While Sacha sulks around inconsolably, Melody assumes the housework duties. It's a pain to clean up such a large maze of a house, but it's so much better than the place Melody came from. Why is it better? The Grisbys had a huge estate! Oh, the atmosphere. It's the atmosphere.
As the daughter of a stylist, all of Paprika's clothing must look fantastic. ...Or at least passable.
"I'm home! I bought the kid about eighty hair bows! One for each outfit..."
Time to start carving the unicorn fleet of intellectualism.
Want to make your daughter a geek and sabotage her social life? Start early.
More than anything, Sacha needs to scream and talk to herself for a while.
"No! Come back! Take me with you!"
But in Riverview, there is no privacy. There's always someone lurking around the corner. Today it's cousin Lori, who passively observes Sacha's sobbing. In a way Lori's lack of reaction is comforting.
Lori's looking increasingly gray, so Sacha snaps her photograph. Perhaps someday Melody will want it. Melody would hate her for feeling even a shred of sympathy for Lori, but Sacha can't help it.
Unfortunately Lori's idea of posing for a picture was to start screaming about stale toast. Sacha hangs the picture where it likely won't be found for a while.
Martin's an extremely charismatic man, these days. Most of his clients consider themselves his friend, and many are repeat customers. Today a beard that would make a lumberjack blush, and tomorrow a new bathing suit. Martin makes sure to only grant stylist house-calls to friends while he's grieving. The Archers have a reputation of emotional outbursts to uphold.
He makes an exception for his in-laws, which is a mistake.
"Macaroni brain! That's what you are!"
Kendell Simovitch married Melody's insane sister, Rosanna, because he is also insane.
"Don't mess with me, Simovitch. You have no idea what I could do to your hair."
Kendell's look is much updated from his appearance in chapter 34. He's a regular makeover customer as well, though on the brink of declaring Martin his nemesis.
Paprika absolutely loves her educational books and toys. Otherwise, Melody would have given up on her overzealous perfect mommy ideas within five minutes.
Martin and Melody stop by the Hill-Archer place. Halen has died, and condolences are exchanged. Cody talks about the weather for a few hours.
Melody and Josephine quickly get bored and revert to talking about music. Melody isn't sure if she's doing the right thing, by not having a real job. What sort of example is she setting for Paprika?
"You need to follow your dreams, girl."
"Drum, I'm going to start a band with Melody. Want to join us?"
"#$%! no."
And so, Melody and Josephine found The Westfield Band of Riverview.
Meanwhile...
"Already, you're a great explorer."
While Martin and Melody are skittering around town at this hour, Sacha is home putting the toddler to bed. Paprika snoozes peacefully in her crib, but her youthful grandmother still can't sleep. Everything in this room just... reminds her of Jazz. The picture he took of their sons in France. The terrariums. The bookshelf full of adventure journals. The vampire eye she gave him so long ago, cut into a crystal ball and still shining on the nightstand.
She couldn't bury him. She hid the urn in the basement, and on nights such as these she goes down there to call for him... though, being terrified of ghosts, terrified of even calling out for ghosts, she knows Jazz's appearance would only cause her to faint. And maybe that's why he doesn't materialize.
Go to your room, you two.
Sacha receives unexpected news from her oldest son, and visits him on the double. He lives close, just across the river. The house on the corner.
"But... how?"
It's hard to face one's mother when talking about these things.
"It was a stupid whirlwind relationship," Arthur says of the reason he left China. "I met her family, and they were murderers. They were monsters. No plasma fruit stir fry for dinner, no, they cut a sim apart in front of me. I didn't do anything, Mom. I stood there and let that person die. And then I ran."
What can his mother say? She would have fainted. She feels her knees wobbling now.
"Jean Lu contacted me to say she was pregnant," Arthur continues. "She said we'd both be facing grave consequences from her family, but it wasn't too late to fix it all, if only I'd return and accept things on their terms. She called me a coward for rejecting her way of life."
"How could you be so irresponsible? Getting random girls pregnant!"
"I was irresponsible, but not that irresponsible! We took precautions! At the end of the day all I know is, the child is somehow mine, and they desperately needed new bloodlines in that part of the world. I had to pull a lot of strings to get my daughter here."
Is... is he saying Chinese vampire magic spawned a baby? Sacha is so not buying that one.
"And the girl's mother?"
"Gone. According to Yuri and Roxie Lin."
Roxie Lin! That shady little creep. She was of a mortal family, turned by choice back in the mysterious days of Sacha's grandparents' youth.
"I named her Sifton," Arthur mumbles into the cold silence. "No one told me what her original name was."
"You work a lot of hours. Your job isn't the family-man sort of job. If you need help..."
"I'll manage, mother. Sifton is more important than my job. No one needs to tell me that."
Melody wants a new tattoo, and Rita is excited about it.
A bunny in Paprika's honor. Sacha finds the one-eyed rabbit TV show terrifying, but Paprika loves it.
"Yeah, yeah. Someday I'll let you tattoo my right arm. I promise."
In the time it takes one game to crash, everyone in the immediate family knows about Sifton.
"LoL." "LoL..."
They may laugh, but their brother is one promotion closer to being a world-renowned surgeon.
"A one... a two... eh, you're a genius like me. You'll get the hang of it."
She's not, but a parent can dream.
"Don't listen to anything your father tells you about music."
Paprika's toddlerhood draws to a close...
...and Sifton's is only beginning. Sacha babysits while Arthur goes to free an art student encased in a block of sculpting clay. Such bizarre accidents happen in this town.
"Odd hair you have, dear."
Sacha spends more and more time at Arthur's house. Her youngest son lives here too, despite all that talk of getting out on his own.
"Hey, if I wasn't here, the kid would have no normal role models.
She'd just have you freakish Vulcans."
Sacha helps teach Sifton to walk.
Paprika has a few more books to read, yet.
Pavel is NOT babysitting. He just happens to be in the room with the baby. Yeah.
"You left your little brother babysitting," Mom comments sourly, as soon as Arthur gets home. "He should be living his own life, not dealing with yours."
"I have to pay for my rent somehow," Pavel says. Does Sacha not trust him or something?
No one knows what Sacha is getting at, so she must make her intentions clearer.
"Sifton needs... a mother figure. Maybe I should-"
"Mother. That's extremely sexist."
"I can't live in my own house anymore," Sacha whines. "It's too painful."
Arthur frowns. "You know you're welcome here. But you love your house. You and Dad worked so much on it..."
"That's why I can't..."
"It's Martin, isn't it? Soon he won't even be a young adult. You can't watch."
"I'm not abandoning my son," Sacha sniffs. "Just that place."
And so Sacha moves out of her childhood home.
"You realize you just let our Mom move in..."
"Shut up."
What Sacha will miss most is cooking for her family.
_____________________________________________________________
Etc.: Letting go of Sacha was very difficult for me. I liked her a lot. She was fun to watch.
As the author I should never admit to not liking my own work, but I hate this chapter. I needed to get Sacha out of the house without killing her or destroying family lines, so obviously I went with the most contrived plot twist I could think of. Story progression briefly paired Arthur with a vaguely Asian-looking sim that had moved into the neighborhood (I replaced a vanilla with one of the EA premades; and... sick of the purple raver hair that plagues EA premades, I spiced it to aquamarine... poor Sifton). Noticing the pairing, I gave Jean Lu "Chinese culture" via MasterController, forced a kid on them and then got rid of her. How demented and evil of me.
Now I'm going to set Arthur's house as a no-breeding zone. I'm having enough problems with the other vampire families in Riverview overrunning the place. It's not that there are a ton of vampire families, it's that the older members of the family don't die. I'm getting sick of seeing the ones I don't like. Also, every generation risks further contamination with a different family. So either I go nuts and invite some vampire slayers into the storyline, or I anticlimactically start switching off the vampirism in the younger ones and preventing the older ones from spawning more. Huzzah MasterController; I love you. Option 2 sounds less cheesy so I'll probably do that.
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