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It’s a few months before the children’s twelfth birthday when the idea comes to Grace.
She’s a little ashamed that it took her so long to come up with such a thing - or she would be, she thinks, if she had ever been programmed to feel such emotions.
It happens when she walks into the library one evening, prepared to tell the children that it’s time for bed, and she’s not at all expecting all seven of them to be crowded around a large book propped open on one of the tables.
“What are you all up to?” She’s cheerful as she walks over to see what’s managed to catch all of their attentions so fully.
Six closes the book a little, but only enough so to get a clear view of the cover before letting it fall open again with a dull thud. “It’s to do with onomastics.”
She’s about to praise his use of such a word when One chimes in, “Like a dictionary for names. There are some really weird ones in here!”
“I think it’s cool,” Three adds, and Seven nods her silent agreement.
“Not m-much for ours, though,” Two tries to sound like it doesn’t bother him in the least, and doesn’t entirely succeed. Grace gives his shoulder a squeeze.
Four glances over his shoulder, back towards an empty corner of the room, before nodding and turning back to the book. “Let’s look up Marco next.”
“Tomorrow evening, children. It’s time for bed, your father will be unhappy if you’re up passed curfew again.”
She doesn’t like taking them away from something that seems to interest them so, especially when it’s educational, but she likes the repercussions of broken rules when Reginald is home even less. How lucky she is, to have such well-behaved children that they all but fall silent at her words, filing out of the room and towards the second floor landing without so much as a mumble of a complaint.
She glances back at the book thoughtfully before following them out, gears turning in her mind as she contemplates the children’s words.
As it is, there isn’t much more she can do other than start a little research when Reginald is away on one of his many business trips. She isn’t doing anything wrong, exactly (she wouldn’t be able to if it went against any ideals placed into Reginald’s lines of code), but she can’t help but assume this is one project that would run a little more smoothly if he wasn’t entirely aware of it.
Besides, isn’t her primary task to take care of the children? To keep them safe and healthy and happy as could be? She knows it will do wonders for the last of the three, at the very least.
And so she finds a dusty old box in one of the mansion’s many storage rooms one night, after the children are asleep and Pogo has retired to his own quarters. It seems as though the box hasn’t been moved since it was placed there nearly a decade before, and Grace is glad she doesn’t need to breathe and inhale any of the dust she brushes off the top of the box. She peers inside, sees a stack of all-but-forgotten papers - exactly the ones she had been looking for.
Hospital records, birth certificates, adoption papers, invoices.
She sifts through the papers carefully, making a pile for each child. A couple of the birth certificates actually have names printed on them already, names the children were meant to have before they were adopted and given a number instead. Names given by no doubt confused and terrified, but despite-it-all still loving parents. The thought makes Grace smile, but it’s likely a sad thought at the same time.
Maybe she’ll write to them too, later.
After all, she knows if their places were reversed, she would want to know how her children had grown, what foods they liked and how often they laughed and how quickly they could disarm an assailant.
How blessed she is, to have seven wonderful children to care for as her own. She owes these parents so much.
She looks down at the two names again, whispers them softly and smiles again. They suit perfectly, and she can’t wait for them to be acquainted with the children they were meant for.
But that still leaves five others, with certificates left blank. Children with no names that she knows of other than numbers. She digs through the paperwork a little longer, comes up with a list of addresses from around the world - homes and hospitals alike - and then moves to the kitchen table to begin her letters.
It’s nearly dawn by the time she finishes sealing the final envelope. Nearly time to start breakfast and wake the children. She knows she won’t be running at full capacity, might even be a little sluggish - having had no time to recharge overnight and all. Just as she knows it will be entirely worth it when she hands the small stack of envelopes to Pogo and asks him to deliver them to the post office during his morning errands.
He gives her a quizzical glance, but she only smiles and tells him it’s part of a surprise for the children’s birthday. His expression changes to the slightest of frowns, but he knows as well as she does that she can’t do anything that would harm any of them - the academy’s reputation included - and so he only nods and agrees.
Later, when she’s standing near the doorway and watching her children chatter happily to one another between mouthfuls of food - records and their required silence were sometimes ‘forgotten’ when Reginald was away - Grace has to resist the urge to call two of them by their other names.
Not yet. She looks forward to the day she can, but it’s not yet. Not until all of them can share in that surprise.
~
The replies start to arrive after a couple of weeks. Not all at once, of course, but one here and there, every few days, and Grace hides them away in her apron pocket until the children are in bed and she has little chance of being interrupted.
The letters aren’t all in English, and she’s grateful that Reginald programmed her with knowing many different languages.
Some of them are very long, full of questions and well-wishes and hopes for meeting someday in the future. Grace reads these ones with a smile on her face and hopes for the same. These are good people, and she thinks the children might very much like to meet their biological parents one day, when they’re grown and can make those choices for themselves.
Others are shorter, as though their authors weren’t sure whether they ought to reply at all but did so in the end, knowing what residence the request had come from. One is barely a few lines at all, and another actually requests ‘further compensation’. These ones are harder to read, if she had the capability she might even shed a few tears, but it only serves to firm her resolve when it comes to her children. She’s fortunate to have them to care for, and perhaps they’re equally lucky to have her as well.
But all of the letters, the good ones and the bad, include a name.
It’s the names that she focuses on, reads them over and over, teaches herself to associate the names with numbers so she can refer to them all properly without a second thought.
Soon enough, she’s only waiting for one last reply, one last letter and she’ll have a name for each of her children.
The reply doesn’t come, though. No letter arrives. It’s only a few days before their birthday and Grace begins to feel what she thinks is probably worry. The closest she can get to it, anyway.
Reginald is away again, will be for at least another week, and that makes her planning a little easier. She had told him already, after most of the names were returned, and he had only shrugged after a moment and gave her his permission so long as it seemed it would improve the children’s morale.
Grace is sure of that much, at least. She knows they'll be thrilled.
Most of them will be.
She’s in the study, carefully wrapping six small boxes with shiny silver paper, each completed with a different coloured bow. Each one has a piece of paper inside, rolled up and showcasing a name she’d written with a fancy calligraphic font - a skill she’d downloaded a few days ago specifically for the occasion.
There’s one more box set off to the side, still awaiting its name. Ready for her to wrap up just as soon as it arrives in the mail.
But when it’s the afternoon before their birthday, when the mail’s been delivered for the day and nothing has arrived, she has no choice but to find Number Five outside in the courtyard, practicing his spatial jumps, reappearing around the area over and over with seemingly impressive ease.
“You’re making tremendous progress,” Grace greets him cheerfully, but she must not have tried quite hard enough to shift her facial expression because Five pauses and considers her carefully.
“Is something wrong, mom?”
“Nothing is wrong, silly,” she places a hand on his head, runs her fingers through his hair affectionately. “Could we sit for a moment, though?”
They do, side by side on the stone bench placed in the yard, and he’s quiet while she explains what has happened. That she’s sorry she has to ruin the surprise, but she wants him to know now why he won’t have a shiny silver box to open tomorrow, and that she’s sure it’s on its way.
“I don’t mind waiting,” he says, once she’s finished and has given him a minute or so to process. “It’s not your fault. I can wait until the letter arrives,” Five actually seems a little excited at the thought. “This is a great surprise, mom, everyone is going to be really happy.”
How lucky she is, to have been given such an understanding child to love, and she says as much when she wraps her arms around him and plants a kiss in his hair. He smiles and hugs her back.
~
They unwrap presents the next morning, the only day of the year when the children receive gifts that aren’t strictly useful and practical. There are clothes other than uniforms, books other than manuals or textbooks, and model planes and magazines and board games besides.
Grace watches them all happily, waits for some of the excitement to die down before going to retrieve the last gifts of the day.
Seven notices the boxes in her arms first when she returns. “There are only six,” she observes, looking up from her new classical cassette tapes.
“Five’s is a little late,” Grace explains, handing out a present to Seven first before moving on to the others. “But it should arrive any day now.”
“Go ahead and open them!” Five seems nearly as eager as she is, waiting to see both what’s in the boxes and his siblings’ reactions.
Excited faces fade ever so slightly as they open the gifts, shift more towards confusion as they unroll the papers.
“Who’s Luther?” One asks first, glancing around as though expecting someone to jump out and reveal themselves. Two and Three chime in, echoing the question with the names inside their own gifts.
Grace smiles widely at all of them. “You are Luther, sweetheart. And you’re Diego and Allison.” They all still seem a little confused, and she elaborates. “I thought you all might like to have other names, other than your numbers. They’re names you were meant to have before you joined our family, but we can change them if you want. You can have any name you choose.”
They’re all staring down at the papers again with renewed interest and dawning excitement.
“What, my name is Claws?” Four asks skeptically, before Grace smiles patiently and correct his pronunciation. “Oh, Klaus. That’s way better!” He laughs a little and leans over towards Six and Seven. “Hello, my name is Klaus. And you are?”
“Vanya,” Seven is still staring at her paper, gripping it tightly with both hands. “Mine’s Vanya.”
“That’s beautiful! And you, sir?”
Six grins widely and holds out a hand for Four - Klaus - to shake. “Ben. It’s great to meet you, Klaus.”
“Ben! I always thought you looked like a Ben.”
Grace watches on quietly, thinks if she had a heart it would be full to bursting as her children laugh excitedly and introduce themselves to one another with brand new names. Names they seem to love, as no one is giving any indication they want to change them. It’s exactly as she had hoped it would be.
Almost exactly as she had hoped it would be.
Five stands beside her, equally silent and with an expression that might pass to most as reserved excitement. But she’s not most, and a quick scan makes it clear he’s a little disappointed as well. She can’t blame him in the least.
“Yours will be here soon,” she wraps an arm around his shoulders.
“I wonder what your name will be, Five!” Three - now Allison - taps her chin in thought. “I’m thinking something like...Desmond.”
“Or maybe Jonathan.”
“Dmitri.”
“Eric.”
“Second Klaus.”
Five cracks a smile, some of the disappointment melting away in favour of joining his siblings’ interest in his name-to-be, and Grace is thankful she has such thoughtful children. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see!”
~
They do wait, for over a year.
Reginald’s training regime increases with his return a few days after their birthday, and soon any of the cheerful atmosphere remaining from the day has all but disappeared from the house. Not the names themselves, though. Their father might refuse to call them by anything other than their numbers, but the children stick with it, and Grace and Pogo do the same.
Five remains optimistic at first, patiently inquiring after the mail each afternoon and doing a near flawless job of hiding any disappointment when he receives the same answer day after day.
Grace asks him, after a month or two, if he’d like to choose his own instead.
“Anything you want. We can go take a look at that book you children were so interested in?”
Five shrugs, manages to put a nonchalant smile on his lips easily enough. “Thanks, mom. But I’ll wait.” The smile doesn’t reach his eyes, though. Eyes a little distant and circled with dark rings, and Grace makes a mental note to suggest Five be granted a little more time to rest between training sessions.
A suggestion she knows will likely be ignored, but she’ll attempt it all the same.
In another few months - during which time Five had stopped asking after the mail - Grace tries again with a slightly different tactic.
“I could choose a name for you, if you like?”
“What would it be?” Five doesn’t look up from the book he’s taking notes from.
“I would have to think about it, but I can do it if you want me to.” It truly is the least she can do, she thinks she would feel terribly for it taking so long already. She doesn’t tell him she’s already sent two other letters, still with no replies to any of them.
“Well, I’ll let you know.”
Grace knows a dismissal when she hears one, and gives his arm a gentle squeeze before leaving the room.
He never lets her know. Their thirteenth birthday comes and goes - a much more solemn affair with Reginald at home and the time for their public debut fast approaching - and Five never lets her know.
And then he’s gone one day. He leaves the breakfast table with angry words and something to prove, and he doesn’t come back.
Grace is certain she would cry if she could, feels the closest thing to despair that was granted to her as she does her best to comfort her children, shaken at the sudden loss of a brother but given little time to mourn and no proper way to do so anyway.
They have no body to bury. No physical way to accept he isn’t coming back. And no name to attach to any sort of memorial.
Only a number, of which Reginald doesn’t place anyway with the portrait he hangs in the house. Grace isn’t sure if it’s meant to be a comfort or a warning to her children who remain, but she never thinks to ask for it to be removed.
Another few months go by before a small letter arrives. Pogo places it in her hand before bringing the rest of the mail up to Reginald in his office, and she’s left staring at the return address. A small hospital from a town she’s never heard of. She sits herself down in her chair in the gallery before opening it.
Inside, the letter is short. The child you refer to was never given a name, it says, he was left outside the building. We have no records at all, prior to his adoption in late 1989.
Grace is quiet, contemplative, as she takes the letter to the storage room, places it with the other papers that wouldn’t likely be sought out again and a small silver box that wouldn't ever hold a gift. She returns to her chair, stares up at paintings while her mind processes facts she thinks she’d have been better off not learning.
She had thought of names, of course she had. And she had set expectations too high for too many children, and when one was let down he forgave her and she carried on letting him down.
She had promised him a letter and a name that was never coming, instilled a hope for something that would never arrive. And when it didn’t, she promised him other names instead. Ones that he would never hear.
She had failed her child completely. And he would never know.
“Are you okay, mom?”
She feels a hand on her shoulder, knows it’s Diego even before she turns to face him, placing a smile firmly on her face. “Of course, dear. Why do you ask?”
“You just seemed lost in thought is all.”
How fortunate she is, to still have such considerate children, despite everything.
She won’t tell them what she’s learned. They’ll be happier not knowing, without another reminder of just how little they have to remember a brother who it seems wasn’t wanted at all before their strange little family came into existence. Before he came to a family and a mother that perhaps wasn't meant to exist in the first place, but who knows she misses him terribly all the same.
She won’t disappoint any of her children like that, won’t let them down so horribly again. She’s blessed to have them, and she wants them to be able to feel the same way about her.
“Oh, I was just thinking, Diego. What would you like for dinner tonight?”