BEJEWELED ★ CONNOR STOLL

FIVE

"GOT ANY FOURS?"

Tilly reaches across the patio table and snags a barbeque-flavored potato chip, chewing thoughtfully as she peruses the cards in her hand. "Go fish." She says, kaleidoscope eyes flicking up to Lucy for one brief moment.

Her face is bare, a rare sight for her, and she'd let Sutton French braid her hair the night before to keep it out of her face. Her freckles from being out in the perpetually-summer sun at Camp Half Blood are sprinkled across her skin, and the oversized University of Georgia sweatshirt she wears hangs off of one shoulder, showing off the stark tan lines on her collarbones.

She looks relaxed and content, smiling widely every time one of her brothers lean in to whisper in her ear. Her accent is stronger, too, when she's around her parents and brothers.

It's a nice change from the minute-to-minute schedule of camp, and Lucy is grateful to be temporarily free of neon orange shirts and beaded necklaces, even though hers hangs within the collar of her hoodie.

Lucy leans back, kicking her feet up on the table between the stack of cards and the bowl of potato chips. There's a pitcher of sweet tea on the table, too, two glasses filled with halfway melted ice next to it.

"You can really see the fireflies out here." She says, her voice taking on a funny tone as she surveys the backyard, the playset off of the patio, the creek just before the treeline.

Tilly takes a sip of her sweet tea, a smile curling her lips around the rim of the glass. "We call them lightning bugs around here. We're far enough away from the city that there isn't too much noise or light, so they come out in the summer." She says quietly, sitting criss-cross in the patio chair.

Lucy stretches her arms out across the back of the patio chair. "Sutton seems nice."

Her voice is weaker than she wants it to be, trembling slightly over the syllables. They've been in Georgia for less than a full day, and seeing all of the love in this house and between the members of this family has had her choked up from the minute Sutton and her small army of platinum blond sons had picked them up from the airport.

Despite the fact that Sutton didn't give birth to Matilda, the fact that Sutton didn't have to sign the adoption papers the minute she married Matilda's father, Sutton has been the mother that Matilda didn't have in Iris.

According to Tilly, Iris is like a cool aunt who checks in at birthdays and Christmas—or, in the goddess of the rainbow's case, solstices and Pride Month—but is distant every other instance. But when she talks about Sutton... Sutton is Tilly's mother, through and through.

Which was something Lucy had never had. Lucy and Ethan's father had dated and married after Nemesis had scarred their children, and each girlfriend or step-mother was worse than the last. With Ethan missing an eye and Lucy unable to smile fully without a stabbing pain, both with miserable dispositions, no one had wanted to be a parental figure to the twins, not even their father.

Sutton, however, had smiled a mile wide when Lucy threw herself into the backseat of the minivan, reaching a hand between the seats to squeeze Lucy. "Hey, baby, it's lovely to meet you."

Sutton was the type of mother that Lucy and Ethan Nakamura had prayed for, for years, only to have Nemesis laugh in their faces.

Tilly crosses the space between the two lounge chairs and perches on the arm of the chair, wrapping one arm around Lucy's shoulders. "You okay?"

One thing that Lucy has appreciated about Matilda since the moment they met was the way that Tilly can always make someone feel special and be entirely genuine while doing it. With others, support feels artificial, chemical. With Tilly, it's always felt like she's speaking from a place within her ribcage.