69. Melianthus

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Melianthus:
meaning- sweet love

Start the song. It's You Can Have Mine by Dan Layus and The Secret Sisters.

As soon as Maddy saw Tyler and Josh come in through the front door, she was up off the couch and running to them. Jim cowered slightly when the small girl immediately jumped onto Josh, her arms wrapping around his neck and her legs around his waist. Josh held her tightly, finding that even after five years, it was hard for him to see Maddy as only Tyler's sister and not his own as well. He didn't have the same attachment to Zack and Jay, although he did think of them as family. Part of him knew that his connection with Maddy was borne of trauma bonding, but he didn't mind. She was his little sister, and that was that.

"I missed you!" Maddy told Josh excitedly. "I haven't seen you in forever."

"I've missed you too, buddy," Josh replied easily, smiling at Tyler when his boyfriend led their timid dog over to the couch and helped him to sit on it beside Jay, who immediately gave the cracker in this hand to Jim.

Jim crunched on the cracker only after receiving an encouraging smile from Tyler. He sniffed Jay's hand then, already searching for another. Jay pulled another out of the box and fed it to Jim as well, smiling widely as he did so.

It was weird to see Jay so much older. He was nine now. His big brothers no longer carried him around, and he was starting to better understand what his brother and sister had been through when he was just four years old. Jay hadn't left the situation unscathed though. After being left in Papa's garden alone for several hours at the age of four, he tended to get extremely sick when he was alone for too long. He'd been six by the time he'd learned not to cry whenever his parents left the room.

Of all the Joseph children, Jay took the divorce the hardest. The divorce meant that Jay would have to regularly be away from one of his parents for an extended period of time. Josh could still remember sitting on Tyler's bed one day after Tyler had come home from school, when Jay came into the room with tears on his cheeks, trying to get Tyler to promise that if their parents ever didn't come home, Tyler would be his dad instead. When nothing else had calmed the toddler down, Tyler had promised. His dreams about Debby came back in full force after that, and Tyler told Josh that his therapist thought it was because he was being forced into a caregiving role once again.

Jay seemed much better nowadays, but Josh still knew that Jay wouldn't warm up to him again for at least an hour since he'd been gone for so long. That theory proved true when Josh told the little boy that he'd missed him, and Jay just kept watching Jim, doing absolutely nothing to show that he'd even heard Josh speak. Josh didn't take it personally. They all coped differently. He understood that.

Still, Jay allowed Josh to kiss the top of his head on his way to the kitchen, where he knew he'd find Kelly. Kelly had become like a second mother to him after he'd come home from the hospital. None of the kids wanted to be without parents for any given amount of time, so Josh's and Tyler's parents learned to juggle the two families together.

When Tyler had gotten his top surgery, Josh stayed at the Joseph house for two weeks. He had his own dresser in Tyler's room, and Jenna had part of Maddy's closet. They lived together so often that there was no need for suitcases. The two families were just fused together. Things remained that way until Tyler left for college. When Zack left too, Josh stopped coming over at all. Jenna still went back and forth since she couldn't really cope with not knowing if Maddy was okay for too long, but Josh had started spending more time with Brad and his friends from football. He started to focus on becoming normal.

A smile spread across Josh's face when he saw Kelly busily making tortillas in a pan while the meat cooked. She didn't look much different than she had on the day he'd met her. Her presence was still comforting.

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