah, I know someone else who likes to do that… and someone who just likes to hold on to my ears." At this, Lucy's hands jumped until there were fingers grappling into his ears. "See, I knew I shouldn't have said that," he sighed dramatically, which only brought more laughter from the four-year-old. Four… She'd be five before long, wouldn't she? She'd be in kindergarten before they knew it… "You just hold on as long as you like," he decided, moving so he might properly embrace the smallest triplet. To look at how she burrowed herself against him, he'd say she very much approved of this shift, and she would gladly stay with him all day. He just might take her up on it if not for the fact that they both had places to be, people to see…

If he'd enjoyed his birthdays before, he would always firmly say that his birthdays now as a father were in a class apart. Was there really a better way to mark another year of living, an increase in one's age, than by having one to several small children excitedly seeking to show you how great it was that you were alive and you were their parent and that it was your birthday? There might have been, but so far as he was concerned… oh, this was the best one. Of course, this year… This year…

It was a non-ending series of firsts, it seemed, ever since February. Some of those firsts weren't so significant, but then there were the big ones. They still had several of those to come, and for seeing how they all coped with the ones that had passed, they couldn't help but dread the next ones, and now today… Today would be the first of Lucas' birthdays without his mother. He hadn't known how he might feel about it until it came, and even when it did, the words continued to escape him. He tried not to think about it at first, which was made plenty easy by the presence of Maya and their girls over breakfast and the birthday surprises that came along with it – a preview of more to come – and then school drop-offs…

And then he'd be on his own, headed to the ranch, and… oh, he could feel her there in his mind, and he had a feeling that every small and not so small way in which her memory might be drawn to him while he was at Sullivan Stables would manage to find him, no matter what he did. It wasn't that he didn't want to think about her, far from that, but… He didn't know how to exist with this sensation of emptiness for the things that he had lost and those he'd never get because of it.

He kept busy, all day long. With the Grand recently ended, they were still not quite done reverting back to 'normal,' so he focused on that, on checking off as many of those tasks from the list along with whatever was on his schedule for the day. By the time he'd leave again, there would be so little of 'Grand mode' left to clear away as to not matter. It wasn't as though the fact that it was his birthday had gone unnoticed, far from it, but that was how he'd needed to go through it, and everyone had supported him in it. Even Maya, while she had called him during the day, had left space open for him to touch on what he was feeling or leave it alone - he chose the latter – and he'd expected no less from her. Later on, when they were home again, the girls all asleep in their beds, and it was just them, he could see himself opening up, but they weren't there yet. First, he had one tradition to honor that was absolutely not gone from his life.

Wyatt would step up and collect his nieces from school that day, taking them on to their activities, to their friends, wherever they needed to be. And while this went on, Lucas would be off with his birthday buddy, as today Nicholas Orlando was a whole eight years old.

He could barely believe it, thinking how it wasn't so long ago that he'd made this vow, holding a newborn babe who shared his birthday. Now there was this kid, so like his parents and at the same time very unique to himself and who he was. It was hard for Lucas not to feel a particular kinship to him out of all of his and Maya's friends' children.

Picking Nicky up each year was almost as much part of this tradition of theirs as the rest, and this one, if he had to describe it… He might not have been the only one feeling some level of disconnect from his birthday. It was the first time he could recall meeting up with Nicky and sensing… not disinterest in going through the motions so much as… interference.

"Hey, bud," Lucas held out his hand to receive the boy into a hug. "Happy birthday."

"Happy birthday," Nicky replied, not exactly mumbling but still…

"You sure about that?" Lucas had to ask as they walked off together. The birthday boy hesitated to respond, enough so that he had his uncle genuinely concerned. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but if you do…"

"I know, but… I don't know…" Nicky shrugged to himself.

The more he grew, what stood out the most was how alike to his parents he was on the whole and in smaller ways, too. And now, presented with this situation but no details, Lucas looked to his friends' son and thought of them when they'd been Nicky's age. He couldn't speak for what Riley had been like as an eight-year-old, though he had Maya and her stories to help fill in the blanks there. And for Dylan, oh, he had all the stories he could ever need. Both of them back as children had been wonderful, but they'd definitely benefited from having friends nearby who would stall anyone trying to mess with them.

Whether this was the answer and Nicky was finding himself in possession of one or more bullies, he couldn't say for sure, but the possibility of it was enough to make him further concerned. He wasn't going to focus on that, not just now. Nicky would benefit a lot more from setting his troubles aside and remembering that today was his birthday.

"So, what do you think? Ice cream, or something else this year? It's up to you," Lucas told Nicky when they were pulling out of the school lot. Nicky shrugged. He'd need more than that to leave the old funk behind, and Lucas worried that, if he didn't think of something soon, he was going to backslide his way into joining him. After a few minutes of silent driving, he let out a sigh and pulled to the side of the road, came to a stop. Nicky turned his head to look at him, confused.

"There's no ice cream here," he noted.

"No, I know that," Lucas confirmed. "Can I tell you something?" he asked. Nicky nodded. "To be honest, I'm having a little trouble with this one, too?"

"Why?" Nicky asked.

"Because… Well, because of my mother," Lucas revealed.

"Oh…" the boy reacted, his eyes flashing like an echo of his own mother, when Riley would realize that someone she cared for was upset and, being rightly so, left her unable to just take it away. "You miss her a lot," Nicky reflected, now sounding like his father.

"Every day," Lucas told him, with all the honesty in his heart. "And today… I don't think I really knew how much worse it was going to get on this one."

"I would, too," Nicky decided, and as earnest as he was in this, as much as Lucas was sure that the thought of losing his own mother would seem horrible to him, he couldn't know just how it would hit, and he hoped beyond hope that Nicky wouldn't have to find out for a very, very long time.

"I know. Thanks, bud." Surprisingly, this small exchange looked as though it had pulled the boy out of his funk. He looked more alert now, and Lucas watched him look out the car windows, considering his choices before coming to sit taller, the instant signal that he'd had an idea. He turned to look at his uncle, and Lucas smiled. "Where are we headed?"

'Where they were headed' was the market, where Nicky guided his uncle to the frozen section before pointing into one of the freezers, to the lines of small ice cream cartons, with a signal that Lucas read like 'you take one and I take one.' It was no preschool cake or tiny pancakes, but for the sentiment that inspired the choice, he couldn't think of anything that would have been more perfect than this, and he was very proud of his turtle nephew for it.

With their choices purchased and a couple of spoons acquired, they went and found a bench to sit on and immediately went digging at their ice cream.

"You know, your dad made a hole in this bench ages ago?" Lucas reminisced, and Nicky stared up at him, saucer-eyed. "Oh, yeah, right there," he pointed with his spoon. Nicky scooted aside and looked at the bench. The middle plank did look sort of darker than the rest, like it hadn't been there as long as the rest. "It was an accident, but, well, you know…" Now Nicky laughed; he did know about the clumsy gene on the Orlando side. His father had it, and his aunt Phoebe, and now it was running rampant among him and his little sisters.

Neither of them mentioned the fact that their choices for this year's ice cream interlude did them a load of good, taking them both away from the things that had come to trouble their birthdays, if for a little while, and that it meant a lot. They didn't say it, but even so, it did get to feel sort of implied. They'd hopefully get back somewhere closer to how it usually went next year, but even then, they would never write off this year's joint celebration as a loss. It had brought them closer and made them thankful for how close they'd already been at the same time.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners