June 27th 2023

Chapter 178
We Remind the Sun & Stars

"What's so funny?" Rosa asked as their little group walked along. She led Allie Mantovani by the hand, as Maya guided the girl's twin brother Santi at her side, the better for the four-year-olds to hold one another's hands in the middle. Next to them, by Rosa, Chiara pushed the stroller where her youngest sat. One-year-old Violet Choi was always happy to go for a ride and it showed in her cheery demeanor.

"You," Chiara answered first, beaming. "Your face, when she calls you Zia," she went on, and Violet lifted her head to look back at Rosa, at her zia, her aunt. That was what she'd become, very specifically, to the girl she had borne into the world. Maya, Nadine, all of them, were aunties. Rosa was her own thing, whether Violet knew why or not. And when she did chirp out the word, it would raise such a smile on Rosa's face, much as she tried not to show it, like she didn't know what to do with herself.

"It's sweet," Maya added, and Rosa tried to act like it was nothing. Her face struggled to show it.

Maya's phone rang, and while Santiago tried to 'help' her dig it out, she got to it first, and she answered. She might have suspected what she would soon hear if she hadn't been so caught up in the conversation with her friends, but the shock was almost better this way. It was Lucas... Ella was in labor, and it was for real this time, which meant in turn that Maya was about to be a grandmother for the second time, this time from the very beginning. And it set her heart in flight, winged not like a butterfly but a hummingbird.

There was no mistaking her reaction for meaning anything else, and her friends got there in half a second flat. Valentina and her twin brother did not know the whole thing, but they recognized enough to be drawn into the giddiness around them, which echoed on to their baby sister in her stroller.

"Give him here, go, go," Rosa held out her hand and moved to take Santi's free hand, as though he wasn't already secured by his sister's hold.

"We'll catch up, promise," Chiara nodded along, and Maya needed nothing more to speed off to get to the parking lot, thanking coincidence for the fact that she'd come in on her own, allowing her to leave in the same way.

Oh, there was a big part of her that wanted to go straight to the hospital, to be with her eldest daughter, but she knew that there be a lot for her to answer for if she didn't first swing back for home to collect the wild pack of little aunts. And she wasn't about to do that to them. Plus, what a memory it would be to capture, for all seven of her girls, and for that baby about to be born… Her little heart wings were beating so, so fast.

To their credit, when the girls saw her arrive, they sensed that something was happening, something big, and as they had all been waiting on this one moment for as long as they'd done – a couple of weeks – it wouldn't take much for them to piece it together, so Maya didn't waste any time in telling them: their big sister was having her baby, so they had to get going. The triplets displayed their most precise abilities for synchronicity here, scattering to collect the toys they had been playing with, along with their sisters. Mackenzie and Aubrey jumped around and cheered, both of them very baffled at the way their big sister Marianne had almost immediately started to cry profusely. Why was she crying? That was good news, wasn't it? Even as she went and embraced her firstborn to help her ride out her emotions, Maya promised the pair that yes, it was good news, and that the tears here were wholly happy ones. Marianne was just so deeply excited about becoming an aunt again.

While they were all moving to go and join the growing family, Lucas had already seen to their getting to the hospital, and they, too, had needed to make a detour on the way. It was one thing that Taylor had come to find them, having been alerted that his wife was in labor – for real this time – but their unit was incomplete. While Taylor was frazzled and beside himself, joining Ella and trying to figure out what they needed to do next, Ella had one thing on her mind, one thing that was not her own active labor, evidently. All she could think about was Tori. She was at her father's that day, but she needed to be at the hospital for the birth or Ella would never forgive herself for the implication of her not being included.

Lucas drove – Taylor was much better positioned staying by his wife's side and tending to her – and he put in a call to Theo, the better to speed things up. He would let Tori know what was going on and get her ready to be picked up as quickly as possible, in the ride from the ranch to the hospital.

It was perhaps the best thing Ella could have requested, to ensure that Tori understood once and for all how important she was in the extension of their family, that she knew that she would never ever be pushed out. When she climbed into the car and her mother saw her, Ella looked so relieved, so happy, and Tori took up her hand at once as she got a kiss atop her head. No matter where their lives took them, there would be no forgetting how Ella had brought a beginning to Tori's life almost as much as Tori had brought one to Ella's as well. All of it was thanks to her, truly.

"Dad?" Ella asked, breathing as evenly as she could, when they'd made it to the hospital, and she had finally been able to settle on to a bed. Lucas walked up to her, caught one of her hand in his with the least concern about whether or not she'd squeeze his fingers too hard.

"I'm here, okay? Wherever you need me to be," he promised, and she nodded. Yes, she knew, and that was what was making her emotional. "I love you so much. You've got this."

Lucas would be in the waiting room by the time Maya and the others arrived because that was where he was needed. As he let them know, things had progressed quickly, likely had been further along than any of them realized. Specifically, here, it meant that they didn't get to visit with Ella before she had the baby. Some of them were more disappointed than others about this, and they did their best to hide this, but it was easier said than done. They'd had this whole thing figured out, a very secret sister thing, from what they heard, and now they wouldn't get to do it.

"I think Ella will be just as happy to see what you guys have for her after, when you go and meet the baby," Maya promised her daughters, resisting the urge to point out she might in fact have been happier, as she would no longer be in the process of expelling a whole small human from her body. They had only a vague notion about how babies came into the world for now and she intended to keep it that way a while longer.

This was, again, not what they had wanted to hear, but there was nothing to be done for it. Here, Marianne Friar needed to marshal her own bit of disappointment and do what she did best as a big sister. The youngest of them were having the hardest time of wanting to rush out and find their big sister and being told that they couldn't, so the one thing that they'd have on their side here would be distraction, activity. And whether because she was the daughter of an artist, a teacher, or a mother of several, this all came down to some spontaneous arts and crafts. They were going to find paper, and some means of writing and drawing, and they were going to make… something… many somethings. These would then be presentable to their sister, their brother-in-law, their niece, the baby, the various members of the medical team…

In no time, they had convinced their parents – through the thinnest form of a sales pitch – to also start making something with them. Right about now, it did feel as though they could use a strong dose of distraction, too. They had found themselves sitting in for what was probably many times the average number of births in their lifetime, and without a doubt this one stood in a class of its own. This was their daughter out there. This was their girl having a baby, and it may not have been her first one, but it was her first one since becoming one of theirs. Their heart existed in a constant state of thrill and fear, looking forward to meeting the baby but also wondering if something might go wrong with the delivery. The two halves were not quite that, because constantly one side would suddenly edge out the other, then flow back to become the smaller part, then gain again…

The flow settled when Taylor Munroe emerged to find his family, his parents, his siblings, nieces and nephews, his in-laws, and he had a smile on him to gladly and categorically stamp out the fearful side, and the disappointed side… His joy was their joy, their hope… and not just his.

She had been offered the choice, even as she'd been told as clearly as possible that it could be frightening and they wouldn't blame her for wanting to leave, and she had chosen to be there, with her mother, as her sibling was brought forth. Now, she came striding hand in hand with her stepfather, matching his smile as she got to be the one to tell them all: she had a baby sister.

They went and visited with mother and baby as soon as they could. They had debated whether they might go on their own first, Maya and Lucas, bringing the girls afterward, but there was no way this would fly with them, so it was all the Friars together to go and meet Baby Girl Munroe. She was in her mother's arms when they walked into the room, and in her first hour of life was already bringing as much bright happiness to her heart as she had done when she'd been waiting to be born.

"Hi! Hi," Ella laughed as her sisters rushed in on either side of her bed, stretching on their toes or being lifted up in Aubrey's case, so they could see the baby. Ella did her best to position her so they could see, and the six girls quietly said their hellos. Behind them, their parents were having their own rush of happy tears, getting a look of their new granddaughter. With only the tuft of fine hair to be seen up to now, they could already tell she would inherit her mother's and sister's color, the same to be determined but looking likely for her eyes, too.

"What's her name?" Mackenzie asked what they were all wondering. Ella smiled, having expected as much, and she looked to Taylor before turning back to answer the question.

"Well, we wanted to name our baby after someone that meant a lot to the both of us," she explained. "Whether we had a boy or a girl, we wanted to honor our friend as best we could. So, she's called Sunny. She's… the light on a new day," she told them, explaining further for the younger ones' benefit what the rest of them had already pieced together, that the day here was capitalized, a name in itself, the surname of a beloved young man who would have absolutely loved to be uncle to his friends' baby girl had he lived to adulthood with them. She could not have been more aptly named.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners