A/N: [October 12th 2024]

October 12th 2023

Chapter 285
We Aim to Love

She was not so caught up in what she was doing at the kitchen counter that she couldn't catch tip-tap sounds of small feet approaching. She smirked to herself, knowing who it was that was coming toward her. She felt him come alongside her, reaching hands to the counter, the better to stretch up as high as his toes could bring him. Finally, she looked down at him, and that face… Oh, how could she do anything but smile at those rosy cheeks, that little nose, those eyes… He looked like his mother in some ways, he did, but to her he was simply the picture of his father, and that was what she saw when she looked upon her two-year-old nephew.

"Hey, Finny, what's shaking?" she intoned, and the boy giggled.

"Tummy," he pointed at himself.

"Your tummy's shaking?" she asked, and he laughed again as she reached down and pulled him into her arms. "Or are you saying you're hungry?"

"Hungry, yeah," he nodded.

"Well…" Maya hummed, looking around. "It's almost dinner time, but can I interest you in… a bit of cucumber?"

That was a magic word where this boy was concerned. It was his favorite, and once he received it, he was good to go.

"Hey, we're back!" a voice called out, announcing the return of her valiant shoppers, saviors of dinner. There she'd been, getting ready to start cooking for the family and their inbound guests, only to discover that certain as yet unidentified people had gone snacking through several of her ingredients for both the meal and the dessert. There was no room for pivoting, so her in-house siblings had all gone out for a run to the store to remedy the problem.

"Daddy!" Finneas squealed, half consumed cucumber wedge in hand as he ran for his father. Wyatt caught him with one arm even as he set down the bags from the other, so he might close the embrace around his son.

It was as striking as ever to see the two of them together, thinking of how far they'd come. The best part, aside from watching Wyatt grow as a father was to ponder what it must all have been like, from Finn's perspective, growing up in the crowded house, with uncles and aunts and so many cousins there to be with, play with… It was hard to imagine a day was bound to come where they wouldn't in the Friar house anymore.

But they were here now, and if the family in this house wasn't enough somehow, he had plenty more, across the road and beyond, who would drop in before he had any chance to miss any of them. Today, even as he was happily united with his grandparents and his aunt from the Hart-Lane house, he was also joined by several of his 'heart family,' as they'd call it. They were no blood of his, but Shawn and Katy, Tanner and Angela, Haley… They were very much family, by whatever title he might see them as.

"Hey there," Maya smirked as she saw that Haley had brought Rafa along for dinner. Her sister's boyfriend gave the awkward little smile that seemed a package deal when it came to accompanying one's significant other to a family event of any kind, even when he was already considered part of that family by other means.

"Hey," Rafa tipped his head. Haley patted his arm, but she was definitely trying not to laugh either.

The 'tension' was broken a moment later, even as Lucas came down from raising Ezra out of his nap, as the Friar sisters and Shonagh came barreling in. There were about as many of them as there were of guests to say hello to, so it was exactly the kind of mixed up scene as one would imagine it to be. Marianne and Shonagh wanted to show Maisie what they'd been working on for their Halloween costumes, and she was just as excited to see it, to talk about what she was planning. The triplets had all had a big week at their respective activities, and they had been dying to tell Grandpa Shawn and Nana Katy all about it, so they all sort of talked after one another, not so much over one another. They'd skip from one to the other and the next, adding another bit of their own story, leaving their grandparents to make sense of it all. Lucky for them, they were really pros by this point.

Aubrey was very happy when Grangie presented her with the new ballet costume she'd been promised. She was hopping about from one foot to the next, even as she kept her hands to herself like she was afraid to touch the thing and maybe damage it. Meanwhile, Mackenzie had climbed to perch herself on the couch cushions, the better to get a bit closer to her Great Gramps' face full of mustache, and Tanner held on to her hand as she spoke, guarding her from a fall. There was really nothing like watching that man with his great grandchildren. They only knew him this way, didn't know so much of where they had all started, of how he hadn't been in their mother's life until she was grown, and that was really the only way they needed to know him.

The conversations shifted this way and that before finally meeting by the time they all found themselves squeezed in around the extended dinner table. This coincided with the arrival of Ella and Taylor and their girls, and once they got to their seats, the first thing they all seemed to want to talk about was Marianne's upcoming eleventh birthday. They weren't there yet, no, hadn't even made it halfway through the month of October, but it was approaching, they all knew it, and that meant they needed to start making plans, more than just preparing for the Halloween side of things. There had been plenty of sneaky talk of presents tossed back and forth between the parents, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles of all kinds, but then what about the party itself?

She was getting older now, there was no point denying it, and her idea of a birthday party was bound to grow along with her. Hallowannie had been part of them for as long as she'd been in this world, but she was going to be eleven this time. She was getting so, so very close to tacking on a 'teen' at the end of her age, and they were going to do their best to not think about that so much until two years from now, but here… This time around, she was still fully content in having her friends, classmates, groupmates, all of them joining in on the games, and the costume contest… If she had wanted to leave a mark of her growing up in any way, maybe she'd done so with her desire to refresh their game set up and add new games, too. Her parents were more than happy to enable her to involve herself in their family traditions.

"Can't we stay up longer?" Lucy begged when she and the twins were made to go upstairs and change along with the little sisters.

"Yeah, we're not little anymore," Remy insisted, turning a look to Mackenzie and Aubrey, who didn't notice.

"Well, we're older than before," Kacey amended, and her twin approved.

"Maybe, but not this time, alright? Come on, up, up," Maya moved in to incite them and climb the stairs, so they did, with grumblings all the way. Without a word – wisely so, as he probably wouldn't have been heard anyway – Tanner followed behind the group. When they got to the top of the stairs, his great granddaughters looked over, noticing his presence and wondering why he'd come along, which allowed him to speak.

"Would it cheer you up if I went and told you girls a story?" he asked, and the silence made the adults around them bite back their laughter. They all knew very well that Great Gramps didn't tell stories from books. Instead, he told stories from life, from back where he'd grown up, and the girls found them fascinating, especially hearing them in the old man's deep voice. "Alright, so you should go and get changed," he told them, and they took off at once, hurrying into their rooms to get their PJs on. Once they were all changed, their clothes put away, teeth brushed, hair brushed, they piled in together in the triplets' room, with Aubrey joining Lucy in her bed and Mackenzie pairing up with Kacey while Remy called for Finn and the boy scrambled to get there. Tanner told his story, and the triplets may not have been fully asleep by the time he left, but they were near enough that, without disturbance, they would nod off in no time.

Marianne and Shonagh went down into the basement with Maisie and Tori to play until it'd be time for them to go to bed, too, which left the others to settle into the living room a while to talk. Their birthday girl would not be one to snoop, but they still left the subject of Hallowannie aside for now. There was a lot of talk turned toward Ella and Taylor, naturally, as their baby may still have been a few months from being born but was already deeply anticipated. They were going out of their way not to find out what they were having, no matter how much they were all curious to know. Bets were tossed around about whether Tori and Sunny would have another sister or their very first baby brother. They had until February before they'd find out, so there'd be plenty of time for any of them to change their minds a few times.

When time came for the girls below to head up to bed, it was decided that Tori would spend the night at her grandparents', so she told her parents good night and headed up with her aunt and her guest. They didn't need a story to get them up the stairs, but they had listened in on the one the younger girls had gotten earlier, so they thanked Tanner for it as they finished their goodbyes and headed up. Maya didn't know what made her happier between seeing how happy this made her grandfather, or how that happiness made her mother happy in return. It didn't feel so long ago when they had been reunited, all of them, and yet it had been more than a decade. It was never going to be enough, not for any of them.

Sooner or later, of course, the evening had to come to an end. The Hart-Lanes had only a short walk to get them home again, so they hung back, as they would, to help finish the cleaning up in the kitchen. Taylor gathered up the sleeping Sunny and her things while Ella hugged her parents and grandparents, promising her father that yes, she would write to let them know that they had made it home safe. Whether he'd say it aloud or not, they all knew it had as much to do with the baby growing in her belly as it did the memory of the awful day where he'd lost his mother. Maya was not far behind on that one either, enough so that she asked her parents to do the same when they'd reach the Hunter-Hart house.

"Do you want a picture, too?" Shawn asked as he hugged his eldest. "Because I'll do it. I happen to be a photographer," he gave her a casual shrug.

"You are, huh? Would I have seen your work?" Maya played along, and his face was just as she would have expected from him.

Everyone would reach their destination as hoped, sending back proof – in photo, all of them – that was greatly appreciated, even from the Hart-Lanes, who had to play along.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners