The Struggle Of Our Lives

Chapter 15, continued.

I rummaged through the tiny refrigerator I had bought a few years back, looking through the frozen half of the box, and selected our food, still in it's cardboard box.

I shut the door to our mini fridge and re-read the instructions on the cordon bleu box. I followed the instructions and put them in a pan to leave in the oven for a few mins.

The fire wasn't quite hot enough, so I through another log of wood inside. I shut the heavy iron door and turned to talk to the twins.

"Y'all ok?" I asked. "How was John's day for you?" We had made John a day to remember him on October 15th, since it was far enough away from birthdays to avoid being a bad reminder, but close enough to everything else so we could think back on him.

"Not bad," Tedd began, "but I miss him." He said somberly. I nodded and sat down on the couch next to him, wrapping my left arm around his shoulder and placing my head on top of his.

"I know bub, I know." I replied. We stayed like that for a bit before I got up to remove the bundles of happiness from the oven, carefully placing them onto our plates with a fork.

"How about you?" I asked Lotte. I handed the twins their plates and sat on the floor in fron of them so I could get a closer view of the TV.

"Not great." She began, "some guy was following me around all day and it made me feel even worse."

I turned around to look at her and placed a hand on her knee.

"I'm so sorry hun, you wanna talk about it?"
She shook her head no, and said she just wanted to eat, so Teddy turned on the TV and we watched the movie Hercules in Greek.

The movie was in English, but for years now, I had tried to make sure the twins wouldn't forget their first language.

Gregory had taught them Greek before teaching them English, and I'm glad he did. Kids who speak more than one language are fast learners, which is a good attribute to have.

They still spoke Greek, but not too often. Every once and a while, I'd ask them to teach me a new word to see if they still remember. Now that they were 10, I knew they had a low likelihood of forgetting.

The movie had subtitles in English, so I could understand. Hercules has been one of my favorite movies for a while now, and the twins liked it too.

My favorite part about watching it in Greek was how great the songs sounded in their mother tongue.

We stayed like this for a while before finishing our dinner and preparing to turn in for the night. Once Hercules was over, we collected our plates and set them aside. I closed the curtains and turned off the lights, leaving only the cloud lights on.

Teddy took his red flashlight and walked to our changing hut, as we had been calling it. At some point, the three of us talked about boundaries and we agreed that we would use the house we built as a shack to change in and overall use to get some privacy.

Charlotte had expressed that she was fine changing with me since we were both girls, and agreeing that now that Teddy was older, he needed some space.

We had a more detailed but less traumatizing version of "the talk" that Trinity gave me. I explained how since they were getting older, some things might be changing, like more hair, some complex emotions and overall things that didn't happen before.

Since I was basically their mom, they had always been very open with me, as I was with them. I had talked with them about these things a month or so before Charlotte got her first period.

The women in our family had always gotten their periods early in life. I got mine when I was 9, Trinity got hers when she was 11, our grandma getting hers when she was 8, you get the gist.

Thankfully the timing of our "talk" was perfect, so Charlotte wasn't scared when she started getting cramps and headaches.

While we were changing shirts, Char tugged at the elastic band from her bra, trying to keep it from strangling her ribcage. She's been awfully quiet today.

"Hey." I started.

"Hm?"

"You ok?" I asked. She slid into one of my old shirts, still very loose on her, and turned to me and replied, "Yeah, I guess."

"You sure? Did something else happen today?" I continued. She shook her head and used the excuse I used when something was wrong.

"I'm just really tired." I finished getting into my shorts and walked over to her, arms outstretched.

She wrapped her arms around my torso, accepting my hug, and I held her tight. We had an unspoken agreement that I would not be the first to let go, since you never knew how long a hug someone needed.

I snapped out of my thoughts when I felt her back rising and falling quickly, and hearing her cry quietly. I rubbed my right hand on her back, holding her tight.

Teddy opened the door and quickly noticed that Char was upset, so he closed the door behind him and joined me in our hug.

The two of us held onto her and whispered a "you're ok" every once in a while. Soon after, she let go of me, and wiped her eyes. I placed my palm on her cheeks and used my thumbs to wipe more tears away.

"You ready for bed?" I asked. She nodded, sniffling. We each took turns climbing up the ladder and getting into our loft bed.

I was last to go up, and saw that Teddy was against the wall with Char in the middle. I got into the bed and wrapped my arms around my sister once more and held her tight, then Theo followed suit.

Soon enough, the two fell asleep and I was left alone once again with my thoughts.

"What happened to you Charlotte?"