A/N: The newest chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!
March 31st 2020
Chapter 91
Their Summer in Progress
It would come to a point where, having had the Hart-Lanes in Austin for a few weeks already, they would almost forget that, in time, they would be returning to Tucson. But that was coming along now. They were headed back in just a few days. They might have been gone already, except for two events. For one, Nellie and Gracie really wanted them all to still be around for their seventh birthday party, and for another, they had been invited to attend the Babineaux family party.
First, there was the twins' party. With Sam being off at the Zvolensky summer house with the visiting family, it had been easy enough for Maya and Lucas to accept the girls' request for them to spend the night leading into their actual birthday over at the Hunter Hart house. They wanted to have the two of them right there when they woke up and they weren't six anymore.
"Remember when they were all tiny and they'd crawl in between us and it would be cute?" Maya breathed, lightly tracing along Nellie's hairline as the girl slept huddled against her. Lucas smiled at her from across the two girls in between, Gracie in much the same position as her twin but next to him.
"Are you freaking out because they're almost as tall as you now?" he quietly asked.
"Hey, I'll have you remember I've still got over a foot on them," Maya defended herself with haste, kissing that brunette head resting nearly at her shoulder. According to her mother, who had tracked all her children's growth, she predicted the twins wouldn't exactly be on the tall side, but they might outgrow their big sister in the end, if only enough that it showed when they stood together. They weren't there yet. For now, Nellie and Gracie stood at a respectable forty-four inches tall, and they were proud to say they were the exact same height, down to the smallest decimal.
"Of course, what was I thinking," Lucas indulged her, which made her drop the 'affronted' act and smile back at him, just as the twins started to stir and wake.
"Hey, good morning," Maya looked to Nellie as she turned her eyes up to her big sister.
"Am I seven yet?" she inquired.
"If you want to be very technical you'll have to wait a few more hours, but if the day's good enough for you then yeah, you are officially seven years old. Happy birthday my Penelope," Maya told her before giving her a big hug and many more than seven kisses over her face, which made her giggle. Meanwhile, Lucas was amused and intrigued at the sight of Gracie Hunter lying there, staring at her hands, front and back, then feeling at her own face…
"What are you up to?" he finally had to wonder.
"Everyone keeps saying about our birthday like we're supposed to change, but I don't see it," she declared in that little observant voice of hers. Lucas laughed.
"It's not so much that you're going to change now," he explained. "But birthdays have a way of just… reminding people about the past, especially when it's kids, I mean… Here, look," he reached to the nightstand for his phone and started digging through his photo albums. "Let's see… last year," he showed her a picture from the twins' sixth birthday party. Gracie took the phone out of his hands and inspected the image. "Do you see it?" She nodded. Now, Nellie had turned around toward her sister and squeezed in closer to see the picture, too, while Maya looked on as well. "And then the year before that…" Lucas tapped at the screen until he found the image.
"Woah…" Nellie breathed.
"And the year before that…" They went down the line like that, third birthday, second, first, and then newborns, in their parents' arms. It might have been harder for the two of them to put all this in perspective, but their big sister and her husband to be certainly had that capability.
"I want to see if the others are up," Nellie declared all at once, and it showed how Gracie was very aware of her twin's habits that she at once tucked her legs in and was therefore spared from being climbed over, unlike Lucas, who accidentally got a couple of tiny girl knees just below his own and found that to be anything but pleasant. When he heard Maya snort, he looked up at her.
"Hey, it could have been worse," she pointed out before turning her attention to the lone Hunter twin between them now. "Now you, little Mouse Mouse," she smiled, finding Gracie's smile echoing her own. The twins hugged as they behaved. Nellie was likely to pounce, always, while Gracie would take hold like she wanted to express every bit of what she felt for a person. It was the kind of hug that would fill you with such an understanding that you were loved by this small girl. "Happy birthday, my Grace…"
Nellie had come to find that the rest of the household was awake. As she'd returned to report, Shawn and Katy were in the kitchen, busy with breakfast and prohibiting her from going in to see, while MJ and Haley had been upstairs, just waking up, too. They'd come down with their birthday girl of a big sister, and while MJ still looked half asleep, hair sticking up everywhere it didn't need to go, the recently-'upgraded' two-year-old Haley mad a mad dash to get scooped up and pulled on to the bed along with Maya, who did not have to be convinced.
"Are they coming soon?" Gracie asked Lucas a little while later, while Maya was fixing up her hair to match Nellie's. She sat up very straight in her chair, though all the while she also held on to the edges of the chair on either side, dangling her legs about, the better to brace herself in case her hair got pulled.
"Shouldn't be long now," Lucas assured her, trying very carefully to check his phone without dropping the already coiffed Nellie, who held on to his neck and had her legs locked around him, like a human backpack. Maya had just gotten the last pin set to attach the braid in place when the doorbell rang and Gracie bolted to join her sister, who suddenly went from backpack to rider, inciting Lucas to get them to the door. She was finally set on her feet, enabling both twins to get to greet their guests as one.
"Is she sleeping? Can I see her?" Nellie asked in a whisper that felt more like a rasp of her normal volume. MJ had come running up now, too, as did Haley, although it was likely more for the fact that her other siblings had all gone, and so she wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
The fuss was a now seven-month-old Ada Marie Minkus, in a car seat, carried by her father.
"She'll wake up soon, but yes, she is asleep," Isadora informed the kids, taking a look at her baby daughter to confirm this, even as Farkle set her down once they'd walked into the house proper.
As the kids remained crowded in fascination around the baby, Lucas and Maya both were left to wait their turn and greet their friends in the meantime, despite the fact that they had been waiting on this moment since Ada was born last December. Farkle and Isadora could hardly travel with her across the country as a newborn, and on their side there just hadn't been any sort of possibility for a trip off to New York. So they had all waited, contenting themselves on texts, and calls, and video calls… and photos. There were so many photos. They knew that little face so well by now. There was just so much of Isadora in her, and yet that smile… that was all Farkle.
But they knew very well that pictures and videos would pale in comparison to the actual little human being right there in the same room as them, and in their arms… Right now, the still slumbering babe was busy being observed by the Hunter kids, especially by her birthday buddy, MJ. The way he saw it, their being born on the same day made it so that they were special to one another. One day, they would be friends, he believed that, and right now, it didn't matter that she was a baby, she was already his friend.
"How was the flight?" Maya asked, hugging Farkle. To look at him now, advancing into his twenties like the rest of them, married, with a child, she still found herself thinking of that boy she'd left behind in New York when she'd moved to Texas. That he had kept such an important part in her life, him and Isadora both, despite that distance, was hardly a surprise to her, no. He was her Farkle friend, he was right where he belonged. And yet she knew they could all have had such a different relationship if they had kept growing up in the same city. He was in many ways someone with a life separate from her own, and so to see him grown up this way… It was weird, but also amazing.
"Started out alright. Ada slept through the take-off, stayed quiet for a while. Then we hit one jolt of turbulence, lasted two seconds and it was over, but she didn't care. Just kept crying and fussing the rest of the way."
"People kept looking at us like we were doing it wrong," Isadora added, not even looking hurt, more like she was affronted that they would dare pass judgment on them or their daughter, like they would have done so much better as a baby on a plane for the first time. Maya and Lucas could just imagine them falling quiet under Isadora's glare.
When the kids finally stepped back, the young mother took the freshly awakened Ada from her seat and set her in Maya's arms. She looked so happy that she got to do it, too, like this was looping the loop that had started the previous summer, at Zay and Nadine's wedding, when she'd told Maya about her being pregnant. Lucas looked on as Maya held the baby, too, and to see how she lit up, looking at Ada Marie, he knew it was just one more notch in her own thoughts of the future, their future, and their own children, whenever they'd go and have them. When he got his own turn, he couldn't pretend as though he wasn't thinking the exact same thing.
The Minkus family had originally been due to come just in time for the Babineaux party, but then it had come to be that they would arrive in time for the twins' party, so here they were. It had led to a funny moment where MJ insisted on having his slice of birthday cake with Ada, because even though he knew she was a baby and she couldn't have cake yet, they were birthday buddies and they needed to have birthday cake together.
The following days had seen Ada being introduced to a lot of people, all as eager to meet her as the last. For all that though, they couldn't say that anyone was as excited – after Maya and Riley – to meet Ada Marie Minkus as GiGi Babineaux was.
When they'd arrived at the party, the old woman wanted one thing and only one thing. She wanted to see the baby, to see her and to hold her. She was just home this past week after having spent the two before that in the hospital. She spent a good half hour and more just sitting in her wheelchair and holding little Ada, talking to her, singing to her… And Ada looked up at her the whole time with such a smile that no one had the heart to separate the two, until a diaper change forced their hand.
The Babineaux party was also marking the end of the Hart-Lane family's stay in Texas, of course. They were flying home to Tucson the following afternoon, and there had been some debate about whether or not they should all even go to the party, if they wouldn't be better off staying back at the Zvolensky house, all of them, having dinner, and a quiet evening. Maya and Lucas could have spent the night there, and they could all have stayed together up through the time when they had to go to the airport and said their goodbyes. But in the end they had decided that being here, at this party they'd all heard so much about… that would be the perfect way to mark the end of their summer together.
"If you get to meet Ree Forster, can I come?" Cara asked Maya after she'd climbed out of the pool and dashed over to where her older sister was getting ready to go up on the small stage.
"I was wondering when that would come up," Maya laughed.
"Please?" Cara insisted, squeezing water from her ponytail.
"If it comes up, you will be the first person I ask," Maya vowed, and that was good enough for her sister, who went running off again.
"Liar." Maya turned to find Lucas there, eating from a loaded plate. Maya chuckled, stepping up and accepting a forkful he held out to her.
"She said 'if it comes up,' not 'is it already happening,'" she signed as she chewed.
"I'm just amazed you managed to keep a straight face this time."
"You have a meltdown once and you can never live it down," Maya shook her head with a sigh.
"I'm only disappointed I didn't manage to record it," Lucas laughed before taking another bite. Maya could only imagine what she must have looked like, when she'd gotten that message from Ree, saying that she was working on some tour dates for the fall and that when she landed in Texas the two of them should meet. "Anyway, I'm not supposed to say anything to anyone until the tour gets announced. Only reason I told you was…"
"That you were bawling like a weirdo and I was right there?" he teased.
"Give me that plate, right now," she tried to take it from him and he held it over his head. "Oh, that is low…"
"Is it?" he grinned down at her, especially as he watched her realize she'd walked right into the joke. He came very close to dropping the whole plate a moment later though, and it was snatched away from him when he brought it back down. "Hey!"
"Can't be trusted with a plate of food," Maya shook her head and went to sit at the edge of the small stage, where he joined her and they ate together, looking across the yard, dotted with so many of their people, enjoying one of their last summer days for the year.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
