Brooklyn - Taylor Swift

Part 7

Flying with Cora and the boys is exhausting. 

Mainly the boys, though.

Cora, bless her soul is so excited about her surprise tomorrow, even if she has no idea what it is. But she is also clearly exhausted and is a mess right now, so she is bouncing in her seat excitedly but also grumbling about every small thing. 

Teddy meanwhile ate a shit tonne of sugar right before getting on the plane and is trying his best to end up with a drumstick through his eye. Teddy has not stopped drumming on anything and everything since we boarded, and while I usually tolerate it, right now, I am about to use his head as a drum. "Mick, if you don't get him to knock it off, I am going to stick that drumstick somewhere else," I tell Mick, glad that we are using our own plane, or we would have some miserable people on this flight.

Scratch that; I'm the unhappy one on this flight.

The last few weeks at the lake house have been fantastic. The weather was perfect, so we spent most days down by the lake, the boys playing in the water while C0ra watched with a happy smile, cuddled into my side as I tried and failed to teach her guitar. In the end, she would just listen while I fiddled. Not even the week we spent at the estate visiting Grandfather could put a dampener on the time we had together.

My favourite day was the day Joey helped me bring down a keyboard so that I could play that while Cora and I watched the boys and Cara on the lake. I played her one of the songs, which will be going to be on the new album, Saturn (Sleeping At Last), skipping the intro since while I know there should be an intro, I still need to figure that out. We just sat there under a tree and watched as the twins seemed to race on some waterjets while Cora waited to see who won while I played.

 I hadn't even played it for the boys yet, just her and the sad smile on her face told me she understood who it was about. "It's about Junior, isn't it?" She asked softly, making me hum. 

"Do you think I'll get to meet him when I go? Do you think he will recognise me?" She asked. 

A straightforward question, and I was fighting harder than ever to not cry in front of her. 

"I am positive Junior will be waiting for you. He has been watching you your whole life, so I know he will be so excited to meet you. You are his little sister, after all," I reassure her, fighting the tears lining my eyes as she hums, looking up at the sky with a smile. 

Junior was her twin; he was stillborn—Robert Ethan Nickels, named after our late father, REN.

 The names in our family are, well, it's safe to say they suck. Let's reflect, shall we? You see, we all have former Prime Ministers as our first name and then strong biblical names for our middle names; at least, that is what Grandfather declared since he is the one who named us all. Mick's birth name is Winston Michael, while Teddy's birth name is Harold Edward. Now they aren't the worst names ever, but at the same time, they are not the best. Now the boys' names are pretty decent. I mean, sure, Winston isn't the best name, but Mick goes by his middle name, and Teddy followed suit. 

It's Cora and me who got screwed over. 

You see, Grandfather is... well, simply put, he was unhappy that we weren't boys as well. After all, there hadn't been any females born into the family in generations, only boys. Safe to say he was unhappy with us breaking this trend. So, he decided to name us like the boys, keeping the tradition going. 

Poor Cora's birth name is John Cornelius. Cora was the best nickname we could manage, I figured it fitted, and since we all use our middle names, we might as well use hers. Oh, and since we are being honest about names, mine is Stanley Andrew. Although in Grandfather's defence, picking my name was a little more complicated, thanks to my condition and it not being clear until I was about eight.