The playroom had turned into a disaster zone by early afternoon, blocks and half-dressed dolls scattered from one end of the rug to the other, and Kyle learned within the first hour that staying at the Rocheforts’ came with the same rule the twins lived by every day.
"We clean up before dinner. Every time." Lily said it like a law of nature, already sorting blocks by color into their bin. "Even if it’s not your mess."
"Some of it’s my mess," Kyle admitted, though he made no immediate move to help until Leo silently held out a bin lid in his direction.
By the time dinner ended, the three of them had the air mattress dragged into the sitting room and half-inflated, Lily and Kyle already deep into an argument about which movie deserved tonight’s slot, neither willing to concede an inch. Leo ignored both of them entirely, focused on the highchair where Lexx sat working through a bowl of mashed banana one small spoonful at a time, his face already wearing more of it than his mouth had managed to catch.
"Open," Leo said, and Lexx opened obligingly, more banana ending up on his chin than anywhere useful.
"You’re better at that than I expected," Franz said, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, the mixing bowl from earlier still on the counter behind him. "Diligent. Lexx is lucky to have you looking out for him like this."
"I want him to grow up fast." Leo scraped another spoonful together without looking up. "So he can actually play with us instead of just watching."
Kyle, who’d abandoned the movie argument the second banana entered the conversation, watched the whole exchange with an expression Franz couldn’t quite place until he spoke. "What’s it like? Having a little brother."
"Annoying, mostly," Lily said, unhelpfully. "But good annoying."
"Do you want one?" Leo asked Kyle, still spooning.
Kyle shook his head fast enough that his answer arrived before the question had finished landing. "My mom’s too busy. She’s barely home. She and my dad get like two words in before she’s out the door again." He said it plainly, the way kids said things they’d stopped being upset about a while ago because being upset hadn’t changed anything.
Lily considered him for a second, the way she considered most problems, like there had to be an answer somewhere she just hadn’t found yet. "Lexx is your baby cousin. So technically you’re already a big brother. You just don’t live in the same house."
Kyle’s whole face opened up at that, disbelief chased fast by something closer to hope. "Is that true?" He looked past Lily straight at Franz, needing it confirmed by someone who couldn’t be wrong about it.
"It’s true. Your dad’s family and Arianne’s are blood relatives, distant as it is, which makes you and Lexx cousins the same way it makes you and the twins cousins." Franz said it without hesitation, watching whatever Kyle had been carrying about the subject settle into something lighter. "You’re allowed to claim him."
"Can I feed him then?" Kyle was already reaching for the spoon before Leo had fully decided to hand it over.
"Careful. He bites down sometimes if you’re too slow pulling it back." Leo didn’t let go of the spoon until Kyle had a proper grip on it, then kept his eyes on both of them the whole time.
Kyle held the spoon with both hands, tongue caught between his teeth in full focus, and Lexx accepted every mouthful without complaint, gumming the last bites longer than necessary just to keep the attention going.
Franz scooped Lexx up once the bowl was empty, banana reaching well past his chin at this point. "I’ll get him cleaned up. Lily, pick the movie with these two, and try to reach an actual agreement this time instead of a stalemate." He glanced toward the stairs. "Your Mommy Aria is still finishing something with your Uncle Gio. We’ll be back before it starts."
By the time Arianne came down, the argument had resolved itself into something with dinosaurs in it, all three kids already settled on the mattress with the opening credits rolling.
"Uncle Franz took Lexx to change," Lily reported without looking away from the screen. "He got banana basically everywhere."
Arianne sat on the couch behind them, content to wait, and used the pause to ask Kyle the question she’d been turning over since dinner. "You doing alright with your dad gone?"
"He promised he’d come back with presents." Kyle said it with total confidence. "And he said we’d go to the amusement park together once he’s home."
"Can Leo and I come too?" Lily asked, already hopeful.
"No, that one’s just me and my daddy." Kyle said it without any cruelty in it, just a fact he’d already decided on.
Lily didn’t argue, though something in her shoulders settled a little lower. "We haven’t really done anything as a family in a while, either."
Arianne let that sit for a second before she spoke again, choosing her next words carefully. "Your mother’s birthday is coming up soon. Layla’s. Is that something you and Leo want to mark this year, however feels right to you?"
Lily stopped talking altogether, the kind of silence that had weight to it rather than absence. "I’ll talk to Leo about it."
Franz reappeared with a freshly changed, considerably happier Lexx a moment later, setting him down in the middle of the mattress where he immediately locked his eyes on the screen and forgot everyone else in the room existed. "Did I miss anything?"
"Nothing," Arianne said, though her eyes stayed on Lily a second longer than the answer suggested.
She waited until the kids were fully absorbed in the film before leaning close enough to Franz that only he could hear her. "Layla’s birthday is next week. I want to clear the day so the twins can visit the mausoleum, if that’s what they decide they want."
"Consider it cleared." Franz didn’t need more than that to agree to it. "I already know the day. I’ll handle whatever needs arranging."