June 25th 2021

Chapter 176
Our Wind of Years

Maya and Lucas awoke on the morning of July 2nd, not even having the time to acknowledge that it was their fourth wedding anniversary before the screeches of their daughter beckoned them over to the nursery with haste. Maya managed to get there first, and even as she reached into the crib to pull her up, Marianne was so eager to be in her arms that she was practically pushing herself up higher faster by climbing her feet along the crib's bars.

"Hey, now, it's alright, I got you, hey…" Maya rubbed her back at once. "It was just a bad dream, you're safe, right here," she vowed, pacing the room with her. Behind her, Lucas went and reached back in the crib, retrieving the pea pod, and bringing it around to where Marianne could take it, which she did as soon as she felt it brush against her hand.

"Nightmare?" Cara's sleepy voice drew their attention to find her in the doorway.

"Yeah, it's alright, go back to bed," Lucas told her.

"Shout if you need me," she nodded to her sister before heading back down the hall. Lucas spotted an equally sleepy Mateo, standing just outside her room, as Cara nudged him back inside and shut the door.

"Hey…" Maya spoke quietly, as Marianne was finally coming around to being calm again. Lucas looked at her. "Happy anniversary," she grinned, and he chuckled before approaching her. With a careful hand to Marianne's back, he leaned in to kiss his wife of four whole years. It hardly seemed possible that it had been this long already, but then they had the experiences to prove it, had four great years to show for it.

"Happy anniversary," he returned the wish. "No French singers hanging around today?" he asked.

"Not this year, no," Maya smiled. "Although… just because he's not hanging around us doesn't mean he's not hanging around anybody else we know…"

"Yeah, imagine that," Lucas nodded.

It was a wonder it wasn't common knowledge just yet, though they might be better off calling it a mercy. Whatever was developing between Stella Buckley and François Lejeune, it was still very new, but the singer had invited her to spend the last couple weeks of his time in America with him, in Los Angeles. She had accepted, and now both she and Phoebe were staying at one of her sisters' home and spending their days hanging out with The Young Frank. If he had been looking for anyone to make him feel like a regular young man, which was what he was at heart, he couldn't have found anyone better than those two girls. As to what would happen afterward, when he would fly off back to France, only time would tell.

"But you know what I do have…" Maya told Lucas as she gently brushed their daughter's dishevelled hair back into place.

"Anniversary song?" he rightly guessed.

"The fifth one…" she confirmed. The first one, of course, had been penned on their honeymoon. The Friars, year one. They were numbered not for the year that was ending, but the one that was about to begin. This one would be The Friars, year five, even if it did look to where they were at the end of the fourth.

"Can I hear it now?" Lucas asked.

"Soon," Maya promised, giving Marianne some good smiles, now that she was starting to come around to a slightly more upbeat mood. "How's that tummy of yours going? The gremlins got anything to say?" she asked her, raising her up until she could press her ear somewhere about her daughter's belly button. "Hello? Anyone want some food?" If there was one sure fire way to get Marianne giggling madly…

After breakfast – which Lucas prepared for Maya, Marianne, Cara, Mateo, Granny Lizzie, and himself – Mateo went to work, and Cara drove off with her grandmother and niece to go visit Sam and Dora. This left Lucas and Maya with some time to themselves on this day which was meant to be all theirs. They kicked this off by deciding that they needed to do something about their looks, to get themselves into something more anniversary worthy. Maya went off to shower and when she returned to their room, she found Lucas sitting on the edge of their bed, with a book open in his lap. She only had to look and see the pictures set on the open pages to know what it was. Their travel log, from their honeymoon in Paris.

"That was the best day we spent out there…" she stated with a smile. Lucas turned to look at her, smiling, too, as he pulled back at the memories.

"I don't know, I tend to agree, but then I think about another of those days, and I can remember… so many other moments, telling me that maybe that was the best day, too."

"Kind of want to go back there now," Maya stated, pressing at his side to have a look at the photos. Lucas put his arm around her waist.

"I'd go back there anytime… Or other places, too, ones we went to on the tour, ones we've never been to before… We could plan something, in a few weeks, or August… You, me, Marianne, what do you think?"

"I think… Where are we going?" Maya beamed.

They spent some time looking at the log, and it really felt like diving four years into the past. They had to laugh, thinking back on their photos per day limit. It had been a great idea at the time, and the proof was right here on these pages. But now… with Marianne… They were way too trigger happy on the camera when she was involved to think that they could ever limit themselves. They could always try, right? Maybe increase the limit just a bit? Or a lot?

"Hey…" Maya pointed to the new page they'd turned to. On the right side, the corners were capped with a couple of folded triangles, holding the next two pages together.

It wasn't as though this was the first time in four years that they looked back through this album. They could separately say they'd flipped through its pages a minimum of once a year. But every time they'd come across those triangles, any time they saw them poking out between the pages whenever they saw the log on its shelf, they'd just sort of smiled to themselves and left it alone. Each time, their thought was simply that they hadn't done anything to warrant the opening. Those triangles had been planted to keep two pages together, pages filled by one half of their honeymoon buddy couple, Caleb and Talia. Over the last four years – or near enough to it by now – they had kept in touch. Most of this was through texts and the odd call, as the couple did not live nearby, though they had visited one another a few times in person. They'd just had a baby boy, back in March, and Maya and Lucas were due to finally meet him in the coming summer.

Don't look yet, okay? After you go home, the first time you think about how you miss when you were here…

As much as they'd obviously looked back on their honeymoon from time to time, it had never been enough for them to stop and say 'hey, let's pull the triangles.' But then today, with the anniversary, and pulling the album, and being compelled to organize a new trip by the memory of that trip? Yeah, it felt like the right time to Maya, and Lucas met the suggestion with a smile of his own. He saw it, too.

"You pull one, I pull the other?"

When at last they got through changing into 'anniversary mode,' they were both in such a good place in both heart and mind, in memory. Talia's pages were a proper trove of little details to take them back to those moments they all spent together in Paris. In words and images, she had captured so much of what the four of them had done together, four young newlyweds let loose in the French city, but also elements she had been witness to, of Maya and Lucas on their own, the two of them just overwhelmed with good feelings, with love shining from the fact that they'd just gotten married. She was not an artist like her husband, but she could draw, little cartoon figures they could recognize as themselves very well.

With this feeling in them, they wanted to do so much more than they were already planning. They'd had reservations at a restaurant, but now they decided to cancel it, to benefit from their having the house to themselves. They would make their dinner, together, doing their best to draw on the foods they remembered eating, both on their honeymoon and on the stop of Ree's tour that took them back to Paris two years ago exactly. They weren't going to be there physically, not this time, but in a way, they were creating a chain, connecting them back to the city every other year.

They researched recipes, sat huddled on the living room couch with Maya's laptop, and then they took off for a quick trip to the market to get what they'd need. Some of the ingredients required them to travel a bit further, to different stores, but they were all for it. This was like a scavenger hunt. It was nearly lunch by the time they returned home, carrying a bag from Ma Maggie's. They did some excellent crepes, which felt like a necessity in light of their Parisian plan. They brought these to the Hex after leaving Crowley his pup-appropriate treat, which he fell upon, tail wagging madly.

"Hold on, let me see about getting us a soundtrack…" Maya connected her laptop and pulled up a playlist. There was really nowhere better in their home to listen to music. The instrumental pieces left them feeling like they'd hopped over to the city across the ocean, and they were able to dig into their meal. By now, they had installed a small table into the studio, easily put out of the way but also easily set in the available floor space in times like these, when it was either desired or necessary for Maya and others to eat food inside the Hex and anywhere near the equipment. This may have been inspired by a near miss with some noodles.

"It's like we never left," Lucas laughed.

"We will have to return to English when we record the song, but for now I'm happy to change things up a little," Maya tipped her head to him.

Once they had finished their meal, Maya took care to pick up the containers and put away the table while she let Lucas hear her demo for their new anniversary song. She did not miss an opportunity to tease him for what she called his 'listening face.' He would start off so serious, concentrated, with his growing musical knowledge aiding him to prepare for the recording that would take place in a little while. But then sooner or later, he would get sort of lost in hearing this new creation of his wife's. And to top it off, because it was a song about them, about their life together in the past year, the concentration just turned into tender fascination for how she'd captured it all, in his mind, so perfectly.

"You know what…" Maya reflected as they left the studio in late afternoon to early evening, with the song recorded and their minds now turned to preparing their Paris-inspired dinner. They walked up the path back to the kitchen door with a mellow ease which kept them almost at a lock step.

"What?" Lucas asked, looking at her with something like a leftover haze in his smile.

"I just find it hard to believe that in almost five years of having the studio there, just begging for it, that was the first time we ever did that in there…" she tossed a sparkling grin toward him and he burst out laughing at once.

"Well, it wasn't the first time I thought about it," he confessed, and her look suggested plainly that she could have said so as well.

"So, what have we learned?" she asked, her teacher voice coming on not so appropriate.

"Don't just think it, say it?" Lucas suggested, smirking. Maya hummed her approval. "Well, in that case," he caught her up until they stood facing one another. "I have a few ideas for after dinner," he informed her, his eyes leaving nothing to uncertainty. Maya just about shivered, but she kept it together, holding his gaze.

"Oh, I am all ears."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners