April 14th 2023

Chapter 104
We Move Through Time

The Friars had one golden rule when it came to their daughters and birthdays. If they requested something for their day and it was in any way possible, they would get it. A gift, an activity, a person, whatever it was. As they got older, the requests did get to feel like they understood there were limitations, but their parents would still miss their younger years when they were gone, recalling more outlandish wishes.

For their big girl's twenty-fourth birthday, the wish was a simple one and fairly doable, though it would demand that they keep a tight schedule... and remember where they parked a lot. What Ella Friar wanted was as much aimed toward her enjoyment as to that of others. Back when she'd still lived in Houston, it had been very rare for her to get to sit in and watch her little sisters at their various activities. She had gotten to go a few times since returning, but not so often that she could say she'd visited each more than once or twice. So, for her birthday, Ella wanted to go to each of her sisters' activities, to watch them do their thing and cheer them on where she could.

If getting everyone to and from where they were expected felt like a runaround, plotting a course so that they could spend any significant amount of time at each while also having to drive from one location to the next was like going pro on that runaround. Lucas had made it his mission all week to be ready for that day, coming up with alternate routes and contingency plans in case of traffic, or any delays in departure. He understood that things could still go wrong, but if they did, it wouldn't be because they hadn't done their best.

"They'll be here soon," Lucas reported, walking into the kitchen again to find that Maya had made great strides with packing everyone's snacks while he'd been gone. Going off the look on her face, he'd say he had a very good idea of what energy had fuelled this progress, and it wasn't the anticipation for Ella's arrival. "Hey..." he approached her.

"It's fine, I'm good, I am so good," Maya told him, even as her hands moved like they were ready to chop something in half.

"No, you're not," Lucas noted.

"No, I'm not," she echoed him, dropping all pretense. She might as well get it out of her system with him before the mad day started, right? "I'm pissed off."

"As you should be," Lucas agreed.

"I mean, I'm happy that Miranda is going to get back out there again, and I know she's going to be amazing, I just... It should not have happened this way, it shouldn't... Oh, and you should have seen Davenport's face, going around the school after word got out. I had just enough space in my head to think maybe I was making more of this than there was, but no, not anymore. No, she was so happy with herself that she'd gotten one on us, and I definitely saw her real smile, not the fake one she's had plastered on for the last year. She thinks she's got her foot in the door now, she's going to pull us apart, and we won't be able to do anything about it. Not going to let that happen, no way," she shook her head.

There was nothing for Lucas to say after that, she'd said it all, and he knew who'd get his vote on determination, Friar versus Davenport. All he could do now was embrace her, and when he did, he felt her relax in his arms, letting her feelings for what had happened at school slide away from her, clearing the way for a great day with their girls.

It was very easy to forget about everything else once Ella arrived. Lucas and Maya barely had time to close around their eldest and wish her a happy birthday, to then also greet their granddaughter and son-in-law, that a rumble of feet brought along six very happy little sisters to crowd around Ella. There were cards, and flowers, and a balloon that Marianne tied around her wrist, to follow her bouncing along all day on her travels. It would be remembered after this day for how it had been a challenge not to lose it a few times and how, dedicated as she was not to lose it. The travellers had laughed over it many times.

They had four stops to make. Tori had joined Marianne's soccer team that fall, for which both girls were very excited, and they were dropped off first at the field. Then it was Kacey at the skating rink, and Lucy at the pool... Last of all, and their first stop for the day, they would sit in to watch the start of Remy's karate lesson.

As all over the place as the second born triplet could come off in her day to day, she was almost comically attentive when she'd be sitting in her class. It was so unlike the version of her that they knew, but that didn't matter so much once they stopped to admire how Remy might have found something she was simply passionate about. She was happy there and she looked forward to getting dressed and attending class. They saw it as they sat by and watched her among the rest of the children, and it was so much so that she barely took notice of their departure when they headed out.

It was back to the pool now, and all the planning from Lucas really came in handy already. They made excellent time and went in, Maya, Lucas, Mackenzie, Aubrey, Ella and her balloon, and Taylor, so they might locate one little bunny fish.

For as much as Remy went from noise to peace when she was in her class, Lucy in the pool was like waking from a dream to find the dream world was still there, only now it was real. She had always been the most ill at ease about being separated from her fellow triplets, this perhaps due to how she'd very early on been made to realize that she wasn't identical to them as they were to one another. But then she would be in the pool... She would be there, and it would be as though the water was the thing that was like her, her twin, and they had been reunited.

They left the pool when the time came for them to go see Kacey at the skating rink with a few minutes' delay, as Lucy wanted them all to wait and watch her do something, and they couldn't well tell her no. They stayed, they watched, and then they promised to see her again soon before leaving. Lucas and his contingencies definitely came in handy here, keeping them well within their expected time frames. Also, after the warmth inside the aquatic complex, the chill of the arena was kind of nice.

When they had been trying to direct the girls toward individual activities, putting Kacey in skating lessons had probably been the easiest match. She'd felt drawn to every part of it, the movements, the energy, the clothes, before they'd ever registered her, so it made sense. And in the time since she'd started attending her lessons, her attachment to the sport had not diminished in the slightest. She'd had to accept the fact that she was still very small, that she was only learning, and it would be a long time before she got to do what the more experienced skaters could do… She was working on that. Most of the time, she was still having to combat five-year-old impatience at the fact that she couldn't do big jumps and spins. 'Not yet,' they would tell her. Those were big, important words in their house now, for everyone.

They'd done their best to time their trips so that they got to watch the triplets in turn, giving each their due, and be with the last of them when her lesson ended, so they could then leave with her, and collect the other two from their completed lessons, the better for all of them to converge back on the park and the field where Marianne and Tori's game would be on its last stretch.

"Is it over? Did we miss it, Daddy?" Lucy asked, craning her neck like her sisters, as they pulled into the parking lot.

"No, no, they're out there, bun, listen," Lucas turned off the radio and rolled down one of the windows, the better for them to hear the noise of the crowd in the distance.

That was good enough for them, so they hurried and got parked so they could get moving. This nearly led to a 'tragedy' where Ella's balloon came momentarily loose around her wrist, and she barely caught hold of it. Taylor immediately set himself to securing the ribbon for his wife, under the watchful guard of his young sisters in law, and then it was off to the field. They really couldn't be missed once they took up their places along with their team's supporters, but just in case, Maya had alerted her daughter and granddaughter of their arrival with their familiar call. Marianne and Tori were beyond thrilled to see them there, as were their friends and teammates that knew them, though the two of them in particular soon moved around like they'd gotten it in mind to do even better that day in Ella's honor.

Marianne was easily one of the team's best players, as she had been for the better part of her time playing with them. For Tori, a lot of it was still very new, but they wouldn't have known it for looking at her, and that was thanks to her aunt and teammate, who had been so excited at the prospect of having her on the team that every time she'd come over to the house, which was more than once a week, always, she would take her outside and show her something new, while she would always be eager to learn, if for no other reason than that she loved being around her aunt, the one who had once seen her like her one and only baby sister back when they'd been very little. Oh, how she loved hearing about those days.

"Mom, did you see? Did you see what I did at the end?" Tori went barreling toward her mother after the game had ended, and Ella caught her in her arms with a laugh.

"Yeah, I saw it, I saw it! You were amazing!"

To see Ella now, freshly twenty-four, with her seven-year-old daughter, a stranger couldn't possibly know how far the two of them had come, from the sixteen-year-old girl who used to sleep with her newborn in her arms, on her biological sister's couch, before being taken in by her art teacher, her husband, and their then not quite two-year-old only child. As much as Maya and Lucas had reasons for being proud of their big girl, they were eternally happier to know that she had reasons to be proud of herself, and she did. She had found her path in life, and was eagerly following it now, with her daughter by her side, with her new husband, and with her great, extended family around her to be proud right along with her. She still had so many steps left to take before her current trek reached its destination, but it didn't feel nearly as difficult when she had them around her and she knew it.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners