Chapter Text
Eliza
Early Autumn, 2016
Love is warmth, decided a young Elizabeth Schuyler. She watched her younger siblings, still too young to stand, clumsily passing a toy back and forth between one another and occasionally bursting into uncontrollable laughter because life was just so beautiful and funny to them. She’s supposed to be doing her homework, but the twins are too cute and distract her easily. From the looks of it, Angelica is having the same problem. Eliza giggles at the frown forming on her older sister’s face. It sends the twins into a fit of giggles once again.
Nearly three decades later, she finds herself playing the same game with a baby of her own. Philip hands her the little, stuffed duck, she hands it back, he sticks it in his mouth, and then hands it over to his mother once again. Kloe is sitting on the couch, supposedly doing her English homework, but Eliza can feel the fond smile on Kloe’s face. She reaches over and moves a dark curl from Philip’s forehead. He gurgles and grabs at her thumb, delighting in the length of her fingers in comparison to his short, stubby ones. She hopes they’ll one day grow into pianist’s fingers like hers, but knows she’ll love him no matter what.
Eliza has work to do, too, but not for another twenty minutes will it truly demand her attention. She’s not sure when, but she starts humming her piano warm-up song, because eventually Kloe starts singing along with her.
“Un deux trois quatre cinq six sept huit neuf.” Beat. “One two three four five six seven eight nine.”
Philip started clapping, almost perfectly in tune. Kloe laughed.
“I think he’s gonna be a natural musician someday, Mom. Once we find his xylophone, he’ll be the next Mozart. He’ll tour the world and dazzle everyone!”
Eliza laughed at her daughter’s enthusiasm. “Wouldn’t that be something? I would like to point out, though, that Mozart’s older sister was even better than he was, so he can’t be a world-famous musician until you are, got it?”
“Yes, ma’am!” There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it!” Kloe declared, hopping off the couch and running towards the door.
“Who does your big sister think that is, hmm?” Eliza asked Philip quietly, holding him upright so he could test out bending his legs. He hadn’t yet mastered crawling but assisted standing made him so happy that Eliza indulged him frequently.
“There he is!” cried a familiar accented voice. Eliza looked up, a grin already cracking her face in two. It appeared that Kloe had invited the Baron over without informing her mother. “Bonjour, Liesl,” he greeted, combining his favored languages as he kissed her cheek.
“Salut, Friedrich,” she replied, turning Philip so he could see the Baron. “What are you doing here? Did something happen to Alexander?”
“Oh, no. Well, nothing out of the ordinary. Washington ‘kicked me out’ as you say, and so I figured I would come over and watch Philip for you during your piano lessons. Seeing as Dieser schreckliche Ehemann of yours has forgotten the last four times.”
“He’s not a terrible husband,” Eliza scolded, lowered Philip back into a seated position and gave him the stuffed duck, which promptly entered his mouth. “Honestly, what did I buy pacifiers for? They’re the only things that don’t go into his mouth. When he does use them, they wind up on the floor within a few minutes. I think he’s outgrown them.”
Baron shrugged. “Everyone is different. You know, I forget he’s not actually a biological mix of you and Alexander. He looks the part to me. Big brown eyes and a love for the world. So very much like you.”
Eliza smiled and pressed a kiss to the Baron’s cheek. Love is warmth, she remembered, soaking in the comfortable aura of being with Kloe and Philip and the baron; of being around people who loved her. She tapped her phone to check the time and her siblings were smiling up at her. Were she to unlock her phone, Church and Alexander would be there with Philip and a pair of infectious grins. When she turned on her computer to work, all her kids would be smiling at her from the background. Both the computer’s screensaver and the electronic picture frame on her desk would provide her with a slideshow of all her friends and family in various states of elation. Every time she saw those pictures, it made her day just a little bit brighter. It was for that exact reason that her house was covered in photos. Though each one was not worth a thousand words, they were worth just enough to make it home.
This is love, she thought, leaning down to pepper her son’s face with kisses because his big, chubby cheeks were just asking for it. Home.