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It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even a discussion.
The boys were back, and they were going to stay, as part of the Molina household, whether they knew it or not.
The group spent the next several hours weaving their unbelievable tale to Ray, interrupting to talk over one another, and interchangeably shouting, crying, and laughing. They didn’t stray far from one another; by the end of the night, the former ghosts and Julie were an indistinguishable pile of limbs on the Molina living room floor.
Luke and Julie, in particular, hadn’t stopped holding hands in hours. It was as if they were terrified to let each other go.
Ray understood. It took three doctors and finally one very stern but gentle nurse to pull his hand away from his wife’s after her last breath.
The way Julie kept looking at Luke made Ray’s heart ache; he was intimately familiar with the longing and grief that kept flickering upon her face, having seen it himself in the mirror every morning since Rose had passed.
It was that, more than anything, that made up Ray’s mind on the matter.
“Well, kiddos,” he said, “I’m off to bed. And you should be, too. Big day tomorrow. We’ll need to do a lot of shopping.”
He rose from his chair and gave Julie a kiss goodnight, then Carlos.
“Shopping?” Reggie asked, tentatively.
“Yeah, we-“, Luke started to speak, then coughed to clear his throat. “We don’t have any money.”
“Good thing I do then,” Ray said, smiling warmly at Luke. “You boys will need clothes, the staples at least to get started. Furniture, too. We’ll have to figure out how to fit all of you in my old office, but bunk beds might work.”
“Reggie can share my room!” Carlos shouted before Ray had entirely finished his sentence. Ray laughed.
“Easy, Carlos. It’s his choice,” Ray said. “Feel free to think about what you want, all of you. No pressure, even from Carlos.”
Carlos pouted but Reggie nudged him and stage whispered that he didn’t have anything to think about, and that made Carlos smile wider than Ray had seen in a long, long time. How could Ray deny them both?
That just left the four teenagers who were very obviously couples, with varying shades of separation anxiety and trauma radiating off of them.
Now, Ray could have done the parental thing. He could have put his head in the sand, assigned all of the boys (including Reggie) to their one room, and fought an uphill battle for the next however many years to keep Luke out of Julie’s room while also ignoring what Willie and Alex would obviously be up to behind closed doors while also dealing with Carlos pouting until he was 21.
Or, he could be realistic and accept that nothing about this situation should he handled through a normal parental lens, and treat these kids - who had been raked over the coals, to hell and back, several times - as the adults they’d be very soon.
It did kill him to allow his little girl to shack up with a boy under his own roof, but he knew what Rose would have done. And with the way Julie and Luke were looking at each other, he’d be a fool to think he had a choice.
He took a deep breath.
“Alright, there’s going to be rules,” he said. All five teenagers and Carlos sat straighter, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Be safe, be smart, talk to me if you are uncomfortable about anything, and I don’t want to hear anything other than band practice,” Ray warned, taking a minute to meet each of their eyes, one by one. Julie’s were the last.
“Um, Dad? What are you talking about?” she bravely asked and Ray pretended that he didn’t hear the hope in her voice.
“Reggie and Carlos can share his room, Luke can share yours, and Willie and Alex can have my old office,” Ray quickly said, ripping off the band-aid. “If that works for all of you. I assume that it does, at least for tonight. We can discuss it more tomorrow.”
Julie’s face shuttered before Ray could get a glance at her expression. To his surprise, she let go of Luke’s hand and slowly stood to face Ray. Luke reached for her automatically like he didn’t want to let her go, but reigned himself in when Alex picked up his hand instead. The poor boy’s face was white as a ghost.
Julie walked to Ray slowly, then grabbed his hand in a pinky promise, their shared secret and sacred gesture since Julie was old enough to know what it was. When she looked up at him, she looked so much like her mom, more grown up than Ray had ever seen her, that it made him want to cry.
“Thank you for trusting us, Papi,” Julie said. “Thank you for being the best dad in the entire world.”
Ray felt his eyes mist over at Julie’s praise. He was trying. He was trying so hard to bring his daughter back and if a boy with floppy hair, overly large biceps, and stars in his eyes is what she needed, then he’d give him to her.
He didn’t say that. He just pulled her into a tight hug and kissed the top of her head.
“We won’t let you down,” Luke’s voice broke through the moment. “We promise.”
The rest agreed, quickly and with enthusiasm, though he noted that a remaining tone of fear laced through their collective promises.
He was going to find them all a qualified therapist to deal with this. Including himself. Tomorrow.
“Try to get some sleep,” he said. “If you need anything, come find me. Carlos, come on. Bedtime was hours ago. Willie, Alex, there’s an air mattress in the closet in my office. Come on, I’ll help you set it up.”
Ray turned then and began walking upstairs, leaving Luke and Julie alone in the dark of the living room.
Knowing that he was allowing this to happen was one thing; actually seeing it, another. Some things a father just didn’t need to know about his daughter.
He mumbled under his breath and asked Rose for guidance and patience for the millionth time. As always when he asked, a soothing feeling came over him, his wife’s cosmic validation reassuring him that he was doing the right thing.
When he tucked both Reggie and Carlos in with goodnight hugs, and saw how misty-eyed both Alex and Willie got when he handed them clean sheets and a well-loved quilt to share, he believed it.