AN: I'm going to take the bonus chapter about Francie and Chester down, because there's no way to make the continuity right, no way to make it fit emotionally with the story I'm writing here. So if you read it, try to forget it, okay? I'll weave those events in, one way or another, but Francie and Chester are getting to know each other at a different pace, you know? That bonus chapter had to have a much sharper curve because I was trying to fit everything into one chapter, where here it's all drawn out, so yeah.

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Francie was walking home in the brisk evening, wondering what was for dinner, when she was surprised by a tap on her shoulder. She quickly turned around, ready to face friend or foe (this was New York City, after all), and came face to face with Antonio, looking like an ad for men's cologne in his tailored coat and boots.

"Hi!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here? Didn't you finish practice two hours ago?"

"I was waiting to walk you home," he replied. "I hope this is okay?" He flashed a smile at her.

"Oh my god, you waited two hours to walk me home? But I live, like, ten minutes from the school." Francie pointed in the direction of their building. "And sometimes my family picks me up and we go out, too. What would you have done then?"

Antonio spread his gloved hands out. "I suppose I would've called an Uber and gone home to be disappointed," he said. He looked her up and down. "Aren't you cold?" he asked solicitously. "You're carrying your jacket."

Francie shook her head. "I get so hot during practice," she explained. "The outside air feels so good after. I feel like the walk home is the last part of my warm down, you know?"

Antonio nodded. "I see. Yeah, that advanced practice looked really hard, very strenuous. You're in amazing shape."

"I hope so. I love to swim, nothing feels as good, don't you think?" Francie looked up at him for his opinion as they waited for a light to change.

"I don't know. I like what swimming does for me, does for my body, I suppose. I like being in shape, I like when people look at me and admire me. If I could get that without the working out, I honestly don't know if I'd do it," Antonio admitted. "Do you think less of me now?"

Francie shook her head and laughed. "Why would I think less of you for telling the truth?"

"Francie! Francie!"

Francie looked up with a smile, just as some bubbles landed in her hair. Antonio, too, looked up, perplexed.

"Ciao, bambini!" she called, craning her neck and waving. At the top of the building , three little heads bobbed up and down as three arms waved back enthusiastically.

"They do this every night," she explained. "They try to time the bubbles just right to land on me without popping. My brother and sisters."

Antonio, too waved up at them in the gathering twilight.

"Everything has to be just right, or the bubbles blow away, or they pop, or the land too far down the street or whatever, so you were here on an auspicious evening, Tony."

"Lucky me," he laughed, wiping some bubbles out of his hair. Passersby were also looking up and smiling, looking at the children up in the penthouse of the building across the street.

"Anyway, thanks for walking me home, see you tomorrow," Francie said, turning to Antonio and shaking her curly hair out of her face.

"It was my pleasure, Francie Santangelo," Antonio replied, looking down at her. He leaned in and hugged her, and she took a deep whiff of the wonderful aftershave he was wearing.

Finn, Lottie and Brina, predictably, were full of questions as they ate dinner.

"Who was that man?"

"Is he your boyfriend?"

"Do you love him?"

"Did he kiss you?"

"Eww, Finn, Francie wouldn't let someone kiss her that we hadn't met first," Brina said, scrunching her face up as she ate her scampi.

"Yeah, Finn, Francie wouldn't do that," Clio echoed, grinning at her little sister. "Who was it, Francie-pants?"

"Shut up, you guys." Francie looked to her mother for help. "It's just a new student at school, an exchange student from Brazil. He's on the swim team with me."

"So why are the kids calling him a man, mimma?" Pete asked as he took a sip of wine.

"He didn't look like a student," Lottie insisted. As usual, she had a milk mustache as she spoke. "He didn't have a backpack, and he was wearing a coat, like a business man, and nice shoes." She nodded for emphasis.

"Charlotte Jonquille, you have eyes like a hawk," Francie told her sister. "How could you see all that from way up here?"

"Okay, guys, how about we cut your sister a little slack, hm?" Daisy said, smiling at her second born. "She says a teammate walked her home, so let's just leave it at that."

"Thanks mom." Francie leaned over and kissed her mother on the cheek.

"But can I ask one more thing?" Finn looked comically worried as he looked around the table.

"What is it, passerotto?" Pete put his chin on his hand and looked at his youngest, his baby, who was somehow already eight years old.

"Clio has Archie, who's her boyfriend, and now Francie might, too," he declared, small eyebrows arching together in concern. "Isn't that what happens before people get married and leave their families? Is that what's going to happen to us?" Everyone could see his little hands clutching the edge of the table, knuckles turning white. "Because I was thinking that maybe we could do it the Italian way, like at Nonno and Nonna's winery, like at Colibrì? Tia Angela and Tia Gabriella both got married, but they didn't leave, you know? Their husbands just came to live with them. And they had kids and everything, but they stayed, everyone just stayed all together, like one big family, and it was nice..." his voice trailed off into uncertainty as he looked around the table. "Couldn't we do that? And then no one would have to leave?"

He blinked, and his chin trembled, and everyone realized that he was trying really hard not to cry.

Oh, Finn.

Francie and Clio pushed their chairs back a little, and he rose from his chair and ran to them, slinging an arm around each of his sisters to hug them as he finally gave in to his tears.

"I don't want you to leave," he sobbed into their necks. "Can't you just stay?"

Francie and Clio patted his back, looking at each other over his dark head. Daisy watched, hand at her mouth, while Pete and the twins tried not to cry also.

Finn finally lifted his head to look at his adored sisters. "Why do you need boyfriends anyway? If you want to go out to dinner or the movies, Daddy or I can take you, and we'll do homework with you whenever you want, promise, won't we, Daddy?" He looked over at his father hopefully.

"Of course, passerotto, but that's not all that dates are for," Pete tried to explain with a straight face.

"Oh." Finn swallowed. "You mean the mushy stuff?" He still had an arm around Francie and Clio, and he looked at each of them in turn. "I'll kiss you as often as you want, and I'm a good kisser, too. Look." And he kissed each of them soundly on the mouth, puckering up and making a satisfying smacking sound as he did so.

"Oh, Finn, has there ever been a brother as dear as you?" Francie asked, kissing the top of his dark head.

"No, never," Clio answered, wiping away a tear as she, too, kissed his head. "I love you, Finn, and I promise I'm not leaving this house for a long time, okay?"

"Me either, Francie declared. "Not for a long time."

"Never?" Finn pressed, tightening his grip on his sisters' necks.

"Finn, you can't ask that of them," Pete admonished gently. "Eventually they'll want their own lives, as will you, and piccola and cucciola, all of you. But they're telling you that they'll be here with you for a good long while yet, and that will have to be enough, okay?"

Finn finally sighed and nodded, letting go of his sisters go to to his mother and climb on her lap. "And can I stay here as long as I want?"

Daisy looked at her husband with merry eyes. "Would you believe me if I told you that the day will come when you can't wait to get away from here? Hmm, my baby boy?"

He shook his head violently from her lap, his head buried in her bosom. "Can I?" His voice was muffled.

"Yes, darling Finn, you can stay as long as you want," Daisy promised. "Now can we please finish dinner? Everyone still has homework, right?"

Reluctantly, Finn went back to his place to finish his meal.

Daisy and Pete locked eyes as the conversation slowly returned to normal around them.

Our family.

After dinner, when Francie was in her room, working on the aforementioned homework, she was surprised to receive a text from Chester.

Did you ever say or do anything to Jill Wyler that would make her upset with you?

Francie picked up her phone and grimly typed back.

Nope. I mean, I've known her to say hi to since kindergarten, but we never hung out in the same circles, so not that I'm aware of. Why?

I mentioned that you offered to help me out in English, and she pretty much warned me to stay away from you, that you weren't as nice as you seemed, that you were bad news, all kinds of stuff. I normally wouldn't repeat all this, but she's a really good friend of mine, and I was hoping you and I could have a mutually beneficial relationship, you know? So I was hoping I could maybe help smooth things out. But she wouldn't say specifically what you'd done, just that I should stay away from you.

I'm truly mystified, if for no other reason than I don't think I've even interacted with her enough to have done anything to her, honestly. Not that it means anything, but I've been voted "Best Personality," quite a few times, you know lol?

Jesus, Francie, is there any Yearbook Superlative you haven't been voted?

What can I say, I've gone to this stupid school since I was four!

And on another topic, are you taking French?

Yeah, I have it with the lovely Jill herself, didn't she tell you?

No haha. I have it, too, but a different period, and I'm having a terrible time with the homework, wanna work on it together?

Sure. FaceTime?

Sounds good.

So Francie, who, thanks to her father, was nearly as fluent in French as she was in Italian, spent a fun hour helping Chester with the French assignment, while Clio worked on her Organic Chem homework on the other side of the room.

When the two girls were in bed that night, Clio asked her about Chester.

"You know Chester Wozniak? Does stats for the swim team?"

"Oh, right, the guy who had polio when he was little?" Clio's voice was soft in the dark.

"Is that what happened to him?"

"I think so. I don't remember very well because we were all so little, but there was a real scare at the school. I mean, we're all vaccinated against it, but he got it anyway, so mom had to take all of us to the doctor for boosters or tests or something, don't you remember?"

Francie shook her head against her pillow.

"It might have been the vaccine that caused it? Because he got a different kind of vaccine in another country or something?" Clio mused. "I honestly don't remember, I'm probably getting it all kinds of wrong, you should ask him about it."

"I will not!" Francie retorted. "We're not that good of friends, and that's very personal. Besides, you can't get polio from the vaccine, I remember that from health class."

"Not from the shot that we get in the States, but in some countries they give a different kind, and he was traveling with his parents and got a different kind?" Clio asked it like a question. "Look, Francie, I was, like seven when I heard all this, I barely remember, so don't listen to me, okay? Whatever the reason, we've established that that's the Chester in question, right? That's the guy you were doing homework with tonight?"

"Yes, mm hm, he's really nice," Francie responded, letting the other subject go. "And he's really good friends with Jill Wyler, remember her?"

"Tall girl, likes anime? Kinda in with the out crowd?"

"Yeah, that's her," Francie responded glumly. "Well, for some reason, she hates my ass, and I can't figure out why."

"Well, not everyone's going to like even you, lovely Francie, you're just going to have to learn to live with it," Clio murmured, on the edge of sleep. "Night, sis."

"Night."