May 8th 2021

Chapter 128
Our Wonders For Surprise

"Hey, you're looking a lot better this morning, aren't you? How about it, want to go for a walk? Yeah, let's go," Lucas smiled, leading the horse called Phoenix from his stable. He was one of Walt's six, and as much as he cared deeply for each and every horse at the ranch, these days he couldn't help but keep a special eye on those new arrivals, and when this one had started having troubles, he'd become Lucas' top priority over the last few days. Even on his days when he wasn't at the ranch, he would stop over to look in on him either in the morning or at night on his way home.

As he led Phoenix along on their slow journey, Lucas looked up and spotted a familiar face walking in his direction, and he stopped the horse.

"I'm going to go ahead and assume you're here to see me and not this guy?" he tipped his head to Phoenix as he smiled to his cousin.

"I am here for you, yes," Dora smiled back. "But if I get to say hello to him, too, I can't complain." She stopped in front of the horse and reached up to touch him. Phoenix showed his appreciation, leaning his head into her hand, which made her smile brighter.

"What can I do for you?" Lucas asked. He started the horse walking again and they took off at that same slow pace as before. They walked for more than a minute and Dora didn't say a word. "Hey…" Lucas looked over at her. Her mind was just in another place, but she turned to him now. "Are you okay?"

"Round one is tonight," she reminded him, and he nodded. Ah, of course. She and Sam were bound for her parents' house that evening, to share the double news of the pregnancy and the engagement.

"Nervous?" he asked.

"Terrified," Dora admitted.

"Why though?" Lucas kindly asked, framing in those two words their lifelong connection as cousins, and how he knew as well as she did that Emmett and Dot Cassidy would not explode at hearing these announcements.

"I don't know…" Dora took a deep breath, looking around. "When you and Maya got to tell people about your engagement, when you knew about Marianne, it was different, wasn't it? You guys were older, it was just… normal. You didn't have to think 'what are they going to say?'"

"No, I guess not, but neither do you, come on," Lucas tried to sound as encouraging as possible. "Remember when you told Cara, and Elizabeth…"

This had been the night following comics day, even as the engagement was not a whole day old, as Lucas himself was made aware of it. He'd gotten a text from Maya earlier, making sure he'd be home for dinner with the rest of them, and he'd confirmed it even as he was left with this feeling like she had a plan regarding… something… There was no point in pushing for more information, though at the same time he'd had some idea once she mentioned that Sam and Dora would be joining them for dinner. It was an incomplete idea, of course, as he'd just figured this meant that they would tell Sam's sister and grandmother about the baby. He had not seen the proposal coming, not this time, when he and Maya had both been predicting its approach not too long ago.

They'd actually told him before telling the others. As Maya had suggested it, she figured it was only fair that they even things out. She knew two things, he knew one, and the others knew nothing yet. Since he did already know about the baby, he was not overly surprised at the new revelation, and instead he'd been able to express himself in total excitement for the pair of them. He and Maya would later get into the territory of joking whether this meant that Dora was now her sister and her cousin, one by Dora's marriage to Sam and the other by Maya's marriage to Lucas.

Once he was in the loop, it meant that he got to witness the big reveal with Cara and Granny Lizzie. It had been decided that, while they wouldn't be telling their respective parents until they were able to go and see them the following week, they needed to get things out in the open here, at the Friar house, while Maya and Lucas were the only ones who knew, the only ones they could speak to about the pregnancy most of all. They would just have to swear the other two into secrecy, while they weren't out in the open just yet.

If anyone was going to react badly about the news, it was not going to be Cara. The moment she learned of her impending new niece or nephew, she was up with a great squeal, the better to go and hug Dora before turning to her big brother with such a grin as she pulled him into her arms next. As for Granny Lizzie, she approached Sam first, looking at him like the portrait of his father that he was, the portrait of her late son. Maybe, on the inside, she was seeing a chance here to have a do-over, to get it right. She embraced him, showed him her love, even as she reached to bring Dora into this fold. Since then, those four had been the young couple's line of contact, as they moved forward day by day in their new reality.

And now… now they were moving on to the next step. They were headed to the Cassidy house tonight for the big reveal, and then the next morning they were flying off to Tucson for round two of more of the same.

"You'll be okay," Lucas told Dora as they walked with Phoenix.

"Can I call you after both of those?" she asked, looking up at him. Lucas smiled, putting his arm around her shoulders, and leaning his head to hers for a moment.

"Of course, you can."

He let Maya know that they were expecting those two calls when he got home that night. She was feeling a bit of sympathetic nerves for them, too, for her brother especially, which was to be expected. After a while, she ended up climbing into the attic for some 'calming painting.' She was still there, just before midnight, when Lucas got the call. He was down in their room, lying back on the bed with Marianne. She'd woken up not long before, and he'd gotten her back to sleep, but once that was accomplished, he just hadn't been ready to put her back.

"So, how did it go?" he quietly asked.

"I'm not sure who was more scared in the beginning, me or Sam," Dora informed him. Already the tone of her voice suggested all was well, but Lucas would let her share her tale herself. For now, he just chuckled at the image of Sam's panicked face. He knew it well. "But then when we got in there, I guess we had a look like we had something big to share, because they guessed about the engagement. We couldn't say no, and then say yes, a minute later, so we just started there. Mom and Dad were so happy, Junior and Alex, too. I wasn't sure what to do after that, whether we should just go ahead and tell them the rest while we were already in the middle of everything, or if we should wait and let them come back down. Sam didn't know either, but then I thought 'what if we should have told them right after the engagement and we missed our chance?' So, I just sort of blurted it out."

"You didn't," Lucas laughed as he lightly brushed at Marianne's back, to ensure that she wouldn't wake up again. She had a firm grip at his collar, and she could wreck his shirt for all he cared.

"Everyone just froze, like they weren't sure that they'd heard right. So, I just did the signs, and then they definitely got it. They cried," Dora revealed, again allowing her tone to show him that these had been happy tears. She was just so relieved on the whole, and he was glad for her. Of course, she was only halfway out of the woods.

The next call came the following afternoon. It bordered on comical to watch the four of them as they waited. Naturally, they all knew that, at that very moment, possibly, Sam and Dora were telling Abigail and James and the rest of the Hart-Lanes their big news. They all wanted to know how it went as much as Lucas and Maya did. Both Cara and Elizabeth had offered to fly out there, too, but Sam had assured them that it would be better off this way. They needed to handle this, Dora and him.

"What do you say, pumpkin? Now would be as good of a time as any to get walking, don't you think?" Maya asked, sitting next to Lucas on the couch, as he set Marianne on her feet at arms' length away from him, like he'd done before, to see if she'd try walking. As before though, she looked perfectly content in remaining on her feet and staring back at them, her thumb hanging precariously between her teeth. "One small step for Anniekind?" Maya pleaded. Marianne just laughed, making her mother sigh even as she laughed. "How did I get such a patient kid?" she inquired aloud, even as she turned her eyes to her husband. Lucas played like he had no idea.

Finally, the phone rang. It startled Marianne, not into walking but rather into sitting back down on the floor, where she was soon joined by an eager Crowley, who could count on some great hugs and kisses from his small friend.

"Hey, how'd it go?" Lucas asked upon answering. He briefly considered putting her on speaker but, maybe out of some sympathetic response, like maybe he'd find out it had gone badly, he didn't go through with it.

"Oh, good, really good," Dora informed him, sounding even more relieved than the day before, and Lucas smiled, giving the Hart women around him the thumbs up. They all had their own version of a look that said 'yes, I figured as much, but still, thank goodness.' "Sam was so happy that we chose to come out here to tell them. I was, too," Dora shared. "It wouldn't have been the same over a screen.

"No, definitely not," Lucas agreed.

The way she told it, Sam had also been just teetering on the edge, the closer they'd come to the moment, so much so that they'd decided to tell the family over lunch instead of waiting until dinner, on the logic that surely someone would see through him ahead of time if they had to be around him for hours. They had all been beyond surprised, naturally, though like the Cassidy family the engagement had been almost expected. The baby though, oh… The rest of the Hart-Lane kids were just giddy at the idea of becoming aunts and an uncle again. As to the future grandparents, it was impossible to pretend as though they'd received the news equally. James loved his stepson as good as though he'd raised him from the start, but Abigail… This had been her firstborn, her baby boy, and now he was about to be a father. It didn't matter that he was twenty years old, not when he'd always been mature beyond his years to her. All that mattered was the memory of that small boy, her very first, who was now a man, who was going to be a parent… It made her feel now more than ever how much she missed having him living nearby. He'd been gone from living under her roof for five years already, but she still missed him so much.

"Does that mean you're letting everyone know now?" Maya asked her younger brother, when Lucas passed her the phone and Dora did the same with him.

"Not about the baby, no, we want to wait a little longer. We figured we'd tell them at the wedding, or after the wedding. But that's like a month away, so we're going to send invitations soon. We need to get things started as soon as possible."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners