Chapter Text
September
“Amber Pike has three Dads.” The phrase had caught her off guard when her six-year-old son had muttered it one day at the dinner table in late September.
The move to Ottawa, hell to Canada, had been thoughtfully planned and carefully executed. America was a shit show, especially for families like theirs and while they had known they would find more liberal ideals in the Canadian capitol it had been nice to finally hear of some actual queerness in their high-end neighborhood.
Chelsea Smith looked across the table at her wife Tiffany, who was looking down at Robbie with a wide smile of relief on her face. “Families can come in all different shapes and sizes.” She caught Chelsea’s eyes and smiled.
After all their kid had four moms.
Chelsea and Britanny had been together since college, after a decade they thought that having a kid was the next step in their relationship. But within two years they had split, Britanny had met Kelsey and Chelsea met Tiffany and suddenly there were four of them parenting the same child. Robbie didn’t mind. He liked having four moms and enjoyed the little sisters which each of the couples had provided him with in the following years.
But now as their son entered the Ottawa public school system it was clear just how strange their parenting arrangement was.
Divorced or multiple families weren’t uncommon anymore. What was uncommon was four lesbians with rhyming names squished together at their kids’ table on back-to-school night. The quartet of them in stark unwavering support, getting along cordially while more than one of the separated straight couples had been glaring daggers from opposite ends of the room.
Robbie was their kid. They co-parented with militaristic precision to communicate and get along to make his childhood as well rounded as possible. After all, if you wanted shit to get done, putting a lesbian in charge was your best bet. Four lesbians just meant there were color coded binders, shared document drives and detailed joined calendars. There was no ego involved, no parent better than the rest, it was shockingly streamlined now that they had been doing it for years. But the communications from the classroom teacher, and the ease of school runs, made it clear they were an exception.
Chelsea hadn’t noticed an abundance of men in the room on that back-to-school night the week before. Especially not any men whom she could clock as queer, but that didn’t surprise her too much, she was still struggling to keep up with who Robbie’s classmates were as well. The notion that there was another queer family in the class would become a topic of discussion in the group chat later that night.
Tiffany was gently asking him questions, trying to get more information out of the boy who was picking at his chicken with a fork. “Amber moved here too.” Robbie glared at his two-year-old sister Emma, making a mess of some mashed potatoes and carrots with jealousy that she hadn’t been subjected to using utensils.
“That’s nice, do you know where from?” Tiffany asked him.
It was something that started with an M, but that was all they managed to get out of the first grader before he trailed off in another topic of conversation not swinging back to the little girl in his class with three dads.
Later that night after the kids had gone to bed Chelsea sent out a text to the group chat between the two couples, cutely named the “R’s elite squad”
Chelsea: Amber Pike (Robbie’s classmate) has three dads.
Kelsey: Throuple?
Tiffany: In this neighborhood… unlikely.
Brittany: Probably divorced.
Tiffany: Don’t know yet. Robbie just mentioned it over dinner.
Chelsea: Didn’t get much more info. Other than new kid as well.
Brittany: Thx!
Kelsey: We’ll keep our ears open.
Kelsey: Glad we’re not the only queer family.
Brittany: I have pick up tomorrow.
**
It was the dog that caught her attention the next time she was sitting in the pickup line in front of the elementary school.
Chelsea was doing her best not to be distracted by her phone when she caught sight of the dog in the car behind her. Unlike most of the designer dog breeds that she saw in the pickup line it was calmly waiting mutt in the passenger seat. It bore excitement in its eyes as it waited for its favorite small humans to return to the car, yet its well-trained behavior mirrored the driver perfectly, an incredibly muscular Asian man with dark sunglasses gently tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.
She let her eyes travel to the fancy laminated nametag that sat in the window that served as a reminder that they were all firmly in their child chauffeuring era. Pike.
So, this was one of Amber’s dads. Not what Chelsea had expected to be honest.
She had finally managed to figure out which child was Amber two days before when she was volunteering in the class. Amber had been cutely dressed in a matching sweatsuit set that was approximately seasonally themed, her mousey brown hair in elaborately twisted pig tails with color coordinating bows. She had been cute, but a little chaotic in their brief meeting.
This muscley man who looked like he would be more at home a CrossFit gym rather than doing elaborate braids, though his own hair was down around his shoulders in way that seemed masculine and modern. She let her eye wander back to her rearview mirror to get a better look at him. He was wearing athleisure, but something about the cut of the fabric and the way he held himself reminded her of those Tik Toks she saw of dads at Costco who appeared to be wearing boring clothes, only to be dripping in thousands of dollars of cashmere and leather. He had a large golden watch on his wrist, a dark wedding ring flashing on his left hand and from time to time he would pet the dog with a calm and steady hand. The car was a Range Rover, not uncommon at all in these parts, but from what she could see of its interior it was spotless. Not like her beat up SUV, that was blessedly not a Subaru, though she and Tiffany had already conceded their next car would be, that was covered in a layer of grim and politically radicalized stickers.
She wanted to give him a small wave of recognition but that felt awkward. While her own outward appearance made it clear that she was a card-carrying member of the alphabet mafia, his didn’t not. Maybe it wasn’t one of the Pike’s fathers, maybe it was a nanny or au pair. After all some of the kids who attended the school had locally famous parents. A few were the offspring of the local evening newscasters, politicians or the son of a prominent furniture salesmen with catchy advertisements.
The line lurched forward and she paid attention to the road, not wanting to get into a fender bender here of all places. She took a moment to glance behind her, watching as he mouthed the words of one of her bumper stickers and smiled to himself.
She felt her heart warm a little before she pulled up into the number one slot and her rear passenger side door was open for Robbie to come running into the car, coat in hand, toque barely on his head and his face a bright red. The door shut behind him and Chelsea pulled forward into the catchy named ‘loading zone’ to get out of the car and buckle him into his booster seat.
Emma had woken up at the sight of her brother who was yelling at the kid behind him. “Bye Amber!” Her son turned and looked at her with excitement. “Mom that’s Amber.” He said tugging on her sleeves and not at all subtly pointing out the kid as if Chelsea didn’t just hear him.
Cheslea looked out of the corner of her eye at the Range Rover which had followed behind them into the loading zone. The man getting out of the car wasn’t that tall, but he had a commanding presence. “Jade, your coat better be in that backpack.” His voice carried a recognizable tone, and Chelsea slowed down her movements to overhear as much as the conversation as possible. Sue her, she was desperate for the gossip of her child’s classmates, it was far better than any reality show that existed.
The three other children who were getting into the Range Rover all had brown hair and had enough similar facial features to be clearly related. A set of identical twins who mercifully had their hair cut and styled drastically differently and a boy who was maybe a grade or two older than the youngest. They seemed comfortable and familiar with the man even though it was clear he was likely not related to them biologically.
A twin who had hopped into the front seat of the car shot back quickly, “It is.” She was far more focused on the fact that she was closest to the dog and letting it joyfully lick her face.
The boy had murmured something soft that was lost in the shuffle of kids and safety belts. “No, we can do that after practice.” The man replied softly to him before loudly telling the older child, “Open it up and show me the coat Jade.” It was clearly parental.
There was an exasperated sigh that placed the child easily in her later years of primary school as she produced the hood of a puffer coat as evidence. Chelsea chuckled to herself, feeling a distant but very familiar connection to the struggles that were momentarily the major stressor in Amber Pike’s father’s world, coats that never made it home, lunch boxes that showed up weeks later harboring the beginnings of mold-based science projects. This was a horrible time to try and strike up the conversation with Amber Pike’s father, but she added the task to her mental to-do list.
The other twin was jostling for something that was in a console or seat pocket. Amber’s voice cried out in the small little cry of a tattling sibling. “Ruby is playing with your tablet.”
The man rolled his eyes as he did one final checks of seatbelts. Chelsea looked at her own son for a moment, knowing he was truly secure and she was beginning to hold up the line. “Ruby.” He was exasperated.
“Dad said I could use the tablet after school.” The aforementioned Ruby whined.
The man plucked it out of her hands. “Yeah, his tablet not mine though. Last time I let one of you use my tablet you changed it all to Russian.”
His son let out a giggle. “Ilya can read it.”
The man shut the rear doors and moved back aground to the driver side. He nervously pulled his hair into a messy bun on the top of his head as if it would mentally fortify him for the evening ahead and then gave the standard nod of recognition to Chelsea. The last thing she heard before him chuckled before he got back into his car was: “So glad your sisters married us.”
She focused on getting back into her own car and keeping the pickup line moving forward as she replayed the statement over in her head. The syntax seemed strange, but there had been truth to his words and Chelsea was certain that she had heard him correctly. She just shrugged, now officially on the lookout for Pike dads’ two and three.