A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!
January 7th 2022
Chapter 7
Our Life With Freshmen
Lucas was not back at work full time, but as of this day he would be going in for a few hours in the afternoon. He could have taken a few more weeks at home and no one would have argued. Part of him wanted to do that, wanted to hang back, and stay with Maya and the girls. Maya had said as much to him, that he could stay, just as she'd reminded him that she wouldn't be completely on her own. She'd have a rotating roster of helping hands, in the form of his parents and hers, either of their Texas-based grandparents, and any of their friends who were free at any given time. For the next few days, she would even have Sheriff Annie, until their baby girl went and started pre-school, not to mention Deputy Tori, as Marianne had insisted that her little niece needed her own star. She would be alright, and so would the babies.
So, off he went, after they'd had lunch and he'd cleaned up the kitchen. Today, because they only had a few more days until she couldn't do so anymore, Lucas brought Marianne along, and Tori, too, leaving Maya to be aided by his mother in looking after Lucy, Kacey, and Remy at the house while she was on or off her class calls. It would be the last day before they finally brought the dogs home, so naturally everyone was very excited for the evening.
The afternoon had been spent in great part with the new arrivals, the quartet of Polka, Caramel, Thunder, and Turtle. For what time he would be spending at the ranch, and because he was officially in the post he had taken over from Manny Alvarez, it was easy to see why he would need to give them this extra bit of attention. He had been familiarizing himself with the case from a distance over the past week, and it was plain to see why he'd need to give them additional care. They'd taken them in when they'd become aware of them because it was both in their heart and their personal mission to look out for them, but they would still need to figure out what would become of them once they were recovered. Their attitudes tended to vary from person to person. It didn't even have to do with their behavior; Lucas would vouch for the skill of every last one of the ranch's employees. But they became skittish, agitated, around some of them while they were both calm and kind with others, so they would follow their lead.
Around Marianne and Tori, they were good, better than good. They clearly cherished the little girls, all of them. With Mariko there at the ready to pull the girls away if she had to, Lucas was able to examine the horses better than if they hadn't been there at all. Tori had a great afternoon, the two-year-old dashing from horse to horse with a basket of various items she could feed them. She giggled whenever they would take the offerings from her hand. And Marianne… She'd had that empathic heart in her for as long as she'd lived, and after spending more time with the new horses, Lucas could see that she was starting to understand. These horses had been in a bad place, they'd been treated poorly. But now they were here, at Sullivan Stables, and she wanted them all to know that they were going to be okay from now on.
"Where are we going now?" Marianne asked when they took a turn on their way out of the ranch. Lucas smiled to himself. She recognized very easily the moment they deviated from the path headed home.
"We're going to Pappy Tom and Granny Mel's," he informed her. Tori let out a big giddy squeal at this, while Marianne frowned.
"They're not at their house, Daddy," she reminded him.
"Nothing gets by you, huh," Lucas laughed. She knew her grandfather was supposed to be coming to join his wife for dinner at the house that evening. "There's others out there though," he reminded her back, waiting to see if she would piece it together. "Who else could there be?" She thought about it for a few seconds, the furrow in her brow being one of those traits where they could never decide whether she looked more like him or Maya. The moment of clarity and realization though, that was all her mom.
"Doggies!" she blurted out. Tori's head immediately went on a swivel, searching for whatever dogs might have been in the vicinity. When she didn't find any, she looked back to her aunt for assistance.
On they went to the elder Friars' home, where they indeed came to find the dogs. Along with Thomas and Melinda's own Duke, there were Jax, Artie, Crowley, Squeak, and Honey Bee, all of them looking like they'd pieced together the fact that they were finally going home. They fell upon the little girls and Lucas with so much excitement that it was a wonder they managed to get them from this house to the minivan and on their way to the house on the lane.
They'd been away from their home for a few weeks, at first out of necessity because someone needed to look after them while their people were in the hospital and, while Eliza and Emma would have gladly done it, the grandparents had suggested that it would be a better idea to have them at their houses, wherever Marianne would be staying, as one more tie to home. And then after they'd brought the girls home, well… They all needed to get a handle on things, having the trio there with them, before they could introduce the additional layer of their beloved pups. They'd been familiarized with the scent of the baby girls, those very ones they'd been so protective of when they'd been in Maya's belly, and as soon as they arrived at the house and were let in, they were on the search.
They didn't have far to go: Maya was waiting on the couch along with Thomas and Melinda, all three of them holding one of the girls. As energetic as some of them could be, they had always shown a gentle nature when it came to babies and small children, and they showed this here, too. They all came up with curiosity, discovered the babies and greeted them in turn as best they knew how. After that, they spent the rest of the evening staying near wherever the triplets were kept, in arms or otherwise.
"I didn't realize how much it all still felt incomplete without them…" Maya commented, later on, when she and Lucas finally got the chance to talk about their days. They'd just put the girls to bed, though whether or not they'd stay asleep for long was left to be seen.
"I know…" Lucas agreed, looking out across the hall. He could see Jax, sleeping on the ground at the foot of Remy's crib. "So, how was it today?" he turned back to his wife. She perked up, eager to tell him everything, and he smirked. This was already promising. He listened as she told him about the seniors at the start of the day, and the juniors at the end, about the sophomores, and maybe most important of all, the new kids, the freshmen. He had a personal stake in all this himself. Not one but two of his cousins were in that class.
It wasn't as though Maggie Hillard and Lara Sullivan-Reyes were cousins to each other. The former was from Thomas's side, and the latter from Melinda's, and up until a few years ago, they'd lived in different cities. Still, they'd known each other most of their lives, thanks to any number of family gatherings where the Friars and Sullivans and all extending branches intersected. And after the Hillards moved to Austin, the two girls came to attend the same schools, becoming classmates, and friends, and finally best friends. If anyone asked, they would say that they were cousins. They'd been the first to arrive in the art room after lunch, the better to allow them to say hello to their cousin's wife and their new art teacher, even if she wasn't in the room.
For having known her since she'd been no older than the triplets, when her fathers had adopted her, Maya could say that she was growing into just the young woman one would have anticipated from knowing her as a child. She was all about sports, and play, and being out in nature… Her fathers would say that after a while they just needed to take her outside, to recharge her, because if they kept her indoors too long, she would absolutely lose her mind. She'd had attention problems in school for as long as she'd been there, but when it came down to the work, they didn't have to worry. She was always one of the cleverest people in any room if not the topmost. Where big sister Lea was one for performance, Lara Sullivan-Reyes loved a good puzzle, in whatever form it took, whether it was an actual puzzle, or a sport, or a school assignment.
As for Maggie Hillard, Maya had known Hank and Tanya's youngest since she was all of four years old. In her case, she could not say that that small child and the fifteen-year-old she'd since become felt like a natural progression, but then that in itself was sort of who Maggie was, wasn't it? She'd always been a curious child, one who enjoyed trying new things no matter how unevenly matched they were to one another. She'd spent one year being very into hockey, until she'd learned to play it and did it well, only to abandon it all and get into baking. That had lasted almost two years and then she'd abandoned it for cheerleading, and that had unceremoniously ended after she'd taken a fall and dislocated her elbow. When she'd been on her way to starting high school, she'd told Maya how she'd never taken art before, not when it was an elective. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy it, but she figured she'd lose interest, the same way she'd done everything else. Maya had responded to this with a promise that she'd never get bored with her. She wouldn't let her. And they would have a great four years together. Maggie had accepted the challenge.
Other than the two 'cousins,' Maya had a couple more faces she'd been eager to find, these ones not yet familiar to her, though she had been certain she'd recognize them the moment she'd see them. The first certainly proved true. When she spotted Cody Marshall, it was like looking at a teenaged version of her mailman. If she had to place him under one of the loose categories of students she'd developed in her years as a teacher, she would put him somewhere in the neighborhood of the quiet ones, the ones who wouldn't make big waves, who likely took art because they figured it would be an easy pass. That didn't mean she would be right; she'd been proven wrong before. From his introduction though, she was almost sure she had him right. That was fine. They had time to get to know each other better.
As much as she tried not to let any preconceptions take hold, she was nervous about her other familiar-faced stranger. She didn't know what it would have been like if she'd been right there in the room when the girl walked in. As much as Tori looked like Ella, and really, she looked so much like her, there were some features that differed enough that they could only have come from her father's side. And today she'd found just how true that was, as she'd spotted some of those exact features on the face of fifteen-year-old Nika Petrelis. There was absolutely no doubt that here was Tori's biological aunt.
Maya had texted Ella at the end of the day, asked her if she'd run into her ex-boyfriend's little sister at school, and Ella had said no. Maybe that was the truth, maybe it just hadn't happened, or maybe Ella had gone out of her way not to allow the encounter to happen, or maybe it had happened, and she just didn't want to talk about it. For now, she had no choice but to leave the matter alone.
For her part, Maya had had an encounter, if only via a screen. At first, when class started, she was almost sure that the girl had no idea exactly who she was, which was to say that she'd had no idea that this was the woman who'd taken in her brother's ex and daughter. She made that discovery, Maya suspected, through her own fault. She couldn't help herself, as the class started, and the students began making their introductions. She would keep looking at her, as thoughts and questions swirled through her mind. And then when she did have her turn, Maya would look at her… The resemblance really was uncanny… When the bell rang and the kids started to clear out, their new diaries in hand, Nika hung back, taking her time to collect her things until everyone else was gone. Then she approached the screen and her eyes just said it. They said, 'you know who I am, and I know who you are.' Barton Day left them alone, guessing the two of them needed some privacy.
"My brother's not a bad guy," Nika declared.
"I know he isn't. Ella says so herself," Maya told her, and just there she realized that Nika – and maybe her brother, Theo, too – had no idea about how Summer Levesque had become Ella Friar, when she and Lucas had adopted her. She had no choice then but to explain it. Now, not only was the girl addressing her new teacher, the famous songwriter and musician, but her niece's adopted grandmother, too. "I saw in your file that you were emancipated. You and your brother…" she asked. In her introduction, she'd made no allusion to the subject whatsoever.
"You know what our parents are like?" Nika asked her, in full honesty, so Maya responded in kind with a nod. "Theo helped make sure I got out of there, I…" She paused. Whatever she was going to say next, she finally decided against it and swallowed it back down. "I have to go to my next class…" And she was gone.
"I don't know if it's a good thing or not that I'm not in the school this fall," Maya told Lucas, as she finished her tale. "Part of me really wishes I was, but also… if I'm just here, then I can keep the teacher and the mother separate. I think I need to let them sort this out." Lucas considered this with a slow nod. A moment later, there was one cry, and another, and a third, from out in the nursery, forcing them to leave the day behind them in favor of the night ahead.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
