A/N: [July 4th 2024]

September 22nd 2023

Chapter 265
We Breathe Together Now

They were all at the ranch that day. Him and Maya, all the kids… This day was really getting to be family tradition for them, every year. A day for goodbyes and a day for hellos… Just now, it was only morning, and they'd had breakfast at the bed and breakfast with Cristina, Rafa, Bishop, and Evangeline, so now the kids were outside again, running around and playing while the rest of them looked on.

Ezra was being held by Rafa at the moment, who carried him around in order to involve him in his big sisters' games. Lucas watched his son and his would-be-cousin, and he smiled, even as his thoughts wandered once again to the matter of Agnes Killian.

Now that they were back in Austin, it was as hard as ever not to start thinking about what they could do, should do, about the girl who may or may not have given birth to the youngest Friar. He'd actually seen her, once. She hadn't seen him, or at least he didn't think she'd seen him. She'd been out with her family, her parents and her younger brother, Jonah, and he wouldn't have dreamed of stepping up to them like that. If she was Ezra's mother, then he doubted she would have said a word about her even being pregnant to her family. Another time would come, maybe, where the choice would become clearer.

He had not approached her, but he'd definitely caught himself looking at her brother, at Jonah Killian, and wondering if Ezra would look anything like him when he got older. It had been so strange, looking at them all and realizing that they could be his son's blood relatives, but until they knew for sure…

"Dad?" His attention was drawn back to the present and the ranch as Marianne appeared at the bottom of the B&B's steps, hugging the basketball in her arms and looking so much like her mother when he'd first known her, even though she was still a couple years short of that age.

"Yeah, pumpkin?" he asked back. She held up the ball with questions in her eyes.

He may not have been a player anymore, but he coached. He'd been coaching the team kids, then the team itself, but then beyond that… He really hadn't done a lot since his attack, which he was still awed to think had been almost two years ago now. When he wasn't coaching, the most he did was toss the ball at the hoop, retrieve it, start again… Deep down he knew he was able to do more, that he was nowhere near the state he'd been in after what had gone down that night at the stables, but something still held him back.

Marianne knew that, of course, she would, but she never stopped giving him a chance to step forward again, and it was one more reason to love her the way that he did.

Before he could decide, the door opened from behind him, ushering out their departing camper. The kids came running up, knowing that the moment had come. Gianna Longo was headed back to Italy. She had been looking forward to and dreading her day of departure, which they all understood, and they'd been doing their best to make the last days of her stay in Austin feel memorable without making her wish she didn't have to leave too much.

It might not have helped then that the girls all crowded around her to hug her goodbye, but she welcomed the gesture and hugged them all back, speaking to them in a mix of English and Italian that was tinged with tears that rolled over her smile.

Bishop had volunteered to drive her to the airport, and Brett would go with them even though he was not leaving Texas along with her. The details of his decision to remain in the city instead of going back to his parents were not widely known beyond those who had been directly involved, but really Lucas wished it would all have gone differently. To the point, he kind of wished they would have been upset, that they would have fought for him, even threatened to sue him and the ranch. At least it wouldn't be what it had been instead, which was that they had simply agreed to settle him in his own place and provide him with staff to look after him. It might have looked like a kindness, but it really didn't feel that way, and even though Brett promised that it was just what he had wanted, he couldn't hide his feelings entirely. He kind of wished they'd fought for him, too.

With the previous year's XCs gone, the ranch now looked to welcome the coming year's exchange campers, especially as it would be the first time where they welcomed four of them instead of two. It would likely be the most they took in from year to year, but already it felt like they should have been doing this a long time ago. The first of them to arrive were their two American campers, and of those, they were first introduced to thirteen-year-old Ricky Chase from Oregon. He was coming with his horse, and already Lucas knew that they would have quite a year ahead of them. The horse had already been on his family's farm before he was born, and by now he was getting on his years. It had been agreed, between all parties involved, that the horse would not return to Oregon with Ricky at the end of the year. Instead, he would go up toward Sanderson Farm, the way many horses had gone over the years, to spend the rest of their days, cared for by Missy and Cole and the family at large, including the Friar girls up the road. To look at him, Ricky was going to need every day he'd be spending in Texas in order to say goodbye to his friend Skipjack.

After him came fifteen-year-old Cate Ngo from Michigan. She would be entering the high school along with the freshman class, there to be hosted by the Willows family, whose daughter Katie was also about to start the ninth grade. The girls had been corresponding since the match had been made and they were already becoming great friends, thrilled to begin the year of Cate and Katie. When the new XC told her this, Maya grinned and let her know that, if she needed a third, she could introduce them to her mother. This had been meant as a throwaway joke, but instead the girl had asked if she genuinely could. She was such a big fan of both Heart of Texas and Goldenheart, which she swore had not been her motivation for seeking this placement, but now that she was here, she would more than welcome the chance to meet the woman who had helped to create and starred at the head of this fictional world of theirs. Maya assured her that she would get many an opportunity to do just that, and she could just imagine the look on her mother's face when they'd meet.

"There's a car coming! Is it her?" Lucy turned to her father, and Lucas lifted his head and tried to see whether this would be one of their two international campers. He was pretty sure that it was, though not the one that Lucy had been seeking.

"Not yet, bun. Hey, Rafa?" he called out, and the boy turned around to look at him, then at the road coming onto the property. Understanding who this would be, he went and passed Ezra over to Marianne before jogging over to meet the boy who'd be hosted by him and his mother.

It had almost not occurred to Lucas and the others, as they'd been placing these campers with families connected to their schools, that they might go and place one with the family that resided right here, at Sullivan Stables. But Cristina had been willing and interested, as was Rafa, so when Tomas Silva's application had come along, he had seen to placing the Brazilian boy with the Cruz family, to join the eleventh graders at Maya's school.

Tomas was seventeen, but stood at a height with Marianne, which was as much a mark of how tall she was as of how short he was. He looked as though he couldn't have been older than fourteen, and not even just for his height, and maybe it was written on all their faces. Finally, the boy looked around and admitted that he was in fact Gabriel Silva, Tomas' younger brother. They were actually both in the same grade back home, and when his brother had changed his mind at the last minute, Gabriel had asked to take his place. If his father hadn't been right there to confirm and apologize for the lack of warning, they would have been in a more complicated position. Still, this would require more discussion, so Lucas escorted the Cruz and Silva families to his office. If they could make this work, they wouldn't have come all this way for nothing.

"It's her this time, right?" Marianne came to stand with her father when they next saw a car come up and turn to drive through the ranch gate. She'd been trying to manage her excitement, her curiosity, but now all the other kids had arrived, which meant that there was only one of them missing and this one… this one was her guest, who would be in her fifth grade class and would live in their house for the whole of the coming year.

"Yeah, I think it might be," Lucas smiled as he spotted what was clearly a giddy girl moving around in the backseat of the car like she was trying to see everything all at once. "Give her the time to get out, yeah?" Marianne squinted up at him. "Don't give me that look like you weren't going to go run up to that car right now," he challenged, and her laughter gave her away.

The car came to a stop, and both the driver's door and the back door opened at the same time, allowing an old man to come out of one and a young girl out of the other. She ran over to join the man and they walked together until they could be face to face with one another. The old man reached out his hand and Lucas met him halfway in greeting and introduction. His name was Brian Dunn, and here was his granddaughter, Shonagh Hallissey. Going off of the men's handshake, the girls looked to one another and decided to do the same, which made them laugh.

"I thought I was the tallest girl in my class, but you're even taller than I am!" Shonagh exclaimed as they walked over to find the others.

"You might be the tallest after me when school starts," Marianne promised her, and Lucas bit back a laugh, seeing how glad she was to have someone else that was a bit tall for their age. They already had a feeling, both of them, that they would have a great year together.

Shonagh was amazed to learn that Marianne had so many sisters, and one baby brother on top of that, and aunts and uncles, and a cousin, and the dogs, and the bird… As Maya and the girls met her, they were all of a mind that she would fit right into their crowded house. And with school still weeks away, well, they would get to play, all of them together, get to know one another. Before all that though, and thanks to Shonagh's family consenting to her accompanying them, they would all be bound for a family reunion, out in Arkansas. They'd have so much to show her…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners