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

August 12th 2021

Chapter 224
Our Great Christmas With a New Year

"You guys should come and spend a few weeks out in Texas with us over the summer," Maya suggested to her aunt as they watched her kids and the little Hunters run around from one attraction to another in the town square. Maya had Marianne asleep in her lap, which had demanded great effort, as all she wanted to do was to keep playing with the rest of them. It didn't matter to her that she'd have much better of a chance to see the fireworks at midnight, as her parents had told her, if she got some sleep now, not when Nellie, Gracie, MJ, Haley, Caitlin, and Harry were clearly having so much fun. Maya could remind her that they had all slept a bit this afternoon while she had been taken on a tour of the town by her great grandfather, but she wouldn't care, which went to show how tired she was getting. That was when she was at her most cranky.

She could hardly blame her, or Tanner Clutterbucket for that matter. He'd been looking forward to taking his great granddaughter around with him for the last several days since they'd come into Arkansas, but there just hadn't been a chance up to now and seeing as they were all bound back for Texas the day after tomorrow, they couldn't let this opportunity pass up. So, off they'd gone, the tall man leading the small girl along by the hand as they left. She'd probably spent much of that tour perched up in his arms, the way they returned to Charlie and David's house, and to hear her as she told it, the whole experience had been well worth the wait.

Their second time coming out to Arkansas for the run up to the turn of the year, they'd felt excited, thinking of this new tradition of theirs and how it might carry on in years to come, as Marianne grew, as they'd have other children coming along, too… After two months of trying, they still had nothing to show for it, but they weren't worrying themselves over it. When the time would come, it would come. At least they hoped it would be that way. If it took too long, they might start to wonder, but they weren't anywhere near there.

Everyone else had been very excited, too, the little Hunters especially. They loved getting to visit their cousins, and being at their grandparents' old house… The merriment had lasted all of a day before they'd hit a snag, though it had since been smoothed away. They'd driven in on the twenty-sixth, after their flight, and the rest of that day had been as relaxed as could be, just settling in, and exchanging one day late Christmas presents.

Maya, Lucas, Marianne, Summer, and Tori were staying with the Olsens, while Shawn and Katy and the little Hunters were staying at the old Clutterbucket house along with Tanner and Angela. They were all bound out there for breakfast the following morning, and they'd arrived to find an awkward scene.

It seemed that Haley had overheard her parents and grandparents talking and she'd figured out that her mother was going back to LA for a new role, at which point she'd run back to her brother and sisters and told them about it. The four of them had grown so much closer to one another in all the time Katy and Shawn had spent out in California, and it never felt so evident as it did that day, as they fell in together under the banner of one single mind. They were upset to think that their parents would be leaving them again, and for who knew how long. It didn't matter that Katy assured them that it would only be for a few weeks, or that Shawn told them that he would be at home with them this time and visiting their mother instead of it being the other way around. All they could seem to hear was that it would all be starting again, and they didn't want it to. They'd just gotten their parents back and they didn't want to lose them again.

There had been a few hours that morning when they'd considered heading back to Austin, just the six of them, so they might sort this out without impeding on the others and this trip. Tanner and Angela wouldn't have it. No, they would stay, and they would all work this out together, as a family. Maya could just see the thoughts spinning through her mother's head, this idea that she might back out of her new project, just let it go and wait for a new opportunity in a few months, or a year, or two years, or… She saw it, and so did Shawn, and so did Tanner, and they weren't going to have it. Katy deserved to continue on this path she'd finally found, after all these years. She was not going to quit.

And it wasn't as though the little Hunters were not happy for her. Underneath all the emotions, somewhere, there was pride for their mother. But they were children, and the previous separation had been very hard on them, so what else could they do but understand?

It took a couple of days, but the little Hunters did come around. In that time, they mostly hung out with their cousins, at their grandparents' house, and it helped clear away the troubles. Maybe they saw how Caitlin and Harry were so close to their grandparents, even though they'd moved away, and even though they didn't often see each other. Sure, it wasn't the same thing, it wasn't their parents, but… just a few weeks, right? One by one, they put down their issues and showed that they were happy for their mother. The last to fall in with them was Nellie, and they'd expected no less. Her status as oldest of the house was forged on bare minutes between her and Gracie, but she definitely saw herself in that position and, as such, she saw it as her responsibility to protect her younger siblings. If she had to protect them from sadness, from distress at the thought of their parents being gone again, then so be it. Once Gracie had come around though – and she'd been the second to last to do so – it wasn't long that Nellie would be convinced to follow.

While this was all being worked out, Maya and Lucas spent most of those days out at the Olsen music store, with Charlie and David and with Summer, too. While the kids were being looked after by Shawn and Katy and her parents and David's as well, they had a task on their hands. In the last few weeks before the holidays, Charlie had been telling her niece about how she and David had been meaning to give the store a bit of a makeover. The inside had needed a paint job for a long time, and they wanted to rearrange the setup. The outside was okay, though they had been thinking of redoing the signs. They'd talked about it so much that they had eventually made a plan to work on that, them and their husbands together, while they were in town. Then they'd have Summer with them, too, and she had been happy to help them out, so that was what she did.

It took the better part of four days, but they were good days. Maya had always known Summer as someone who liked to be productive, to feel useful. She couldn't say if that was how she'd always been or if this was a trait born out of her becoming a mother at the age of sixteen, but she had it now. It made Maya feel most confident that the girl would land on her own two feet, as she would soon be working to establish herself, to make a living and get a home for herself and her daughter. And for how she'd come to feel about her, it was a genuine relief.

"I didn't know you played," Lucas remarked on that last day, after they'd finished the last of it. The rest of them had gone outside to look at the signs newly hung up, and as Maya was speaking with her aunt and her husband, he'd spotted the girl back inside the store, sitting at the piano in the corner. Not even the bell that rang as he walked in could distract her from the piece she was playing. She wasn't just playing, no. The way her hands moved over those keys, the impression was that she had been a very talented pianist, maybe hadn't sat at her instrument in some time. When he announced himself, she startled and closed the cover in the same motion. Then she saw it was him and she relaxed.

"I…" she started to speak, then hesitated over her response. "I used to, but I haven't since…" Since she'd left home, since she'd been thrown out, he'd guess.

"I see," he responded solemnly.

"My father taught me, since I was three years old," Summer revealed, and she didn't need to say any more. The rest of the picture could fill itself easily enough. She wouldn't have been able to deny what this moment had indicated. She missed the piano, and while she could have easily gone and used the keyboard in the Hex, she hadn't felt able to approach that part of her old life. Except they'd spent the last few days in the music store, and the instrument had sort of called to her, all this time, until finally on this last occasion she couldn't help herself and now here they were.

Lucas hadn't shared this brief talk with Maya, not right away. Instead, it had been turning in his head, on that evening, and the next day, until that night of the thirty-first of December, as they were all in the town square waiting for midnight. And then the solution came to him, and it was a bit crazy, so he knew Maya would be on board as soon as she heard it.

"You know what the house needs?" he asked her as they walked around, waiting a few more minutes before they'd wake Marianne again. She was now in his arms, gripping to two handfuls of his coat.

"I don't know, you tell me," Maya asked with an amused smile.

"A piano," he declared. "I know there's the keyboard in the studio but think about it. A snowy winter night, or a party with friends… and someone playing at the piano."

"I have thought about something like that before," Maya admitted with a slow nod. He didn't doubt it. "I guess we can look into it once we get home, or…"

"Or we could buy the one at the store, the one that's for sale," Lucas cut in. Now Maya stopped and looked at him, and he recounted his moment with Summer the day before.

They got so invested in discussing the logistics of it all that they almost missed the countdown. Marianne was awakened as quickly but peacefully as they could achieve, and she got to see the turn of the year with her mother and father close around her as the sky lit up with colors. She barely minded the noise.

Unexpectedly, the Friars packed up to return to Austin a day early, for a long drive rather than a flight home. They were followed in this journey by the Olsens. Caitlin and Harry rode in the minivan with their cousin and her family while their parents were in the truck that carried the newly purchased piano. Yes, they could have found a very good piano back in Austin and it would have been easier, but it had been sort of important, symbolic, that they should get this one especially.

The Hunters and Clutterbuckets had been surprised by this turn of events, but then they weren't new to the way the young Friars existed in their world, with the people they cared about. And they saw the way their young lodger reacted when she heard about what they'd decided to do. It was very much a mutually beneficial arrangement. Maya was a musician, and this was not out of the realm of possibilities for her, but at the same time it was another showing of how much they cared for her and wanted her to feel at home with them, to rebuild those parts of her life that had been torn apart in the past year.

So, off they went on the first day of 2032, on a song-filled ride back to Texas. They arrived at the house, breaking the reigning silence. Granny Lizzie and Cara were in Arizona, along with Sam and Dora and Francesca, while the dogs were being looked after up at Sanderson Farm. They wouldn't be brought back until after the piano was carried from the truck and into the house. After some debate, they found its ideal spot and the next and only natural thing to do was to ask Summer to sit at the bench and play something for them, to 'test the acoustics.' The seventeen-year-old smiled as she pulled up the cover from the keys. Whichever emotions were swirling in her heart and mind in that moment, they resolved themselves into a timely rendition of Auld Lang Syne. It was like Lucas' selling point had come to manifest itself in the best way.

If they hadn't been sure of it after that, Lucas returned from going to collect the dogs at the Sandersons' to be met out on the porch by his wife. She'd just come out, like she'd been watching for him, and even as the four dogs merrily greeted her, she suggested for Lucas to look through the window. When he did, he soon saw what she'd wanted him to see.

Summer sat at the piano, and kneeling on the bench, next to her, sat Marianne. The toddler was watching the girl with great intent, even as Summer would point to this key, and that key, and she would push down on them with her small fingers, excited for the sounds she'd create. Summer kept showing her, and after a while Marianne would remember, until she could string a few of the notes together, to her great amazement. She had done music! That was what she'd tell her parents when they'd go back inside the house, and after a rush of dogs coming to welcome her back, too, she would insist on showing them what she'd done under Summer's brief but effective lesson. It would be the first but not the last by a longshot, the first time they'd look on to Summer and Marianne side by side at that piano bench, for days, and weeks, and months, and years to come.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners