The Lucky One
By Jeune Ecrivain
Rating: K+
Summary: As she cries in Cory's embrace after confronting Kermit, Maya realizes that she may be much luckier than she thought.
Maya Hart never considered herself particularly lucky, at least not in the family department. Her father had abandoned her and her mother little over a decade ago, and her mother did not exactly have much free time if she was going to put a roof over their heads by herself. Katy Hart was an actress whenever she had the opportunity to actually audition and win a role or two, but the truth is that her only reliable vocation for as long as Maya could remember had been waitressing. She also did not consider herself particularly qualified to be a role model for her daughter, so she did not spend as much of her free time with her as Maya would have liked. She did, however, make sure that Maya knew there was at least one person in the world that loved her, and that was good enough for her. It became especially easy to appreciate the little things her mother did once she learned the truth about whose fault her father's abandonment really was. To protect little Maya's image of her daddy, Katy had always led her to believe that she herself had driven him away. In the relatively short time she had known her prospective stepfather, his role in convincing her mom that the white lie had outlived its justification had already sealed his place in one of her most cherished memories. On top of that, despite his travel-intensive job, Shawn was still taking the time to nurture his unexpectedly natural friendship with her and even offering her some pseudo-parental advice in his own inexperienced yet endearing way. He made her feel more valued than she had in a long time.
But neither she nor Katy would have even met Shawn Hunter were it not for the Matthews. For Maya, the knowledge that she lived in a technically broken family nagged at her self-esteem for most of her life, leaving a persistent kernel of self-doubt. One would think, then, that being best friends with someone like Riley Matthews would serve as a constant and depressing reminder of what she lacked in her life. Riley was the oldest child of a still-happily-married couple of high-school sweethearts, and Maya had once joked wryly that the only thing that prevented them from availing themselves of the cliched white picket fence was the fact that they lived in an apartment instead of a house. They certainly had everything that the fence represents in American culture. Somehow, though, the stark contrast between her and Riley did not rub salt in Maya's wounds. In fact, if anything, some of the former's endless optimism had begun to infect the latter, while Riley's father-slash-middle-school-teacher Cory had also become a supportive and surprisingly integral part of Maya's life. Introducing her to his best-friend-since-boyhood Shawn had only been the latest in a series of subtle blessings given to her by the Matthews patriarch.
That was until the Forgiveness Project, when the Matthews family outdid themselves once again. Mr. Matthews had a habit of using history to teach broader lessons about life in general, so when he assigned each student to write a letter of forgiveness to someone of his/her choice who had wronged or offended them in some way, Maya was hardly surprised. Nor did it surprise her when Riley had naively suggested that her father be the recipient of her clemency. But she couldn't forgive him until she understood why he had left, so she had decided to at least write him a letter inviting him to visit her and explain himself.
To her cynical surprise, he did come, and shortly before leaving again, he sat down with her and had the conversation that she had needed for a long time but never knew it. The answer was a very bittersweet one. He was simply too irresponsible and immature at the time to handle caring for a wife and daughter, and when he became at least self-aware enough to realize that, he had decided that he was no good to Katy and Maya anyway. However, he had since overcome those flaws in his character and was now happy with a new wife and child. Although the last remnants of her self-blaming were finally chased away by that revelation, it was still hurtful. After all, he may have told her that there was nothing that she did or could have done to make him stay, but he had apparently proved later to be perfectly capable of change. So why did it take another woman and another baby for that to happen? She knew he did not realize it, but he had implicitly told her that, for some reason, neither she nor her mother had been worth making the leap to become a responsible adult, but someone else apparently was.
When she returned to face the Matthews in tears, apologetically explaining that she simply could not forgive her deadbeat father, she felt like she should have known that Mr. Matthews would never have been insensitive enough to expect that for a school assignment, but she was relieved when he told her so nonetheless. Then, he asked her the question that revealed his true motive, the one that utterly broke her. "Maya, did you forgive yourself?"
As she began sobbing in his arms, she realized that she had only just done so in that very moment, but now, she recognized another mistake she had made for most of her life. She really should have known, she thought. The Matthews had long treated her practically as one of their own. If she did not know it when Cory told her she was "worth working on" after she had failed a test despite knowing the material, she should have known it when he practically spelled it out for her at a school dance, at the end of which he had bypassed Riley and instead offered Maya his hand for the capstone father-daughter dance. She also remembered a moment shortly after Christmas, when Riley was lobbying for the unprecedented involvement of her friends in Family Game Night. In his characteristically neurotic way that she had always found entertaining, he had at one point told his daughter that she would eventually have to choose between her family and her friends. Maya had barely noticed at the time that, in gesturing at each group in turn, Cory had included Maya in the "family" category. In retrospect, she felt guilty for not realizing it, but it was overshadowed by a swelling of gratitude.
Maya had once described herself as someone with no dad and "half a mom." As she felt Mr. Matthews' comforting arms wrap around her, however, she was randomly reminded of a poster she had seen somewhere that read, "Any man can be a father. It takes someone special to be a dad." At the time, she had been too young to really understand it, but now she did. She had more than half a parent. She had more than one whole parent. She even had more than the standard two. Sometimes, common blood is superfluous in true kinship. In all the ways that really mattered, Maya Hart had four loving parents, along with a sister and even a little brother named Auggie. Her father may have left her behind, but her dad, or at least one of them, was right there holding her as she cried. For the first time in her life, she felt just as lucky if not luckier than her best friend.