January 9th 2021

Chapter 9
Our Move Toward Connections

"Is it okay if my friends sleep here tonight?"

This was Cara's greeting, on Saturday morning, when she appeared in the kitchen for breakfast. It caught both Maya and Lucas by surprise, not for it being in any way outlandish, but more for how it was just one of those moments where they were left to feel like Cara had adopted them as parents more than a sister and a brother-in-law. It wasn't like they hadn't been put in this position before, because without a doubt this had been that much more of a factor when they had first been entrusted with a 15-year-old Sam. With Cara, it was all still new, for her as much as for them. In time, hopefully, the whole thing would be a lot easier to navigate.

"Sure, of course, it is," Maya promised. "How many friends are we talking here?

"Just the two, just Lainey and Raina," Cara replied. "We have a project to work on, it's just easier this way, we can knock it out over the weekend."

"We finally get to meet them, huh?" Lucas asked, bringing the skillet so he might fill the sisters' plates. Maya bit back a laugh, rather than to let Cara know how the two of them had been joking as to whether the oft mentioned pair would ever materialize.

"Yeah, I know you guys are going for groceries later, so I was thinking..."

"Snacks?" Maya asked, with an expression like 'I got you, you came to the right place.'

"That, yeah," Cara nodded, smiling. "But also, Lainey is vegan, so..."

"Not a problem," Lucas assured her. That had become more and more true, with Gracie having maintained the diet over the last couple years.

When the grandparents moved in over the summer, there was absolutely a learning curve for them, but like the garden, it became one vehicle for Tanner and Angela to form connections to their grandchildren. Maya and Lucas had helped, sharing what knowledge they had already accumulated.

"It's like the bigger I get, the more people recognize me," Maya spoke quietly, as she and Lucas walked along the grocery store aisle, gaining distance from the pair who had approached them a moment before.

She was always happy to speak to people who came to her and knew her, but it was becoming some whole other thing now that it involved people - whether they knew or were aware of her or not - coming up to touch her belly. She'd gotten pretty good at spotting the intent in people's eyes, on those times where she at least saw them coming, and she would do her best to telegraph that she didn't want it while remaining polite. It didn't always work. Lucas would be one hundred percent in her camp here, and if he was the one to see the intent coming, he'd warn her or try and redirect them.

"Yeah, I guess with the tour, and the pictures..."

"I'm not going to be a shut in because of it, but it does get awkward after a while. And then what happens after she's born, and I'm out somewhere with her?" He could see that her hand would move to slide protectively over her belly before her arm moved at all.

"I... We'll just have to deal with it," he shook his head, his tone showing how he'd been thinking about that, too.

The closer they got to their daughter being born, the more his questions and his worries would get to feel larger than life. Now, they manifested in the occasional bad dream, in scenarios of what could go wrong. Problem encounters had been some of those.

When they arrived back at the house, they walked in, to the sound of voices and laughter, and to the presence of Cara and a pair of girls, all three sitting on the couch. Going by the school bags at their feet, it was likely that they had just arrived a few minutes ago. These were abandoned now, as the trio stood to come and help with the grocery bags, even as the introductions were made.

Cara had mentioned her new friends over the last few weeks, though it wasn't like she'd given her sister or brother-in-law some kind of biography, detailed in any way. Instead, the most they got was 'Raina said this' or 'Lainey did that.' Even so, they'd gotten enough of those small anecdotes that they were able to take one look at the girls and say which was which.

The 'file' on Raina would peg her for being the more outgoing of the two, more adventurous, possibly more flirtatious, and certainly the tall Japanese girl had something like a fluidity in her movements which just screamed 'most likely to start dancing, because why not?' As for Lainey, the image they were able to conjure up suggested someone with the discipline of an early training at some sport or instrument. And the blond girl they met here today most definitely confirmed this in their minds.

By the end of the weekend, they would learn that Lainey – whose full name was Laura Anne but had been compounded sometime when she was little and stuck – was something of a prodigy violinist, ever since she was very little. They also learned that Raina, born and raised in Wales, was a classical singer, though this was not something she liked to bring up a lot, as it led to questions, and requests for demonstration, and part of the whole reason she'd come to study in America was to put that part of her life on the side, until she knew whether or not she wanted to make it her future.

Either way, it was the musical aspect in all three of their lives which had brought the two of them and Cara together, after they'd come upon the latter one day, brushing up on the TXNY songs for band practice. From there, they'd come to find they got along very well. Better still, they'd found people they could turn to, and not be so alone out at the university. From there, the bond had solidified.

Until all this additional information would come by them, Maya and Lucas only had two faces and two names, and polite manners to turn back on, as they met Cara's friends and were met by them.

"Do you know, I came this close to seeing your show over the summer. My sister had the tickets, but that was the day I was flying out here," Raina told Maya, and something in her tone very amiably suggested that she'd had no idea who she was at the time, only making the connection later on, after meeting Cara and getting to know her enough that she'd even bring up her older sister.

Maya already knew, per another of Cara's anecdotes, that neither Raina nor Lainey knew about TXNY, or Maya's song writing career, or her ties to Ree Forster. It had just never entered their awareness in such a way that they'd recognize the name, or even look at Cara herself and spot the resemblance. It wasn't to say that she had chosen them for her friends on that merit alone, but if she was ever concerned that either one of them might have any sort of ulterior motive in befriending her, it was a reassurance to know that they were all in the clear.

That wasn't to say that this unawareness had not been altered in the time since they had all met and started hanging out. Both Maya and Lucas remembered the day when Cara had left for university with a very definite 'oh boy, I'm about to do a thing' air about her, which they'd somehow rightly interpreted as 'I'm going to have my new friends listen to these songs I'm going to be singing in front of people soon.' When she'd come home at the end of that day, and she'd joined Maya, Lucas, and a visiting Sam and Dora for dinner, she had confirmed their suspicions, with relief that said it had all gone well.

Maybe for their having returned now, Maya and Lucas were soon left to go about their day, as the girls headed up to Cara's room to get started on their project, the better to warrant their taking part of the evening off to just hang out.

"Hey, Dockleberry, would you like to assist me in making a batch of vegan cupcakes?" Maya asked, as her method of helping with the grocery bags seemed to consist of tracking down the necessary ingredients and setting them all together on the counter.

"Is it the same recipe as last time?" Lucas asked, handing her one of items when he found it in one of the bags. Maya took it with a smile.

"It is, yeah," she confirmed. "Are you going to steal half of them, too?" she teased.

"I didn't steal, and it wasn't half of them," Lucas insisted.

"Yeah, but it was definitely at least three," Maya pointed out. Lucas couldn't deny that much, so he just sighed.

"I didn't think they'd be that good, okay?" he told her, and she laughed.

"How about we just make two batches, then you can still have your own… Just don't eat them all at once," she slipped into a beaming smile as he came up to her, looping his arms around her waist until her belly prevented him going any further without leaning in.

"I'll do my best," he vowed before kissing her.

Lucas wasn't the only one to approve of Maya's vegan cupcakes. When Lainey picked one up for herself, being the reason why the treats had been made in the first place, she presented that reserved but no less genuine smile, which they'd come to know very well. Then, when she actually bit into the cupcake, she was so pleasantly surprised that she pre-emptively pulled a second one while she was still consuming the first. It was a very small thing, but it seemed to settle on both of Cara's friends like a signal that they needed to come here more often, and that they would happily appear.

"It's happening again…" Maya sighed, later that evening, as she and Lucas sat on the living room couch. Lucas turned to her like he had one foot out the door and one hand on their hospital bag. "No, stop that," Maya waved this response away with a laugh. "I'm being weird again, that's all," she explained, to which he gave a 'you?' look of mock confusion. "Ha, ha," she flatly replied but smiled, nonetheless.

"Is this the parent thing again?" he asked. She shook her head like she was refusing to even acknowledge it. "I guess it's like it didn't matter how many birthdays we had, we didn't feel like adults until she came," he pointed up to the ceiling to indicate Cara up in her room. "And until she…" his pointing finger turned down now, until it could land softly at his wife's belly. Maya met this with a look like 'hey, this isn't her fault.' "Right, so it's all that one's fault then," he indulged her, and she accepted this with a grin.

"It'll stop after a while, I guess. It just has to do its thing. You know how it is."

"Yes, I'm familiar with that brain of yours," Lucas promised, his smile suggesting just how much he loved that mind. More than anything, he knew, as she knew, that these thoughts just might have been born of their being so eager to finally hold their Marianne that, until she came, all they could do was harness that energy and aim it on to the next logical recipient. And that was Cara.

They were so close now. Just a few more weeks, and they would have their daughter. Already, things were brewing, with one day coming that would either make this wait a bit more bearable or leave them so much more needy that they'd drive Cara completely mad with parental attention.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners