A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

March 17th 2020

Chapter 77
Their Day of Holding

"You don't have to miss class for this," Maya insisted as she kicked off her shoes. She and Lucas had finally gotten up to the attic at the end of the night, once the wedding party was good and done. They were exhausted and could not get into bed soon enough, but then there had been something that needed to be said, to be done.

They were supposed to go fly back to Austin the next morning, them and Sam and Cecilia, but after Wyatt's burst of panic over his parents being gone, Maya had come to the end of the night and reached the conclusion that she should stick around Tucson for a couple more days, to back up her grandmother in looking after her siblings. She'd already told Abigail as much and had been received with gratitude. She was just as aware of her youngest's fears, and she could now go on to her honeymoon with something less to worry about.

But for Maya to stick around Tucson was one thing. She had a job, but that job – unless it involved an actual Stage Ready session – did not require her to be in her office, at the theater, all of the time. She could be here and keep working. Hell, she could look into expanding the program beyond Austin and Houston, into a new city and a new state. The other three though… they all had class to get to tomorrow. They were already going to be missing one or two classes a piece, but there had been no way around that. If any of them stayed here with her, they would definitely miss more than they had to. Alright, it would be understandable if Sam wanted to stay, this was his siblings, too… But then didn't they always say that all of her siblings were now Lucas' as well? If he wanted to stay…

"I know, I do," Lucas promised, taking off his jacket. "I just know I won't feel right about being back there when you're here, helping your grandmother…"

"Okay, maybe, but Sam and Cecilia? It's too short notice, he's got a test tomorrow afternoon. I actually overheard Cecilia quizzing him while they were dancing." Alright, it had hardly qualified as a dance when they were barely moving, but they'd been standing together, swaying, and they looked happy about it. "If he stays here, he's going to miss his test, and he might not get to take it again. And Cecilia needs to go back, too. It'd be better if they had someone to go with them, wouldn't it?"

"It would," he had to agree there.

"You know I am really not looking forward to being away from you for any amount of time, I'm not. I sleep horribly when you're not there," she declared, which got her a chuckle out of him.

"You do?"

"Oh, it's hell," she nodded. "I wake up… two, six times…" she shook her head.

"That's a leap," he pointed out.

"Some nights are worse than others," she shrugged. "And the nights aren't the only bad thing, I mean just the idea that there is any distance between us that involves a 'welcome to' or 'you are now leaving' sign, it gets me all twitchy."

"Twitchy?" he echoed, with a bemused smile.

"Oh, yeah, it's bad."

"Alright, then you can spare yourself that bad feeling if I stay, can't you?" he turned to her, finding she had already swapped her dress for shorts and one of his t-shirts and was now undoing her hair. She still had her jewelry on, and her makeup, which made for an amusing image. At his comment, she paused, like he'd just punched a hole in her logic.

"But if we all did what we wanted all the time, who would we be helping?" she finally countered, walking back to where he stood, still a few steps behind her on the changing. "I'm trying to make it so there's as little disruption as possible, you know that, right?"

"I do," he sighed. Of course, it made more sense to do it as she said, but could he be blamed for not wanting to be away from the one he loved? "If I say I'll go with Sam and Cecilia, can we do something about the next couple of nights after this one?" he teased, getting a 'shocked' look out of her.

"Might be able to do something about that, yeah."

The next morning, as had been the plan all along, they all headed to the airport. They were seeing James and Abigail off to their flight, off to their honeymoon, and soon after that it would be Lucas, Sam, and Cecilia, catching their flight home without their would-be fourth, Maya. The goodbyes to the newlyweds had been a parade of hugs, some of them repeated. Wyatt had easily gone in three or four times to both Abigail and James, and when the last call had come for the pair to get on their plane, the boy had been attached tightly to his mother. It had taken Maya stepping in for him to even agree to let go, and if she didn't hold tight to him he would easily have tried to weasel out and chase after his parents.

If the showing at the first gate hadn't been enough to prove to Maya that she'd made the right call in sticking around, the one at the second gate sealed the deal. He already knew that she was staying, and still Wyatt had tightened his grip on her like he thought she would actually leave with the others after all. He wasn't too eager to see Sam go away as it was, and he'd only left Maya's arms in order to hug his big brother. He still hadn't kicked those fears he'd developed after losing Kermit, they all knew it, but on the whole they could almost forget. There would be clues, day to day, but he was never faced with any genuine separations the way he was today, and that made it all flare up big time. He had lost the ability to trust that, when someone went away, they would come back. If any one of his siblings knew how that felt, it was the one he went back to, as soon as Sam set him down.

"Yeah, I got you, it's okay," Maya rubbed at his back, pressing a kiss to the side of his face, all the while keeping eye contact with Lucas as he came up to say goodbye until her return to Austin.

"Can I get a hug, too?" Lucas asked the boy, who turned his head now and reached out one arm. "Group hug it is," Lucas smiled, hugging his fiancée and her little brother together.

Lucas and Maya had to settle for a quick goodbye kiss, as he then had to go along with Sam and Cecilia, who could only wave at her, while she did the same and incited Wyatt to do the same. Just like that, it was down to Maya, her grandmother, and five of her siblings. All of them had been excused out of school for the morning, but then they'd be taken to their respective schools after lunch. Elizabeth Hart would get Teddy and Cara to where they needed to be, while Maya would see to Eliza, Emma, and Wyatt. They'd left the airport and gone to spend what little time they had left wandering through the mall. After a pizza lunch, they'd gone to make their drop offs.

"You two good to go?" Maya asked Eliza and Emma.

"Yeah," Emma nodded, pulling her backpack on while Eliza opened the back door.

"You're coming to pick us up, right?" she asked.

"I'll be right there when you come back out at the end of the day," Maya confirmed, for their benefit as much as her brother's. Wyatt looked ready to stage a sit-in, right in the front passenger seat of his sister's rental car. Elizabeth had Abigail's car.

"I like that you're still here," Eliza declared, potentially dangerous words to utter near her little brother, and Maya had to state the facts here before they went too far into Wyatt's brain.

"Only for a couple days though, remember? I have to go back to Austin after that, or else who will keep Sam out of trouble?" The girls laughed and got out of the car, dashing off toward the monitor who greeted their return. "Hey, Wyatt, want to show me your class?"

"Okay," he agreed, the tone suggesting he might be under the impression that this was a trick to get him to go, which… well, it sort of was, to a point, wasn't it?

They went up together, the boy holding his big sister's hand in a very 'not letting go' kind of grip. Maya just smiled, squeezing his hand back. Ditto. They went up to his classroom, where Maya got to meet his teacher, Mr. Finkle. Wyatt was also very happy to show her his desk, and his artwork where it was on display in the class and out in the hall along with his classmates'. He was just as happy to let his teacher know that his sister was a teacher, too, an art teacher, so she would know all about if his drawings were any good. He was so much jollier than he'd been all morning that she didn't have the heart to specify that she did have her degree but wasn't teaching yet, not exactly.

"Right, bud, I have to let you get to class now, but I'll be right outside waiting for you at the end of the day, okay?" Maya crouched in front of her brother a few minutes later.

"Promise?" Wyatt stared her down.

"I swear," Maya nodded, presenting him with both her pinkies. Wyatt smiled, hooking one of his little fingers with each of hers, one and then the other. "That, my dear brother, is what we call a binding contract."

When she was finally able to leave the school, she got to feel something she hadn't expected, a sort of twinge of concern… Yeah, she'd promised, and as far as she was concerned she would hold her word, every time, but then what if one of those times she didn't get to go, what if… What if something happened, to her or to someone else, and at the end of the school day she wasn't where she'd told her brother she would be? Accidents happened, stupid ones and serious ones both. The day Sophie had gotten into all that trouble, she probably figured she'd go home at the end of the day, back to her wife, her roommates… and instead she'd ended up in the hospital, for weeks, after having nearly lost her life. What if she wasn't there? What if something happened to Abigail and James while they were away?

She had never understood her brother's fears as much as she did then. The kid had gone through something none of them would wish on anyone, to lose a parent, and at his age… He had earned his issues. The best they could do was to support him along the way.

Maya drove off to her aunt's house, to rejoin her grandmother. Yes, she was staying at Abigail and James' house while they were away, but then while the kids were all at school she fully intended to keep up her own routine as far as her daughter and granddaughters were concerned. While Luna was at work and Sadie and Ginny were at school, Elizabeth would tend to the house, cook, bake… Luna would insist that she didn't have to do it, as though she was earning her keep, but then she'd know better than to suggest her mother was doing anything out of any sense of obligation of the sort. It was what she liked to do, and so she did it. That afternoon, Maya joined her for a bit of laundry and cupcake making.

When the time came to head out again, to pick up the kids from school, Maya was very ready, as though Wyatt had imprinted some of his urgency on to her. She drove up to the school with minutes to spare, smiling as she looked to the box sitting next to her and containing four of the cupcakes she'd made with her grandmother, one for each of them. Elizabeth had taken a similar box over to Cara and Teddy's school.

Maya: How was your flight?
Lucas: Lonely. I kept looking to the side and you weren't there. The woman who was going to be your neighbor kept looking back at me like she thought I was sweet on her.

She giggled to herself, imagining the awkward look on his face.

Maya: Did you tell her you were very lovingly engaged already?
Lucas: I did. I even showed her your picture so she wouldn't think I made you up.
Maya: Was that a possibility?
Lucas: The way she was looking at me when I first said it, maybe. Would have asked S and C to back me up, but they were watching a movie and not paying attention to me.
Maya: Just so long as you got it sorted out and I don't need to give you scary fiancée eyes.
Lucas: Wouldn't mind seeing those so long as they came with the rest of you.

Their conversation was eventually cut short by Lucas' need to get to his next class and by the exit of the first kids out of the elementary school. Maya got out of her rental and made sure to stand well in view while she scanned the faces for the ones she sought. In no time, there they were, Eliza and Emma having taken Wyatt on as part of their hand-to-hand chain, though he broke away from it as soon as he spotted his big sister by the car. He sprinted over to her and she scooped him up.

"Did you get taller since I last saw you?" Maya asked, which made her brother laugh.

"No," he told her.

"I swear you got taller. Or maybe I got shorter, like that's possible." She set him down, soon to have her young sisters swooping in for hugs, too. "Hey, so I didn't think this through, and we really shouldn't eat in there in case of spills, so maybe we should go and sit over there to have…" she reached into the car and pulled out the box of cupcakes.

The plan was fully approved by all. They were more than familiar with their grandmother's recipe, and it would be a challenge just to eat the cupcakes and not inhale them. Sitting with them as they told her about their afternoon in animated voices and hand gestures, Maya thought of how she'd have to go back to Austin in a couple of days. Being here like this with all of them, her brothers and sisters of the Hart-Lane side, she would experience her own bit of separation anxiety whenever the time came to leave them again. The difference between her and Wyatt, of course, was that she had the power to decide and come see them on the spur of a moment, as she had since their relocation to Arizona. She'd keep those going, of course, though now she was cooking up a plan to have them over in Austin in the summer, all of them, and maybe her cousins, too…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners