September 1st 2022

Chapter 244
Our Exploration of Friends

Dear Maya,

It's so strange sometimes. I saw you last night and you were just Maya, my neighbor, my friend. Then I sat down here to write to you and suddenly I wanted to start out with 'Dear Mrs. Friar.' Anyway, last night at dinner, that's when I thought of writing to you. You were telling stories about art class, your students right now, and it made me think about art classes with you. I went and pulled out my diaries after going back home, started going through them with Cole.

We must have sat there for like four or five hours. I would turn the pages, see my old drawings, and I'd remember something about when I did them, so I'd tell him. I'd never shown them to him before; it was really nice, just the two of us like that. We've been lucky, getting moments like these, ever since he came back to Austin, and we got together. It's one thing that we found each other again as adults, but then there's this whole other life, when we were kids. He was my best friend. I still remember the day I found out that his parents were splitting up and he and his mother were going to move out to Rhode Island. I cried for hours, and the days before he went away, I couldn't even walk up to his house for how upset I was. Turned out that he got it in his head that I was cutting him out of my life already, but really, I was trying to do everything I could so that he didn't leave. If he did leave, then I was going to go with him whether I had to hide on the moving truck or I could convince my parents to move us to Rhode Island, too.

Now that he's been back, now that he and I are making up for lost time and figuring out what we want our future to look like, a lot of it has been coming back to the family farm. Right now, there's my grandparents, and my parents, and me, and sometimes Cole, too, when he spends the night out here. Some nights I go to his house instead. It's never far for me to get back up the road for morning chores, and if he's not working that day, he'll come with me. I think you've seen me or both of us go by a couple of times.

He's always known where I stood about the farm, how I want to stay here, continue to help run it with my family, especially to make it so that my grandparents can start pulling back a bit, take things easy. It's not that they're unable to do it anymore, far from that. Really, the only issue is that they're going to want to keep going and, at some point, they won't be able to do it, but they'll do it anyway, especially my grandfather. But there's my parents and me, and now there's Cole, and he's been really good about doing part of the work. I think a part of me worried that knowing that the farm and I are a packaged deal might scare him off. Either that, or he wouldn't want to be involved for the long run, living up here full time.

But then last night, after looking through my sketchbooks for hours, we kept on talking a while, went on right until sunrise. We were both exhausted, but also not, and by then we were already gearing up to go out for chores, so we were going to do those and then get back up to my room to sleep a while. It got to be that kind of tired where you just start wondering if you're awake or dreaming sometimes, you know? So, when I turned around and he was there, kneeling among the chickens, I thought for sure it was all in my head, right up until he took my hands. He didn't have a ring yet, still doesn't, but he asked me anyway. And that's my long way of letting you know that I just got engaged! Surprise! I could have just told you in person, but this felt like the way to go. Anyway, in case you haven't figured it out yet, I delivered the envelope myself. I'm just outside, sitting on your porch…

See you in a minute,
Missy Sanderson

.

She let out a sound of surprise when she read the last of that letter, and it was loud enough that it brought Lucas clambering up from the basement, where he'd been doing laundry. Was she okay? Was it the baby? Maya got up from the couch as he came to her and she presented him with the letter, pointed to the last paragraph with a giddy hop in her feet. When he saw the words, the way his face perked up… She kind of wished she'd just brought him outside, so Missy could see his reaction. The best she could do for now was to grab hold of his hand and pull him to the front door as promptly as possible, there to open the door and step out to find their neighbor and her former student, right where she'd promised to be. She had the look of someone who had slept since that early morning proposal, yes, but hardly enough to make up for that sleepless night talking and reminiscing with her now fiancé.

When she looked up and saw the pair of them coming out to meet her though, she was all smiles. She got up and came to meet them in an embrace. Maya could tell without seeing his face at first that Lucas would be recalling something she'd told him, after their guests had left the night before. He would be remembering how she'd been so confident that Missy and Cole would soon be engaged. It seemed that her pool of former students, the older ones at least, were in the midst of a wedding and baby boom. There had been several engagement notices in recent months, and only one pregnancy so far, yes, but enough talk to suggest that there were more aside from August Matthews and Milena Janacek who were attempting to join the likes of Phoebe and Khalil. And now here they were, not twenty-four hours later, and the prediction had been realized. She was never happier to have been correct.

x

They could see it in her little blue eyes: Mackenzie Friar wanted to walk. She could almost do it now, she seemed to feel the ability in her grasp, and yet it would elude her. She was never so determined as when the weekend rolled around, and it was time for the turtle friends – both generations together – to gather for their weekly dinner. Already, the eleven-month-old would get this look of intense focus on her face when there would be people looking at her and trying to encourage her, but then her greatest motivation came from a source much closer to her age and size, namely the Mantovani twins. Valentina and Santiago were now a year old, fifteen-months-old in truth, and they were both walking very well, running around even, and Mackenzie saw them, and she wanted to do what they did. She would get this look in her eyes like she was saying, 'Wait for me!' The twins would be running around her, looking at her like they were trying to encourage her, too. And the longer this all went on and she would still not pull it off…

"Okay, alright, come here, Mackerel," Lucas cut in among the children to scoop up his wailing daughter. "You're almost there, yes, you are," he promised as he rocked her around, zoomed her this way and that, just how she liked for him to do. "Don't even worry about it," he kissed the top of her head. "You're okay… You're okay," he gave her a dose of the jolly voice, and that along with everything before worked to make her smile again, and laugh, and so he set her down back with the twins again. The two of them sat down with her, and there the trio remained for a while, no more attempts at walking for the littlest turtles among them.

"How complicated do you think it would be if all of us went on a trip somewhere?" Dylan wondered aloud, looking at the other adults as they gathered in Asher and Ray's kitchen. "Just full on summer family vacation, but all of us." They all looked at each other, and overall, the thought seemed to be that it would be so many of them, and that would make things so complicated, but at the same time it would be the good kind of complicated, wouldn't it?

"Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm imagining myself, imagining the both of us, really, two months post baby," Maya indicated herself and Lucas and he was already nodding in agreement with her. Had they ever gotten back to what their sleeping patterns were before they started having children? No, not at all, and each time they started over it was a dip back down from the comfortable middle ground, leaving them to work their way back up again. This summer, they'd be in the thick of it with Aubrey, so how likely were they to be up for a big friend vacation? "But you guys should still…"

"No, no, no way," Zay shook his head at once. "It's all of us or none of us," he affirmed. "Or at least to each their own, you know?" he added after a beat, and the others smirked.

"We'll just wait until next summer, huh?" Sophie suggested, getting a few nods.

"Unless anyone else gets pregnant… Maybe they'll go three for three," Rosa joked, nodding to Maya and Lucas.

"Yeah, not happening, nope," Maya shot back at once, turning from Rosa to Lucas, who was chuckling but now shook his head, showing that he was with her. They would not go and get pregnant three years in a row… in theory.

"Well, if anyone does, it won't be us," Chiara declared.

"Or us," Nadine chimed in.

"Definitely not us," Isadora followed. Rosa, Jenna, and Morgan gave silent signs that they were remaining on the outside of this motherhood situation. This only left…

"What about you guys?" Asher asked Dylan and Riley.

"Our position hasn't changed," Riley shrugged. "We're not doing anything to help or hinder, so if it happens, it happens." When they were ready to shut that door, they would do it, and that was that.

"It doesn't have to be a summer trip, does it?" Farkle asked. "We could go somewhere in the winter, too. We could go skiing."

"Because that's worked so well for us in the past," Nadine had to point out, and the responses varied between those who had no idea what she was referring to, and those who'd just heard, and those who had some direct involvement. For the original turtles and Maya and Nadine, this called back an infamous trip that had happened early on after Maya had moved to Texas, when they had all gone and failed to let her know. Riley had a different look, like she was remembering something she hadn't lived herself but marked her nonetheless, and this made Maya press her lips together like she wanted to laugh but also knew she shouldn't.

Mackenzie may not have walked at that week's gathering, but once she was home again, her big sisters – four of them at least – all came together as everyone landed in the living room, and there was another session of trying to help her take those first steps. When she did succeed – if only for one step and another before she was down again – it caught her parents by surprise as much as it seemed to do for her, but then she had a big smile on her face. Yes, she had done it! And she could do it again.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners