May 16th 2023

Chapter 136
We Love A New House

"Hey, if any of you wants to come along for this, we have to go! Last call!" Maya leaned over and raised her voice so that it might ascend the stairs and find her daughters. Behind her, she heard squeals out of her nephew, and she turned a smile to him. Finneas was having as good a time as any boy his age could hope, hanging out with his Uncle Lucas. "Not you, Finny, you're always on time," Maya moved over to them and took the baby's squishy face in her hands to kiss it. He was always a fan of cuddles and kisses with Auntie Maya.

"I don't know about you, but I've got a weird feeling about this one," Lucas turned his eyes up toward the ceiling, and Maya sighed. She was kind of feeling it, too, and she didn't know what it was about.

One thing was for sure, her summons had done nothing. So, with a huff, she started up the stairs and up the hall. Triplets' room? Nothing. Her room? Nope. The green room? Not a daughter in sight. The bathroom gave her nothing else, so she walked back up the hall and headed up to the second floor.

Oh, she was definitely on the right track now. She couldn't see them, but she still knew for sure that they were close, like some maternal tracking sense. They were here, and they were hiding?

"Guys, it's not time for hide and seek, okay? Everyone's waiting for us over at the… house…" her voice trailed off when her eyes landed on some very damning evidence of what they had been up to and why they might have been hiding now. Scissors… and a couple of lost, long blond hairs. Only one person in this house had hair that long, if she still… "Marianne Christine Friar, get your pumpkin butt out here, right now," she tried to keep her tone from going off the rails before she saw just what they were dealing with. They'd said they would discuss the possibility, but she hadn't meant for her to handle matters on her own…

Though she'd been the only one called out, by her full name and everything, the others all started to emerge from their hiding spots, like forest critters sniffing for trouble. And last of them came their ringleader, with eyes that tried to come up brave and self-assured but didn't quite make it because they knew they'd done something they weren't supposed to. Not an hour ago, Maya's firstborn daughter had hair that flowed all down her back. She still had it, but most of it hung in a braid that she held in her hand, while what remained attached to her head landed in a barely lopsided chop that ended just above her shoulders. Not knowing what sound might escape from her, Maya's hand stuck itself over her mouth, her eyes gone wide with surprise.

"I didn't want to wear the wig," Marianne finally spoke, probably thinking it would be an ideal time to let it all out, while her mother was speechless. "It was too much. Anyway, now I can see what it's like having shorter hair. It's a lot lighter," she declared, unable to hide how much she liked this especially at the moment. "It'll grow back if I don't like it like this, and I can give it away," she held up her braid. "There's people that need it more than I do, right?"

Possibly, her daughter was too smart for her own good. Either way, her arguments were solid, and the more of them she put forth, the harder it was for Maya to be upset. After a few seconds, she sighed and moved forward so she could check out what had been done. Her daughter had not had more hair taken off her head than a regular trim, no more than an inch off each time, for as long as she'd lived. Marianne wasn't the only one who was used to her having that long hair.

"You look so different," Maya chuckled despite herself, tears stinging in her eyes as she held her girl's face in her hands.

"I think she looks pretty, Mommy," Kacey declared, and the others nodded in agreement.

"Well, sure, she does, she got those good, good, Friar genes, like you all did," she squinted, which made Marianne smile.

"And Hart genes," she insisted on adding, and Maya leaned to kiss her forehead.

"You look so grown up all of a sudden," she whispered. Marianne hugged her arms around her mother, who hugged her back. "Let's just go and see about evening things up a bit before your dad sees you, okay?"

Lucas would be informed by the twins that they couldn't leave yet, because Maya and Marianne were working on something, and they couldn't leave until it was ready. He wasn't so gullible as to hear this and assume it was the whole truth, but he went along with it for the time being. The girls played around with the baby, probably forgetting after a while that they were expected elsewhere or why they were being delayed. It was about twenty minutes after they'd joined him that Lucas discovered what the hold up had been. Lucy came down first, joining her fellow triplets, with Mackenzie and Aubrey behind her. Maya came down next and, catching her husband's eye, hers said something like 'just you wait.' He was unsure what that was supposed to mean… until Marianne came down. He never got to see evidence of what she'd looked like after her own work, but he saw the result after Maya's intervention, and it was a great shock for him, too, if not from the same angle.

What he got to see was his baby girl, his tall pumpkin, her short hair making her seem even more like she could have been a good two or three years older, the way some parents had been known to complain, out on the soccer field. As the whole story of the haircut came out, with all the girls promising never to give themselves or one another a cut like that, Lucas couldn't say he was surprised that Marianne had done it, and neither could Maya, once she had the chance to think it over. As she'd been preparing for her run of playing in the Annie musical, in her starring role, they'd seen her continue to contemplate what transformation would be required for her hair, and they'd known how much she hated The Wig. Now that she'd gone and done this, they were just waiting for her to ask them to try curling her hair and – temporarily – make it the right color for the time of the musical's run.

That would not be happening on that day, not when they were already running behind and would be expected by their friends at what had up until very recently been known to them as the Zvolensky house. As of today, it would become the Zvolensky-Mantovani and Garcia-Choi house… They were all trying to decide on a more direct name to call it, but there was plenty of time to figure that out later, after everyone was settled in.

They hadn't planned on making the move in February, would have wanted the children to finish their school years rather than forcing them to start from scratch at this point in time, but the family they'd sold Ray and Asher's home to had talked them into handing the keys over early. They could have moved everyone across the street for a few months, only needing to settle the two fathers into the guest room, but then they thought about how weird it would be, for the children especially, to no longer have their fathers' home when it was right there, and seeing strangers now living in it… So, they'd decided to just go ahead and go to Austin earlier than planned. The house was mostly ready, the things that were not ready being those they had purposefully held off until closer to the move, so they could make it work.

"Oh my… Wow, Annie girl, look at you!" Sophie gasped, laughing as she jogged over to her turtle niece and swept her off her feet, making Marianne laugh with her. "I didn't know you were getting your hair cut!"

"Yeah, neither did we," Maya informed Sophie as she set the girl down.

"Oh? Oh…" she looked back down to Marianne, caught between wanting to smile and look serious.

"I need it to be the same color as yours, too," Marianne told her, and that only made the smile win out.

"I bet you'll look great. We'll be like twins!" Sophie held up her hands and got the double high five she'd requested before dealing it back.

"Only for a while," Marianne told her, and Sophie tipped her head. Yes, of course.

Marianne's new hair would be a big hit with the rest of the blended family, as it would be with everyone else who'd see her for the first time without her blond mane. When it would come to the adults hearing the story, those of them who were parents especially, there would be some amount of sympathetic laughter exchanged with Maya and Lucas, thinking of what it must have been like for them. Despite how it had all gone down, they couldn't deny that the results were very flattering on the nine-year-old.

Spontaneous hair changes aside, now what mattered most was getting the families settled into their new home. There had been a lot of consideration given to just how they would make this work, all of them in that big house. For sure, they would get that much more out of it than Diana Zvolensky had gotten out of it in the years since her daughter had moved out, and the same could be said of the years in which both Diana and Sophie had lived together. Now, there would be ten of them sharing the place, the two couples and the six children that they shared among them.

There'd been plenty of debate about how they would work it all out, whether there should be a space for the Moms and the kids, and the Dads and the kids, and then for all of them together, but in the end, it had felt like too much trouble for no reason. Yes, they'd had their own homes back in Houston, across from one another, where their children had rooms in one and the other, but in the day to day… They'd have their meals together, unless something like work or a date night kept them away, and they'd spend most of their evenings together… and then they'd go off home again as they'd go and turn in for the night, the children alternating homes from one night to the next. Now, there'd be no switching, no figuring out whether something had been left at one house or the other, misplaced at one house or the other… and as far as their living all together in that house, well… it could be said that they already did that. Anyway, the house was big enough that they never had to worry about anyone stepping on anyone else's toes.

"Wait, final touch, final touch…" Zay came forward, carrying the box he'd been entrusted with, as the family and their helpers gathered in the home theater room, after they'd finished helping the kids with all their rooms. From the box, the masks and their display hooks were taken and added to the wall. Six small red masks, one each for Giulia, Connor, Jae, Valentina, Santiago, and Violet. Now it was official.

They were all a lot less anguished about the early move than their parents had feared they would be, and a lot of that went to those boys and girls in blue masks, in orange, and in purple masks, too. Yes, they would have left their old homes, old schools behind, but they all had enough of a connection to Austin through their aunts and uncles, some grandparents… And in their schools, among however many unknown classmates, they would have the bond of fellow turtles to help them land on their feet.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners