February 7th 2020

Chapter 38
Their Holidays With Family

They didn't need to worry about wanting for pictures of the new little Minkus. Ada Marie was a daily staple of their inboxes, many times over, courtesy of her shutterbug father most of all. It was like their new favorite show. Did you see this one? Isn't she sweet in that one? There was no telling as of yet exactly when they would get to see the baby in person, but in the meantime they were happy to feed their eagerness on pictures and videos.

The girl was a whole week old the morning Maya, Lucas, and Sam took off from the house on their way to the airport. They'd all gone to bed early the night before, in anticipation of this departure. Whether they actually needed to leave so early depended on who you asked. They would be spending about two hours waiting for the flight to land, the way they were going. But the passengers were worth it. They were family.

"Your face? Right now? It's adorable," Maya reached over to prod at her brother's cheek. Sam gave a half-hearted nudge, pushing her arm away.

He couldn't pretend like he wasn't bursting at the seams at the thought of seeing those people coming off the plane. His grandmother, his aunt and his cousins, James and his kids, his brother and his sisters, his mother… his mother most of all… It could have been easy for him to pretend that the distance didn't affect him, after all this time, but he was still fifteen, nearly sixteen, and being away from the people who had been his world all his life… No one understood this more than his big sister right now, so if he needed to be there very early, to ensure that his would be one of if not the very first face his family saw when they got off the plane, then that was what they'd do.

"Stop…" he told her now, though the laugh in his voice suggested he didn't mind the poking nearly as much as his words would have them believe.

"Make me," Maya grinned. Poke, poke, poke.

"Lucas!" he called for backup, and Maya 'gasped.'

"Snitching on me? That's low, Sammy, that's real low… Especially if you're snitching to someone I can be very persuasive with," she turned a smile to her fiancé at her side. "What do you have to say to that?" Her brother looked at her for a moment, then turned his attention to Lucas to unload his response.

"With great power comes great responsibility," he calmly stated. Maya turned to Lucas, who was giving a face like he'd been put in the spotlight and he was now forced to put down judgement.

"He just Spider-manned you, didn't he?" Maya whispered.

"I think I have a solution that will make everyone happy," Lucas finally told them, looping his arm around Maya. Her arms were effectively pinned to her now, keeping her from poking her brother, but on the plus side she was being held by the guy she loved, so if that wasn't a solid compromise…

"Alright, well that was a good play," Maya smiled, settling in, her expression switching over as she looked to her brother and gave him the 'I'm watching you' gesture. Sam laughed, looking back to the arrivals board, even though they still had a long while to go.

A few seconds later, both Maya and Lucas heard the ding of a notification on their phones, one second after the other, which they rightly interpreted to mean a new 'episode' in the Ada Marie Minkus show. Maya managed to get her phone out, despite the arm that 'restrained' her, and they saw she'd been correct. The message – from Farkle – came attached with a short video. This one showed Isadora, sitting peacefully on the sofa in their home, with baby Ada curled up in her arms. The girl was wearing what they recognized at once as being one of the outfits they'd sent as gifts in the weeks preceding her birth. It looked just barely on the side of too big, but then she'd grow into it in time.

Ada was awake, and generally enjoying life. In this moment, she looked sort of captivated by her mother. Isadora sang to her, nice and smooth. She was singing a TXNY song, one of their first, one of the ones she had written herself. It was near to impossible to look at that video and not feel deeply touched, but in particular Lucas could just tell without seeing her face how it would bring tears to Maya's eyes. He'd stroke her arm with his thumb, on the end of the arm he had looped around her and she'd just go sniffling up, like if he acknowledged the fact she'd be feeling it all, then she might as well go ahead and catch her breath. He knew how much the people in her life mattered to her, in ways he could hardly have known on the same level.

"Tucson!" Sam pointed to the board later on, springing to his feet before Maya or Lucas had the time to realize what he was going on about. "They're here," he pointed to the line informing them that the flight from Tucson was about to land.

"Hey, chill, little brother, come on…" Maya gave his shoulders a squeeze as she stood.

"Yeah, if you look too desperate your mom is going to want to take you back with her," Lucas piped in.

"You won't get to finish your degree, your friends will be sad, and none of them more than your loving sister…" Maya dramatically intoned.

"Okay, okay, can we just go," Sam took her hand, and they were off.

Sam wasn't the only eager one that day. It wasn't that Maya wasn't eager to see her siblings and everyone, but then circumstances had made it so that she was getting to be used to being apart from them all, while this… This was the longest Sam had been away from everyone, and the longest everyone had been away from Sam. Now they were about to see each other for the first time in months…

"Do you see them?" Sam asked, eyes scanning the faces of people stepping from the flight. Maya and Lucas looked along with him, and Lucas was the first to spot any of them, though it happened barely a second before the voice of one Elizabeth Anne Hart, better known as the Lizard, let out a squeal that cut through the confusion and drew their attention.

"Sammy!"

"Oh, look out," Lucas smiled. The ten-year-old could have played football for how fast she broke through on her way to reach her big brother. When she got there, she locked him into such a hug that he would have lost his footing if not for the pair at his back reaching out with four hands as one. As soon as he'd been steady, Sam had lifted his sister into his arms and she'd locked arms and legs around him, like she'd never let him go again. Going by the smile on his face, Sam might have been alright with that.

He'd no sooner put her down that Eliza turned her attentions on Maya, who scooped the girl right off the ground again, even as Sam's attentions were now taken with the littlest of the Hart siblings, led along by the hand by the middle girl and middle child of the quintet. Wyatt almost looked like he had been going on skepticism that he'd truly be seeing his brother and sister today, while Cara had taken it upon herself to prove to him that it was all true. The moment he spotted the ongoing reunion happening just ahead, he gasped and shot off like a rocket, letting go of Cara's hand and running into Sam's waiting arms. He started talking so fast that it was hard to comprehend what he was saying, but it sounded a whole lot like he was reporting on the activities of the 'ship' up in Maya's attic room in Tucson in recent times, which was as good as saying 'I missed you so much.'

"Hey, you," Maya opened out her arm for Cara to join the sister heap, which she happily did. "Did you get taller again?" she breathed, holding the thirteen-year-old close. If she kept this up, she really would surpass her…

"Come here a second," Lucas snatched up Wyatt from Sam's arms so he could go and hug his mother when she came in sight. Abigail looked like she might have gone at a run the way her youngest daughter had done, for how tightly she hugged her first boy, her first child… She pressed kisses into the side of his head like she'd supported this separation long enough and she would enjoy having him back for as long as she could. She held his face in her hands, looked at him with such a smile… Her patience had been rewarded at last.

The more of them came around to join the cluster, it really got to feel like, for all the snow, and the lights, the decorations and the madness of shopping that had been going on, the music and the movies… This right here… This was truly the start of it, of Christmas. It was a little under a week away now, and by all accounts it was shaping up to be that the next few days would be some great ones.

"Do you get that feeling, too, like you just want to keep looking at the weather all the time, to make sure there won't be a storm again like last year?" Maya asked Lucas as they drove on toward home, leading the rented car riding behind them. That vehicle contained Abigail, James, Sam, Eliza, Emma, and Wyatt, while Sparkles the minivan, along with the two of them, brought along Cara, Teddy, Luna and her girls, and Elizabeth Hart.

"I don't need to. Zay's been texting me updates like every hour on the hour the last couple days. He and Nadine are hosting the two families this year and he really doesn't want their 'first married Christmas' to turn into anything like last time out here." Maya could barely keep from laughing.

"Damn…" she spoke quietly, shaking her head with the realization of how all of them were getting on to that part of their lives, more and more. Marriage, and babies, and homes, and full-time jobs… She wasn't against it, far from. Deep down, a part of her had been looking forward to all that, but that didn't make it any easier to realize how they were all just growing up, that they were adults… A cough from the backseat brought her back out of her thoughts. "Sorry, Granny," she sheepishly replied, though both she and Lucas in the passenger seat were trying to hold back from laughing at the reprimand on the word.

"Kind of feel bad about leaving them behind tomorrow night," Lucas turned to Maya a few minutes later, once the back of the minivan was back in conversation, discussing what sounded like a funny incident on the flight over.

"They'll be fine," Maya told him. "I think they're planning to go skating or something. I passed on the invitations from my parents, and your parents… They won't be bored. We would have brought them if we could."

"Are you talking about Sam's new girlfriend?" Cara asked from behind them, a smirk in her voice.

"She's not his girlfriend," Maya pointed at her without taking her attention off the road. "Cecilia's his friend. We're just going to see her school's Christmas show. We all helped her come up with the idea, and I showed her a few things…"

"Giiiirlfriend…" Cara cooed, sitting back with giggles. Maya sighed.

"This is going to come back and bite us later, isn't it?" she asked Lucas.

"Oh, big time."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners