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Grace is 21 when she marries Reginald. He's charming, refined and treats her like a queen. They go to concertos and fancy lunches and he kisses her to the light of the stars on her 20th birthday. Reginald is twice her age.
She moves into his mansion and makes quick friends with his personal butler, both Reginald and Pogo dote on her every whim. Vintage dresses and fine pieces of vinyl and a room to her own instead of her father's small run-down house where they had to share a bedroom till the day he died.
Grace adores Regie, after a year of marriage he becomes more absent but she understands, his work is tiring and he isn't a young man. Besides, he still finds time to take her to dinner.
She wants children. Books upon books of essentials about babies are bought, she talks in hushed, excited tones with Pogo as she prepares for the big moment.
Regie says yes.
So they try, and try, and try. After six months Grace learns she is infertile, Reginald looks into adoption.
He thinks she wants a baby. She thought she wanted a baby, but when she saw him play fighting with the other children she knew that he was hers.
Diego is 14 years old, only 10 years younger than herself. His caseworker warns her of him, no foster family has been able to keep him for more than a month because of his behavior. She sits with him while he reenacts a scene from his favorite action movie for her. Diego likes comic books, wishes he had a red mountain bike and one day he's going to be a police officer so he can make the world better one bad guy at a time. All Grace wants is to make his life better, and she does.
They train together, pretend punches flying until Grace dramatically falls to the ground.
"Offi-c-er down!" He stutters and laughs as she grabs him, pulling him down with her.
She knows Reginald loves Diego in his own way, but still, she acts as mother and father to him. Teaching him how to calm his anger when he gets overwhelmed and holding him when he cries, whispering encouragements as Diego tries to get his words out.
Grace doesn't stop there. She treats Diego like a full-time job, always there for him, always ready to spring into action, but Diego deserves someone closer to his own age.
An 8-year-old may not be as close to 16-year-old Diego as she had wanted, but just like her son, as soon as Grace saw her she knew that Allison was hers.
Allison becomes the perfect daughter, she loves fashion and gossip mags and Grace walks her into her new bedroom, a wonderland of pink. They spend hours watching romantic comedies as Diego pretends to throw up. She knows he secretly loves it, especially since Allison adores the attention when he pretends he's saving her from a despicable criminal.
Grace is 27. She loves her children with all her heart. She is content.
Grace falls pregnant.
The doctors say it's a miracle and Grace cries, she notes down everything and monitors her pregnancy with Allison, they giggle and talk about how cute the baby will be. Diego is 17 and he thinks it would maybe, possibly, be a tiny bit cool if he had a younger brother.
Diego gets his wish, Reginald names the baby Luther and looks at him fondly. Grace swears that Regie holds little Luther more than he even acknowledges their other children. She spends even more time with Diego and Allison to make up for it.
Luther is 4 when Grace's best friend finally passes away. She dressed Allison in the best attire you could buy for a 13-year-old and they walked down to where Pogo was waiting to take them to the ladies lunching garden. She finds out from the lowered faces of the other ladies, and Natasha's empty chair.
Natasha had been sick for some time now, and Grace is just grateful that she passed painlessly. She had been waiting for this moment since Natasha signed the paperwork, wrote her name in cursive letters next to Natasha's own daughters.
Vanya is silent the entire drive home.
The 9-year-old was always timid, but now she doesn't speak. Grace takes her to therapy every 2 weeks with the radio set to a classical station.
Her therapist says she needs something to take her mind off her mother's death and after many attempts at getting her to open up, the first real thing that Grace learns about Vanya is that she's always wanted to play the violin.
With Grace's support, she flourishes.
Klaus is 19 when she finds him. It's been 3 years since she took in Vanya and seeing him laying on the side of the road unconscious, small, she can't force herself to walk past him.
It's not so much of an adoption as it is 'you have somewhere safe now'. Her children love him the moment he enters the threshold. Allison, Luther, and Vanya may be younger than Klaus, but the hold him nonetheless, they tell him everything's going to be okay.
Even Diego, now 24 (the same age she had been when she adopted him), comes home for family dinner that night despite having other plans already in place. Grace cries and Diego stays the night.
When Klaus comes back with Ben the next day she simply sets another place at the table.
He had met the now 17-year-old Ben on the streets a year or so back, and took to protecting him as a duck takes to water. He's shy and reserved and only Klaus can get him to smile, Grace doesn't know what life Ben has lived but she hopes someday he would trust the rest of them enough to let his guard down in their presence.
She wasn't expecting to take on another child today, but how could she not when Ben and Klaus were clearly already brothers. Besides, Grace had all the love in the world to give.
If Reginald notices that Grace had cleared one of his studies to use as a bedroom he doesn't mention it.
9 years pass and almost all of Grace's children have left the nest.
Diego had been living on his own for years now, he still comes back every few weeks for mothers unbeatable home cooking and tells her about all the criminals he’s stopped, all the people he’s helped.
Allison had moved to the outskirts of LA with her fiance, she calls Grace every time she books a new role and they talk for hours on end. She surprises Grace by coming home for the first time in years to tell her mother she was pregnant, they hug for what seems like decades.
Vanya is only a stone's throw away, living in a dinky little apartment that she swears she can pay for herself. More often than not Grace finds her on the doorstep and Grace is always sure to have nonperishable food and essentials wrapped in a basket with a large red bow. She sits in Regie's large armchair as Vanya plays her violin and all her troubles fade.
Klaus and Ben moved out together when Klaus' boyfriend Dave proposed. The three of them live just a few hours down the road and Grace adores having them over for dinner, Dave is charming and treats Ben like his own brother (and she supposes he will be soon).
Luther is the only one still living at home, he used to spend every waking hour with his father. The funeral is quiet except for Luther's shivering breaths.
Luther is 16, and he is lonely.
Grace adopts 13-year-old Five. Partially for Luther, partially for herself, but most of all for Five, who is frustratingly blunt, flinches when she reaches her hand toward him and refuses to tell her his real name.
Grace sees it in the adoption papers and Five knows she knows. She doesn't call him anything other than Five.
All of her children come home, they take leave from work and book flights. Grace introduces them all to Five and Luther is the most excited of all, quickly jumping into the big brother role she knows he's been yearning for.
Diego, Allison, Vanya, Klaus, and Ben sit around their mothers cherry wood table, Grace at the head. They talk about everything and anything while Five and Luther play (or while Luther plays near Five, who is crouched in the space between two armchairs, throwing sarcastic remarks at Luther as he sips an extravagant iced coffee Grace made just for him).
Luther and Five rejoin the adults when Grace finishes cooking dinner and Five preens at all the attention they get from people twice their age as they jump from topic to topic. When Five turns and talks to an empty space at the end of the table for several minutes no one comments. They all understand in their own way.
Grace is surrounded by family, and she knows that nothing will ever break them apart.