June 11th 2022

Chapter 162
Our Steps Toward Days

It would happen more often than not in the morning, as the house as a whole started to wake up for the new day, but sometimes it would be in the middle of the night, too. For all they knew, it could have been happening a lot more than they realized in the two weeks since they'd brought Mackenzie home and they just hadn't woken up those other times. One way or the other, they weren't concerned... This was a good, sweet thing between sisters, it was, even if they also couldn't help but wonder if they should discourage it.

Sometimes they'd already be awake, but other times a noise would start them waking up. Either way, it would start with floorboards creaking ever so softly under a light load. Those steps would draw nearer and nearer and then they'd be inside the room. They wouldn't come up to the bed though; they would approach the crib. With only whispered words if silence wouldn't do, Marianne would stand there, checking on her baby sister.

The middle of the night visits would usually happen shortly after Mackenzie had been awake and crying loudly. It would wake up the triplets, too, a lot of the time, but they'd either stay in their beds, or sit up, or come as far as their bedroom door, which one of them would pull open from where it sat open just a crack. Lucas would go and see to getting the other kids back to sleep while Maya saw to the baby. Once everyone was back where they were supposed to be, the exhausted parents would go crashing back to bed and usually drift to sleep along with their daughters within seconds.

Seeing the five-year-old standing by the crib, reaching a tender hand to take her sister's hand was well within what they knew of her as a person as much as a big sister, but then she could be out there for a long while, and it left her parents wondering what this would be doing to her sleep schedule. When it got to the point that her preschool teacher brought it up...

"Good morning, Mackenzie," Marianne whispered. They could just hear the small noises to confirm the baby was awake in her crib. Lucas looked to Maya, awake as he was and with the same look on her face. It was morning now, it was 'normal,' but still... They had to talk to her.

"Hey," Lucas spoke as he approached, and Marianne turned her head. "Good morning, pumpkin," he bowed to kiss her, scooping her up at the same time. She held on good, kissing back when she had the chance. "Here, come on," he brought her over to the bed, deposited her into her mother's waiting arms before returning to the crib to collect the baby. Marianne watched him come all the way until he sat on the edge of the bed, facing them. Now she could kiss her sister hello, too.

"It hasn't been easy with the new baby, huh?" Maya asked, brushing at her daughter's morning hair. Marianne wasn't following. "She cries a lot in the night, and that wakes you up." Marianne nodded, shrugged. She didn't mind. "You've been so good with her, just like with the triplets. But in the night, you need your sleep, too. We all do, but you, especially. At your age, you need more, do you understand?" The nod was slow, but it was given, as good as tacking a 'yes, but' on the end. "Your dad and I got things covered, and if not then there's your aunts. But you need to go back to sleep, okay? Even if she cries."

"I can help," Marianne insisted. It just didn't make sense to her not to do as she'd done.

"You do help," Lucas told her. "You help so much... in the daytime. At night, it has to be up to Mommy and me, okay? Please?"

"Okay, Daddy," Marianne nodded with some reluctance, then, "Can I hold her now?"

"Hold on, let me see," Lucas made a well practiced diaper check. "All systems go," he finally nodded as Marianne sat herself at the ready to receive the baby.

"I'll need her back soon so she can eat, remember?" Maya quietly spoke up, and Marianne nodded, never taking her eyes from her sister.

Marianne had absolutely been helping, and so had her little sisters, in their own toddler way. It was clear that they understood that things were different now that Mackenzie was here, even if they all three struggled at times with the new distribution of their parents' attention. They never wanted them to feel like they'd been left behind in all this, but sometimes it couldn't be helped that things wouldn't be how they wanted them. They'd do as best they could to compensate, and that was sort of where the help came in.

It all worked out more or less as they'd always expected that it would. Kacey would be the first to run if they asked her to pick up something and bring it for one of her parents, the first to watch with a curious eye. Lucy would get by a lot of the time simply being in the room with one parent or the other even if they couldn't play with her. And Remy... oh, Remy took it the worst of all and would grip on to whoever she wanted and start to cry if she was left to wait for very long.

That was for them, of course. When it came to the baby, there were no worries; they all loved her to bits, and if they heard her cry they would come running at once, giving her what words of comfort they had picked up from their family and others who'd come to visit. They would sit with her, and Kacey would brush at her hair, Lucy would try and sing to her, and Remy would make funny faces at her to make her happy.

Even though they only had the one new baby this time, Maya and Lucas were no less thankful to the extra hands of help they had thanks to Eliza and Emma. Some nights, they would come and collect their niece, the better to take over the loss of sleep so that their sister and brother-in-law could try and gain some back. They helped around the house, as always, and they played with Marianne and the triplets, which went a long way for Maya and Lucas to feel less as though they were in need of some time travel device to attend to everything they needed to do.

Lucas had worked it out so that he came into the ranch two hours later than usual and would continue to do so until things had settled down a bit at home. If there was ever a day where it was just too important for him to go in earlier, he would do it, but otherwise the system worked.

Meanwhile, Maya continued to get updates about school through Stella as she came to drop off or pick up the diary boxes. As had been hinted to them, when she came with the boxes on that first Friday after Mackenzie was born, it was with many a surprise inside, and Maya looked through all of these over the weekend, all of them with Lucas to see everything, too, and Marianne as always, and the triplets this time as well. They'd be doing their own thing, but all it would take would be someone going 'look!' and they would look.

The students had all been doing their weekly assignments in their diaries since she'd gone on leave, as they'd done it both previous times, and they continued to be hers to look over, while Barton in the past and Stella this year would have the rest of their work left in their care. That week when the news had gone out that she'd had the baby, the vast majority of them had taken the time to leave something in their diaries - a drawing, a note - in congratulations. This had been done on top of another project, this one directly instigated by Stella. It was left for Maya to discover in a tube that came along with the boxes.

Inside the tube, there was a long paper rolled up. When allowed to unfurl, they saw how it was covered all over to make a mural of sorts, a mosaic of smaller drawings which, thanks to the color scheme, created a whole. Maya could pick out one by one who had drawn this or that... They'd all done a part of it, and the many small shapes, animals, foods, flowers, toys... They spelled out her name.

They had all been in awe of it, from the triplets, who like their parents loved a good museum stroll, to Marianne, who scrutinized the whole piece with curious eyes, to Lucas, who found himself welling up, none more than Maya, who felt that great swell of teacher pride... It had been framed - not easily for its size - and now hung over Mackenzie's crib.

The students had since gotten to meet their teacher's new daughter. Just last week, Maya had gone and spent the day at school, mostly in the teachers' lounge, to drop in for a few minutes on each of her classes. Each time, the reaction was similar, with great excitement when they saw their teacher followed by a rush of curious eyes as they realized she'd brought the baby. She didn't start going to pass her around, knowing it was a one way ticket to her monopolizing the period when she just wanted to say hello before ceding the floor to Stella. For all that, she wasn't going to get past letting Nellie and Gracie each have a turn at holding their niece, so that kept her a little longer and ended up keeping her for that one whole period after all.

Someone had stated that they could have Mackenzie be their model for the day, and from there Maya couldn't really say no. It was hard for her to resist already as it would give her a chance to observe Stella The Teacher.

She worried just a bit that her shy bird would freeze up for having her there, but that didn't happen. Maya got to see with her own eyes what she'd been hearing since February, how Stella was doing so good in her position. It helped that this was a subject she was so passionate about, but beyond that... She was a very good teacher. She and Maya would alternate holding the baby and walking around the class where students could see her for their portraits. Maya now had a whole folder full of these at home, and she would have to figure out what to do with them. She couldn't just leave them on a shelf.

"Daddy," Marianne looked surprised, that night, when she walked out of her room and found him waiting there with a smile.

"Mackenzie is sleeping, and so should you," he reminded her. It might take a few nights for her to remember it for herself. She climbed back into her bed, and he tucked her in.

"Daddy?" she looked up at him.

"Yeah, pumpkin?"

"Can Mackenzie stay in my room?" she asked. Lucas crouched to get nearer to her eye level. "I can make space for her."

"You want to have your little sister in your room?" he asked, and she nodded.

"There's three of them over there, and I'm by myself," she reasoned.

"That's true," he admitted. Save for her aunts upstairs, she was the only one on her own. "Well, right now she's still very little, so it's easier to have her close by, that's why she's in our room. You had your crib right there when you were a baby, and your sisters, well, the only reason they were always where they are is because there would have been no space to put them all on our side." Marianne understood this.

"What about when she's not too small?" she asked. Lucas smiled.

"I'll see what your mom thinks, but I'm sure she'll be okay with it, too. You know she's still going to be crying at night, yeah?" She did, and she didn't mind, none of it. She just wanted to be with her sister. "We'll talk about it in the morning, alright? Go back to sleep," he kissed her forehead, and she accepted his request, settling in, closing her eyes. "Love you, Hucklebucket..."

"Love you, too, Daddy."

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners