"To be fair, there were several reasons we didn't fit in. I'm pretty sure that Mom's special talents weren’t the only reason. She was still different enough even without that. Not a lot of our classmates had seen such an unrepentant hippie, let alone an Asian one,“ Faith shrugged and turned back to pulling the cooler over and opening the fridge, carefully. It was thankfully empty, so she started filling it up with their supplies. She didn't like to think about the move.
Faith had been only nine and Crissy twelve when their parents died. Just like that, their lives changed dramatically. They were pulled out of school and away from the home they'd shared with their parents and sent to live with their dad's sister, Lucy.
Aunt Lucy was a sweet woman and did her best to raise two heartbroken little girls more used to playing outside and getting filthy 'hunting' in the park than to dressing up like princesses and pretending to find Prince Charming. Aunt Lucy, however, lived and worked in Los Angeles, and while she tried to get them all outside to hike as much as she could, her job was demanding, and the city intruded even into the wilder spaces. It was nothing like the small northern California town they had been used to, but Aunt Lucy tried, bless the woman.
Faith had hated it.
She hated everything about the city– cities in general, in fact, made her teeth itch. The first thing Faith did after she graduated high school was to come back to the town she had started in— with Chrissy following enthusiastically not even a month later— and worked her way through community college while working as a waitress at the local diner. Aunt Lucy helped as much as she could, and when Faith turned 21, she had come into her inheritance as well which put her over the top as far as getting set up for her happy, small-town life.
Now she was settled in her own home, down the street from the house she spent the first nine years of her life in. That house was now occupied by Crissy and Kaylee, inherited along with this cabin when they came of age.
Faith finished emptying the cooler and the bag of dry goods they had packed and frowned at the empty bag.
"Crissy? Where's the coffee?" Faith called out the front door. She stood up from where she crouched by the fridge and wandered out the door to lean on the porch railing and laugh at Crissy trying to do a cartwheel on the lumpy grass. She was significantly less graceful at it now than she had been when they were kids. Kaylee was rolling on the ground with laughter.
"Been a day or two since you practiced, hasn't it?" Faith laughed and joined them.
An hour, and about a million grass stains later, all three of them were lying in the trampled grass, grinning like lunatics and staring at the sky. Kaylee was snuggled in between her mom and her aunt and Faith couldn't think of a better way to spend her time than playing on the lawn with her niece and her sister.
Life was pretty good.
"Hey, what was that you were yammering on about when you came outside?" Crissy asked after a while.
"Oh! Hah!" Faith laughed. "We forgot to pack coffee. Tomorrow morning could turn into a bloodbath."
"Oh good lord no," Crissy sat up and glared wildly at Faith, gasping and clutching her chest dramatically. "We shall surely perish!"
Kaylee giggled and Faith tried to keep a straight face even though she felt the smile tugging at her lips.
"Aunt Faith's so mean in the mornings without her coffee," Kaylee giggled again. "Like a monster! Aunt Monster!"
"GRAAAR!" Faith growled and rolled over to tickle Kaylee, who squealed with laughter again and squirmed her way free somehow, running across the lawn.
"You wind her up again, you calm her down," Crissy grinned. "I'll go into town by myself."
"Wait, what?" Faith turned to glare at her sister.
"You heard me!" Crissy laughed and scrambled to her feet. "I'll grab some coffee and if there's anything that looks good for snacks. I think s'mores supplies are in order, as well!"
"Oooooh, that's genius!" Faith smiled broadly. "Okay, that's a deal. Coffee and chocolate and marshmallows in exchange for babysitting and bed-making from Auntie Faith."
Crissy snickered and stepped back just before Kaylee tackled Faith back to the grass. "I'll leave you to it, then." She brushed off the grass and other bits of lawn debris she had stuck all over her, completely missing a long bit of dandelion chain that Kaylee had abandoned after three flowers that was stuck somehow to her collar, and headed to the car.
"Well, Kaylee-bee, it's just you and me!" Faith sang out and Kaylee grinned.
"Ice cream for dinner!" Kaylee cheered.
"Shhhh!" Faith found it difficult to shush her niece and laugh at the same time.
"I heard that!" Crissy called over her shoulder as she slid into the driver's seat. "That explains why she was still so wired the last time I left her at your place when I had a date!"
"Just go! Coffee is life!" Faith shouted. She chased Kaylee around the yard for another few minutes after Crissy drove off before herding the girl inside.
"Okay, Kaylee-bee, I volunteered us to get this place a bit more habitable for this week. What should we do first?"
"There's suitcases in the living room!" Kaylee pointed. "That's not right. And I know you said we would make the beds, right?"
"That's right. They're just case-less pillows under a pretty quilt right now. They need sheets! And pillowcases! And monsters!"
Kaylee giggled. "No monsters!"
"Sure, why not? It's not like the monsters under the bed stay
