A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!


August 12th 2022

Chapter 224
Our Magic in the Night

"When did this ever become normal for us?" Maya wondered. She smiled, watching the way Mackenzie sort of rolled this way and that on her back, holding on to her feet as she had them stuck in the air.

They were both sitting on the bed in the Olsens' guest room while Lucas took on the charge of unpacking their things for their week-long stay. Maya would have helped him, with their things as much as the girls', but Ella had taken on her sisters' luggage and Lucas had theirs, while she had been 'granted' a bit of peace after their trip out from Texas to Arkansas. She had pointed out that she hadn't walked from home, that she'd been sitting and 'taking things easy' since they'd left home, but they wouldn't have it. Evidently, in their eyes, she had reached the point in her pregnancy where no task was too small to be considered potentially taxing on her. Never mind the fact that she would be back at work the following week and would continue to be for a few more months… Oh, well, no point arguing. There are worse things than sitting with this funny little macaroni… and watching that tall bit of Huckleberry.

"And 'this' is…" Lucas asked, turning to get the distinct impression his wife's eyes had been aimed lower a moment earlier. Then he got a look at Mackenzie's foot-tugging silliness, and he chuckled.

"Coming out here for New Year's," Maya clarified. "I mean, I still remember when we came here for the first time, for my grandparents' anniversary. No one knew us, no one knew we were coming, and my mother was so stressed that she didn't even bring the kids out…" The kids… Her siblings, not so little now… And she hadn't even been a mother yet… "And now we've been coming out here, almost every December for a few years already. It's what we do… and I can't believe how simple it feels compared to that first visit."

"I know," Lucas nodded. He remembered that first time, too, and it did feel like an entire lifetime ago. Almost to drive the point home, Maya's young cousin Harry came jogging into room. The boy who had been a kicking little thing in her mother's unknown little sister's belly the first time they'd crossed paths was now two months shy of turning nine years old. Meanwhile, his big sister, she of the toy guitar when they'd first met her, had recently turned twelve.

"Mom says dinner's going to be ready soon," he reported and immediately turned heel to leave the room again, looking like a kid who'd been pulled away from something he had been busy with just to deliver a message and, now that he had done as asked, couldn't get back to his thing fast enough.

"Thanks, Wiz!" Maya called after him.

"Do-on't!" Harry called back with a huff, and both Maya and Lucas bit back the urge to laugh. Oh, he knew exactly where his name had come from, so he also knew where the nickname came in. Still, no matter how big of a role the series of books had played in both his mother's life and his aunt's, he did not see the appeal, which made any and all reminders aggravating to him and his 'very early onset teenage boy feelings,' as his parents would describe it.

"I don't think he likes it," Maya made a face down to Mackenzie and she giggled and held out her arms. She didn't have to ask twice. Her mother scooped her up, and the eight-month-old settled in the hold, plenty satisfied to be right side up again but still equally interested in playing with her feet. "You know, one of these days, we're going to look the other way too long and we'll look back and oops! You'll have eaten your whole foot off," she gasped, pretending to do so herself, which got the baby laughing and squealing. "One for me, one for your dad, yeah?"

"Save me the left one," Lucas called back with a smirk.

"Oh, left foot, excellent choice," Maya agreed. Mackenzie laughed on, though she was definitely yawning, too. The whole reason Maya had been sitting with her – other than the 'no unpacking' mandate – was to get her to come down and sleep a while, after the trip out to the Olsens', and it had been slow going, but now it seemed to be working, so the rest of the unpacking was done very quietly, any other conversation exchanged in sign.

It was no wonder that they would reflect on how New Year's Eve in Arkansas had now become tradition. The holiday season in general had a way of making people look back on the year just ending, and even though they did come out to visit more than the one time per year, there really was something about being out here in late December that made them reflect. As they left the sleeping Mackenzie in the room and went to join the others below for dinner, they didn't know whether they thought more about the past year or their previous end-of-year trips here.

They would always recall New Year's Eve three years back, the day when they had asked eighteen-year-old Summer Levesque to be their daughter, and she had become Ella Friar. She may have come into their lives fully formed, a grown girl, a young mother, but it was as they always said: they could not imagine their lives without her anymore. And it happened right here, over in the town square, waiting for midnight. Would it have qualified as irony that the revelation, the very idea for the adoption had been born of concerns over Theo Petrelis, or at least over his parents, when this was now the second year that he was part of the party migrating from Texas to Arkansas for the turn of the year?

It may not have been on the same level of significance for them in the long run, but they definitely had not forgotten about what had happened last year, not on the eve but rather on the morning when they were getting ready to head home. Theo, outside the Olsens', kissing Lea. It had made for a very strange start to the year, for those two, and for the one who connected them in the first place. Everyone had wanted Ella to be okay with this, no one wanted her to get hurt, even if she no longer cared for her daughter's father in that way. Time had already been healing a lot of wounds when it came to Ella and Theo, and this… this felt like the final hurdle. If they could get through that, then… then maybe they really could all be okay in this strange little group of theirs.

Now, here they were, one year later, and what had started with the odd conversation when shuttling Tori Friar between Austin and Houston, and turned into anticipation of those conversations, and led to a first kiss inadvertently observed, and turned to concerns over Ella… had now turned to what would be a year of dating for Lea and Theo at the end of January. It wasn't exactly a long distance relationship, but the distance between the one in Austin and the other in Houston definitely played into when and how often they could see each other in person. Maya and Lucas both figured that Theo would have readily moved to Houston, if not for Lea, then definitely for Tori, except for how there was Nika and her school.

Nika thought the same thing; she had at one point tried to talk her brother into going out there, letting her maybe stay with Maggie or Lara's families. Lea would have easily talked her fathers into taking Nika in if that was what they needed. But Theo wasn't going to shuffle her off to someone else; she was his responsibility, in so many ways. More than that, she was just… his family, the two of them out on their own after they'd broken away from their parents… He'd made her promises when they'd moved to Austin, and he intended to keep them. Things were working just fine with their current arrangement, and they were going to keep working. Houston was only a temporary thing for all of them. And in the meantime, they kind of liked their set-up. Lea and Theo would call one another, and text, and they would continue seeing each other whenever it was time for Tori to be taken from one city to the other. Ella would joke that she was more than happy to relinquish her own load of those drives if it allowed them to see each other more often. It wouldn't just be about driving over, dropping Tori off, talking for a couple of minutes, and then parting ways. Now, the drop-offs were often doubled up with a date.

Over the next few days, the two of them would definitely be making the most of their uninterrupted time together, and it would be amusing to see them going around, making the very most of the small town, often on their own, but occasionally the two of them and Tori along for the outing. Even after all this time, it continued to be easiest for the girl to navigate the branches of her parents and their friendship, and her mother's best friend and her relationship with her father… She'd already loved Lea very much before she'd ever been her father's girlfriend, already spent a lot of time with her, so she didn't experience some big change when Lea and Theo had gotten together.

When Tori wasn't with her father and Lea, she would spend time with her mother, naturally, but also with her grandparents… who may have been going out of their way to keep her around them. Were they being obvious in their motive? If they were, and if anyone – say, their eldest daughter – were to call them on it, what would they have to say?

"Can't a couple of young grandparents want to spend time with their adorable granddaughter?"

Oh, they could, definitely… Was that all of it though? Or were they doing their best to provide their big girl with the freedom to wander where she might and enjoy her own window of uninterrupted time with someone kept at a much less manageable distance for the better part of the year. They were being helpful!

Along with Theo, Taylor had also made the trip to Arkansas with them again this year. He'd shown up on Christmas Eve, and it had not been unlike when Ella had first seen him at the mall the year before, except even better. Maya had told Lucas, last year, that their daughter's smile had felt like a row of three big smile emoticons in a message when she'd seen Taylor. This year… This year, it had felt like five of them. They wondered how many more would be needed for something to actually happen between the two of them. Could a few days of a couple of friends spending time together help in any way? It certainly couldn't hurt, so Nana Maya & Pappy Luke's Daycare For Sneaky Granddaughters was officially open.

"What do you think?" Maya whispered at Lucas' ear as they sat on a bench in the square, waiting for midnight on the last night of the year.

"I think this all feels very familiar," he looked down to the two sleeping girls in his arms – Kacey and Remy – and to Maya's arms, holding both Lucy and Mackenzie, also sleeping, the two-year-old's hand pitter-patting at her mother's belly. "Except for those two," he nodded ahead of them. For once, both Marianne and Tori were wide awake and eagerly awaiting midnight, chasing each other around a pole strung around and around with lights.

"Right…" Maya laughed, seeing what he meant. "I was actually referring to those two over there," she lifted her cheek from where it had been resting lightly against Lucy's upturned forehead so she could nod and direct him to look to where she was looking.

It wasn't as though they were going around, hand in hand, or even with fingers so close to the other's that they were nearly brushing against one another's, no, but to see Ella and Taylor as they wound their way around the town square, waiting like the rest of them but doing so with a stroll… They might as well have been.

"You'd think they haven't had a chance to say a word to each other in weeks," Lucas commented, now that he could see them, too, both looking like they were in the middle of a very lively conversation. He could just about distinguish his daughter's laughter, floating through the overall noise of the crowded space.

Maya snorted.

"Please, I don't see you for a few hours a lot of days, and when you get back…"

"Yeah, alright, I get your point," he chuckled, and they quietly watched the two of them out there, carrying on with their circuit.

They'd both, at one time or another, heard their daughter express how much she was getting to feel that she missed Taylor while he was off at school, and they sympathized with her far more than they could say. They'd be halfway through once this school year ended, halfway through and then who knew for sure what the future would hold for them? In a perfect world – and this view was admittedly biased by the Friars' desire to see their daughter and granddaughter back in town – it would mean both of them resettling in Austin. Whether or not this was how the cards ended up being stacked, would it take that long before Ella's… bank of emoticons filled up? It didn't feel as though the last few days, wonderful as they'd been for everyone, had yielded any advancements on that. Ella and Taylor continued to be friends, either that or they were playing it very cool, not letting anything show. Maya didn't think so, and neither did Lucas. That was alright. They'd enjoyed the other's presence, and that was what mattered most.

"Nana! They're going to count now?" Tori asked as she and Marianne came dashing over to the bench

"Yeah, looks that way, won't be long now," Maya told them both.

"It's going to wake them up," Marianne was sure, and Maya bit back the urge to smirk at the air of big sister seriousness on her face. All her little sisters were sleeping, and people were about to get loud in their presence.

"It's okay if it does, pumpkin," Lucas promised her. "We've got them; they'll be fine."

"Go get your sister, hurry," Maya suggested, and at once Marianne ran off. Tori tried to follow her to get her mother but was called back by her grandfather, suggesting that she stick with them and wait. Marianne was quick, and soon Ella came around with Taylor, as did Theo and Lea, and then the Hunters, the Clutterbuckets, and the Olsens… Now they were all together, just in time for the count to begin and bring the year 2036 upon them.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners