September 25th 2021

Chapter 268
Our Look Toward Expansion

As the school year was approaching its end and everyone had started discussing their plans for the holidays, Maya and Summer spent the length of one drive from the apartment over to the school discussing what the girl might do over the season that bore her name.

"Last year was really bad," she confided, and Maya could see why. She would have been heavily pregnant, the further the season advanced, and it had been a hot one. She would have been living at her sister's place, but also still working as much as she could and almost too much. She'd already told the story of how she'd gone into labor while on a shift. And then very shortly afterward, she would have started her sophomore year and been working again in no time.

"This year will be different," Maya vowed to her, and Summer smiled. She could believe the words, swear by them. "I know the obvious move is to get more hours at work, and by all means, go for it, but you won't go full time, will you?"

"I have more time now, I can save up a lot, for Tori and me," Summer argued.

"You do have more time... to be with her," Maya slowly countered. "And for yourself, to be a seventeen-year-old kid." She wanted that, of course she did. Maya smiled. "You know, the break can be a bit hectic for us. We could use some help from time to time... for Marianne... like a nanny." Summer looked at her, giving her that look she got when she'd feel the need to resist the family's constant generosity. "Think of it as a very... low intensity, everybody-wins way of paying off the furniture you insist on paying back. You have your job, with a reasonable bump in hours, and that's all yours. And the rest of the time, you get to be with Tori, and a certain other little girl who will be so happy to have you around more often."

So, it was settled. And after school had ended, in the days and hours when she wasn't working, Summer was with them. Tori was with them a lot of the time while her mother was working, being looked after by Maya, or Granny Lizzie, or any other of the grandparents if needed.

They were here today, and while Tori sat up on the floor, under the watchful eye of Jax, Summer was at the piano. Marianne sat on her knees, on the bench, next to her, and she did as she was shown to do. Over the last six months, since the piano had come into the picture, these lessons had been happening at least once a week, whenever Summer would be at the house. Marianne would see her come in and almost immediately, without preamble, would either go and take her hand to drag her over, or she would scurry to go and climb on to the bench, ready to begin. The progress was slow, mostly for fun in the beginning, but as time went on it was easy to see that Marianne wanted to keep going, so they did.

Today, Maya and Lucas were taking the advantage of having their 'nanny' with them, to prevent having Marianne underfoot as they went up to the attic.

Lucas would admit that he had sort of forgotten about Maya's idea after a while. Possibly, he had written it off as something that wouldn't really happen, just chatter between them, in the middle of the mega Sleepster. It should have been right there for him to see, but he suspected it had been Maya's intention to keep him in the dark until now, in which case he'd had absolutely no chance of catching on. Oh, he'd seen her drawing, and doing research, but this in itself was just part of the day-to-day living with her, so he didn't always wonder what she was working on.

And then this morning, as they were waking up, enjoying the peace of the moment while they had it, she informed him that she wanted to show him something up in the attic, but only once Summer had arrived and Marianne summoned her to the piano. She'd dashed off upstairs after greeting the two Levesque girls in turn, and Lucas heard the attic trap coming down, bringing the steps. Finally, he went and joined her.

They had lived in this house for seven years already, one more of those impossible tricks of time. They remembered so well when it had been new to them. It wasn't completely new, of course, especially not to Lucas, as it had been his grandparents' house before, all his life... But then they'd done all that work to fix it up and they had made it their own, like new. Nothing was as new as the attic. That had been a gift, unplanned or at least unexpected, by his family and Maya's, while he'd been down for the count, recovering from that ankle injury. It was like the crown on top, transforming the house officially from being his grandparents' to being his and Maya's, for their family.

Seven years on, it did feel like they forgot how big the space was. It wasn't crowded so much as just... compartmentalized, until they didn't really think about it anymore. There were things here, things there, and there was a great open space, yes, minding beams, until they didn't consider the attic as a whole.

When Lucas climbed the steps, he came upon Maya making her way backward in a crouch, a tape measure dangling from one wrist, a folded up paper sticking out of the back pocket of her shorts, and a roll of masking tape being unrolled and stuck to create one of now several lines on the attic floor.

"Should I... stay back here, or..." Lucas had to ask. Maya turned her head to look at him and grinned.

"Yeah, stay there," she agreed, then, her grin turning into a smirk, "Enjoy the show." He laughed, but he did as he was told.

For several minutes, he watched her work. She would consult the paper, she would take measurements, and she would make more lines out of tape. She had more than one color, as he discovered, though he had no idea what each one meant except that, of course, they would mean something. Finally, she stopped and consulted her plan once more as though double checking to confirm she had it all correctly. Finally, satisfied, she stuck it back in her pocket and turned to him.

"Can I come up now?" he wondered.

"Oh, we're being funny, is that it?" she squinted as she motioned for him to approach.

"I don't know about me, but you definitely are," he climbed on to the attic floor proper. Now that he was there, he could see better what she had been doing. It could all look a bit strange and random, but instead it sparked a memory, taking him back to the pool at the Zvolensky house. "Oh..." he understood. Maya beamed, her excitement rising.

"Okay, so, I couldn't decide how to break things down because of the windows. They make sense where they are, from in here and out there, too, but there need to be windows in the rooms, obviously," she started to explain, with a rapidity that demanded for him to continue paying attention, keeping up with her.

"Absolutely," he nodded.

"Right," she smiled on and continued. "So, with the space we have, I'd say we can make two good bedrooms, three, maybe, but it might be a good idea to have a bathroom up here... otherwise we really need to start thinking about putting one on the ground floor. So, two bedrooms and a bathroom or three bedrooms, plus storage, and then the art room..."

She paused. He was still with her.

"We have the stairway going to the first floor, and that can be expanded to come up here, opening there," she moved to indicate one of the tape squares.

"That would run through the back of our room downstairs," Lucas pointed out as he visualized it.

"It would," Maya confirmed. "Not by much, not so much that it'll make a huge difference. See here?" she pointed to another pair of lines, in another color. "This is where the room stops now, and that's where it would have to go. The other end is over there."

"Okay," he nodded. She continued.

"I had to decide where to keep the art room, the front or the back," she pointed to each window. "But with the stairs here, I figure I'd have this area open, to be the art room," she moved along, pointing out lines as she went. "Then we move back this way, walls go here, here, so there's one room here and one there," she indicated the large squares to her left and right. "And that leads into the back a third room... guest room... with some storage space, for the things we already keep up here. Unless we need to add the bathroom, in which case it's the red lines there, and..."

"I can get us a bathroom downstairs," Lucas waved off the alternate floorplan. "It doesn't need to have everything, no shower or bath, just a toilet and sink, right? The coat closet is just about the right size, next to the kitchen..." He could see her picture it in her head, in details her brain was perfectly equipped to conjure up.

When she smiled, he knew she agreed. Now, they could have that extra room at the back of their attic turned second floor, with its window looking out toward the lake. Oh, she was happy. In the next moment, she came rushing toward him and hopped to wrap her arms around his neck. He caught her with ease and barely had a chance to laugh that she was kissing him, and he could only kiss her back.

"What are the odds that we could get it all done by this fall?" Maya asked when she pulled back, still holding on to him.

"Meaning we would be starting this, what..." he frowned, surprised.

"As soon as possible, I figure," she replied. "No better time to start. It's summer, and if we can finish this fall at the latest, then it'll be taken care of, before my sisters maybe move in with us, and before there's another infant living in this house... and you and I really need to get a move on with making that happen, wouldn't you agree?" she asked, laying light kisses over his face as she went on.

"Yeah, we really do," Lucas agreed, tilting his head so he might catch her lips, rather than let them continue their path along his chin.

It seemed as though they had been trying to make this happen for so long already. The fact that it hadn't happened, well... They knew what the biggest factor was, didn't they? So much had been shaken up in the last several months, and they'd been shaken, too. It was almost better off that they hadn't succeeded in conceiving in all this time. Coping through everything while also dealing with the early stages of a pregnancy... It would have been a nightmare.

But right about now, standing in their attic as they plotted to transform part of their home, all to plan for the future... It felt now more than ever like they were on their way. There was no telling how long it would take for them to be successful, but one way or another, they would get there. They couldn't wait.

When they left the attic and closed the trap, they looked to the small sign they'd placed there, a memorial to Pappy Joe's lost Annabeth. When this was over, there would be a proper stairway to the floor above, the trap would not be needed anymore. They would find a way to keep the memorial up anyway. It would remind them of how things used to be.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners