March 31st 2023

Chapter 90
We Celebrate Our August Girls

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Friar,

I wanted to thank you both for your gifts following Toby's adoption day. I could have sent our simple card, as we've done with others, and I've included one of those in the envelope, as you'll have seen. But then even as I was writing your names in it, all I could think was that it had to be a letter with you. Besides, I have so many thoughts in my head after yesterday that I just need to get it down on paper, to remember it the way I do as it just happened. I don't want to forget a single detail of this moment. The thought of our letters gave me that and I won't forget it, not one bit.

He's been in our lives for a year and a half now, and maybe it's because he was the first child that was placed with us that we got so attached to him, but it doesn't feel that way to us at all. He came into our home and our lives, and we knew he belonged with us, and we belonged with him. August and I started talking about adopting him when he hadn't even been with us too long, but it really started to feel serious after Jane. We didn't have her for very long, but it made us think about what would happen, what it would feel like if that was Toby, and there was no other answer for us.

This summer has been so difficult for him, for all of us. He was so upset when Lilah went away. It all happened so fast for him, we didn't have time to prepare him, so it didn't matter that this was great news for her. She was his sister, his friend, and then she wasn't there anymore. He started reverting to the way he'd been when he first got placed with us, and we did our best to help him, but we could only do so much. And then when Mason arrived a few weeks later, it only confused him more. We couldn't really explain to him that here was this boy that just needed a home very suddenly and ours became it. He went to bed one night with only the two of us there with him, and the next morning there was another boy, an older boy who didn't want to be there, with strangers, and had no problem letting everyone know.

Despite all of that, I won't forget when we told him about the adoption. Once we knew it was going to happen, we wanted him to know. We told him he wasn't going to go away, not like the girls did. He was going to be our little boy forever. August recorded us telling him, and I think you can see it, the moment he understood what we were telling him. I think it's the first time he held on to us and it didn't feel like he was afraid we would disappear on him.

The morning we went to court, I don't think we'd ever seen him so bouncy before. He knew what the day was about, and he just wanted to get going. August and I were just so happy to know he would be ours for good after that day, we were crying, but he just had that bright little smile of his, and whenever he heard his name, he would squeak. He had everybody laughing.

All I can think about sometimes, looking at the picture we took when we came home, the one that's with the thank you card, is how he's going to grow up always remembering we're his parents. He knows he wasn't always, we've never suggested otherwise, and his circumstances would have made that difficult, but one day we'll be able to tell him how much it meant for us to get to be his Mom and Dad. Right now, we get to tell you how thankful we are to have you along with us through our family's journey.

Love from the Matthews,
Milena, August, Toby, and Mason

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Dear Matthews family,

We cannot wait to see what the future brings for you, and we are thrilled along with you that we get to a part of your lives. Whatever that future holds, know that you can always count on us to be with you. We're already very excited to welcome Mason into green group and we hope it will be something he will enjoy. The same goes for Toby starting preschool alongside our Mack Attack. Whenever we talk to her about it, she always makes sure to ask about him and what he'll want to do, what he'll prefer out of this activity or that one…

We will be seeing you soon, maybe before this letter reaches you, so until then,
Maya, Lucas, Marianne, Kacey, Remy, Lucy, Mackenzie, and Aubrey Friar, with bonus congratulations from Ella Friar, Taylor Munroe, and Tori Friar, and bonus bonus congrats from Wyatt and Finneas Hart-Lane and Nellie and Gracie Hunter

PS: We were informed we nearly committed the crime of not mentioning the animals, so we had to rip open the envelope and make a new one to mention that of course the crew of Jax, Artie, Crowley, Squeak, Honey Bee, Yankee, Liberty, and Micro were also very, very happy for Toby Matthews.

X

"Hey, they're going to be here any minute!" Maya called up the stairs. "Is everyone ready?" Seconds went by and she got no response except for the sound of feet running around upstairs. "Sure, no, this is fine, everyone was all about making a big surprise, but when the time comes…" she mumbled to herself as she started to climb up, only to come to a sudden halt when a torrent of panicked looking girls emerged from all around, the triplets from above and the others from below. "Hey, there you are, were we playing hide and seek and no one…"

"Did you find them?" Marianne asked, not to her mother but her sisters. They all shook their heads. Lucy looked very close to crying.

"What's going on? Hey…" Maya's mind frame shifted at once to reassurance, moving to the littlest triplet.

"We can't find them, Mom. Crowley, and Squeak. They're not anywhere in the house. Can we go look outside?" Marianne explained, even as Aubrey was clinging to her side and Mackenzie was moving up to do the same with their mother.

Maya understood their distress now, and she reciprocated it. She didn't doubt that they were telling the truth, especially with how she could see the dogs by the door. Here she'd thought they were just excited for the arrival of Ella, Taylor, Theo, Lea, and the birthday girl, the last along of their August girls. But there were only five out of the seven there, and as eager as they always were for guests, suddenly she could see what this was, not excitement but anticipation: they knew their number was coming up short and they wanted to fix that. She also knew what would happen if she just opened that door. They could end up with even fewer dogs than they had now.

"Okay, go and tell the others, yeah? We'll go, I promise."

Soon, they were heading out, Maya, Lucas, Nellie, Gracie, and Wyatt each with one dog on a leash, the better to keep them near, and the girls split among them. More groups meant more chances to find the dogs, right? They looked long enough that, by the time Ella called her father, asking where everyone was, the new arrivals were soon joining the search. The Hart-Lanes came to help. The Sandersons, the McCulloughs, the Dixons… They looked, and they looked, but there was no sign of the two dogs. After a while, the feeling among the adults was that they could keep going as long as they wanted, but they would accomplish nothing except to have several young girls crying, one of them left to have her seventh birthday ruined. They couldn't let that happen, but how were they supposed to make them all feel better?

"Look," Lucas crouched in front of his daughters and granddaughter after they'd all regrouped. All those sad eyes on him were enough to rip his heart in pieces. "Both of them have their information and if anyone finds them, they'll be able to get them home to us. Let's go back home and see what happens, yeah?"

"What if they don't?" Tori asked, speaking what was on all of their minds. Lucas reached out to her, and she hurried over at once. In all that had been happening, he suddenly realized he hadn't gotten around to wishing her a happy birthday, and it wasn't the time just now, not like this, but he still hugged her with all his hopes for this to be a very happy day for her.

"I don't know," he honestly told her.

"Why don't we make posters?" Lea suggested. "Put out the word…"

"Yeah, let's do that," Ella agreed with her best friend and now former roommate.

"I can start driving around," Taylor offered.

"I'll go, too," Theo nodded.

After the two of them had gone, the poster project started. They had to find the perfect images to convey Crowley and Squeak as dogs, their energies, their personalities. That had to make it easier for people to see them and know them, right? All the while, as the kids set themselves to drawing the posters, with Marianne in charge of writing down the text, Maya and Lucas would look to each other, feeling as though they knew just what was going through the other's mind.

This was not what today was supposed to be. It was Tori's birthday, their sweet, sneaky granddaughter hitting number seven on her candles. It was the close of another excellent round of August Girls birthdays. This year had seen Nellie and Gracie's nineteenth, in all its hungover 'glory.' Then there had been Megan Orlando and her fifth, which had almost been a premature party for the triplets with the girl showing she was very much her father's daughter in the way she'd try and make it their day, too. It seemed fair. Before the triplets could have their actual fifth though, in the eight days that separated them, they first had Giulia Choi turning an all-important double digits of ten years old. She may not have been the first of the junior turtles to get there, but it still felt like everything was happening so, so fast. Not that Giulia thought so, no. If it were up to her, she'd grow up even faster. She did not want to be a child anymore, which had been as amusing to her parents as it left them even more baffled by how she was just not their little girl anymore.

Now they'd had the triplets three days back, and it had been the intent to bring all the girls together as they celebrated Tori's seventh, but it hardly seemed possible anymore, not if this was what they were looking at. It was one thing after another, with someone wondering if the dogs were together or on their own, how they'd managed to get out at all. Any time any of them looked like they were getting anywhere close to either suggesting or being led to suggest that either of them, Crowley or Squeak, could be hurt or, worse, dead, it would become a rush to redirect the topic away from there.

"Do you really think they're going to find them?" Ella quietly asked her mother after Taylor and Theo had been gone for nearly two hours. The posters were ready, and now the girls wanted to go and get them where people could see, starting with the shelter, the animal hospital… She was thinking of her own daughter in that instant, as Maya could understand. She wanted to make sure she'd have a good birthday, better memories than this, and no one would blame her.

"I don't know…" Maya sighed. She wanted to say yes, but the longer it took, the harder it was not to prepare for the worst. That was fine for the long run, no choice around it, but in the meantime, what were they going to do about the birthday girl?

They did the only thing they could do. After the posters had gone out, after the guys were back and they headed back home, they did everything they could to make this day a good one, for Tori especially but also for the other girls. They started this out by calling in the rest of their August Girls to join the six they had in the house. It wasn't perfect, but by the end of the night, it did feel like they could look back on that day with some amount of fondness, and that meant a lot.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners