September 3rd 2022

Chapter 246
Our Realizations of Time

After a week at home with four of her girls - and a rotating roster of visitors from day to day - Maya may still have missed being in school, but she was wholly satisfied with her current condition. She still did some things around the house, that would never be stopped unless she really couldn't keep up, but for the most part, her main task every day was to hang out with her daughters. She watched them play, joined in where she could... Maybe the best part, for her at least, was to see how happy it made them that she was there. How ever much or little they understood the rhythm of daily life, they were always so glad when the weekend came, or a holiday, any day where their mother or father did not go away in the morning. And now Mommy was there with them, every day.

"Mama... Mama..." she heard a voice call and just thought, 'Kacey?' before realizing that she had been asleep. She blinked, turned her head. She was laid out on the couch, and as it turned out, she wasn't being called on so much as indicated.

On the floor, while Remy was running around them, chasing Honey Bee, and Lucy was tipping her head this way and that, listening to the song coming lightly from the television as she stood in front of it, Kacey had Mackenzie sat in her lap. She held her with one arm around her waist, and with the other, she was pointing to their mother on the couch. If she were home, it was very likely that Marianne would be doing the same thing, with whichever word she'd choose to try to get her little sister to repeat. So, Kacey was doing just as she'd seen her big sister do. Whether or not Mackenzie understood what she was meant to be doing, right now, the only thing she seemed to think was that it was very funny. She was smiling, laughing, and the longer Kacey tried, Mackenzie only laughed harder, which made Kacey laugh, too. It got their sisters' attention, too, and it made their mother have to work extra hard not to laugh, too, as she had fished out her phone to record the moment.

"You got this, Macadamia?" she asked, reaching out to her baby girl. Mackenzie reached out her hands to her. "You want to come to me? You can do it, come on…" she encouraged her. She'd seen four of her girls and her lone granddaughter go through these steps toward… steps… and it felt as though she had the confidence of those past successes within her, to share on to her smallest girl. Lucas would say she had a magic voice, that she could get them to do it just by calling to them. She'd tell him that he shouldn't sell himself short, that he had the whole Girl Dad powers in him, but right now it was about her and Mackenzie. "Come on, Fleetwood," she quietly called, thinking how much she'd respond to her grandfather's nickname. Right now, it just about made her ears twitch, and she looked around like she expected her old Grandpa Shawn to pop out of hiding. "It's just us right now, but you can still give it a shot, can't you?"

Mackenzie squealed, looking at her mother, and her sisters… She crawled her way off of Kacey's lap, up to the couch, where she gripped on in order to pull herself up on to her feet. When she got there, she tipped her head to rest against her mother's belly and looked up, smiling.

"Look at you, funny girl," Maya laughed, stroking her cheek. A few seconds later, Mackenzie squeaked, surprised. "That's your baby sister in there, she's kicking," Maya reminded her. "You felt her, didn't you?" At the promise of kicking, the triplets came hurrying over, and it was a wonder that they all didn't jam their hands in at once or it could have ended in a collision.

"Does it hurt, Mama?" Lucy quietly asked. She'd asked it before, always looking concerned, like her only context when it came to kicking was a foot connecting with something, and that hurt whether you were the kicker or the kicked.

"No, I'm alright, bun," Maya promised. She slowly sat up, the better to reach down and pull Mackenzie up with her even as the triplets climbed of their own power. "You were all in there before. I felt all of you do the same thing. Sometimes I kind of miss it," she confided.

The triplets were all looking like they were wondering how it was possible that they would all have fit in there. They knew the three of them had come together, how could they not at this point? Still, it might have been that they'd forgotten the part where they had once been much smaller than they were now, or that she'd been even bigger by the end than she was now, with just one Aubrey…

"Where should we go after lunch?" Maya asked them, pulling them away from the curious question. Oh, this was a much better one, an easier one. It was becoming part of their routine now. They'd be at home in the mornings, but they would go somewhere in the afternoons. The park, the mall, someone's house if they were home… Depending on what would be involved, it'd be up to Maya to decide if she was able to go with them or if she was better off letting them go with whoever was backing her up that day while she stayed home and relaxed.

It was a very brief consideration. In a moment, Remy straightened up with an idea and looked to her mother.

"I want Daddy," she proclaimed, and Lucy and Kacey were immediately sold, chiming in that they, too, wanted to go see their father.

"You want to go to the ranch?" Maya asked, and they nodded.

"Horsies," Kacey smiled.

"Alright, we can do that."

With Thomas Friar there to drive them, Maya left the house after lunch with the triplets and Mackenzie, and they headed to Sullivan Stables. As much as a visit like this would make the girls happy, it was plain to see, each time, how the feeling went both ways with Lucas. It was a great pleasure, always, for him to look up and suddenly see them walking toward him… almost better when they were running to him. What made it better, the more they grew, was how they were getting stronger and stronger as talkers, meaning that when they did reach him, they would have plenty to say, all of them, all at once.

The afternoon was spent as it would be when the girls would be taken to the ranch. They'd go and see the horses with their father, they'd stop over at the retreat to see the dogs presently staying with them – with a bonus of getting to see their Uncle Bishop – and they would check in with their people, like Juliet, and Donna at the dance studio, and Carson at the archive… At each stop, more attempts were made to try and get Mackenzie to walk, or maybe say a word… The staff at Sullivan Stables was easily as motivated as the family was to see the girl reach those milestones. She might not have pulled it off with any of them that day, but that didn't stop her from making them all smile or laugh just for being exactly herself.

"I'm telling you, this girl's got stage presence in her just waiting to come out," Donna beamed, looking at the little blonde. "It's in your blood, sweetheart, yes, it is." Mackenzie looked just on this side of intrigued at the statement, though she only stared up as her mother leaned to her and reached up her hand.

"I don't know about you, but I think she's got a point," Maya whispered, kissing the proffered little fingers, which made their owner giggle.

When it had come time for Lucas to head out and pick up Marianne and Winnie from school, he had gone to his wife and girls to see if any of them would like to come along. Maya didn't feel like heading out, kind of wanted to stay where she was, with Mackenzie, and wait for Nellie to show up, to say hello and surprise her. As she'd been doing for years by now, she would leave school and take the bus to get here along with Bobby Davis, the both of them due to see to their horses and take them around with their respective trainers.

The triplets absolutely wanted to go for a ride with their father, especially if it meant going to surprise their big sister, so off they went, while Maya remained with Mackenzie, sitting in front of Juliet's home, Marianne Sullivan's old home.

"How about it, Macaron, want to try it again?" she asked the girl sat on her knee. "I know you can do it," she lifted her as she stood, bringing her to stand in front of her, holding on to her hands as she faced out. "One step this way, one step the other way… That's it, keep going," she smiled, delicately seeking to loosen her hold, until she could let go completely. "One step…"

A bus honked, the sound stretched, somewhere off beyond the Sullivan Stables arch, and then the sound of brakes, or just of a vehicle seeking to stop very suddenly, and then a clamor, and then, several seconds later, a scream…

It didn't need to last very long, although it did, plaintive and frantic, and if the objective had been for her to recognize the screamer, it wouldn't have been necessary; she'd known within two seconds, and her heart lurched for fear.

"What on Earth…" Juliet's voice startled her as the woman came from her house.

"Stay with her!" Maya immediately hurried off, as fast as she was able to go, barely conscious of her funny girl, taking several wobbly steps in her attempt to follow her before Juliet came and swept her up into her arms.

Maya wasn't the only one to be hurrying for the arch in that moment, but she had to be the slowest, to her dismay. By the time she made it on to the street, there were plenty of people all around, enough that she struggled to get through, to find out what exactly was going on and maybe most important of all… Where is she?

"Nellie!" she called as soon as she saw her.

She was completely distraught, adrenaline through the roof and shouting, still, as a woman did her best to pull her back no matter how much the teenaged girl resisted. Nellie didn't care about the tears along one leg of her pants, or the sleeve of her shirt, the scratches on her arms, all of them suggesting that she had hit the ground. All she cared about was the boy on the ground, looking a whole lot worse than she did.

"That's my sister," Maya hurried to her. "That's my sister. Nellie!" she touched her arm, and Nellie startled, saw her, reached for her. If she was meant to be relaxing today, there was no chance of it now, but she was holding on. Possibly, the only way she was keeping it together was that she could feel her sister falling apart, shaking so hard in her arms, that she could only present herself like steady ground in a storm.

"I-I didn't see, I-I… H-he… He push… H-he pushed me out of… of…"

Maya had barely registered… him… This may not have been one of her siblings, but it was one of her kids, one of her students, one she'd known long before. And if she couldn't see for herself that he was conscious, if in distress and pain, she might have felt her steady ground break apart as she looked to Bobby Davis lying bloodied and broken in the street.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners