August 4th 2022

Chapter 216
Our Dreams For Luck

"You were amazing out there this morning, 4H," Maya beamed as she looked into the laptop screen, to her little sister's equally beaming face. She'd gotten first dibs at talking up close as they waited for dinner to be ready on either side.

In the background, she could see some of the others, their parents, and their siblings, moving this way and that in the hotel room. They didn't have a kitchen, hadn't made their dinner, of course, but MJ had this idea that they should make as though they had, so everyone was sort of going through the motions, to comic results. For that, Maya couldn't say how much or little of her face could actually be seen: the little kids had crowded in front of her, to look at the screen and giggle at 'the dinner show.'

"Thanks! It was so much fun, there were so many people everywhere, in the parade and on the sidelines watching. And I talked to a bunch of the performers like me, you won't believe some of them. I'm sending pictures later."

She was talking a mile a minute, and it went on and on before the others insisted on cutting in and getting their turn. MJ had absolutely been having his best day, too, and had his own star encounter stories. Nellie had been all about the balloons, which got her Francesca's approval. Gracie had gotten to talk to some of the musical performers and had let it slip here and there that she was in her school's musical... and that her sister was - per stage name - Maya Hart. She would never be the kind to brag, and it never came out that way. She was just proud of who her sister was and of the fact that they might know who she was. Many of them did.

"Didn't see her mentioning me," Katy piped in with mock hurt that made her daughter reach over and embrace her.

"Hey, what about me?" they heard Shawn call from off screen, and at once Nellie, MJ, and Haley dashed over to - they had to assume - pile up on him. "Woah, take it easy, weirdos!" he called. It got the 'audience' laughing even more than the dinner play.

"You guys got my box, yeah?" Marianne filled up the screen as she leaned in closer to the laptop.

"Oh, yeah, right here!" MJ went to pick up the package, which had been shipped overnight to the hotel. "We can open it now?" he asked, and Marianne nodded, so MJ got to it while Haley hurried to join him, just as curious as he was.

They knew what was in the box, or at least they knew some of what to expect. As she'd told it, they had been doing table decorations for Thanksgiving in kindergarten, and Marianne had turned right back around and worked with her mother to make more, for their dinner. And since the Hunters were going to be in New York and not physically with the rest of them, the solution had been this, to send some extra homemade decorations over to them. That way, they could have the same decorations on both tables, and it'd make it even easier to feel like they were together.

This went as far as the decorating itself, as Marianne had a box of her own, with the contents not yet on display. Now both sides were getting to see what she had made with her mother while it was put on display. At the age of six, Marianne existed in a space where people would often just roll with whatever odd thing she might make and where they also knew that she was actually skilled, having learned from her mother for as long as she could recall. With all this in mind, there was soon a sense like the guests around the Friars' table and the faraway Hunters' back in New York weren't sure what to make of these creations of hers. There was definitely a Thanksgiving quality to the colors and some of the motifs, but there were also some additions that made them wonder if she might have gotten her holidays mixed up. On each of the table decorations, she'd drawn at least one four leaf clover, in a good, bright green, throwing a number 7 on top of it.

Sam was the one to break the silence as he looked at all those clovers and, knowing what he had guessed earlier… He started to laugh. The others looked at him, wondering what was going on with him, but then Ella started to laugh, too, and first Eliza and then Emma got looks of realization and snickered quietly, waiting for all those who didn't have the 'cheat code' and had no idea what was going on to catch up to the few of them who understood. Marianne was looking at everyone now like she could barely keep it together, suggesting that there clearly was something that they were supposed to piece together. So, they continued to look at the decorations. Four-leaf clover… seven… four-leaf…

"Lucky seven?" Gracie frowned, saying the first logical thing she could think of, and going by the rising giddiness in her niece, she must have been getting warmer.

Later, Maya and Lucas would share a laugh for how much the both of them had worked hard to keep a straight face through all this, never giving anything away until someone figured it out. The funniest part was how Maya had been standing there since the box had been opened, doing absolutely nothing anymore to hide her tiny belly. Even her family out in New York could have noticed it if they looked closely at her on their screen. Marianne was practically dangling from the edge of the table by the end of it, as she waited for someone to catch on.

They could have done with a photo finish. All at once, it was Patty, and Mateo, and then Gracie 'Sherlock' Hunter again, on the screen, with a look of sudden realization, looking to Maya, either asking if or declaring that she was pregnant again. Once they said it, there was a flurry of heads turning to look at her, to find out if this was true, followed by an outburst from left, and right, and far off in New York as by sight and by word they got their confirmation. No matter how many times they'd gotten to make an announcement like this one before, no matter that this was the fourth time, the second in a little over a year, it was still overwhelming and wonderful to feel everyone circling around, wanting to congratulate the two of them, sharing in their joy.

It was all a bit of a mess for a minute or two, until along came the triplets, burrowing their way between legs until they could reach their parents. They didn't understand what was going on and why everyone was talking at the same time, and the only thing that would be able to make everything make sense again, in their minds, was to ask their mom and dad. So, they were told how they were going to be big sisters a second time, how they were going to have another baby. Both Kacey and Remy received this news with a sort of 'oh wow!' kind of look to them, hopping around, while Lucy… cried?

"What's the matter, bun?" Lucas asked, picking her up. She didn't seem to know how to express her concerns at first, what the words were, but eventually they pieced it together. She was under the impression that they were getting another baby, but in exchange for Mackenzie instead of in addition to her, that she was going to be going away. She didn't want that! "Oh, bun-bun, no," Lucas promised her with a smile. "Mackenzie's not going anywhere, okay? It's going to be all of us plus the new baby. That's why it says seven right there, see? One, two, three, four, five, six…" he pointed in turn to Ella, Marianne, Kacey, Remy, Lucy herself, then Mackenzie over in her seat next to Felix. "And seven, right here," he pointed to Maya's belly. Oh… Well, this made some sense, yes. The sniffles stuck around, but Lucy had stopped crying.

"I wish you guys could have been here," Maya told her family on the screen, sounding genuinely apologetic, but she would not find a single one of them complaining about how this had all gone down. "We made the whole plan before we knew you wouldn't be in Texas today and…"

"Oh, it's alright, baby girl…" Katy insisted, misty eyes coming in clear over the call. "We'll be all over this when we get home," she assured her, and on that, Maya was not concerned in the slightest. She could already imagine them having that single thing on their minds as they got off the plane.

The dinner was everything they could have hoped for it to be. Whether it was the power of the news they had received, or the decorations, or simply this company both near and far, they achieved their goal: They may have been nearly clear across the country from one another, but they shared a space for the time of this meal and of the casual chatter that followed after dessert had ended and some of the kids had gone to play. The triplets were so used to their normal evening routine that they became confused as to why they weren't going up for bath time yet. It was time! Lucas got to the point where he lifted the three of them on to his lap and kept them secured there, as though they'd get some wild ideas in them. That wasn't a half bad trade, enough so that, by the time they would be taken up to get changed for bed – skipping bath time for the night – they would be sound asleep in their father's arms.

His mother and father would volunteer to help him get them upstairs before they went home, each liberating one of the girls from his hold before they all went to the first floor and played a round of sleepy-girl PJ time. As skilled as they all were in this, Melinda had her husband and son beat by a mile, getting Remy all changed and carried over to her bed while the two of them were still trying to navigate arms and legs in the right holes. Lucas commended her for having pulled the most challenging of the trio, too. It made her laugh.

"What challenge?" she asked, looking to her granddaughter, already shifting in her sleep to adopt a position more in line with what she saw as being the best, whether or not anyone else would agree.

Once Kacey and Lucy were each placed in their respective beds for the night, it was impossible for Thomas and Melinda not to converge on their son, knowing he was about to be a father again… for the seventh time… If it was a strange and great number for him, it didn't leave the two of them indifferent either. They would look at him and he could easily see this sense of being so very deeply awed at the idea that their one and only son was already father to six and in a matter of months to a seventh as well. To Lucas, the thing that got him most emotional right there was to see in that same look just… an overwhelming sense of pride, from them, in him and his presence as a father. It was truly the part of his life that brought him the most fulfillment and joy, to be a husband and father, and coming from the people who had inspired this path in him for as long as he could remember… Oh, he was so very thankful for them.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners