March 3rd 2022
Chapter 62
Our Reach Toward Peace
When she arrived home that evening, Maya was just drained. She'd known that the day would be difficult… how could it not, least of all on her… but actually going through it had been something else entirely, beyond expectations.
By the time she'd left, both Theo and Ella were keeping Nika company. Ella had asked her mother if she would take Tori back to the house for the night, as she didn't know when she'd leave the hospital. She would have been taken back by now, left with her neighbor until her mother came home. She might have been left for Phoebe and Khalil to watch, but it was one of those situations where she really just needed to know that her daughter was with her family. Maya agreed, naturally, on the word that she would spend the night at the house, too, and that she'd let them know when she was going to be leaving, so one of them could go pick her up.
So, she'd left the hospital and gone to pick up her granddaughter. Tori was as surprised as she was elated to discover that she would be going back to her grandparents' house for the night. She spent the ride home turning the pages of a storybook her babysitting neighbor had given her, looking at the images. She could be chatty and prone to singing and moving around in her seat on a car ride, sure, but only really when there'd be someone else in the car – mostly Marianne or another small child – doing it already. On her own, unless called on, she'd usually be quiet like this. Even if it had been coincidence, on this ride, Maya had been glad to be able to just drive quietly.
Everyone was already home by the time she got there. Everyone had had dinner without her, and Eliza and Emma were seeing to bath time with Marianne and the triplets, in what sounded to their big sister like their way of acknowledging that she would have had a big day and been in need of a moment to collect herself before turning on Mom mode. Lucas saw to bringing Tori upstairs, where she might have her turn in the water. They had PJs for her on hand, always. When he came back down, he found Maya had plopped down on the couch, there to be piled on by both Artie and Jax. She was scratching at one and the other as her arms could reach.
"Did you have dinner?" Lucas asked and she rolled her head around to look at him.
"I actually had to think about that, so what do you think?" she sighed.
"Want me to make you something?"
"Probably a good idea, yeah… Just going to need to find a way to extricate myself from here," she declared, looking back to the dogs, who met this challenge by lying on top of her even further. "Seriously, guys…" she chuckled. Right about now, there were just no words for how much their presence did her good, so maybe it was as much that they wouldn't let her move and that she wouldn't want to leave the couch.
But, once there was a hot plate waiting for her on the kitchen table and she could smell its contents where she sat, all the dog cuddles in the world couldn't keep her away so, with many thanks for their 'assistance,' she coaxed them into allowing her to stand. They finally agreed, though only on the compromise that they followed on her heels and came into the kitchen, there joined by Honey Bee. The other two were bound to be upstairs, with the girls.
As Maya ate, she recounted some of her day after Lucas had come and gone. Lucas followed this up, at her request, with tales of his day at the ranch, of green group, of the XCs, and of life at Sullivan Stables in general. On the whole, they would have to be so much more cheering to the heart than what she had left behind at the hospital.
They'd had an unexpected bit of rain that afternoon. Maya had completely missed it and been unaware of it until Ella showed up with a dripping umbrella, having made her way from school to the hospital. Lucas, however, had been made aware of it when it had forced the four groups of kids to reunite, everyone seeking cover and finding it in the main building of Sullivan Stables. They'd attempted to make the most of the situation, breaking out snacks and using the projector – generally used for business meetings using the facilities – to play a movie. The kids had taken very well to the change of plans, and it had been a good afternoon for all of them.
After the movie was over, the rain had stopped, too, so everyone had gone back outside, returning to their original plans for the remainder of their time before the parents would start to arrive. Green group had spent this time with Mariko, who they were already getting to know as someone they all loved to interact with. She would let them help her as she went around looking after the horses, which wasn't to say that they didn't see or interact with the animals with other people, too, but with her it was always just their favorite. She was good enough at what she did that, today, for the first time, she'd gotten little Harper Beaumont to come up and touch one of them, where she had been too afraid before. Mariko had definitely picked the ideal horse for this first contact, and the four-year-old girl had been left satisfied, comforted as she smiled. As much as she already liked being at the ranch, she might now get to enjoy herself some more.
They were quiet for a minute. Maya went on eating, and both she and Lucas could hear giggling from upstairs… Marianne, Tori… The babies would have been done with their baths by now, dressed up again and put in their cribs, which meant that it would be the little girls' turn. Hearing the sound of their laughter was enough to lift so much of weight on anyone's heart.
"Hey," Maya nudged her husband's foot as she looked back to find him lost in thought. He blinked and turned to her.
"Sorry?" he asked. She waved at his head with her fork. "Oh, I…" he blinked again, realizing his distraction. "I was just thinking… Ella's been meaning to come over to the ranch on afternoons, and she was supposed to do it today, but then she had to go," he explained, and Maya nodded.
Ever since their daughter had revealed her goals for college, it had been on his mind, and how could it not? He'd been so focused on this idea of Marianne one day, and maybe one or more of her little sisters, joining him in the family business, the profession and the passion passed down along the Sullivan line, that it had never occurred to him that Ella might be looking to do it first. It wasn't as though he saw her as unsuitable to it, far from that. Whenever she was at the ranch, he saw that affinity between her and the horses, and she did like to listen to his stories when he told her about some aspect of his job and the things that he had learned throughout the years… Maybe it was that she'd come into their lives when she'd done, that he hadn't been able to watch her progress the same way he had done the likes of Marianne. The question of what she might see herself becoming after high school had not really been one that they'd addressed, not up until the time had come for her to go about sending out applications. When that had happened, well… she'd wanted to keep it a secret, hadn't she? She had surprised them, surprised him…
And as big of a surprise as it had been, more than anything, it had been… an honor. To think that he had inspired his daughter in this way… That was the word she'd used: he had inspired her. And when he remembered that moment, when she'd told them… It continued to fill his heart with so much pride for his unexpected daughter that he would just smile.
Ella called to let them know visiting hours would be ending and she was ready to come home, a little while later, by which time her little sister and daughter had been put to bed and her parents were enjoying a quiet night on the couch. As promised though, Lucas got in his car and went to collect Ella. Driving off toward the hospital, he found himself thinking of Nika. What kind of night would she be having out there? For her sake, he hoped they would allow Theo to stay with her. She was just so young, and she'd just given birth to a child she'd now relinquished, handed over to another who would be his mother. From everything Maya had shared, and just his own contemplation of the situation as a whole… It made him think of Ella again, of the night Tori was born. When he picked up his daughter, one look at her suggested she was thinking of that night, too. As they drove off, he slowly asked if that was the case.
"Yeah…" Ella admitted, leaning her head to her hand, elbow at the window. At least, Lucas' hope was fulfilled, and Theo was spending the night on a long chair they had brought into his little sister's room. "Sent me down a sort of… resentment spiral again… for my sister."
Lucas didn't pry. In the more than two years since Ella and Tori had come into their lives, the elder Levesque girl had never been seen, hardly ever spoken of. Ella never sought her out, which was fine, as her sister didn't either. Wherever she was, she was likely doing what she'd been doing even when hosting her sister and niece, going about her work, which seemed to be the only thing that mattered to her, more than home, more than family. Ella had just written her out of her own narrative. As far as she was concerned, the only sisters she had were Marianne, Kacey, Remy, and Lucy Friar. They were all a girl could want for sisters, even with three of them being just shy of seven months old.
"How's Nika?" Lucas asked, taking them away from the subject of Ella's sisterly woes. It wasn't exactly a happier subject, but it was one she at least felt more sympathetic to.
"She was finally asleep by the time I left," she reported. "She won't stay that way, someone's bound to wake her up if it doesn't happen on its own, but hopefully she can get a few hours like this. Theo is probably going to get even less sleep than her. He's just sitting there, determined to be awake in case she needs him. I told him he should try and get some rest while she is, but who knows if he will."
Lucas could see the young man fighting off sleep, too. The more he'd gotten to know him… He had come so far, done so much, to separate himself and his sister from his parents' influence. That influence had already cost him so much, and he had been going around now, patching up the holes they'd left, building something stronger over that mess, just as Ella had done. Nika's pregnancy had been an unexpected complication to this goal, but at the same time, it had only motivated them all, the entire trio, to rise above the old rather than let it obscure the new. Ella had made a good life for herself and her daughter, and Theo had become worthy of acting as Tori's father, and Nika… Today would have to be the beginning for her, the first steps she'd take into this new chapter of her life. She wouldn't be alone in it. They'd have her back, all of them, and they would watch her become so much more.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
