June 14th 2022

Chapter 165
Our Steps Toward Morning

There was unrest in Triplet Village that night. That was what they'd taken to calling the nursery ever since the girls had traded in their cribs for their beds and the house-like frames. By now they had helped to further personalize each one to its given owner, even if the girls had a tendency to migrate from one to the other on certain nights. This night was not one of those nights. The girls could barely be kept in any bed at all.

It started somewhere about an hour after bedtime. Downstairs, Maya and Lucas had been enjoying a bit of quiet time before they had their turn at heading to bed when they heard Marianne calling for them from the top of the stairs. There was enough urgency in her voice that not only did they hurry to respond but so did Eliza and Emma, coming down from above.

"Hey, what's the... matter?" Maya blinked. As she climbed the stairs, Lucas right behind, she caught a whiff of something that gave her pause.

"Remy got sick back there in the hall. And in the room, Lucy was, too," Marianne reported even as her parents and aunts moved in. One puddle in the hall, and one... two, in the village... Kacey hadn't been spared.

The next little while was a lot of rallying and getting things taken care of. They'd come a long way since their first nighttime situation, that big fever of Marianne's, and even though they would still obviously worry for their daughters, they had lost all semblance of uncertainty. They knew what to do.

They had a sling just for Marianne to get to carry her baby sister around if the occasion came, and it absolutely did that night. In all the activity, it wasn't long that Mackenzie woke up and started to cry very loudly. Marianne's whole mission then became to keep her calm. She wasn't about to go back to bed while everyone was looking after the triplets, so she stood or sat nearby, with Mackenzie snugly bound to her. If she hadn't already proven her merits for getting her baby sister put in her room, she did so that night. Mackenzie was the only one who slept for a long while.

In the meantime, there was everyone and everything else. Maya and her sisters took charge of one each of the triplets, helping to clean them as much as to comfort them while Lucas went to grab what they'd need to check them out and hopefully get through the night without having to take them anywhere. He brought these to Maya and then he quickly set himself to cleaning the floors. The sooner this was done, the sooner he could join the others.

It took a while, but there was absolutely a point where they felt confident in saying that the worst was over. They'd keep a close eye on the girls over the next few days, but overall, they were good. Now they had to try and get them to sleep, them and their sisters.

"Bed now," Lucas smiled to Marianne. By now, whether because of the time or the sensation that things had calmed down, she was barely hanging by a thread away from falling asleep.

"I'm okay, Daddy," she insisted, holding her arms around her sleeping sister.

"You did so good, you really did," Lucas promised. He picked the two of them up together and brought them to the green room. "Gotta rest now, you need it, too. I promise you'll feel better after. Anyway, if you keep her, you might roll over in your sleep and that wouldn't be good."

Even deeply exhausted, she couldn't argue with that logic, so she allowed him to remove Mackenzie. By the time he had her in one arm up his chest, he was removing the unmade sling from an already sleeping pumpkin. Lucas carefully leaned to kiss her before carrying the baby out of the room and back up the hall. With her back in her crib, he went to the nursery. It was decided that they'd just bring the triplets into the master bedroom, laying them down in the middle of the bed with one parent on either side. Emma and Eliza went back upstairs, and at long last the house was quiet.

"We're not getting any sleep anytime soon, are we?" Maya hummed, her hand absently floating from one sleeping girl to another.

"Not even in a good way..." Lucas tried to joke, figuring that they had reached a point where a bit of humor wouldn't be uncalled for. Maya first snorted, then frowned as she thought of something. "What?" Lucas asked. She looked at him for a few seconds like she was debating something. Finally, she sighed, gave him a look to request secrecy. He nodded.

"Gracie came to see me today after school," she started.

"Okay..." Lucas replied, as yet not following why that would prompt a look of discomfort.

"She came to see me and, if anyone asks, she came to talk about her entry for the auction," Maya went on, holding his gaze.

"Alright..." he resettled his position, following a bit more but also just as lost as before.

"She wanted me to give her what you might call a... strictly precautionary preview of The Talk," she revealed, and the look of absolute blindsided shock on his face must have looked a lot like the one she'd had to keep on the inside when her sister had made that request to her.

"They're not... already..." he slowly asked. She gave him an earnest look.

"How old were you, the first time you thought about..."

"Okay, that's fair," he immediately had to admit, which made her smirk.

"I don't know, it's still hard to think about all that and then... her..." Maya went on, and Lucas quietly nodded. Gracie was as good as his sister, too, had been in his life since she'd been born, too. "But if I can set all that aside even a little bit, I'm also proud? That she took that initiative, that responsibility... that she came to me..."

Thinking the whole thing over, even if neither of them would have it in them to consider it openly instead of deep, deep in their minds, they would think that, years from now... many years from now... one of their girls might go and turn to their Aunt Gracie for just this kind of question... or any one of their aunts... Ella... Big sister, better yet...

"So... How is the auction going?" Lucas asked, changing the subject. Maya gladly followed the prompt.

"Everything's on track, last I heard. My piece is coming along, which I'd love to show you, but..." she indicated the trio sleeping between them. Lucas smiled. It was never going to leave their memories, the way Kacey, Remy, and Lucy would always reach for each other, cling to each other, when sleeping near one another, like a recall to days when they weren't born yet, still growing...

Maya would get to show him her work in progress after all. After a while of the two of them just lying there, looking at their girls, Maya became aware that she'd very soon have to go about feeding the baby. The last thing they wanted right now was for the triplets to start and wake if Mackenzie cried.

"You okay to hold down the fort for a while?" Maya whispered, and Lucas nodded. "I don't know why I asked," she smiled before getting up.

She collected the baby and then, considering her options, she decided to take her elsewhere, which ended up being upstairs. She liked the thought of sitting there with her daughter, all the while with the stars shining through the skylight. When all was said and done and they were able to return below, Maya grabbed the canvas and brought it to the room.

In her absence, tired as he was, Lucas had continued his watch over their ailing girls. He watched her return, and settle Mackenzie back in her crib, and finally approach the bed with the canvas. She turned it around like 'ta-da!' and he smiled. It was very true to her in the best way possible. It would sit on display on his desk for the rest of the night, while Maya resumed her post as 'the other bread slice in our triplet sandwich.'

"You know what I thought about while I was up there?" she asked with a big smile.

"'Please don't bite me?'" he suggested, and she stifled a laugh. "What did you think?"

"I thought... Gosh..."

"Gosh?" he squinted.

"Yes," she raised her chin at him. "Gosh... How the month of May is coming along nicely..."

"Gosh..." he repeated now with a slow, understanding nod. His birthday was coming up fast.

"Thirty-four..." she whispered in a most dramatic tone, then immediately frowned to herself. "Right? I'm so tired..." she chuckled pitifully.

"Last I checked," Lucas 'rescued' her from the perils of math on a brain deprived of rest. "And 'this many' for my ice cream bud," he added, holding his hand up, five fingers splayed out. Maya pretended to count, but she smiled.

Yes, Nicky Orlando would be five years old the same day as Lucas' thirty-fourth... and the same day as the art auction, as it turned out. It would complicate a few things, sure, but not so much as to be a problem. Two birthdays and a school event... They could pull that off fine.

"Riley told me he asked for that many scoops this year, too. Are you going to keep an eye on him after filling him with all that ice cream or are you going to leave it to his parents?" she teased.

"Oh, never, I'm full service with that," Lucas promised. "Going to do my best and make sure he doesn't get sick. It's no fun otherwise..."

"Yeah, no kidding," Maya sighed as she looked to the girls. "How did you get all tangled up like that? Ladies..." she observed as Lucas also noticed the mess of small limbs twisted here and there like they'd meant to make sure no one would pull them apart without them knowing. "Guess if they're comfortable, huh?"

"After earlier, I'm not going to argue with their logic," Lucas agreed.

"So, birthday man... Talk to me, what would you like?"

"Would you be satisfied if I said I was already satisfied? You, the girls, I'm good."

"Of course... Is that what you want?" Maya asked.

"Right now, I'd settle for a few hours of sleep..." he admitted.

"Fair..." Maya agreed. "I'd suggest grabbing a hotel room for that night, but we'd definitely still have to bring Macrame," she nodded, waiting for the inevitable look of 'what do you... oh' on his face, and then the smile.

"Look, my standing order from the last... almost twenty years stands. I trust you. Whatever you come up with, that's what I want for my birthday."

"Carte Blanche, got it... Ooh, Paris..." her mind wandered. "Too far?"

"Well, there's the auction, and Nicky... But only because of that," he joked, and she nodded in kind. Right, of course.

They made it to sunrise, at which point Eliza and Emma returned, insisting that their sister and brother-in-law pick one of their beds upstairs and get some rest. They'd look after their nieces. They didn't have to be convinced much more than that.

"You know, apart from the sick children part, I do love nights like those..." Maya would comment, later on, when they woke up. "You, me, talking... Tiny bit delirious by the end of it..."

"Isn't that how we ended up with Mackenzie?" Lucas pointed out, which made her laugh.

"Yeah, well, no chance of that this time... Say the word though, I mean, you do have a birthday coming up."

"Now that you mention it..."

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners