May 19th 2021

Chapter 139
Our Arms Around Family

The sleeping arrangements had required some mixing and splitting around. The twins would of course be in the room downstairs. They would have the bed, and Desi, Haley, MJ, and Hunter would have their sleeping bags on the floor. There was no need here to debate the old 'boys here, girls there' rule, so it was never an issue. The only place where it might have been an 'issue' was how they normally did Sleepsters, with the girls doing their thing and the boys doing theirs. This was different, and they'd known it going into the day. This was about Gracie, and welcoming her back home, all of them together.

Meanwhile, Khalil was settled on the living room couch. As thankful as he was to be here, to be part of the sleepover, he wanted to let the kids have their thing in the twins' room, the whispers in the dark, all of that. He was close by, if his sister or any of the others needed him, and that was enough.

Maya and Lucas were upstairs, in Nellie and Gracie's actual room, and they would take the former's bed for their own that night, with Marianne in between them. It was a close fit, but that had never been a problem for them, and in the end, it was as cozy as they could want it to be.

"Testing, one, two, this is Rock Star, come in, Mouse, over," Maya spoke into the brand new walkie-talkie in her hand. She couldn't keep from smirking, so she had a good idea of how Lucas' face must have looked as he observed her, too.

"Mouse here… over," Gracie's voice was heard, surrounded in giggles.

She would be down in the other room, with her own walkie talkie, the other kids nearby. The set had been purchased by Lucas, on his lunch break, a flash of an idea. He figured Gracie would perhaps want to communicate with them, or anyone in the house, and seeing as she couldn't just get up out of her bed and go to them, then she would need a way to compensate. Might as well make it fun, right? She had loved the idea, and so had everyone else, including Maya, who had been quick to invite them all to pick code names.

"Alright then, time to go to sleep, over," Maya smirked.

"Okay," Gracie replied.

"You have to say 'over!'" they heard someone speak in the background, possibly Hunter, though it was hard to tell once the others started laughing again.

"Don't make me come down there, over," Maya spoke, knowing full well they could hear her laughing, too.

Finally, the walkie talkies were set aside. There was no assurance that the kids would suddenly put their heads to their pillows and go to sleep, not in the slightest, but it went without saying already. Maya set down her own receiver and looked back to Lucas, who was lying on his back next to her, a sleeping Marianne curled up on his chest.

"She stole my spoon," Maya 'accused' in a sweet whisper.

"You'll get it back," Lucas promised, turning his head to look at her and receiving a kiss for his troubles.

"Not complaining, of course," Maya settled in on her side, draping her arm over their daughter and her head at his shoulder. "This is good, too."

When they had given Gracie her walkie talkie, she had expressed doubt that they would even hear her if she used it and they were asleep. Maya and Lucas had both assured her that they would respond, due to their sharpened parent ears.

"Come in, Rock Star, over? Come in, Cowboy, over? Pumpkin, over?"

The first two woke up, and the third nearly did, too, which sent the second to prevent it while the first reached for the walkie talkie.

"This is Rock Star… over," Maya whispered after a beat that felt like the one on the other end was waiting to hear the word. That was what they were supposed to say, wasn't it? "What's the matter? Can't sleep?"

"No," the response came, disregarding the 'code' and in the same instance, with one word, allowing Maya to realize it wasn't Gracie on the other end but Nellie.

"Come up here, okay?" Maya told her even as she got up from the bed and moved to open the bedroom door.

Seconds later, she heard steps on the stairs, quiet but at the same time very loud in the stillness of night. Nellie's head appeared, and then the rest of her as she reached the landing and scurried over to her big sister. Maya shut the door again and brought her to the free bed, there to sit cross-legged and facing one another. It was coming on three in the morning, and the girl looked like she'd barely slept a minute since they'd been told to settle down.

"Everyone else sleeping?" Maya asked. Nellie nodded. "Since when?"

"I don't know, not long after we had to. Gracie was tired, so the others just let her be, and then they started falling asleep, too."

"Not you though?" Lucas asked, from across in the other bed. Nellie shook her head. With a sigh, Maya reached for her to move and lay her head down in her lap. When she did so, Maya lightly hummed a song for her, brushed at her hair, her back… She could see Nellie was trying to get into the spirit of the effort, to fall asleep. She struggled a while, and Maya knew it by the way she could see her sister's eyes fluttering, or her hand moving…

She was not the baby girl she'd been, but sometimes she still felt that way, and tonight she really did. She needed this comfort she now received, she craved it desperately. Missing their parents was a constant struggle, but it was so obvious right now how the accident had rattled her to her core, and the fact that their mother and father were not here yet had become a heavier burden each day. She understood the reason, and she appreciated that this small sacrifice would lead to weeks uninterrupted, but it didn't change the fact that she was eleven, and her twin had been severely injured, and she'd been terrified, and the two people she wanted the most were out of her reach. They would be here, in just a few hours, and it should have appeased her, but instead it just made her more eager than ever, and it kept her from sleeping.

Maya and Lucas would look to one another across the beds, and they knew very well what Nellie was going through. She'd been staying with them all this past week. It was a strange sort of situation, to see how their family was so spread out across those days. Shawn and Katy were in Los Angeles, Gracie was at the hospital, Nellie was with Maya and Lucas and Marianne, and MJ and Haley were at home with their grandparents… In the morning, it would be all of them together in one place, and it would be like a collective breath taken in and released by every last one of them.

"Giving her a few more minutes before I take her back down there," Maya whispered when she saw that Nellie had finally fallen asleep.

"Want me to carry her?" Lucas whispered back.

"It's alright, I got her," she assured him. "You keep doing what you're doing," she nodded over to Marianne, who remained as she'd been all night, asleep and using him as her mattress and pillow.

"Fair trade," he had to agree, which made her smirk. It was never going to be anything but the sweetest thing for her to see him with their baby girl, no matter how much she grew.

When she was satisfied that she would stay asleep, Maya carefully got up and lifted the sleeping Nellie into her arms. Oh, she was much heavier than she had been as a toddler, or even just a smaller child, and it wouldn't be long now that she would be too big for her to carry, but for now she managed it. She carefully left the room and headed down the stairs, taking her time. Without stopping, as it would only mean carrying her load longer than she had to, she stole a look to the couch as she went, seeing that Khalil was asleep, and he was.

Coming into her old room, passing the sleepers on the floor, she approached the bed to lay down one twin and found the other with her eyes open and staring back.

"And how long have you been awake?" Maya whispered with a sigh. Gracie just shrugged, rubbing at sleepy eyes. "Missed your buddy?" Maya guessed and got a nod. "Just a little trouble nodding off, she's good now," she promised as she set her down next to Gracie, who instantly and gently took hold of her hand. Without waking, Nellie grasped on in return, which left Gracie looking relieved.

Moving back upstairs, Maya had to think about how strange the past week had been for them. It wasn't the first time she thought about it. Every day, it had been right up there with thinking of the recovery efforts, and how they would affect Gracie, and then their parents being away… The twins though… Sooner or later, they were going to have to come face to face with the fact that their lives wouldn't always be so closely paralleled. Sure, they were their own people, and they didn't always do the same things at the same time in the same place. That wasn't new. But always it would continue to feel as though, no matter what they did apart, by the end of the day they would snap back together, never actually separated, just briefly diverging.

Being apart the last few days, save for the daily visits after school, the thought had already been allowed to start taking root. In the weeks to come, while Nellie would be at school and Gracie would not, it would emerge from the earth, and it would get them thinking of the time when this would be the norm. One day, they would live apart from one another and it wouldn't be because of anything except that they were adults, that they might have their own families, and then they would just be visiting each other. No one could know how that would be unless they were in the same situation, could they? Maya certainly couldn't know, not the way they did. She could sympathize, and she did, very deeply so, but that was as far as it went.

"All good?" Lucas asked when she returned, shut the door, and climbed back into bed with him. He had his arm out to receive her, and she happily burrowed herself small against him, so he might hold her.

"Yeah," she breathed, putting one arm around the sleeping Marianne again. "As much as it can."

"They'll be here soon," he reminded her. She smiled. Of course, she was eager and a little sleepless at the thought of her parents' return, too. They had missed so much, and no one would hate it more than them, but it wouldn't be up to her to bring it up, and she wouldn't. Tomorrow, the next few weeks, it would all be about the fact that they were together again, not that they had been and would eventually be apart again. That would be her mission, and she knew he would aid her in achieving it. That was their position in this family, wasn't it? Bridge makers… peace keepers…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners