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rainbowfic2026-04-20 03:08 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2026-04-20 03:08 pm
Warm Heart #14 [Tales from the Neighborhood]
Name: Surrogate
Story: Tales From the Neighborhood
Plot Thread: Grant/Scott/William
Colors: Warm Heart #14: Blame
Styles and Supplies: Life Drawing, Gesso, Watercolors ("Stories that revolve around a love triangle often presume the presence of would-be binaries: a hero and a villain, the righteous and the evil, the good and the bad. But what happens when the roles are blurred and no one is out to hurt the other? In Ida Lupino’s 1953 drama The Bigamist and the recent dark comedy television series DTF St. Louis, the focus is on the humanity of all three characters within their marriages and the ambiguity of their actions. Taking a cue from the sympathetic nature of these characters, write a short story that involves a love triangle that is similarly even-keeled. How can you experiment with point of view, humor, or dramatic circumstances to create a narrative in which all members of the triangle are imbued with equally powerful traits of complexity and pathos?"), Tempera ("Queen of Cups reversed indicates someone with blocked psychic abilities and an emotionally unstable nature. In this reversed position, the nurturing and compassionate qualities associated with the Queen of Cups become overshadowed by moodiness and irrational behavior. This card warns of being excessively self-sacrificing or getting entangled in emotionally draining relationships. It urges you to take time for self-reflection and regain a sense of emotional stability and self-care.")
Word Count: 2,998
Rating: PG
Warnings: Discussion of Divorce
Characters: Grant Thomas Hanby, Scott Hanby, William Curtis Hanby, Lucy Hanby, Rebecca Thomas
Summary: Complex family situations get in the way of family planning.
They’d scrimped and saved every last penny that they’d been able to earn during college — from part-time jobs, from awards and scholarships, from Grant petitioning Dad J — and when the three of them had put everything together at the end, it had been enough to buy a house. Grant had let Scott and William handle finding the right house and negotiating for it, since they were much better at that, anyway. But now they had a house, with actually quite a lot of rooms in it.
Before the potion, Grant had never thought he’d like kids as an adult. They were something girls were supposed to like, after all. But now he found that he did — he hadn’t liked the being pregnant or giving birth part at all, but he liked the twins for who they were, and he’d always liked Scott’s little sisters, and William’s younger siblings, as well. He didn’t want to personally produce any more of them if he could at all help it, but he was glad the house had so many extra rooms and hoped that they would all be filled eventually.
William had told him after the purchase that he’d been the one advocating for the extra rooms, and Scott had had to be convinced. But there were two of them and one of Scott, and if William had won this one on his own, perhaps Scott wasn’t so opposed to the idea after all.
They were eating breakfast one morning when William brought up the subject.
Scott’s eyes flickered over to Grant for a moment. “I don’t think Grant wants to do that again,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to be Grant’s job,” said William. “We could adopt kids.” He turned to Grant. “Your brother adopted a bunch of kids, right? And,” he looked back at Scott, “didn’t you say your new step-mom has an adopted child? It can’t be that hard.”
“Richard has an in with the adoption agency called ‘having a lot of money’,” said Grant, amused. “I don’t think we’re there, yet.”
“I don’t really know about Jane’s son,” said Scott. “That happened a long time ago, and he’s nearly our age now. She might be married to my dad now, but her son’s not really our family.” He shrugged. “Anyway, she was married to her previous husband for ages, and they only ever managed to adopt one.”
Grant could feel William looking at him with an expression that said You were supposed to back me up here. But he wasn’t going to lie about Richard’s situation to Scott — it wouldn’t help any of them.
Unexpectedly, Scott said, “Would surrogacy work?” He paused for a moment, and then continued. “My sisters are still in high school — well, except Paige, but if I understand how the potion works, I don’t think she actually has a uterus to lend us. But don’t you have like six older sisters, William?”
“Only four,” said William. “But—” he grimaced— “I think they are all trying to have their own kids, at the moment.”
Grant sat silently, following this train of thought; it led to a place that Scott wouldn’t like at all. It was probably better to abandon the idea, or maybe just agree to wait for one of William’s sisters to be willing to help them out, rather than to follow it aloud to its conclusion.
But William seemed not to realize, or maybe he had forgotten this drama, because he turned to Grant and said, “What about your sisters?”
“I do have an older sister who’s not trying to get pregnant,” said Grant, slowly. “I don’t think she wants any more of her own, either.”
“Not Julia?” asked Scott. “Last I heard she never wanted to stop having more.”
“Not Julia,” Grant confirmed.
“Then who…?” Scott cut himself short, eyes narrowed and lips pressed into a thin line.
“You mean Rebecca, right?” asked William.
Did he not know? He must not know.
“No!” said Scott, banging his hands on the table. “I won’t— She destroyed my family. She stole my mother away. I won’t have anything to do with her.” He got up and stalked out of the room.
William watched him go, with some dismay, and then turned back to Grant. “It was Rebecca? The woman that his mom ran off with?” His face got very tight. “Isn’t she old enough to be Rebecca’s mom?”
“Not quite that old,” said Grant. “But yeah, it was Rebecca.”
“I’m sorry,” said William. “I shouldn’t have mentioned her. But I had no idea.” He paused for a moment. “I guess you must know more about that than I do, huh.”
Grant shrugged, uncomfortable. “Not that much more, to be honest. They’re sharing an apartment now. I don’t know if they’re actually together in a serious way or not, I don’t think Rebecca ever wanted that kind of relationship with anyone. Rebecca says she’s letting Lucy find herself.” He chewed his lip. “That’s really all I know about it. Julia and Richard are backing her up with this… Julia got the house, and Richard got the business, so they are kind of the de facto heads of our family now. I worry that if I look into it further, I’ll form some kind of opinion about it, and then I’ll either get alienated from Scott, or alienated from the rest of my family. So I try not to.”
“That’s tough,” said William. “And not fair to you.” He looked back at the doorway that Scott had left out of. “That was my fault, with Scott. I’ll talk to him. I don’t want you to feel like you have to resolve this.”
“Thanks,” said Grant, a weak smile coming to his lips. “But I still worry that it’ll come down to me some day, anyway.”
William didn’t talk to Scott immediately. He waited for the evening; Grant had an early morning the next day, and went to bed first. After William put the twins to down for the night, he went back into the living room and sat beside Scott, who was flipping through TV channels distractedly.
“I’m sorry about the conversation this morning,” he said. “It’s ok. We don’t have to have any more kids if you don’t want to. Just forget I said anything about it.”
Scott looked over at him, and the anger from the morning seemed to have been replaced with a kind of tiredness. “I don’t mind the idea of kids,” he said. “Not really. And you still want more, right? I think Grant does, too, but he just doesn’t say anything because he’s worried we’ll ask him to get pregnant again.”
William smiled a bit at that. “Maybe there will be a way. But we definitely don’t have to recruit Grant’s sister for that.”
“Oh,” said Scott. “Yeah.” He set down the remote and looked sadly at his feet.
“Do you want to talk about that at all?” asked William. He shrugged, and then continued, “Happened to my family, too. Before I was born, but… still.”
Scott looked up at him, sort of cautiously. “That’s right,” he said. “I forgot about that. I guess… I don’t know. I don’t get why she left us. Why do people do that?”
“Lots of reasons, probably,” said William. “I know why my mom left — it was because David was cheating on her. But she didn’t leave us kids with him when she did it.” He looked at Scott thoughtfully. “What did your dad say about it?”
“Nothing much,” said Scott. “He just said that he missed her, and got a bit depressed about it for a bit. He didn’t cheat on her, though. I’m sure he wouldn’t have done that.”
Scott’s dad had never seemed like the kind of person who would cheat, but William had to wonder, anyway. “Did you ever talk to your mom about it?”
Scott shook his head. “There was too much going on, then— you and Grant— college— Paige— figuring out where my mom had gone off to and talking to her didn’t really make it into my priorities, at the time.”
“Well,” said William, “that would be a way to find out why she left— by asking her.”
Scott set his mouth into a hard line. “I’d probably have to talk to Rebecca, too, wouldn’t I.”
“Maybe briefly,” said William. “I’m sure she’d probably let you talk with your mom alone, though.”
Scott relaxed his expression a bit. “You’re probably right,” he said, after some consideration. “I should go talk to her.”
The address that Grant had provided brought Scott to the second in a row of tall, narrow townhouses. With some trepidation, he approached the door and knocked.
After a few minutes, the door opened to reveal a woman who could only be Rebecca — she’d been older enough than Grant that the three of them hadn’t ever been in school with her, but Scott knew she was the only alien hybrid in Grant’s family. She seemed to recognize him, too, and her expression became guarded and closed off.
Scott swallowed down his anger toward her for the moment. He was here for a reason — he wasn’t going to go back home and tell William he couldn’t put in the effort. “I’m here to talk to my mother,” he said.
Rebecca’s face relaxed at that, and she opened the door wider and stepped out of his way. “She’s up in the third floor office,” she said, in a disinterested way, and then shut the door behind him and went over to a pile of papers on the dining room table.
Scott trudged up the two flights of stairs and came out into a small office space with two desks with computers, and a printer sitting in the corner. His mom sat at one of the desks, next to a window that overlooked the front of the line of houses, working on the computer, but she stopped and turned as the door to the stairwell opened.
“Thought I saw you down there,” she said, as Scott took the other desk’s chair and drew it up near her. “I was wondering when I would get to see you again. Paige said you weren’t in the mood to talk the last time I saw her, so I didn’t contact you.”
Scott sat in the chair and tried to work through what he wanted to say. “It hurt a lot at the time,” he said, finally. When she’d left, it hadn’t even been that long ago that William had talked to him about how nice his family was and how he’d wanted one like that, and partly, he’d been afraid that William would take it all back. But that wasn’t something he needed to worry about anymore — they were all married now, and William had told him to go do this himself. “I had a talk with someone,” he said, vaguely. “I wanted to ask you— Why did you leave?”
“I know it seemed very sudden to you,” she said, “but you need to understand that it was a long story. It wasn’t because of you— not any of you kids. I think our marriage had always been afflicted with a chronic illness, from the beginning. Did I ever tell you how I met your father?”
Scott thought back, but he didn’t think she had. He shook his head.
“I was eking out a living as a house cleaner,” she said. “I might have gone to college instead, but I needed the money more. Your father did go to college. The house he was living in there threw a big party, and they hired me to come clean up afterwards. He was the one who let me in — everyone else was asleep, he told me. Someone must have sent the job to my manager in the early hours of the morning before they all crashed. He wasn’t as much for the parties, he said, and wasn’t it unfair for whoever had to clean up after it?
“He helped me clean the place, and afterwards, we got to talking, a bit. I told him about all the stuff I’d rather be doing, my dreams that were never going to be realized. He told me he’d make them come true.”
She gazed off, seeming to focus on that distant point in the past. “I think we were both too naive back then. Neither of us knew how it would really turn out. At first it seemed like it might work. I moved in with him after he graduated, I landed the job I’d always wanted to have, it felt like the dreams were coming true.” She paused for a minute, seeming to consider something. “We talked so much about what my dreams were, but I never thought to ask about his. I think in retrospect that maybe he just assumed that he wanted what every sensible man wanted, and so it should just be obvious. But what he wanted was a lot of kids.”
Scott had been in enough awkward conversations with Grant and William about kids at this point that he thought he could see where the story was going, now. “I guess it was really about us, then?” he asked.
His mother turned to look at him with some alarm. “I don’t want you to think— I love all of you. I don’t regret having any of you. But it takes so much time out of your life— being pregnant for nine months. Caring for babies and toddlers. Raising all of you the right way. I don’t regret it, but it took so much time. I couldn’t keep up with it all and still pursue my career, my dream, effectively. Your father did help out, but really only once you guys were older. I couldn’t make him understand what the problem was. At some point, I realized that if I didn’t leave, I’d be stuck there forever, making his dream a reality, while mine slipped away from me. And Rebecca gave me a way out.”
“Grant and William want a lot of kids, too,” said Scott, thinking aloud. “I don’t have anything against it. But… I thought about that, too.”
His mother got a very pointed look on her face. “You have some already, right?” she asked. “Paige told me.”
“Yes,” said Scott. “They’re great, actually.” A smile lit up his face. “You should come meet them sometime. But William was saying he wanted more.”
“Is it too much? Twins are rough, I’m lucky I never had to deal with them. Who takes care of them? Do you still have time for the things you want to do?”
“We take turns, who’s on duty,” said Scott, “based on work schedules, and we try to keep it even. I think it’s working, so far. I don’t feel overwhelmed.” He paused, thoughtful. “I think if we keep doing it the same way, another kid or too wouldn’t be too much, actually.”
She relaxed. “That’s good. I guess it helps that there’s three of you. And,” she shrugged. “Maybe if I’d married a woman in the first place, we would have gone into it with fewer unspoken expectations about who would be doing the childcare. I think about that, sometimes.”
“Ahh,” said Scott. “Are you… going to marry Rebecca?”
She shook her head. “I think I am done with marriage, to be honest, and she was never interested in it in the first place. We’re just friends… sort of. Maybe closer in some respects than most. But probably, when I get some better financial legs under me, I’ll move out of here, and will just be another one of the people she sees.” She smiled at him. “Besides, I know she’s already part of your family through Grant. I don’t want to make things more confusing for you.”
He laughed a bit. “That wasn’t my biggest concern, honestly. But… thanks for explaining all of that. I guess I understand it now.”
“You don’t hate me for it?” she asked. “I thought maybe you did, since you stayed away for so long.”
Scott shook his head. “I hated Rebecca, mostly,” he said. “I thought she’d… I don’t know. Stolen you away, or seduced you, or something.” His mouth twisted. “I’m sorry. I never considered that you might have had some agency in it.”
She laughed. “Well, I’m glad, in a way, that even when you were angry, you couldn’t bring yourself to be angry at your mom. If it’s alright, I’d like to see you more often. And my grandsons, too, if it’s not too much trouble.”
He gave her a big smile. “Yeah, I’ll definitely bring them around sometime.”
As he went back down the stairs, his thoughts returned to the conversation that had brought him here in the first place. If Rebecca wasn’t evil, after all…
Rebecca was still working through the pile of papers when he got back to the first floor. Getting a better look at the top of the pile, he saw that they were children’s homework, and she was marking them. He hesitated there, for a moment.
She looked up at him. “Is there something else you wanted?”
“I wanted to thank you,” he said, “for what you did for my mom.” He didn’t wait for the surprise to clear her face before continuing. “We — I mean, my husbands and I — we wanted to have another kid, and Grant said you might be willing to help us out. I understand if you don’t want to. I know it would take a lot of your time, and your energy, and it’s your body. But we have some money— three good jobs. And we’d help you out with whatever. If it’s alright.”
She considered him, for a moment. “We’ll see,” she said. “I’ll talk to Grant, and we can hammer out the details, maybe.”
When he left the house, his heart felt lighter than it had in a long time.
Sim Notes
Rebecca Thomas is Grant's older sister, biologically the daughter of Dad G and my brown-haired alien pollinator. This is her adult portrait:
Technically, her lifetime want is to become a mad scientist, but she spent a long time as a science teacher, so that's more or less how I think of her now.
Lucy Hanby is actually one of the default maids that spawns in every neighborhood, and the story in here of how she met Scott's dad is actually accurate. I changed her style a bit after I got them married:
In my game, her want was to top the Entertainment career, and I was totally going to get that for her, but it was a big pain in the ass when she kept getting pregnant, which was the main reason I broke the marriage up. When I was looking around for someone suitable to make use of the surrogacy mod I'd created so that these three could have kids with alien genetics that weren't necessarily Grant's, Rebecca did turn out to be the perfect fit for it. Then I remembered that she was the sim I'd used to wreck Scott's parents' marriage and was wait, that sounds like some really interesting drama, actually. Hence this story.
The twins' names are Liam and Elijah, and they both got slightly different sets of alien genetics:
The child that eventually comes of the surrogacy arrangement is biologically descended from Scott and Rebecca, which makes him 3/8 alien, and I believe is homozygous for the alien genetics. His name is Christopher:
Incidentally, the Richard who Grant mentions in here is Garrett and Benjamin's dad. There will be a Nubs story about the Rebecca/Lucy relationship later, and, probably a very long time from now, a couple Nubs stories about Scott's new step-mother, who used to be married to Robert's brother Oliver.
Story: Tales From the Neighborhood
Plot Thread: Grant/Scott/William
Colors: Warm Heart #14: Blame
Styles and Supplies: Life Drawing, Gesso, Watercolors ("Stories that revolve around a love triangle often presume the presence of would-be binaries: a hero and a villain, the righteous and the evil, the good and the bad. But what happens when the roles are blurred and no one is out to hurt the other? In Ida Lupino’s 1953 drama The Bigamist and the recent dark comedy television series DTF St. Louis, the focus is on the humanity of all three characters within their marriages and the ambiguity of their actions. Taking a cue from the sympathetic nature of these characters, write a short story that involves a love triangle that is similarly even-keeled. How can you experiment with point of view, humor, or dramatic circumstances to create a narrative in which all members of the triangle are imbued with equally powerful traits of complexity and pathos?"), Tempera ("Queen of Cups reversed indicates someone with blocked psychic abilities and an emotionally unstable nature. In this reversed position, the nurturing and compassionate qualities associated with the Queen of Cups become overshadowed by moodiness and irrational behavior. This card warns of being excessively self-sacrificing or getting entangled in emotionally draining relationships. It urges you to take time for self-reflection and regain a sense of emotional stability and self-care.")
Word Count: 2,998
Rating: PG
Warnings: Discussion of Divorce
Characters: Grant Thomas Hanby, Scott Hanby, William Curtis Hanby, Lucy Hanby, Rebecca Thomas
Summary: Complex family situations get in the way of family planning.
They’d scrimped and saved every last penny that they’d been able to earn during college — from part-time jobs, from awards and scholarships, from Grant petitioning Dad J — and when the three of them had put everything together at the end, it had been enough to buy a house. Grant had let Scott and William handle finding the right house and negotiating for it, since they were much better at that, anyway. But now they had a house, with actually quite a lot of rooms in it.
Before the potion, Grant had never thought he’d like kids as an adult. They were something girls were supposed to like, after all. But now he found that he did — he hadn’t liked the being pregnant or giving birth part at all, but he liked the twins for who they were, and he’d always liked Scott’s little sisters, and William’s younger siblings, as well. He didn’t want to personally produce any more of them if he could at all help it, but he was glad the house had so many extra rooms and hoped that they would all be filled eventually.
William had told him after the purchase that he’d been the one advocating for the extra rooms, and Scott had had to be convinced. But there were two of them and one of Scott, and if William had won this one on his own, perhaps Scott wasn’t so opposed to the idea after all.
They were eating breakfast one morning when William brought up the subject.
Scott’s eyes flickered over to Grant for a moment. “I don’t think Grant wants to do that again,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to be Grant’s job,” said William. “We could adopt kids.” He turned to Grant. “Your brother adopted a bunch of kids, right? And,” he looked back at Scott, “didn’t you say your new step-mom has an adopted child? It can’t be that hard.”
“Richard has an in with the adoption agency called ‘having a lot of money’,” said Grant, amused. “I don’t think we’re there, yet.”
“I don’t really know about Jane’s son,” said Scott. “That happened a long time ago, and he’s nearly our age now. She might be married to my dad now, but her son’s not really our family.” He shrugged. “Anyway, she was married to her previous husband for ages, and they only ever managed to adopt one.”
Grant could feel William looking at him with an expression that said You were supposed to back me up here. But he wasn’t going to lie about Richard’s situation to Scott — it wouldn’t help any of them.
Unexpectedly, Scott said, “Would surrogacy work?” He paused for a moment, and then continued. “My sisters are still in high school — well, except Paige, but if I understand how the potion works, I don’t think she actually has a uterus to lend us. But don’t you have like six older sisters, William?”
“Only four,” said William. “But—” he grimaced— “I think they are all trying to have their own kids, at the moment.”
Grant sat silently, following this train of thought; it led to a place that Scott wouldn’t like at all. It was probably better to abandon the idea, or maybe just agree to wait for one of William’s sisters to be willing to help them out, rather than to follow it aloud to its conclusion.
But William seemed not to realize, or maybe he had forgotten this drama, because he turned to Grant and said, “What about your sisters?”
“I do have an older sister who’s not trying to get pregnant,” said Grant, slowly. “I don’t think she wants any more of her own, either.”
“Not Julia?” asked Scott. “Last I heard she never wanted to stop having more.”
“Not Julia,” Grant confirmed.
“Then who…?” Scott cut himself short, eyes narrowed and lips pressed into a thin line.
“You mean Rebecca, right?” asked William.
Did he not know? He must not know.
“No!” said Scott, banging his hands on the table. “I won’t— She destroyed my family. She stole my mother away. I won’t have anything to do with her.” He got up and stalked out of the room.
William watched him go, with some dismay, and then turned back to Grant. “It was Rebecca? The woman that his mom ran off with?” His face got very tight. “Isn’t she old enough to be Rebecca’s mom?”
“Not quite that old,” said Grant. “But yeah, it was Rebecca.”
“I’m sorry,” said William. “I shouldn’t have mentioned her. But I had no idea.” He paused for a moment. “I guess you must know more about that than I do, huh.”
Grant shrugged, uncomfortable. “Not that much more, to be honest. They’re sharing an apartment now. I don’t know if they’re actually together in a serious way or not, I don’t think Rebecca ever wanted that kind of relationship with anyone. Rebecca says she’s letting Lucy find herself.” He chewed his lip. “That’s really all I know about it. Julia and Richard are backing her up with this… Julia got the house, and Richard got the business, so they are kind of the de facto heads of our family now. I worry that if I look into it further, I’ll form some kind of opinion about it, and then I’ll either get alienated from Scott, or alienated from the rest of my family. So I try not to.”
“That’s tough,” said William. “And not fair to you.” He looked back at the doorway that Scott had left out of. “That was my fault, with Scott. I’ll talk to him. I don’t want you to feel like you have to resolve this.”
“Thanks,” said Grant, a weak smile coming to his lips. “But I still worry that it’ll come down to me some day, anyway.”
William didn’t talk to Scott immediately. He waited for the evening; Grant had an early morning the next day, and went to bed first. After William put the twins to down for the night, he went back into the living room and sat beside Scott, who was flipping through TV channels distractedly.
“I’m sorry about the conversation this morning,” he said. “It’s ok. We don’t have to have any more kids if you don’t want to. Just forget I said anything about it.”
Scott looked over at him, and the anger from the morning seemed to have been replaced with a kind of tiredness. “I don’t mind the idea of kids,” he said. “Not really. And you still want more, right? I think Grant does, too, but he just doesn’t say anything because he’s worried we’ll ask him to get pregnant again.”
William smiled a bit at that. “Maybe there will be a way. But we definitely don’t have to recruit Grant’s sister for that.”
“Oh,” said Scott. “Yeah.” He set down the remote and looked sadly at his feet.
“Do you want to talk about that at all?” asked William. He shrugged, and then continued, “Happened to my family, too. Before I was born, but… still.”
Scott looked up at him, sort of cautiously. “That’s right,” he said. “I forgot about that. I guess… I don’t know. I don’t get why she left us. Why do people do that?”
“Lots of reasons, probably,” said William. “I know why my mom left — it was because David was cheating on her. But she didn’t leave us kids with him when she did it.” He looked at Scott thoughtfully. “What did your dad say about it?”
“Nothing much,” said Scott. “He just said that he missed her, and got a bit depressed about it for a bit. He didn’t cheat on her, though. I’m sure he wouldn’t have done that.”
Scott’s dad had never seemed like the kind of person who would cheat, but William had to wonder, anyway. “Did you ever talk to your mom about it?”
Scott shook his head. “There was too much going on, then— you and Grant— college— Paige— figuring out where my mom had gone off to and talking to her didn’t really make it into my priorities, at the time.”
“Well,” said William, “that would be a way to find out why she left— by asking her.”
Scott set his mouth into a hard line. “I’d probably have to talk to Rebecca, too, wouldn’t I.”
“Maybe briefly,” said William. “I’m sure she’d probably let you talk with your mom alone, though.”
Scott relaxed his expression a bit. “You’re probably right,” he said, after some consideration. “I should go talk to her.”
The address that Grant had provided brought Scott to the second in a row of tall, narrow townhouses. With some trepidation, he approached the door and knocked.
After a few minutes, the door opened to reveal a woman who could only be Rebecca — she’d been older enough than Grant that the three of them hadn’t ever been in school with her, but Scott knew she was the only alien hybrid in Grant’s family. She seemed to recognize him, too, and her expression became guarded and closed off.
Scott swallowed down his anger toward her for the moment. He was here for a reason — he wasn’t going to go back home and tell William he couldn’t put in the effort. “I’m here to talk to my mother,” he said.
Rebecca’s face relaxed at that, and she opened the door wider and stepped out of his way. “She’s up in the third floor office,” she said, in a disinterested way, and then shut the door behind him and went over to a pile of papers on the dining room table.
Scott trudged up the two flights of stairs and came out into a small office space with two desks with computers, and a printer sitting in the corner. His mom sat at one of the desks, next to a window that overlooked the front of the line of houses, working on the computer, but she stopped and turned as the door to the stairwell opened.
“Thought I saw you down there,” she said, as Scott took the other desk’s chair and drew it up near her. “I was wondering when I would get to see you again. Paige said you weren’t in the mood to talk the last time I saw her, so I didn’t contact you.”
Scott sat in the chair and tried to work through what he wanted to say. “It hurt a lot at the time,” he said, finally. When she’d left, it hadn’t even been that long ago that William had talked to him about how nice his family was and how he’d wanted one like that, and partly, he’d been afraid that William would take it all back. But that wasn’t something he needed to worry about anymore — they were all married now, and William had told him to go do this himself. “I had a talk with someone,” he said, vaguely. “I wanted to ask you— Why did you leave?”
“I know it seemed very sudden to you,” she said, “but you need to understand that it was a long story. It wasn’t because of you— not any of you kids. I think our marriage had always been afflicted with a chronic illness, from the beginning. Did I ever tell you how I met your father?”
Scott thought back, but he didn’t think she had. He shook his head.
“I was eking out a living as a house cleaner,” she said. “I might have gone to college instead, but I needed the money more. Your father did go to college. The house he was living in there threw a big party, and they hired me to come clean up afterwards. He was the one who let me in — everyone else was asleep, he told me. Someone must have sent the job to my manager in the early hours of the morning before they all crashed. He wasn’t as much for the parties, he said, and wasn’t it unfair for whoever had to clean up after it?
“He helped me clean the place, and afterwards, we got to talking, a bit. I told him about all the stuff I’d rather be doing, my dreams that were never going to be realized. He told me he’d make them come true.”
She gazed off, seeming to focus on that distant point in the past. “I think we were both too naive back then. Neither of us knew how it would really turn out. At first it seemed like it might work. I moved in with him after he graduated, I landed the job I’d always wanted to have, it felt like the dreams were coming true.” She paused for a minute, seeming to consider something. “We talked so much about what my dreams were, but I never thought to ask about his. I think in retrospect that maybe he just assumed that he wanted what every sensible man wanted, and so it should just be obvious. But what he wanted was a lot of kids.”
Scott had been in enough awkward conversations with Grant and William about kids at this point that he thought he could see where the story was going, now. “I guess it was really about us, then?” he asked.
His mother turned to look at him with some alarm. “I don’t want you to think— I love all of you. I don’t regret having any of you. But it takes so much time out of your life— being pregnant for nine months. Caring for babies and toddlers. Raising all of you the right way. I don’t regret it, but it took so much time. I couldn’t keep up with it all and still pursue my career, my dream, effectively. Your father did help out, but really only once you guys were older. I couldn’t make him understand what the problem was. At some point, I realized that if I didn’t leave, I’d be stuck there forever, making his dream a reality, while mine slipped away from me. And Rebecca gave me a way out.”
“Grant and William want a lot of kids, too,” said Scott, thinking aloud. “I don’t have anything against it. But… I thought about that, too.”
His mother got a very pointed look on her face. “You have some already, right?” she asked. “Paige told me.”
“Yes,” said Scott. “They’re great, actually.” A smile lit up his face. “You should come meet them sometime. But William was saying he wanted more.”
“Is it too much? Twins are rough, I’m lucky I never had to deal with them. Who takes care of them? Do you still have time for the things you want to do?”
“We take turns, who’s on duty,” said Scott, “based on work schedules, and we try to keep it even. I think it’s working, so far. I don’t feel overwhelmed.” He paused, thoughtful. “I think if we keep doing it the same way, another kid or too wouldn’t be too much, actually.”
She relaxed. “That’s good. I guess it helps that there’s three of you. And,” she shrugged. “Maybe if I’d married a woman in the first place, we would have gone into it with fewer unspoken expectations about who would be doing the childcare. I think about that, sometimes.”
“Ahh,” said Scott. “Are you… going to marry Rebecca?”
She shook her head. “I think I am done with marriage, to be honest, and she was never interested in it in the first place. We’re just friends… sort of. Maybe closer in some respects than most. But probably, when I get some better financial legs under me, I’ll move out of here, and will just be another one of the people she sees.” She smiled at him. “Besides, I know she’s already part of your family through Grant. I don’t want to make things more confusing for you.”
He laughed a bit. “That wasn’t my biggest concern, honestly. But… thanks for explaining all of that. I guess I understand it now.”
“You don’t hate me for it?” she asked. “I thought maybe you did, since you stayed away for so long.”
Scott shook his head. “I hated Rebecca, mostly,” he said. “I thought she’d… I don’t know. Stolen you away, or seduced you, or something.” His mouth twisted. “I’m sorry. I never considered that you might have had some agency in it.”
She laughed. “Well, I’m glad, in a way, that even when you were angry, you couldn’t bring yourself to be angry at your mom. If it’s alright, I’d like to see you more often. And my grandsons, too, if it’s not too much trouble.”
He gave her a big smile. “Yeah, I’ll definitely bring them around sometime.”
As he went back down the stairs, his thoughts returned to the conversation that had brought him here in the first place. If Rebecca wasn’t evil, after all…
Rebecca was still working through the pile of papers when he got back to the first floor. Getting a better look at the top of the pile, he saw that they were children’s homework, and she was marking them. He hesitated there, for a moment.
She looked up at him. “Is there something else you wanted?”
“I wanted to thank you,” he said, “for what you did for my mom.” He didn’t wait for the surprise to clear her face before continuing. “We — I mean, my husbands and I — we wanted to have another kid, and Grant said you might be willing to help us out. I understand if you don’t want to. I know it would take a lot of your time, and your energy, and it’s your body. But we have some money— three good jobs. And we’d help you out with whatever. If it’s alright.”
She considered him, for a moment. “We’ll see,” she said. “I’ll talk to Grant, and we can hammer out the details, maybe.”
When he left the house, his heart felt lighter than it had in a long time.
Sim Notes
Rebecca Thomas is Grant's older sister, biologically the daughter of Dad G and my brown-haired alien pollinator. This is her adult portrait:
Technically, her lifetime want is to become a mad scientist, but she spent a long time as a science teacher, so that's more or less how I think of her now.
Lucy Hanby is actually one of the default maids that spawns in every neighborhood, and the story in here of how she met Scott's dad is actually accurate. I changed her style a bit after I got them married:
In my game, her want was to top the Entertainment career, and I was totally going to get that for her, but it was a big pain in the ass when she kept getting pregnant, which was the main reason I broke the marriage up. When I was looking around for someone suitable to make use of the surrogacy mod I'd created so that these three could have kids with alien genetics that weren't necessarily Grant's, Rebecca did turn out to be the perfect fit for it. Then I remembered that she was the sim I'd used to wreck Scott's parents' marriage and was wait, that sounds like some really interesting drama, actually. Hence this story.
The twins' names are Liam and Elijah, and they both got slightly different sets of alien genetics:
The child that eventually comes of the surrogacy arrangement is biologically descended from Scott and Rebecca, which makes him 3/8 alien, and I believe is homozygous for the alien genetics. His name is Christopher:
Incidentally, the Richard who Grant mentions in here is Garrett and Benjamin's dad. There will be a Nubs story about the Rebecca/Lucy relationship later, and, probably a very long time from now, a couple Nubs stories about Scott's new step-mother, who used to be married to Robert's brother Oliver.