A/N: JUNE 24TH - Hey, so as much as I'm trying to stay on top of things, where I used to be one month ahead of posting with my writing, right now with my job and everything I lost all that advance and haven't had a chance to build any of it up again, which means I'm writing the chapters on the day they go up. Some days, that'll mean that I don't get it done in time because I'm too tired to do so once I get home (like yesterday). I'm hoping to get that settled soon, but if I miss days here and there in the near future, that's why, and I'll do my best to catch up asap. I'm about to start today's chapter now, not sure whether I'll get the 'We Three Hearts' one done today, but if not then it will be up tomorrow. Thanks!

June 23rd 2023

Chapter 174
We Swim Above & Below

"Mom, come see what we did!" Marianne came running into the house via the kitchen door.

Maya barely had the time to put down her pen that she had her arm snatched up for pulling and needed to decide fast whether or not to follow. She did follow though; it was the reason why she'd settled down here to work as opposed to upstairs at Lucas' desk. It was only a matter of time before they all finished what they were doing out there, and when they did, they'd want her to go and look. She wasn't about to impede that, plus being dragged down the stairs felt unnecessarily risky.

So, she followed her firstborn outside, where she didn't have to travel long at all to behold her handiwork. Her little sisters were out there, along with her aunts, uncle, and little cousin. Finneas was just running and running on his little one-year-old legs, giggling excitedly while the others looked on and either laughed along with him or encouraged his exploration of the tent and the whole set up the others had put together ahead of Marianne's camping sleepover with her friends that evening.

"Wow! That looks amazing!" Maya beamed at everything she saw, the camp site as much as the people. Nellie was out there, in full 'daughter of Shawn Hunter' mode with her camera, allowing Wyatt to focus fully on his son and this memory he'd get to keep, of his son on this day.

"I wasn't sure we would finish in time, but we did," Marianne breathed, tipping her head, and Maya had to reach over and pull her into a side hug for how she looked so like her father in that one moment. "They'll be here soon, right?"

'They' would start to arrive a few minutes later, and there'd be no holding still once that happened. Some of these kids they had seen grow as much as their own over the last handful of years, and just like with their children, they would be taken now and again by just how fast they were all growing. Sometimes it felt like the simple fact that they all had each other, all existed as a group, made their growth feel like it all happened that much faster.

It continued to be that Marianne's best friend, Winnie, would look at him as some version of a father figure in her life, and Lucas would never discourage the notion. He knew where they actually stood, and he was confident that Winnie knew it, too, same as her mother. They were all the family that they chose to be together, and that was what counted. He could still see a lot of the small girl who'd once cried over a broken fairy wing, though she had definitely evolved. She did not follow her best friend's aspirations toward the stage, but when it'd be just the two of them – as it often was – she would get carried away singing and dancing around with Marianne, and they would both have such smiles on them the entire time. There were already a hefty quantity of pictures and videos as evidence of this, showing the girls get older, and taller (very much taller in Marianne's case and less so in Winnie's), and both the Friars and Lauren Grayson looked forward to what the years to come would add to this gallery of memories for the pair.

They'd all been waiting to leave the house, only waiting for the kids to arrive, to drop off their things and say goodbye to their parents – or aunt and uncle – for the next couple of days, and now finally they could head out to what had been one of the very first suggestions out of Marianne when she'd brought up the sleepover weekend. She wanted to take them all to her uncles' house to go swim in their pool. They could have gone other places, but this was just her favorite pool, and Michael and Keith were more than happy to receive their Annie girl and her friends. They couldn't go and take all of them out there and not bring the other five girls, the triplets and the little sisters, and Marianne didn't argue the fact; it had been her idea to begin with. They all got to put on their swimsuits, and grab their favorite towels…

When they all got to the house, they wasted no time in trying to ditch the clothes they had on top of their suits so they could get into the water already. Oh, they knew to be safe, always, especially those of them who had been coming to swim in this pool over the years, which was all of them now, as Haru got The Speech from former lifeguard and swim instructor Keith Reyes. To look at the way the two of them exchanged the odd smirk, Marianne had clearly told him all about it ahead of time, which made the event itself as important as it was just kind of hilarious to the long-distance friends. Once the newcomer had been told all that he needed to be told and made it clear that he understood what he had been told, the path was clear for him and the others to get on to some splashy fun.

They'd done their best to ensure that all of them who went to the Sullivan-Reyes pool that day would have the best of times. That meant going in with a plan as far as who would do what, and who would watch over which group of kids. When it came to Kacey, Remy, Lucy, Mackenzie, and Aubrey, the watch fell upon Maya and her siblings. Between the four of them, they were confident that they could keep an eye over the five sisters and little Finn, too. In a lot of ways, he was like their secret weapon, because as much as they all loved to swim around, and dive under the surface, and do every other fun thing that came with being in the pool, once they added their tiny cousin and how a lot of this was still so new for him… Now that was all they needed to have in order to keep the excitement at a safe level and reduce the chances of any unfortunate incidents.

It was truly something to see Lucy when she'd be in the water. They never saw her quite so confident as when she'd be there, until she actually came off as 'the leader' among the triplets. Maya loved to see how all of her girls would grow and evolve on their own, and just as much if not more so when she got to see how they would do this together, as sisters. Maybe some of that went back to her own life, to how she hadn't grown up with all of her own siblings from childhood, and if so then that was fine by her. She hadn't set out to revise her past by way of her children, but the fact that she'd sort of gotten a version of that anyway… It felt pretty good.

Lucas had his cousin Lydia on hand to keep an eye on Marianne and her friends. The pack of them would insist that they were getting to be old enough that they didn't need to be watched and, whether or not that was true, they'd be left to do their own thing… even as the two cousins sat on the pool's edge, talking about their respective summers thus far and what they looked forward to before fall time rolled in. Of course, Lucas would be keeping a casual eye on his daughter and her friends, and they were all definitely doing just fine out there, so it made it very easy.

He would look at them all, but in particular he would see his daughter among them, the people she cared about the most in the world that she wasn't related to by blood or adoption. Winnie, Harper, June, Mosi, and Haru… They made her world when she wasn't in family mode, and she was so lucky to have them all. Lucas knew that, even though one of that group was very rarely with the rest of them, they were all equally important to her, as they all were to one another. Haru had come into their midst thanks to her, but over the year he had come into her circle of friends, he had been welcomed by all of them and not just her. He and Mosi especially, as the only two boys in the group, had kept up a regular correspondence of sorts, with calls, with games… But for sure, the one he was closest to was Marianne, and as much as they maintained that friendship from far away most of the year, now that they were back spending the next several weeks together… They were going to make the very most of it.

They carried that spirit right back out into the world as they left Michael and Keith's by stopping for ice cream on the way home. This led to an unexpected but very happy encounter with Haley Hunter, who was waiting to pick up several things. She'd come prepared with a small cooler and, when her sisters asked after it, she gave a semi-exasperated sigh.

"I spend most of my days with three pregnant girls right now, okay?" she pointed out, which made them bite back a laugh.

They all empathized with her current 'situation,' they did. This summer was supposed to be about her focusing to advance her training in the various martial arts that she studied, and she was still doing some of that, but not nearly the way she had intended it before Madelyn's situation came to light, and then Max McAllister's, and then Marie Nilsson's… All of a sudden, the three of them had become this unit together, and while she had only signed up to look after one of them, Haley now had them all, and she did it without hesitation, like the friend that she was.

With their own ice cream collected, they ate part of it out at the shop and brought the rest on home. That leftover would be put away in the freezer for safe keeping until later on, after dinner. While her sisters would remain at home with their mother, Marianne would follow her father as he led her and her friends toward the campfire site. Nellie and Gracie would stay with the kids in their tent overnight, but for now it would be the six of them and Lucas, happily leading the camping 'trip.'

There was ice cream, there were enough smores to make one wonder how they slept at all and didn't have enough sugar in them to keep them hopping all night. Because she was very much her parents' child, Marianne led her friends in ghost stories as much as songs, the first keeping the other kids hooked on her every word and occasionally yelping or jumping from surprised fright, and the other showing which of them all could be seen someday joining a musical in high school and which would probably have no such inclinations whatsoever.

"Dad?" Marianne asked as they were seeing to getting the fire extinguished. Some of her friends were looking like they would fall asleep a second or two before their heads ever grazed a pillow.

"Yeah, Pumpkin?" Lucas smiled.

"Can we have a pool?" she asked, and now he tried not to laugh. He and Maya had been holding a wager, to see how long it would take her to ask it, as though they hadn't known that she was working her way up to it. She'd been dropping hints whether she meant to or not. It wasn't as though they hadn't been thinking about it themselves, but having it come from any one of their girls…

"Maybe…" he started, and she swayed up on her toes so fast that he did have to laugh. "Easy there, okay, don't go get your shovel yet. We'll talk about it, alright?"

"Fine, okay…" she let out a breath, but oh, did she have a smile tugging at her face all the way back to the house and her tent for the night.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners