August 17th 2022

Chapter 229
Our Celebration of Sisters

She had already seen her sisters in class, in the morning, by the time Lucas came over and revealed the big Sleepster surprise to her, but if she just looked back to that period with the sophomores, she did feel as though their behavior suddenly made a lot more sense. To this day, the twins' brand of sneakiness seemed subject to a certain flaw in that their big sister – and their parents – could see through it more often than not. They weren't mind readers, couldn't actually know what they were going to do half the time, but it was easier then to be on the lookout, wasn't it? With this, she had to say that she'd fallen half and half, between figuring it had something to do with her birthday, but with no idea of exactly what they had in mind, not until after Lucas told her.

For that, she was given a boost to get through the end of this day, to head on home and see what they had all been planning behind her back. Forty-six people… Oh, that number had been nagging at her brain since she'd heard it, enough so that she'd started trying to figure out who might be part of that number beyond herself and Lucas and their girls, her two sisters right at the house… It was a slippery slope. How was she supposed to know who had been counted and who hadn't? And if she started making guesses, wouldn't she just be setting herself up for disappointments if some of those people didn't come? She was better off just waiting and seeing for herself. Did that mean that her brain stopped trying to piece everything together? No, of course not.

When last period ended, she resisted the urge to go track down her sisters and give them the old interrogation eye to see if they might break. That would only have delayed the discovery, though it would have amused her sisters, and she could be known to act silly solely for their benefit… No, instead, she went ahead and departed the school, with Jenny offering herself to handle the loaded Grandpa cart on their way to the minivan. Maya dropped her and her friends off over at the Hillard house – they had a project to work on and, as it turned out, their own sleepover that evening. This made Maya briefly consider if Lucas might have invited the four of them to join Sleepster, but she quickly set this idea aside. She wished the girls a good weekend and continued on toward home.

Oh, she may have been newly thirty-four years old, but she felt a good two decades younger than that as she drove up the road toward her house, trying to see if there were any cars already there, having brought some of these mystery guests. She couldn't see any, but that didn't mean no one was there. They could have taken the bus, could have been dropped off by parents, or friends' parents… or a cab… She could not have not looked silly, climbing out of the driver's seat slowly… alert… She scanned windows as far high and low as she could see them, peered around the side of the house as she went to get the cart and load up the boxes. Surely, if someone was watching, because they were a bunch of kind people who were under the impression that she couldn't do any sort of manual labor in her 'fragile' condition…

"Either they're really committed to the bit, or they can't see me, wherever they are… or there's no one there, in which case I am a whole notch or two above 'silly,'" she quietly talked down to her belly, and right then she got to feel the very first – and incredibly timely – flutter of movement. She paused, taken by the surprise. Hello, Lucky… "Glad you're on my side with this, huh?"

She was very thankful for the small ramp they'd now built on to the porch, as much with Kelsey Farrell on the brain as this very activity, week in and week out. She was able to get the cart up to the door without struggling to pull it up the stairs or having to unload and reload it. She opened the door and found flowers on the small table just inside. She smiled, stopped, and read the card aloud, as she was instructed to do.

"Welcome home! Be advised, you are not alone, so don't freak out, just say 'you can come out now.'" Even as she snorted, recognizing her little brother's hand, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and looked up to see the first of her guests exit from out of the kitchen. Even with the warning, the surprise was not entirely effaced.

It was a soft start, with the expected presence of card-writer Wyatt Hart-Lane, who was cut off from getting first dibs at big sister hugs when their little sister cut ahead of the sixteen-year-old. The eight-year-old Maisie had never known any other way than that she lived in Tucson while her eldest sister lived in Austin, though the same could be said of Sam, who'd been staying with the Friars when the girl was born, and even Cara, who'd moved out here back when Maisie was younger than the triplets were now. That only made these visits that much more thrilling for her. She'd already been saying that she wanted to get to come and live out here, same as her siblings had done before her, when she went to college. She'd been saying it since she was about five years old, and Maya had already vowed – written down and everything – that she could absolutely do that.

"Happy birthday!" she looked up with a grin that reminded Maya of her daughter, only two years her junior. She was missing some teeth, too.

"Oh, I know I just hugged you a few weeks ago, but I already missed this," Maya swayed with her little sister as they embraced, and Maisie seemed to agree with the sentiment, as did Wyatt when he came up, although… "What's this here, what's happening?" she had to ask, trying not to laugh, as she noticed the bit of hair that had been allowed to grow over his top lip. Wyatt shrugged awkwardly.

"Trying something out, I guess," he told her. Clearly, he didn't hate it.

"You know… That could grow on me," she decided, and he smiled.

After them, there came Ginny and Sadie Chen, and oh, was she happy to see Luna's girls. They hadn't been able to make it out for Christmas, as they'd been off on a trip with their father and stepmother, but now here they were, nineteen and sixteen already, and they were as eager to hug her as they were to feel at her belly, being that they hadn't seen her since she'd announced this new pregnancy. Right behind them were a pair she had seen not three weeks ago. Caitlin and Harry Olsen had flown out unaccompanied.

After them, that was when the surprises got a lot more surprising. Willow's being there was more surprising in the sense that, with all of them having families and jobs keeping them busy, they could be weeks and sometimes more than a month without seeing the former member of TXNY, but after her… After her, there was the far greater shock – a good shock – of the very popular children's book creative duo (in this house and far beyond) of Franny Santos and Kayla Banks.

They had come into her life as a tag team, on the first day of college, a whole fourteen years ago and some, and it was an unfortunate reality of circumstances, with none of them living on the same continent, let alone the same country, how rarely they got to be together again, all three of them. The last time that had happened was four years back, at their ten year reunion. Now they were here, and Maya's own excitement was reflected in them as they converged on her for a hug.

Kayla and Will were still going strong, over in Sweden, along with their boys. Kayla wished she could have brought them along, but it just wouldn't have been practical, so she best she had been able to do was to record a greeting for their Aunt Maya. Oscar would be six this year and spoke English with the sweetest little accent, having been born and raised in Sweden all his life, same as his little brother. Elias had only just turned one back in September, but he was the spitting image of his older brother. He was also deaf like his parents, leaving Oscar the only one who wasn't. He was eternally protective of his little brother for it, even as he was getting to be frustrated as he noticed people talking to him directly rather than his parents, his mother especially, when they'd be out somewhere.

Franny was in the same situation as Kayla. She also had a spouse and children she would have brought along if she could, and they had their recorded message, too. Back in Australia, Franny's wife – Catriona King, formerly of the band Weaver Kings – was seeing to their son and daughter. It seemed only yesterday that they'd adopted siblings Angus and Isla. They'd only been three and one at the time, but now the boy and girl in the video that Maya would be shown and sent were a soon-to-be seven-year-old Angus and recently turned five-year-old Isla Santos-King, both with that same splash of freckles on their faces, the same rich brown eyes, and densely covered heads of hair that matched their eyes near perfectly. Theirs were very familiar faces as they featured, along with Oscar and Elias, in Franny and Kayla's second book together. There were already plans for another book featuring the quartet, their greatest inspiration.

The last of Maya's surprises to have arrived already was heard before she was seen, thanks to the long-familiar sound of her crutch, clicking along the floor in time with her steps. Maya turned, and there she was… Cecilia… She and Sam may have long been parted, remaining as friends to this day, but Maya could never forget the young girl who'd first become a staple of this house to the point that she'd been given a key. She could still remember those days, coming home to find her already waiting. How many nights she'd had dinner with them… They'd never lost touch, not even when she and boyfriend Tony Janacek had left Texas, but then this girl had gotten to feel like family, so whenever they got to see each other, it felt like that period apart weighed as heavily as with her siblings out in Arizona. She was twenty-five now, hardly the fourteen-year-old she'd first met, but then she'd smile at her and what even was time?

"Haven't been to one of these in so long, I had to come," she explained, and Maya nodded. Oh, yes, she had long been welcome to their sleepovers.

"I'm so happy that you're here," she told her, clasping her hands. She looked around, entirely overwhelmed still. "All of you," she added.

This was barely a portion of the number Lucas had given her, and she had to wonder, after this, what else her Huckleberry husband had in store for her. She just couldn't stop smiling, which would bring the others to laugh, playfully teasing her. They were all going to be spending the next two nights in this house, with her, with… so, so many people… She was only now getting to consider more than 'who will it be?' They were going to have to fit all these people somewhere, and feed them, and… She took a breath, reminded herself that these questions were bound to have been addressed already by that sneaky husband of hers. Oh, well played, Doc, well played… She would have to get him back when he had his next birthday, naturally.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners