Evelyn knows so few things about these poor kids; she took the phone call half an hour ago from a hassled duty social worker who also knew about three things about the family. 

Sibling group of four, so it's lucky that Lily was placed with her adoptive family a month ago and she has no long-term placements right now, and that Social Services agreed that it was reasonable to have two of the children share a room if it meant keeping them together. Two boys and two girls, alternating, ages between thirteen and nine. They had been staying at home, with the oldest boy in charge and a neighbor checking up on them, for a couple of days while their parents went on a trip. Which definitely seems dubious to Evelyn, but isn't outright neglect, and isn't the reason they're coming into foster care. The neighbor was able to billet them for a couple of days after their parents' very unexpected deaths, but understandably cannot actually take FOUR surprise children long-term. Given the massive loss and upheaval in their lives, CPS was - to their credit, for once - actually trying very hard to keep the full group together, and has been combing the entire county for a carer that can take the whole sibling group. 

No previous CPS involvement or case history with the family. Nothing on file about behavior issues, though Evelyn isn't going to be surprised at all if some things crop up. The poor kids. 

She's been pacing, impatient and tense, and is already heading to open the door as soon as she hears a car pulling into the driveway. 

Peter looks at her and starts to bow, then straightens up a tiny fraction of the way through it. Holds out a hand to shake, instead. "Mrs. Steel?"

Evelyn smiles pleasantly at him, though not too brightly, that seems insensitive when his parents just died. "Hi! It's lovely to meet you. You can call me Evelyn, Mrs. Steel makes me sound like a schoolteacher." And also she's divorced and hasn't been called 'Mrs.' in ages. "You must be Peter?" The boys are thirteen and eleven and this kid is way too tall to be eleven. 

...He's very composed. She didn't quite catch what the aborted movement was meant to be, and isn't sure what to make of it, but she's surprised at his manner. 

"He is," Edmund says. "And I'm Edmund and she's Susan and she's Lucy," pointing to the taller and smaller girl respectively. "It's lovely to meet you as well. I mean - considering."

(Edmund says this with the air of someone who is trying to be exactly correct about his mourning process by not expressing unconditional joy about things.)

"Don't be pedantic," Susan says half-heartedly to Edmund, then "It is lovely to meet you," to Evelyn.

"No, I understand, none of you asked to have to come live with a stranger." They're all so...like that...Evelyn isn't even quite sure what the 'that' is, just that it's not at all what she expected and it's throwing her off-balance. "Well, let's get your things out of the car and head in. I'll need to sign some paperwork with your social worker, but after that we can work on getting you settled in." 

Lucy is the fastest to the car and the retrieval of luggage. She immediately attempts to lift entirely too much at once for her tiny body, which predictably results in her dropping half of it, which results in her looking furious for a moment, before breathing deeply and picking up a smaller load.

"Sorry," she says to Peter. "I dropped yours."

"Please try to remember how small you are," he says despairingly as he retrieves his suitcase.

??????????????????? 

...You know what, nevermind. This probably makes perfect sense as some sort of family inside joke. 

Evelyn is a grown adult and can help carry more of the suitcases. At least these kids have belongings. So many children come into foster care with nearly nothing, or at least nothing not immediately deserving a trash bin. 

Suitcases lined up in the front hall, she shows the children to the kitchen and asks if they would like anything to drink. Tea, maybe, she knows they moved from Britain fairly recently and their accents sure do show it. 

"...maybe some cocoa," Edmund suggests.

"What a good idea. I like cocoa too."

Evelyn will heat some milk on the stove, and take advantage of the wait to explain some of the house rules. No hitting or swearwords. No food in bedrooms; no going into people's bedrooms when they're not there, or without knocking and asking when they are there; the doors in the house don't lock, so please don't barge into the bathroom if the door is shut, and leave it open when you're not using it. The garage and basement are off-limits for the younger two children by themselves. Using the computer or television are privileges; Evelyn will never send them to bed without dinner, or god forbid hit them, for breaking a house rule, but television time can be withheld. Though she's sure they're not going to have any trouble with that. 

...They should discuss which of the children would like to share a room. There are only three bedrooms upstairs, but one is big enough to set up the air mattress from the basement - don't worry, it's a very nice one - until Evelyn can arrange a second bedframe and mattress. 

"The doors don't lock?" Edmund asks, somewhat visibly dismayed.

"I'll share with Ed," Peter says. "The girls would kill each other."

"I would do no such thing," Susan says primly. "Lucy would kill me. I would lie there, passive-aggressively martyred."

"I'm afraid they don't. I have a lot of children in and out of the house and it's a rule for the fostering agency, it can be dangerous if children lock themselves in. But the rule about going into bedrooms applies to me, too - I'll always knock and ask before coming in, unless I'm very worried that you're hurt or something. Anyway. Thank you for being willing to bear with me."

She smiles at Peter and Edmund, then turns to the girls. She is not going to deign the murder comment with an answer; she's not a huge fan of casual conversation about murder, but it seems like normal sibling teasing, not actually a threat of violence, and it's not swearing, and she's not going to come down hard on the poor grieving kids who just lost their parents. 

"Now, I'm very sorry about this and I know it's a silly question, but which of you would you say likes space and footballs more, and which of you likes pink and flowers more? There's one room with each, which I thought was very clever of me at the time but then it never turns out to be one boy and one girl." 

"Football," Lucy says immediately. "- unless you mean American football, that's still me but slightly less so."

"I'll take the flowers and pink, yeah."

(Edmund looks somewhat mollified by the explanation that she will not take advantage of the non-locking doors.)

(It's way too early to start psychoanalyzing the poor boy about his reaction to the locks thing. Maybe he's just shy and would be mortified if someone walked in on him not wearing a shirt. Maybe one of his siblings used to annoy him by stealing his toys. Maybe it was an abusive parent situation, which is of course what her mind leaps to first, but that's getting so far ahead of herself.) 

She'll leave them to their hot chocolate for a couple of minutes and go check in with the duty social worker, who indeed doesn't know much more about the case but has at least brought all the legal paperwork she needs to sign, including copies for her records, and who's spent the last handful of minutes making good use of time by filling in a few of the blanks. 

And then it's just the five of them in the house, and she can head back over to join them at the dining room table. 

"Right. It's a couple of hours until dinner - though if you're hungry, we can have a snack - but I was thinking it'd be nice to, you know, just get to know each other a bit better." Her instincts are telling her that this is a case where going first might help. "...I'm divorced but I have a grownup son, Jeremy, he's in second-year college now. I've lived in this house and been a foster parent for about twenty years. I'm -" slight self-conscious chuckle, "- very boring, really, I like cooking and gardening and soap operas. And children, of course." 

"...Peter. I'm thirteen, I like..."

Peter seems to have trouble accessing what he likes.

"Why'd you go first if you're going to forget everything about yourself," Edmund mutters after a few long seconds. "He's on the wrestling team, considering branching out into fencing, and he likes movies with lots of explosions and debating philosophy. I continue to be Edmund, eleven, I like reading though not as much as Susan does and I'm also considering taking up fencing and I'm a bit of a prick a lot of the time. -sorry, not supposed to swear."

"I'm Susan, I'm twelve and I like reading and archery and... horses? Are horses an interest."

"Yes, horses are an interest. I'm Lucy, I'm nine, I like football and that means I'm the only normal human being in this family."

They seem like polite, lovely kids. Also Evelyn feels like that whole interaction was very - full of things to notice - and like she's failing at noticing most of them right. Large sibling groups have dynamics and Evelyn always feels like she's walking into the middle of a dinner party of people she doesn't know; even if they're being polite and welcoming, she's missing all the references and history. 

- oh no archery. Evelyn knows one (1) fact about archery, which is that kids' archery summer camp is fancy and expensive. 

She smiles at Susan. "They definitely are! I had a little girl once who loved horses. Have you read Black Beauty? - we do mean the American kind of football, unfortunately, but my adult son loves soccer, which I think is what British football means." She doesn't acknowledge Edmund's swearing. He caught himself and apologized, right? 

"You know, I don't think I have. I haven't really been interested in horses for very long - I picked up an interest over the summer. Around when the boys were getting interested in fencing."