A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

July 1st 2021

Chapter 182
Our Wind of Return

It was incredible to think half a year had gone by already. Half a year since that terrible day last January when Gracie had been hit by that car, chasing after the runaway dog, Una. To look at her now, you could hardly tell the accident had happened. She could walk unaided most of the time. But then there would be days where her hip would hurt, and she'd have to rely on support again. She still wasn't allowed to do sports, or gym class, no running at all, and even if she had never been that much into sports… At the end of the day, she was nearly twelve years old, and the idea that she'd have to go and sit in a corner somewhere, at the start of sixth grade in the fall, while her classmates would get to play…

On the whole, she had handled the situation just as well as they would have expected her to. She'd had to deal with an additional difficulty, with her parents being away most of the time. If there was ever a time when she'd want to have her mother and father there to comfort her, dealing with all the days of bed rest, and adjusting to different mobility issues, and physiotherapy, and missing school, and feeling separated from her twin… She had needed them badly, and they weren't there. They visited, of course, now more than ever, but they would still be gone a lot of the time, as they had been for the past two years, and sometimes missing them would get to be too much. The only one she'd share those frustrations with, other than Nellie, of course, was her big sister. Maya would always be there, always do her very best to be there for her, through all this, even if deep down it would also fuel her quiet frustration over their parents being away.

But now… Now it was all changing, now they were coming home. Heal Thyself had wrapped, and everything that Katy had still needed to accomplish in Los Angeles, other than her and Shawn packing away the things they'd bring back to Austin while they were subletting their apartment, had been done. They had departed for a California-Texas road trip, one direction, no return, the day before, just so that they could drive through the night and arrive in the morning, the better to spend the most of this first day back together with their family as possible.

"Okay, who's helping me with the pancakes?" Lucas faced the grouping of little Hunters nearby, like soldiers waiting for their assignments. All hands volunteered.

"You did it last time," MJ told Nellie, who honorably lowered her hand. "And she's too little to get close to the stove," he pointed to Haley.

"Am not!" the very recently turned seven-year-old protested. "I'm not, am I?" she asked Lucas.

"She could get burned!" MJ insisted. At nine years old, the lone Hunter boy took his position as older sibling to the only one of his sisters younger than him very seriously, as he had done since their parents had gone to California. He saw her as his responsibility, something which had become that much more important to him after Gracie's accident.

"How about you both help me, and you can show her how to not get burned?" Lucas suggested. Haley at once implored to her big brother by tugging on his arm and flashing a bright smile. "I'll show you how to flip the pancakes," Lucas added to sweeten the deal. He knew he had him at once.

"Okay, but we have to be careful," MJ told Haley, who started hopping around and nodding at once.

"What do we do?" Gracie asked of herself and Nellie.

"We can make a fruit salad!" Nellie suggested. "With some of our strawberries from the garden."

"That's a great idea, sweetheart," Angela Clutterbucket approached her granddaughters, even as she carried her great granddaughter. Marianne was just now enjoying one of the small red fruit, and by the looks of her they'd say she was enjoying them a lot. "You go on and sit there at the table and I'll bring you everything you need to cut the fruit. Here, you take her," she passed Marianne down to Nellie.

"I can help carry everything, Grangie," Gracie told her grandmother.

"No, please, I insist, it's nothing at all," the old woman went bustling along. Lucas caught a look on Gracie's face. She knew as well as he did that Angela was attempting to minimize her recovering granddaughter's motions or time standing up unnecessarily, especially if she would be handling a knife. She didn't like that it had to be this way, though she understood it came from a good place, so she didn't say anything.

Still, she saw Lucas looking at her, and when he smiled at her she shrugged and went to sit at the table, next to Nellie. She had Marianne standing in front of her and was telling her all about how they'd grown the strawberries. Marianne dutifully listened – and ate – until Una came sniffing up to her, drawn by the sweet scent of the fruit. As attached as she was to her snack, she had one berry in one hand, which she was in the process of eating, and another in her other hand, which she now happily surrendered to the dog. Una gobbled it up and licked at the girl's hand, which made her giggle before leaning to kiss her head and sit with her on the floor. As the twins would start to prepare the fruit salad, they would pass some of the bits to Marianne from time to time, if they knew Una could eat them (otherwise, they asked Lucas first), and she would go ahead and feed those to the dog.

By the time Shawn and Katy would arrive, they would get to hear all about how MJ had learned to successfully flip a pancake, how several attempts had nearly fallen on the floor but been saved by a quick thinking – and quick acting – Lucas, and how Haley had helped prepare the pancakes, too, and had not burned herself a single time. They would also find that MJ had – very lightly – burned one of his fingers, but that it had been quickly tended to by his brother-in-law and topped off – sort of unnecessarily – with a band-aid applied by his little sister, from her personal Muppet set.

While the others were downstairs, tending to the breakfast that was to be consumed as soon as the returnees arrived, Maya was upstairs with her grandfather. They were changing the sheets on the bed in the master bedroom. Tanner and his wife had waited until the day came when their daughter and her husband returned to do this for the plain reason that they knew their grandchildren. It wasn't uncommon, any day or two, to find one of them had left their room and gone to sleep in the big bed, their parents' bed. They'd only slept in it whenever they visited over the last two years, but still the room did retain something of a familiar scent, and the mattress, the pillows, the sheets, all of them were the same. The children would go in there and fall asleep somewhere that felt close to their parents. They almost pretended like it didn't happen, just let them do what they needed to do. Some nights, usually if it was someone's birthday and Katy and Shawn were both away, all four of the kids would be found in their parents' bed.

There were many things that could earn Tanner Clutterbucket the title of gentle giant, whether it was him playing with his great granddaughter, or letting his youngest granddaughter paint his fingernails, or any time he was in the garden… Maya also found he earned it in how much attention he put to making up a bed with clean sheets. She was almost laughing, in the most grandpa-adoring sort of way. Being with him here though, today of all days, there was something she couldn't help but wonder about. Right when the little Hunters had learned that their parents were coming home, as happy as this made them, it had also left them all to wonder what it would mean as far as their grandparents. They'd moved here from Arkansas to look after Nellie, Gracie, MJ, and Haley when their parents had needed to go to Los Angeles. They had just dropped their old lives and come here, and they'd find none more thankful for that than their daughter. But now Katy and Shawn were coming home. Tanner and Angela had promised their grandchildren that they weren't going anywhere, but would that remain true? Would they continue to live here with them, down in what had been Katy and Shawn's room before the second floor had been built on to the house? Or would they decide it was time to return to their home in Arkansas, with their younger daughter and her children, who'd seen their grandparents move away…

"You know you never look so much like your mother as when you make that face?" Tanner spoke, pulling her out of her thoughts.

"Sorry?" she asked.

"That look you had just now," he pointed to her face. "I never appreciated just how many times she felt she couldn't say something to us," he explained. He didn't say more, but the rest of it was in his eyes. After Katy had run away, no doubt her father had wished many a time that he'd enabled more honesty, more openness. "What's on your mind?"

"I… might be feeling just a bit sentimental today," Maya admitted with a sigh as they pulled up the comforter over the sheets.

"About your mom and dad coming home?" he asked, like he both understood why that'd be the case but also didn't feel like it equated what he saw on her face.

"About you and Grangie, and whether you'll actually stay," Maya went on, feeling right here like she'd regressed about twenty years, to a child this man had never even known. "I know you said you would, but I can't help thinking about… Charlie, and Caitlin and Harry, and everybody else back there…"

"Your mother's series ended, but she will still act, won't she?" Tanner asked.

"That's the plan, I guess, but…"

"Then she and your father will need us again. And we will be here," he slowly nodded. Maya's mouth shifted to speak a 'but,' only to be stalled as her grandfather spoke on. "When they asked us to come and look after your sisters and your brother, your grandmother and I discussed the matter for a long time. We would come, no question. Part of our talk was about what we would do when we got to this part. Would we stay here or return to Arkansas? We talked about it with Charlene, too. The three of us together came to the same conclusion, which was that we would come here to look after our grandchildren, but when your parents came home then…"

"You could look after Mom again," Maya said it as she understood. Her grandfather's mustache twitched.

"In a manner of speaking," he nodded.

"Then you're staying."

"As long as she'll have us," he nodded again.

"Can I come hug you now?" Maya smiled.

"I would appreciate it if you did," Tanner replied, and Maya walked around the bed to embrace her grandfather. He towered over her, that great gentle giant of a man.

"They're here! They're here!" they heard Haley shouting from below as they were placing the last of the pillows on the bed, so they made their way down the stairs, just in time to see the door open and watch Katy and Shawn be piled on by three out of four little Hunters.

Gracie hung back, knowing better than to submit herself to the giddy hold. Her parents may have been overrun with the feelings of having Nellie, MJ, and Haley holding on to them all at once, but they didn't miss seeing her standing there. As soon as the group hug got a bit less jumpy, they opened up a space for her to come along and be folded in among them. With her head pressed to her mother's heart, she seemed to catch her breath. She was crying now, same as her mother and father were and all for the same reason. They were home, finally. And they weren't leaving any time soon.

"We made pancakes!" Haley revealed.

"Lucas showed me, and I flipped one," MJ added.

"He burned his finger," Haley pointed to the green bandage.

"Only a little," MJ promised.

"We made a fruit salad," Gracie told their parents.

"With our strawberries," Nellie added. "The rest was from the market."

"Marianne loves the strawberries," Gracie smiled.

If there was ever a time when Katy and Shawn would be so very happy to be inundated with information out of their children, this felt like it fit right at the top of the list. Both Maya, coming down the stairs, and Lucas, coming from the kitchen with Marianne in his arms, couldn't help but look at the two of them with parents' eyes. They may only have had the one, and she was not yet two years old, but the idea of being away from her for any extended period of time, for whatever reason… Coming home to her at last would just be the best day. They'd probably been counting down the days.

"And what did you do?" Shawn asked his eldest, as she was locked in a tight hug with her mother, and he waited for his turn. Maya smiled up at him from over Katy's shoulder.

"Made the bed," she informed him. "You've had some visitors in there."

"And they're always welcome," Shawn smiled, looking to the little Hunters, all four of them borderline sheepish at being 'discovered' but now growing relieved to find they were – as they should have known – free to continue communing with their missed parents if they needed to.

"I can't wait to hear all about graduation, and the workshops, and… everything," Katy told Maya, still holding to her hands after they'd pulled apart. Knowing that they were coming home, and that they had been away for so long, it had become a sort of arrangement between the two of them to hold on to certain conversations, the better to really dig into them once they could do so in person. Now that they were here, together again, Maya could see into her mother's eyes, to those places that felt fully reserved to just the two of them, the once-upon-a-time Hart girls, who'd been one another's whole world. She understood that no matter how much Maya had wanted to support her, the absence had weighed on her the way it wouldn't on her younger siblings, who'd never had to worry about a parent not returning, not like her. She understood that it would have been making her frustrated, even angry, and now that she was back… Things were going to change, all for the better.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners