September 19th 2022

Chapter 262
Our Hope For Time

One week later

"It's okay, I've got 'em, I've got 'em," Eliza vowed as she came down from the second floor and barely stopped to look in at her sister before she went into the triplets' room. The cacophony of play in there was not working so well for baby Aubrey, and Maya was trying to stop her crying. Rather than scold the girls for doing what came naturally at their age, Eliza worked and brought down the noise level, inviting them to come upstairs to her room, which they agreed to do.

"Is Aubrey okay, Mama?" Lucy stopped in the door on her way toward the stairs, as she would. Ever since they'd come home, she had been dedicated to her buddy duty. She didn't get up in the middle of the night to check on her the way Marianne had once done with Mackenzie, but she was never far, never too long from checking that all was well in Luckyland.

"Yeah, she just got startled," Maya promised. Now it was all three of the triplets coming to look, and they all seemed to realize their part in the disruption. Had they done something bad? "Hey, it's alright, it happens. You three were the same way when you were little like her... and littler. Here, see? She's calm now. I think she knows you're here," she smiled as she went and sat on the desk chair, where they could approach and peer at the baby. They smiled at her, made faces at her... Aubrey looked back, blinked. Lucy took her hand, and more and more she would look like she remembered the gesture, like it made her feel safe, this hand from this one sister.

The triplets went with their aunt, and being that she was at the desk already, Maya kept the baby against herself with one arm while she opened her laptop. There she found an email from Cory, where he'd attached an essay written by Bobby Davis as part of his make-up work. She sat back, adjusting her hold on Aubrey before she could start and read. Much as she regretted not being able to help him herself as she'd promised to do, it would be Cory who saw him through to the end of the year instead of handing over the reins 'when she was ready.' It felt unnecessary at this point, better that Cory carry on if he was already willing. The only thing that mattered now was that Bobby got to be a junior next year, and from what she'd heard and what she read here, he was on his way to making it happen.

"We're back!" a voice rang out from below, just as she was finishing writing a reply to Cory. Marianne... She'd gone to the grocery store along with her father and Mackenzie. From above, there was a rush of excitement as the triplets moved to go find the returning trio. Eliza went with them, where she apparently took over the unloading along with her nieces, as Lucas came up the stairs and into the master bedroom, there to find his wife and youngest daughter.

"Hey..." Maya smiled, rising from the chair to go and kiss him. "Want to go see Dada? Huh? Yeah, of course you do," she hushed as she passed Aubrey over. "Girl Dad is always a good choice," she lightly teased, while Lucas just smiled and looked upon that new little face, already so deeply imprinted into his mind.

"How'd it go out here?" he asked.

"Oh, you know how it goes. They start off doing exactly like we'd hope, playing quietly so they wouldn't wake the baby or get her crying. But then time happens, and they're having so much fun that..." she motioned a burst of sound.

"Right," Lucas chuckled knowingly.

"Eliza stepped in though, took them upstairs," Maya went on, returning to the barrage of clean clothes in need of sorting and folding that lay on their bed. She'd been in the middle of this when Aubrey had been startled. "What about you?" she asked.

"Well, Mackenzie is starting to figure out a few things out there," he reported. He came to stand with her, evidently determined to help her even as one of his hands was busy with the baby. She would have told him he didn't have to, but then he'd go all Huckleberry on her, so better let him do what came naturally.

"Is she now?" she instead asked, curious to hear.

"Yeah, you know the..." he pretended to see something that drew his year-old attention and pointed his hand with a pleading look.

"Oh, that one," Maya laughed. "And you couldn't resist?"

"No, well, I could... mostly. Except there was Marianne, too, and if Mackenzie appealed to her..."

"Ah..." Maya's laughter redoubled. She caught his smile at hearing it, and it just about brought her back to Earth. They were still not out of that reflex, were they? The 'oh, it makes me so happy to see you so alive' reflex. And she wasn't about to take it from him, but at the same time it would make her feel uneasy, like here she was, doing her best to move forward, but always she would be pulled back, like there was a tether to her ankle. She didn't want him to see that unease, didn't want him to feel bad, but of course he did see it. He took it in stride though. He had something else to share with her.

"We ran into Nathan and Riya while we were out there," he revealed, and she perked up at once.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, they were picking up supplies..." he gave her a pointed look, to which she could only shake her head, like asking what he was doing. He pressed on the look, and finally she blinked. Oh!

"For the end of the year party?" she asked, and he nodded.

Another moment, and she was taken back to a conversation the previous year, where the idea had been put forth - too late that time around - that they should get back in the game of team parties. Their former captains now owned the Shelby house, and they had taken up the tradition, so why not? They had toyed with the thought of a second party, for the former players, down in the basement... leading to a shoot-off between the new and old class, of course.

"They're doing it, aren't they? The basement, the shoot-off?" Maya assumed, and he nodded. She let out a breath, thinking about it. There was no way to ignore the matter entirely, was there? "You know, before... everything... I had been telling myself that I would go if they did it. Even if I'd just had her and she was very small, I could still go," she nodded to the baby, who'd started gripping to Lucas' shirt sleeve, drooling on it just a bit... He either didn't notice or gave it no mind.

"You still could, we could..." he told his wife instead, but Maya shook her head. "You said you've been feeling really good..." he went on, clearly trying not to come off overly worried.

"I did, I do," she nodded. "I mean I'm exhausted, adjusting, healing, more or less the way I've done post baby... two of the three times before this one," she amended, and he nodded. The triplets were a case all their own. "So, I'm there," she held up her hand, flat, indicating a level, a perfectly respectable level under the circumstances. "And what I thought I was going to do before... I knew I was probably kidding myself, but it was a nice thought. Right now, I'm where I rightly expected to be, and, well... Do you feel up to a party right now?"

"Alright, when you put it like that..." he slowly nodded. She'd called up his own new-baby exhaustion, and now it felt like he was about to yawn.

"So, we'll bow out for this year. But next year," she pointed at him, a pair of rolled socks in her hand.

"Those don't go together," he quietly indicated. Maya frowned, looked at the socks, then sighed and unrolled them, seeking their true partners from the heap. "Next year..." he put her back on track.

"Ha! Gotcha!" she found what she was looking for. "Next year, we go, and we show them how it works." He responded by giving a very muted version of their call, looking down to Aubrey. Maya chuckled, came up into the baby's line of sight.

"You hear that, Lucky?" she whispered, kissing her cheek. "And for the sake of our sanity, let's hope you're not on your way to being a big sister by then," she joked. When she looked back to Lucas, the brow was going again. "Hey, I..."

"I think I should get an appointment, to make sure that doesn't happen," he told her, seriously, quietly. She blinked. To her, this was coming out of nowhere, but he'd clearly been thinking about it for a time.

"Really?" she asked. It was drawing a line for them, for their family. Sure, it could be reversed, if they changed their mind, but still, it was a big decision, and she was sort of blindsided by it... for about three seconds. Then, his reasoning became clear, even as he explained himself.

"We nearly lost you," he shook his head, his deep set fear showing itself. "I nearly lost you, and they... We have seven amazing daughters. Would we be happy if we had more? Of course. But after what happened, maybe we should just be content with where we are, the nine of us."

The socks were dropped into the basket, and Aubrey was taken from her father's arms and brought to her crib. Maya walked back to Lucas, embraced him. He hugged her back, that concern alive in his arms with the way he held on to her.

"Okay... Okay," she told him. It was his choice, and she respected it fully. He was right, in so many ways. Sooner or later, the moment would have come when they'd decide to stop, and here they were just now, looking after the second in a row of unplanned pregnancies, so clearly leaving it up to chance and careful calculation wouldn't do it. "Just... not for a few weeks, yeah?" she finally added.

"After graduation?" he knowingly assumed, and she nodded. "Sure, that sounds good," he laughed.

"Then I can throw you a party," she teased, and he pressed back the urge to laugh even more, for Aubrey's sake. "I'll look after you," she pressed a kiss at his cheek, migrated back to his lips, and there she stayed for a few beats before he had a thought.

"What about home prom?" he asked. Her eyes widened. Oh!

"Well, that would be..." she closed her eyes, willing her brain to recall the date and when... "Next week," she nodded. She looked back to him. Could they pull that one off? Them and their girls, her sisters, Ben... maybe Dakota, if they kindly nudged for Emma to bring a date... It would hardly be out of the norm, their daily norm. There would just be some nicer outfits, proper hair, maybe some makeup... Decorations, flowers, food and drinks, music, dancing... "I think... it might be feasible..." she turned her eyes back to him, a smile.

"Maya... Would you go to home prom with me?" he tipped his head to her.

"Oh, but Lucas, it would be the happiest day of my life... after our wedding, the birth of our daughters, that time I..."

"Okay, okay, I think we're covered," he cut in, chuckling.

"No, come on, I could have gone deep with that list..." she insisted. So, she carried on, listing many a happy event in their life as they went on folding the laundry. Oh, home prom... They couldn't wait to see how the girls would react.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners