May 28th 2023

Chapter 148
We Have Groups of Many Colors

He had been accused, lovingly, of putting this off. He supposed he could see why they might think of it this way; a while ago, he could admit, he had resisted, but that wasn't what he was doing now... or what he had been doing, he should say. Today, it was changing. Today, he was returning to the Sullivan Stables After School Program, there to look after the green group alongside Dylan Orlando and Bobby Davis. He would make appearances in both the blue and red groups, too, because his granddaughter and his firstborn had respectively asked him to, and who would he be to tell them no?

The reason it had taken him this long to return was not the one that several people had assumed. It had nothing to do with any residual trauma, physical or psychological, even if he would readily confirm that he still had some of that lingering, that here and there he would expect to always have something, ready to sneak up on him when he least expected it. But the possibility was not going to overpower him, he wouldn't let it. He had suffered terrible things, losses, but he was alive, surrounded by people he loved and who loved him, and that was all the power he needed.

He knew when he was ready to return full time. He realized it right about the time Maya came home from California. He could have gone right back to the ranch, but he decided it would be best, for himself and his entire family, to take a little more time, time where he would just be okay, and exist in this state, alone and with them. After that, he would return to all that he'd been forced to set aside in November. And that included the groups.

There'd been some thought of not telling the girls ahead of time, to surprise them when he'd show up, but Lucas had changed his mind in the end, deciding that it would be a much better surprise if they all got to carry it with them for a few days. So, he'd told them one night at dinner, when Ella, Taylor, and Tori had been with them. It had been received just as he had expected, which was with great, loud merriment, and then with hopeful requests that he would visit the blue and red groups on top of his return to green. The whole thing had ended up like some kind of negotiation, the results of which became that, for the first week, he would divide his time equally, on each group day, between the three groups, and they would rotate the sequence of those blocks of time between them. Everyone was satisfied, everyone was just happy to have him back. On day one, he would therefore be starting with Tori and the blues, then the triplets in green, before ending in red with Marianne. He waited all day, and now the moment had arrived.

"And Kylie and Maria, they got some of those badges, too, and they gave me one each, and I gave them one each, and they gave each other one each, and then Dad sewed them on my bandanna, and Kylie and Maria's moms sewed their badges on theirs, and now everybody can see that we're best friends," Tori excitedly went on telling her grandfather as the two of them walked hand in hand to join the rest of the blue group.

He'd only just noticed the three little badges, along the edge of her bandanna as it sat on her head, and she'd gotten a look like she'd been waiting to tell him all about them. He couldn't stop smiling as he listened to her, chuckled to himself at how she could say the word Dad and he would know from the way she said it whether she was referring to Theo or Taylor. This one was Taylor, breaking out the needle and thread for his stepdaughter.

"It's a nice touch, looks good on you," Lucas told her, and she flashed him that bright smile to warm her Pappy's heart. "One question. What's going to happen after this year. You three are going to have new bandannas for the fall," he pointed out.

"It's okay, Pappy Luke, we have a lot, so we can put a new one on the red bandanna, and another new one on the yellow when we're in that group," Tori confidently assured him, a moment before pausing, thinking to herself. Lucas suspected that she wondered what they would do when they had no more bandannas to sew their badges on to. That would be a problem for twelve-year-old Tori, and she was still seven, so Lucas gave her hand a light and playful tug so that she'd blink and look at him.

"Do you have enough of those little badges so I can have one, too?" he asked her, and her face lit up all over again as she nodded. She definitely did. "Good, then we'll need to find somewhere to put it, so everyone knows you're my sneaky granddaughter," he whispered at her, and she gave another nod in reply that was as sneaky as she was.

As they joined the group and got on their way, Lucas was very happy to see all the kids having a wonderful time as they did. He was obviously seeing a lot of Tori and her friends, but even the others... Some of them he had seen through some of their green group time, others not, but one way or another he knew them all, and he was glad to have them around. He was very happy to see some faces in particular, the faces who would have been absent for a time, after their parents had expressed concerns for their safety and removed them. They had missed being here, and it made him glad to see that their families once again trusted him and Sullivan Stables as a whole to give them this experience.

For how long he had spent there, as opposed to the other groups he had or had not looked after, Lucas was very happy to next find himself among the small ones down in green group. He had seen most if not all of them here and there in the time he had been away, but there was still this feeling like they had all grown so, so much in the time since he'd last been on group duty, back in November. Even as he had seen THEM every day since, he couldn't help but feel the same about his own daughters. It felt impossible to think that Kacey, Remy, and Lucy would be done in green before long and graduating up to blue group. He was already having to figure out what he would do in the fall, if he would follow them as he had done Marianne, or if he would stay back and be there for Mackenzie. No matter what he chose, he felt like he'd be letting someone down. He'd figure something out in the end. What else could he do?

Oh, they were all so happy to get him back, his kiddos in green. They knew he was there, that he was back to stay, thanks to the triplets, and they'd already come rushing over to say hello when they'd arrived earlier, but when he went to them for their third of the afternoon, that was something else, and on that one he was certain that Dylan and Bobby had both played a hand. They had made a trip to the arts and crafts room in the first bit of their time at the ranch, and the results of it had been a whole array of drawings, some cards, which he received upon arrival, all of them waved up at him so he'd take them and look at them.

He ended up sitting down on a bench where he could take them in turn, observe them, speak with, and thank the young artist... It felt like some kind of Mall Santa imitation, and he kind of liked it. Highlights went anywhere from his daughters' work to when his co-monitors presented their own. They had been compelled to produce these by the kids, but by the comical grins on their faces, he'd guess the two of them had been all too happy to get in on the project.

The whole time he was with the greens, he had a small pack of shadows underfoot. He wasn't surprised for having the triplets there, Lucy especially, but he also had the trio's friends tagging along. Felicity, Sammie, and Barry were all trailing him, too, and it could have been because of their wanting to be near their friends and nothing more, but he could see that there was more to it for them. The five-year-olds looked to him, if not like a father, then like something of a favored uncle, and he took that role with pride.

When it came time for him to head up to find the red group, Lucas couldn't help but think of how he may have never monitored the kids over the past nearly two years, but he had done so before. He would have stayed with them, but he'd gone back down to green for the triplets. These kids though... He had seen them through all of green and blue, had watched them grow and develop, and they remembered it, too. They were looking forward to him coming back, even for a little bit. To hear it out of Marianne and her friends, he might have been this legendary figure of their youth, might forever be that to them as they'd age out of the program and grow into adulthood. It made him think of his summer campers, from years and years ago, coming to visit him, and he imagined similar encounters when he'd be an old man... He oddly looked forward to it. In the meantime...

"Guys, he's here!" Nicky Orlando called out, and between the way he sounded just like his father at his age and the reaction it caused out of the kids, he had to laugh. He watched them all rush to him, and it was no surprise to see who reached him first, long legs making for long strides.

"Look out!" Marianne warned and he braced himself to catch her into a hug.

"Gotcha," he grinned down at her, making her laugh.

They had all changed so much, but at the same time not at all. He saw the most out of Marianne and her friends, permanent fixtures as they were at the house, so one would think that the notion wouldn't touch them, but it did. He recalled tiny Winnie Grayson and her broken fairy wing, and Harper Beaumont and her long banished fear of horses, June Abernathy and her eternal fascination with boots turning into concrete knowledge and predictions that she would either own an inordinate amount of footwear, or go so far as to create it, or both... Mosi Okafor, he suspected, still carried some of that boyhood crush for his daughter, but most of all had shifted into eternal friendship...

These kids, even if it would take them twice as long to do it, would be something like Maya's first class of start-to-finish students, wouldn't they? They would be the very first to come along at age four and leave when they were twelve. They had one more group graduation ahead of them, from red up to yellow, at the end of this year, and it was hard for him to believe it. Looking at them all, for the first time, it made him wonder if there was space for them to create an upper program, for the kids that reached the end of the program and still wanted to come. He'd sort of thought about it when Rafa had pleaded his case, but now... He needed to think about it. Looking at all those kids, those smiles, he couldn't not think about it.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners