A/N: [November 28th 2024]

November 28th 2023

Chapter 332
We Create Branches Upon Branches

They would sometimes wonder what it would have been like if they had settled down somewhere else when they'd gone and started their family together. Specifically, they imagined the kind of life they had made, the two of them, her siblings, their many children, and everything that came with them. Friends, many of them, with growing families of their own, were one thing, but then their girls had their friends, too, and they would all be over at the house a lot. On many a day, their home would get to feel like an overrun daycare, and that was fine by them, that was what they'd signed themselves up for, having a family as large as theirs, but they'd be lying if they said that it didn't get to them, too, once in a while. The rest of the time though, they welcomed the noise, they embraced the mess, they joined in the chaos. Today was very much one of those days, with many of the girls' friends on hand, roaming about the house, and outside, too. They hadn't even hit full capacity yet.

Today, on top of everyone else already roaming about, they were expecting a subset of the Matthews family, namely August and Milena and their children, adopted and fostered both.

There were presently five children living in their home, three of them being their adopted sons. Ten-year-old Mason remained the eldest of the bunch, and he had really bloomed in his role as the big brother in the time since he'd been taken in as a foster. And then Toby, oh… sweet little Toby who wouldn't stray from August or Milena for any longer than he needed to, now six years old and being wonderfully talkative when he found motivation to be… Youngest of them all was one-year-old Adam Matthews, who in another life might have been Adam Carter. Madelyn's baby boy was thriving in his new family, and that was all his birth mother could have ever asked for. Anyone who saw him now and also knew Madelyn couldn't help but look at him and see the sophomore girl's features shining out of him.

Over the years, the Matthews couple had fostered many children beyond the three they had adopted. Some had stayed days, others weeks, months… They'd had none with them until very recently, until all of a week prior, actually, when they had taken in a pair of sisters. It was the first time they were matched up to siblings, but when they'd gotten the call, there had been no debate. Now, they had been getting to know them both and making them feel as at home as they'd done for all those who'd come before them. They had five-year-old Clara, soon to be six, who was as much big sister as tiny mama to her little sister Posey, aged two. They had been fostered together since Posey had been all of six months old, when they'd been taken from their parents, and it was Clara's constant miracle that they were still together, her constant fear that they would ever be split up.

The aim in bringing the Matthews family along that day, with the house being as crowded as it already was, had been simply to allow the kids to play together, with kids their own age all around, but there was another as well, this one only brought up when they had arrived and dispersed. Milena went to her former teacher, a mother on a mission.

As she told it, they had been getting to know more and more about Clara and Posey's lives before they'd landed in their home, and just the day before, Clara had come around to telling them about the previous home she'd been in with her little sister. Specifically, she talked about the parts she missed, the people she missed. These were former foster siblings across the board, kids she'd known over the months she and Posey had lived there. And she'd mentioned a boy who had been there, who she missed most of all. She had also mentioned his name, and it wasn't unfamiliar to Milena, but she hadn't wanted to go directly to him, just in case.

Hearing all this though, Maya knew what needed to be done, and she did it. She called to the Hunter-Hart house and asked to speak with Freddie Jacek.

Even as she could say that she had never imagined that the boy, who had been in her class for nearly four years now would ever end living in her teenage home, with her parents, her little sister, and her grandmother, the reverse didn't feel nearly as unlikely. She wouldn't have predicted it to be one of her students, but knowing her father and really him and her mother collectively, she would never put it past them to take in a teenager in need of a home. The fact that they had all found one another was just the kind of coincidental miracle that made her beyond happy for the life that she had built up since she'd come to Texas.

Freddie would insist time and again that he would only stay so long as was required, that he had always intended to make his own way without depending on any foster parents, that he was just going to get through high school and then the next step would be set in motion, and every time he would mention all of this, he would be met with assurance that he could take all the time that he needed. Shawn had told Maya how much he could see through Freddie's promises, like it was all he could do to keep moving forward. He needed to keep just enough of a distance between himself and any situation he found himself in, so that if he needed to get out of it, he would be ready. He didn't know how to settle, and they wanted to help him learn.

As soon as he was told about Clara and Posey, he was as good as on his way. Shawn drove him out, both of them arriving to find the girls playing with the other children and looking as though they were having a wonderful time. None of it stood a chance at keeping their attention though when they spotted the familiar face. Clara saw him first, and she called out his name before bolting over, her little sister tagging along a moment later, from curiosity more than anything.

Freddie's smile was as wide as Maya might have ever seen it as he opened out his arms and lifted the five-year-old into his arms and hugged her close. He could have let go for how tightly she held to him, but he kept one arm around her, crouching and then kneeling until her feet touched the ground, the better to wave his hand at little Posey. She finally recognized him, and with a squeal she sped over to him, where he brought her into the hug with her older sister. Soon, he was sitting on the grass with Posey in his lap while Clara told him about leaving their old foster home and ending up with August and Milena and their boys.

The girls eventually went back to play with the other kids, but every so often, they would stop and look back to where Freddie was like they were making sure that he was still there. He would wave back at them, and that'd be all they needed to know before getting back to what they'd been doing. They had been told how their foster dad's father was lifelong best friends with the man who'd come with Freddie, who was not exactly fostering him but still very much had been the reason why he'd gotten to leave the home where they had all gotten to know each other. All this would boil down to the promise that they would have so many more reasons to see each other. Everyone had everyone's numbers, and they could call him if they wanted him to come over. He had soon vowed to pick Clara up from school every afternoon, with August and Milena's blessing. If that all wasn't enough, they were getting to be friends with the Friar girls and their friends, so they had all the connections that they needed.

Maya was sitting by her student's side whenever the young sisters would look to him, and it would make her smile, as much for seeing how they looked to him as for the way he was always ready to give them the greeting that they were seeking. Freddie had been telling her about how Clara and Posey had come to them, not so long before he'd left, but long enough that the two of them had bonded with him. It had been enough that, when the time had come for him to leave and go live with the Hunters, the girls had been the only reason for him to hesitate even a little bit. He had not wanted to leave them without a goodbye, because he'd always hated when any of his foster siblings had ever just disappeared, and he didn't want to do that to them. That being said, the actual goodbye didn't feel a hell of a lot better.

"I never got to say goodbye to Noor, when we were split up, and that was my worst one," Freddie recalled, and Maya could only imagine it. "I didn't want to get attached to anyone for a while after that. I didn't want to before either, but then she'd been there and I j… I just felt like we were… family. After she was gone, that was as bad as it got. But then I got a little better, I guess. I realized how I never wanted that for anyone, to not have anyone, to not be able to… to connect, you know?" he looked at her, and she nodded. She knew that part, completely. "Everyone deserves to have the best family that they can."

"They do," Maya agreed, her heart kicking up like a drum even as she replied to the boy's statement, and she wasn't even sure why.

She looked over as she heard a chorus of small child giggles, finding Shawn Hunter playing giant with the tiny gang of Ezra, Finneas, and Posey, even as some of the other children were running circles around him, like the great protectors of the land, defending the people. The situation as far as Freddie's being taken in by the Hunters was not the clearest so far as the future and what it might all come to mean, but it was significant enough that they had to wonder. Were they thinking of doing anything like what she and Lucas had done with Ella, adopting him at eighteen? Would Freddie Jacek go and become her brother? Whether they made anything official or not, his connection to the family would not be so easily parted, not when everyone was clearly invested in remaining together.

But there was more to it than that, a lot more, and it didn't all come together until later that day, that night, when their guests had all gone, when the children had been put to bed save for a stubbornly wakeful Ezra and his parents were doing their best to remedy this. Maya told Lucas about the conversation she'd had with Freddie, and again there was her heart, and she didn't know why, but Lucas heard it, and he looked as though it was all that he'd needed to confirm a nagging suspicion that had been playing at him, making his heart drum, too. He let out a small laugh of disbelief, brushing at their boy's hair and kissing the top of his head as he did.

That was all she needed to get in order to get to where he was, and it felt like the floor had given out from under her and sent her tumbling through the clouds at the possibility that it might have been Freddie Jacek, on the December night over a year ago now, who had dropped off a baby boy on their doorstep, Agnes' baby boy and his as well.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners