March 8th 2021

Chapter 67
Our Night of Steps

There was peace in the room for those minutes where Marianne was fed. The baby girl clung to her mother, and Maya hoped to pass on whatever spirit of calm and rest she had in her on to her daughter. She hummed whatever songs came through her mind in that instant, pushed away her worries if for the space of those minutes alone. She was just going to have to trust that this would pass, as she'd been told. It would be so easy for her to lean on to the other side and imagine the absolute worst, because this had never happened before, and the thought that it might was… much more powerful than she'd anticipated. This fever would pass. Marianne would get better. This night would soon become but a distant memory. If she had to repeat it to herself all night, she would.

"Mind if I cut in?" Lucas asked when she was all done.

"You most certainly can," Maya breathed before passing him the baby.

"Alright now, little lady," he breathed. Leaning back against his pillows and the headboard, he brought Marianne to lay against his chest, supporting her with one hand as he held her hand with the other. "What do you say we try this sleeping thing again, huh?" he asked her. Catching the slight smile on his wife's face, Lucas was pleased to see that his more Huckleberry-esque tones had done the trick for her, if no one else.

"You are such a dork sometimes, you know that?" Maya informed him.

"Is that so?" he inquired.

"Don't get me wrong, it's one of the best things about you. One of, multitude," she added, miming a great whole and then the portion allotted to this dorkiness.

"Well, then, I thank you," he tipped his head in his best hat-tipping expression despite not having a single free hand to assist him. Maya chuckled, shifting herself to come closer, until her head was at his shoulder and she could look to Marianne as well. Lucas carefully brought his head down until he could kiss the top of hers. Maybe, just maybe, she'd fall asleep this time.

"You know, the more I think about it, I'm really looking forward to your stories coming together," she spoke for now, not so close to dozing off as of yet.

"My…" he started to ask, unsure what she was talking about for a beat before he remembered what they'd been discussing earlier. The ranch, the people like John Carson, their stories… "Oh, yeah," he slowly nodded. "Well, I don't know exactly how I'll do it yet… or when… But maybe I should try and get as much of it done as possible before I start residency. Don't know how that'll go yet, but I kind of figure it'll get more hectic than what I've been doing at the ranch this year."

"Doesn't have to be you collecting the stories, does it?" Maya offered.

"No, I guess it doesn't, but… I kind of want it to be," he admitted.

"That's fair," Maya breathed. She could just see Marianne's eyes on her, staring back at her, and it left her with such a feeling of helplessness, like her daughter was pleading with her to make her better, because, somehow, she should have been able to… but she couldn't. "Tell me something," she looked to Lucas. "Just talk to me? Please?" She couldn't just lay here in silence; it would only make it worse. She didn't have to tell Lucas this part. He'd just know, and he'd deal with it as he always did.

"Well… I have been thinking more and more about how I'm about to head into this next step, with the residency, and it's just like… all the work I put in over the years, it finally led to this, and once it's over… I've been thinking about the ranch, too, about Manny, and basically waiting for him to retire, and then taking his place… and then what happens once Juliet hands over the whole of Sullivan Stables…"

It still didn't seem real sometimes. He was… beyond blessed, and he was aware of it. He hadn't received all that he'd received without putting in the work, but he couldn't ignore the fact that he'd come by some truly fortunate turns. He lived in a house he had essentially been given, didn't have to buy. It had been in his family, so it wasn't too out of the ordinary. And he had put in a lot of work to make it into what it was now. And then the ranch… his future job had been in the books since he was just a kid, but it wasn't like they'd given it to him regardless of qualifications. He had studied so very hard, and he'd come out on top of his class. As to Juliet's passing him the whole of the ranch, well, it was as she'd said. It belonged in the family, and he was going to work damn hard to keep it going, keep it thriving. One day, he would see this place mark its centennial anniversary. He would. And he would see to it that it lived on beyond him.

The next three years, he knew, would all be about getting him closer to that goal. It would take him through those last steps before landing back under that arch, once and for all. He looked down to the baby still very much awake against him. Their Marianne would be three years old already by then, three and then some… It seemed hard to believe it, when she was so small right here, but then she wasn't nearly as small as she'd once been, was she? She was growing up so fast, and the notion would hit him and Maya both… so many times. What would she be like by then? Running around, talking up a storm… That was what he kept on imagining. A tiny Maya…

He told his wife as much, and it made her smile.

"See, that's funny. I look at her, and I just see you," Maya told him. "A tiny girl Lucas."

"And what exactly does that look like?" he wondered. She pondered her answer here, which possibly amused him even more.

"Just sort of… intensely kind," she finally decided. Lucas considered this, those two words alone coming off simple but then at the same time being so much more. He felt he knew what she was saying, and he looked at Marianne again. He could not see a greater compliment. "I think we're going to need to break out the songbook again," Maya breathed out, observing their still very wakeful girl. Lucas looked at her, too, then back to Maya.

"How about we try another way this time?" he offered. "Let me tell you two some stories."

"Ranch stories?" Maya asked with a smile she turned to Marianne, as though to confer with her on how exciting that would be.

"Yes, ranch stories," Lucas confirmed.

"An exclusive excerpt from the Huckleberry Files?" she went on. Now she was really playing it up for the baby, though her calm tone continued to invite restfulness.

"For my best audience, always. Now, listen," he instructed.

"Listening," Maya promised, resettling. "Who's this one from? Does it have a title?" Lucas cleared his throat. "Listening, very quiet listening," Maya promised once more. He smiled, gently rubbed at their baby girl's back as he spoke.

"I guess you could call it… Turtles and Horses," he told her and Maya both, with only the latter responding with a quiet laugh.

Even now, when he would go to the archive, the one thing that would really remind him of the days when it had been the old dance studio was the balcony. Today, the doors were locked, and no one hardly ever went out there except to tend to the flowers. As the year would go on, Lucas suspected they might see about putting decorations up there. Halloween, Christmas, Easter, who knew? The rest of the ranch did enjoy a bit of a holiday spruce up, and the archive would be no exception.

Regardless of how it would look, it would still be the old balcony where he used to take his friends. He would get them through the back door, which opened directly into the stairwell, all the better to get them on to the second floor and toward the balcony doors when they didn't want Donna Devereaux and her dance classes to see them going. It had always worked… except for that one time, of course. Lucas and the other boys had already been friends for a while when they'd started going up there, had been running around Sullivan Stables like it was their very own playground, or theme park if the theme was horses.

He had a surprisingly distinct memory of the first time he'd brought them out there. Zay, Asher, Dylan… His mother had taken the four of them out there one day, figuring it'd be something fun for the boys to do. Lucas, for his part, had grown up around the horses for as long as he could remember. The others though… Oh, they had seen horses at one time or another in their lives, sure, but it became very clear that day that none of them had ever been that close to a real live one before, never near enough as to be able to touch one. They had definitely not been astride of one either and by the end of that day… well, only one of them had his first go, while the others would take longer.

Right away, Zay had been hard set against being lifted up there. He appreciated the animals, would even happily pet one or feed one, but his feet were going to stay on the ground and that would be that, thank you very much. Asher was curious at the prospect, though he was never going to be the first one to do it, no. He would rather stay with his feet on the ground, too, at least until he got to watch someone and figure out what was right or wrong to do.

"I'll do it!" Dylan had proclaimed, to the surprise of absolutely no one, not even the horse. If Lucas recalled it correctly, he'd buddied up to a horse called Porter, who had been just about the right size for a boy his age, and the right temperament, too.

"Did he fall off? Did he hurt himself?" Maya interjected, feeling like especially back then their friend would never have been so far from a bruise or a scar.

"Would you believe it, he sat on that horse for a good long while, was walked around, too, not a single incident. It might have been the best day of his life up to that one. Then when he was helped down again, he tripped and scraped his knee."

"There it is…" Maya nodded with a knowing smirk.

"By the time my grandmother got him all patched up, back at the house, I guess the others weren't up for taking a turn either. But Dylan still wanted to see them some more, so she took us around, told us about every horse, how old they were, how long they'd been at the ranch, how they got their names, and the things they could do…"

"Like you did when you took Haley out there," Maya recalled the day, the year before, when her little sister had played the truant and refused to go to pre-school, forcing her big sister to take her in to work in the morning, until Lucas could come and get her.

"Yeah, I guess it was," Lucas realized, smiling. One day, he'd get to do that with Marianne, too. Oh, he really couldn't wait.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners