February 28th 2021

Chapter 59
Our Work to Coordinate

With his day full of clearing and cleaning the future archive and relocating all the boxes, Lucas was extremely glad to return home, to unwind and be with his family. He was looking forward most of all to telling Maya about this new project he'd been given, though he knew the moment he'd be with their daughter he would forget everything else for a while. She was sitting in her aunt's lap, as Cara sat on the living room floor with her, and it was probably a good thing that she was being held securely. The four-month-old's attention was all on the dog within her grasp. As frenzied as they had always known him to be, Crowley had been putty in her tiny little hands from day one. He sat there now and peacefully bore the innocent petting he received from the baby girl. If they let him – and they usually did – he would sleep near her crib every night.

"Hi," Cara tilted her head back when she heard him approaching. "Hey, hey, look who it is," she lightly jostled Marianne until she'd turn her head. It was easy to tell when she spotted her father for how she reacted merrily to his presence. It was like a sunrise in his heart as he reached and pulled her into his arms.

"Well, hello there, Miss Marianne," Lucas kissed her head, smiled to see those blue eyes turned on him with that bit of growing familiarity that came with time. "Been waiting to see that little face all day," he told her. One of these days, she'd be old enough to hear him and understand him, but even without that today, he truly felt that she could look at him as he looked at her, and she'd know… everything she needed to know here and now.

It was near on a miracle that he managed to hold on to his story until after dinner, but then he knew they were about to settle around the table within minutes, and he knew once they started talking about the archive, it would turn into something so involved as to make them forget plates and rapidly cooling meals sitting in front of them. So, they spoke about this and that, their days, the two of them, and Cara, and Granny Lizzie, and it was as wonderful as ever. Lucas expected that there would be something to catch his wife's attention, whether he mentioned his story or not, and he really didn't have to wait very long before she proved him right.

"Alright, give it to me," she challenged as they teamed up to clear the table. They had just seen off Cara – upstairs to study – and Elizabeth – taking Marianne up for her bath – and now it was down to the two of them and their dishes.

Maya was giving him eyes like she'd search him to find if there were in fact any kind of physical evidence on him, of this thing she'd been sensing since he'd first come to greet her after coming home from work. This time around, she wouldn't come away empty handed, not exactly. He chuckled, holding up a finger before moving back into the living room. He'd left the envelope 'hidden' back there. It was a wonder that he didn't just turn around and find her bumping into him like she hadn't left his heel. Instead, he returned to find her waiting… patiently?

"Hey, I'm being nice," she insisted when she caught him laughing. "I don't need to run at you, I know you won't keep me waiting… much," she squinted.

"Never," he promised, a smile stuck on him that had nothing to do with anything or anyone but her in this moment. He held up the envelope for her to see. Her brow lifted. What's that? "Because I love you," Lucas stated, giving a pointed look that suggested the words 'or else you'd never see this.' Now he looked at her and he just saw that sprite of a girl he'd met, years ago. She was still in there, just as alive, just as curious. She could never be any other way.

"What is it?" she asked, almost demanded, before she was handed the envelope. She pulled the flap open and pulled out the small stack of photos he had liberated from the album. As soon as she saw the very first one, her hand had to fly with haste to cover her mouth, if she had any hope of containing her surprised and very, very amused gasp. "No, seriously, what is happening here?" she finally asked in a whisper trembling with laughing undertones.

She inspected the first picture, started going through the other ones, eventually unable to keep from laughing at least a little. Lucas shared with her the tale of the turtles' great hideaway, and their spying on Donna and her dancing wedding parties which then led to this consequence as captured in the photos. Maya looked so utterly pleased to know about it, and to be looking at the evidence of it, that Lucas wasn't sure whether she was simply glad for the stories or for the new material he'd just provided her, the better to relentlessly mess with their friends. She definitely messed with him, just a bit, regarding his young dance partner in the photos, as though either one of them had anything to worry about with all that.

After a beat, Maya turned from the photos and back to him, her look suggesting that she was left wondering something. This had been great, yes, but it didn't feel like it equated to what she'd been getting off of him over dinner. Was there more?

"How'd you find these?" she finally asked, guessing correctly that this would be the way to lead into her unanswered question. Lucas smiled, pointed to the one image he'd brought along which showed him and Zay and Asher and Dylan up on that balcony.

"That building there, the old dance studio, Juliet plans to use it for a Sullivan Stables archive, kind of like a museum," he revealed, and oh did he ever have Maya's curiosity on high alert now… "It was actually my grandmother's idea, years ago, it just… it never happened. But now the sixtieth anniversary of the ranch is coming up, and Juliet wants us to finally make it real."

"Wow…" Maya looked back to the picture with a smile. He didn't have to ask whether or not she thought it would be a good idea. She was at peak curiosity right here.

"There are… so many boxes, full of papers, and photos, mementos… Just a staggering amount of stuff to go through for material," Lucas shook his head, remembering all those stacks of boxes sitting in the old studio, like he'd gone and created a shrunk down city street, with the boxes as buildings on either side of the road. "Anyway, when Juliet took me up there, I remembered that day, with the flower girls, and I went looking to see if I'd find any pictures. And there they were."

"Zay would freak out if he knew I saw these, right?" she grinned, and here again Lucas was left to have some mild concerns regarding any mischief on her part.

"He already told me to burn them and send him the ashes," Lucas nodded, and Maya bit back a roll of giggles. "So, yes, he would." She hummed, looking back to the photos again for a moment before sighing and handing them back, following this with a flourish of her hand over her face, as though to say, 'I have forgotten it all.' Lucas responded to this by handing her back the balcony photo. There was no harm to that one picture of the four boys, proud turtles perched up high.

"So, Juliet's going to be pretty busy with all this, huh?" Maya asked, all the while pressing the precious gift to her heart in thanks. "You're going to help her?"

"Oh, no," Lucas told her, realizing he'd left out one of the most important parts of the story. "Juliet's not doing any of this, I am. It's my project," he explained, and now Maya was back on wide-eyed curiosity. "She figured I'd want to be the one to do it, and she was right," he nodded. She smiled.

"It does seem very 'you,'" she agreed.

"I think it seems more like… us," Lucas countered. "If you're up for it, I mean…" he started, and with the look she gave him, something more like 'hey, now, wait a minute,' he went on. "A little Friar teamwork…"

"Is that any way to refer to our daughter?" she joked in a whisper, making him laugh. "I mean, you, me, and museums? Now we get to… build one, to…"

"Curate one?" Lucas offered, and she liked that… Oh, she liked that a lot. She nodded, teetered about on her feet. "We have a month to get it all ready. This won't get in the way of everything else for you? With the quiz team and all the other…"

"No, no, not at all," she promised. "I am at your disposal. It'll be great, actually. I can go out there, I can bring Marianne… We all get to spend some more time together all three of us."

"You know I'll be sold on that," Lucas replied, and she nodded with a great smile he could only lean to kiss.

"And you know… I will be an excellent assistant on this, you know it, I know it…"

"Humility," Lucas chuckled.

"Honesty," she countered. "What I was going to say though… You should see about getting your mom in on this, too. And your uncle and the girls… They'd want to help bring your grandmother's vision to life, too, wouldn't they?"

"Yes, they would," Lucas agreed with a smile full of love for her, because how could he do anything else, with that suggestion? His mother would definitely be available to come and pitch in a lot, and she would be further convinced with the presence of her granddaughter. His uncle and cousins, well, they might come by over weekends, maybe afternoons, evenings, through the week, whenever they weren't working or at school… Either way, of course he would extend this out to them, too. It would be something they could all do, in an expression of their love for Marianne Sullivan, whether they'd ever met her or not.

When Lucas called his mother and told her about how he'd agreed to do the archive, she had that familiar tremor in her voice, that swell of emotion he was so familiar with. She was so happy to hear that he wanted to do it, and one hundred percent was she on board to help him and Maya in any way that she could. She would meet them out there the very next morning, and she would see about looking for anything she might have missed from around the house.

"I saw your name on one of the boxes. I think you were somewhere about five or six years old at the time?" Lucas confessed, and his mother's laughter here was delightful, full of that great shock of pleasant memories.

"All I ever wanted back then was to be just like her, down to her handwriting," Melinda recalled. "There's a good few years back in those days where I really wanted to be my own mother, the way she dressed, the way she had her hair, walked, talked, all of it. She thought it was sweet, I imagine, oh… she would humor me so. It was almost a game between us."

"I've seen the pictures," Lucas nodded. His grandmother would not go so far as to get his mother miniature versions of her own clothes, but she would definitely seek out anything similar enough as to satisfy little Melinda's whims, and to see them in those photos, stood or seated side by side, the girl's smiles said it all. Who better then to help bring the archive together with them than Marianne Sullivan's biggest fan?

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners