December 11th 2019

Chapter 345
Their Run Toward the House

Driving up to the house the following morning, Lucas was hit with a realization of his own, though it wasn't about the end of the year coming up fast. In his case it had more to do with the fact that this was it, after all these months… This was the last Sunday he would be able to come up here and work on the house. Next weekend he'd be up to his neck in finals prep, and the weekend after that he was going over to Arizona with Maya, and after all that, with summer starting, and graduation, there would be no other time for him to come here, to work, without possibly tipping his hand.

So, the next time he drove up the lane and toward the house… Maya would be with him… and he would show her what he'd been doing all this time… and he would ask her to marry him.

How else was he supposed to feel except very, very anxious and a tiny bit terrified?

"Is there a lot left to do?" Dylan asked, as he and Chiara followed him from the car.

"No," Lucas told them, and saying this, knowing this, he felt just a bit elated… relieved, really, but also just glad. Beyond all his expectations and his fears, it was all balancing out. With what they had left to do and the number of people – the three of them plus the dad bros – they had to accomplish it, he could very reasonably declare that by the time they got back in their cars and left here later that day… The house would be ready, at least as far as he sought to have it ready. After they did what they would do today, all that would be left would be the parts he wanted to do with Maya, like walls, floors, window dressings, light fixtures, and most of the furniture… Basically, turning this house into their home, the two of them and…

"Ah, Lucas, your phone," Chiara held it up, after having been put in charge of it for the course of the drive into Austin. He took it up and found the smiling face of Sam Hart waiting for him to connect the call.

"Hey, dude," he answered. "We just got here." Even when there wasn't anything particularly on the roster for the day where he could lend a hand, Sam would call in, see how it was all going. He liked being involved, and Lucas was more than happy to enable him in this.

"You're going to finish today, right?" Sam asked. Something in his voice rang strange to Lucas for a beat, but he didn't call it out.

"Yeah, looks that way," he smiled at the boy on his screen. "Here, let me show you what we're going to be doing," he told Sam, motioning to the others that he'd be back before making his way up the stairs and into the third room, the one just across the hall from what was to be his and Maya's room. When he got there, he shut the door and turned back to look at his phone. "You okay?" he asked, and Sam looked momentarily at a loss for words.

Lucas knew about the big Hart/Lane breakfast meet up from the previous morning. Maya had told him about all she'd heard, from her call with Wyatt in the morning and then with Cara a couple hours later. It was supposed to be a good thing, and both he and Maya sympathized with Abigail and her new boyfriend, who had to have been concerned over opening up this change to their children while at the same time dreading how they might take it. Some of them were taking it better than others, though none of them had really taken it 'badly.' But then there was still Sam, who had not pronounced himself as of yet. Maya had tried to call him the night before, after coming home from work, but it was late and he must have been asleep already. She'd tried again this morning and he hadn't picked up, writing a minute later to say he couldn't talk. Wyatt had been sleeping back in Sam's room from time to time, ever since he'd found out about his moving to Austin for the fall, and he'd been there at the time, still asleep. Sam didn't want to wake him.

"Did you talk to Maya yet?" Lucas asked him.

"She was already gone by the time I tried," Sam finally replied.

"Sam…"

"I…" he started to say, stalled… There were times where his resemblance to his older sister resolved itself in very specific expressions, which made it so that Lucas found it suddenly very easy to read the boy's face. In this case, what he saw presented distinctly as 'I don't want to say this, but I have to.'

"Hey, Sam," Lucas spoke, getting him to focus again. "It's okay, whatever it is…"

"I'm not sure I should go anymore," Sam finally blurted out. He closed his eyes, breathing out, as Lucas bowed his head for a moment.

"This is about what you found out yesterday?" he guessed, then, after a beat, "Was Wyatt really in your room this morning?" He could read that, too. Busted.

"I… I-I wanted to talk to you about it, first," he admitted, which Lucas took to mean that he wanted to know what to say by the time he'd talk to his sister.

"Okay, but why?" Lucas asked, rather than to go in for 'you can't be serious' or anything like that. "Are you upset that your mom is…"

"What? No, I actually think it's great," Sam blinked, almost surprised that Lucas would think otherwise. "Emma's dad is a really good guy, and he makes Mom happy, I can tell."

"Then why do you want to stay in Tucson all of a sudden?"

"It's just that… This is a really big change, and it could get bigger, and if I'm not there, it… it'll be too much at once for them. I need to be here." Oh, you are your sister's brother alright.

"Sam, I'm going to tell you what I know Maya will say to you when she hears this, and that's 'don't be an idiot, you're coming to Austin.'" He opened his mouth to reply, but Lucas went on. "I'm not saying it's not going to be strange for them, but they'll get through it. They'll have your mom there, and whatever needs sorting out, she'll sort it out. It'll be hard sometimes, for you to be here and not there. It's been hard on Maya, not being near you guys, or near her other siblings here, but it's the right thing that she's been in Houston all this time, just like it'll be the right thing for you to be in Austin, living your life and your college experience like you wanted it. There's a nice green room down the hall from where I'm standing that's just waiting for you… and my fairy girl of a cousin," he added with a smile that made Sam smile back before he could do a thing about it.

"I just don't know if I can…"

"Call your sister, okay?"

"She's at work…"

"She'll pick up, okay? Just wait like five minutes." He waited for an answer. "Okay?"

"Yeah… Yeah, okay. Thanks, Lucas."

After they hung up, he called the front number for the restaurant. Leona was running the phone that morning, by chance, so he asked her to give a message to Maya from him, to get her phone from the back and wait on a call from Sam.

As he opened the door and stepped out into the hall again, his eyes were easily drawn into the room across from him. It had been weeks of the place being overrun with Dot's materials, and everything being pushed around and out of place, as she went about restoring the old set with the help of one or another of his cousins. Now that they were done, with everything cleared out and the furniture set up in a more sensible way, it actually looked like a bedroom. And with the work that his aunt had achieved… He'd always loved these pieces, whenever he'd come to visit his grandparents as a child, and even later, after his grandmother's passing, when his grandfather wouldn't even sleep in here… They had never looked so good as they did now, and the thought of making the place even more their own…

Three weeks…

It was exactly that, twenty-one days, until Zay Babineaux and Nadine Zhu would walk down the aisle, become husband and wife, and then Lucas would bring Maya here… He even knew how he would do it. She'd given him the idea, without even realizing it, that night with the two of them sat on that bench outside the ice cream shop. Three more weeks…

"Hey, Lucas, your dad and Mr. Hunter are here!" Dylan called from downstairs.

"Coming!" he called back, stepping out into the hall again, passing under the attic door, looking up as he went and smiling to himself. The week before, he'd gotten Dora to use her fine carving skills and cut three small letters neatly in the center of the door's edge. ACF. Annabeth Claire Friar. The room existed in her memory; it was only fair.

Their day had been started off with a task Lucas had really been looking forward to, if only for what it would represent. While they had been making great progress in the work in the last few weeks, the house was still littered with various materials and tools. So, before they tackled their final tasks inside and outside the house, they were going to go around and clear out all that clutter, and they were going to sweep and clean the floors, the windows, and any other surfaces left affected by the work they'd been doing. This took most of the time they had for the day, and by the time they were done, all that was left was to go around the house and finish up all those small things they'd left to the end.

Half of them had started on the upstairs, the other half on the basement, and they worked their way back, clearing one area after another, sometimes having to trade one person for another. They finished up in the living room, and then before he knew it, Lucas felt a hand land on his shoulder. He turned and found his father smiling at him, nodding for him to look around and realize… they were done.

He let out a breath, laughed a little. They were really done. This was what he would show Maya, three weeks from today. After Tom and Shawn had left, he'd asked Dylan and Chiara to give him a couple minutes to walk around on his own before they'd start for Houston again. They happily agreed, walking off to the car while he returned to the house.

When they'd started, at the end of the last summer, it had still very much been his grandfather's old house. It showed how it hadn't been used for a while more than anything, but once the dust and the coverings had been removed, it was that house he'd come to… countless times as a child. It showed all those memories he'd held on to, and the ones he'd almost forgotten and now recovered. Even more, it showed potential for the future. Now, it was ready, made into a blank slate all over again, for them to inscribe with the story of their life together.

Three more weeks… It was a good thing he'd be very busy, with the end of classes and with finals, because he really could not wait much longer to see this plan to the end.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners