A/N: Hey everyone! Hoping to get the first deleted scene done and posted sometime today. It will be in a separate story, so be on the lookout for that! And suggestions are welcome anytime!

March 25th 2020

Chapter 85
Their Summer in Austin

"He knows they're not staying here, right?" Lucas whispered as he and Maya stood together, watching Sam. He'd been making his way along, cleaning around the house, since they'd come down the stairs for breakfast earlier.

"Am I being a bad big sister for letting him do it?" Maya whispered back. Lucas looked at her. "He's just so meticulous about it," she shrugged. "And if it makes him happy to do it, who am I to stop him?"

"Okay, but we have to leave for the airport in like half an hour," Lucas reminded her. "He's coming with us, isn't he?" Maya considered her options for a moment, the options being 'to stop him or not to stop him.' Finally, she sighed and stepped forward.

"Hey, uh, Sammy? Sam, hey!" she called out to her little brother until he stopped and looked at her, sponge in hand. "Hey, how's it going?" she smiled.

"Good, yeah," he nodded.

"Great," Maya told him, still with that smile of casual curiosity. "It's just that, well, we have to leave for the airport soon, to pick up everyone off that Tucson flight. You are coming with us, right?"

"We're going now?" he asked, looking at himself for a moment.

"Half an hour, if you need to… yeah…" she stepped back as he put the sponge where it belonged and moved to go upstairs. Maya looked back to Lucas. "Do I need to worry about this?"

"He's been living away from most of his family for almost a year now, I think maybe it's just really hitting him that he misses them and he wants to show them that he's doing okay," Lucas shrugged.

"I get that, it's just…" Maya gestured, trying to come up with the right words and coming up short.

"I know," Lucas told her.

"How?" Maya asked, as though to say 'I don't even know.'

"Experience," he shrugged, nodding at her to indicate who he had experience with. Words or no, hers was the face he knew the most. She might as well have been carrying a sign.

"You ever think that one of these days the whole Huckleberry thing isn't gonna work anymore?" she wondered, pointing at his face.

"Is it?" he inquired. She looked at him a few seconds more, finally letting her hand down.

"Nope," she declared, smiling at him before moving toward the stairs, listening carefully before calling out. "Still changing?"

"Yes!" Sam called back. Maya turned to look at Lucas to see if the beat of silence had left him thinking the same thing she thought. He nodded.

"Put down the duster, sponge, or other cleaning implement, we're heading out!"

It was just as well that they left early. By the time they made it to the airport lot it appeared as though the whole place was occupied, and it took them a good ten minutes to find a spot to park. It was going to take several minutes more for them to reach the terminal and get to the gate where the Hart-Lanes would be coming through. Maya went the whole way arm in arm with her brother, who tried to look embarrassed but never really tried to pull away either.

"Are we late? Did they land?" he asked as they approached.

"No, we're good," Lucas reported, looking at the board.

"I used to think I spent a lot of time in airports after moving out here, but now it's really starting to be way more, isn't it?" Maya wondered aloud. "When friends would come to visit, we'd have a sign and everything," she told Sam, who now looked like he wished he had one. "No time for a masterpiece right now, Sammy. Don't worry, they'll still know you're happy to see them."

The plane landed on time, maybe even a few minutes early, and before long they were in for a solid bit of a reunion. Sure, they'd seen each other not two months before, but then days could feel like an eternity when family was involved. They would get through those days, and weeks, and months, with phone calls and video calls and texts and e-mails, but as soon as re-established contact came on the table, it was like they forgot how to think about anything else. They found those familiar faces in a crowd, and suddenly they were magnets, pulled to one another.

"I have your necklace!" Wyatt informed Maya, once he'd pulled back from the tight hold he'd jumped into. "I kept it safe," he held up their father's guitar pick, hanging from the chain around his neck.

"Yeah, you did, thank you," Maya smiled as he pulled the chain from around his neck and put it back around hers The chain was just long enough that it could go over her head. It still carried some of his body warmth, which made her happier than she'd expected it might. She didn't realize how much she'd missed having their father's gift around her neck until it was returned to her, made to feel almost alive by her brother's protection.

The Hart-Lanes had a rental for the summer, which was soon loaded with luggage and passengers both. They trailed along after Lucas' car and they all started on their way to Diana Zvolensky's summer house, which was to be their residence for the next several weeks.

"Is it a big house?" Sam asked Maya and Lucas as they went.

"Well…" Maya considered the question.

"You know the house we went to when we had the sleepover?" Lucas asked.

"It's that big, too?" Sam's eyes went wide.

"No, no," Lucas quickly shook his head. "It's like… half that?" he estimated, looking to Maya out of the corner of his eye for confirmation.

"Let me put it to you this way, it will comfortably house everyone… and then some," Maya turned to look at her brother.

"Woah…" Sam blinked.

They had been there, for the first time, the second summer they'd known Sophie, and this was after they had all returned from their Europe trip. Sophie had decided it would be the best way for them to just sort of book end their vacation together.

The two of them and their friends had been up to that house… at least once a year since then, for a weekend here or a week there… Now, it would be the first of many times they'd be coming up, with the family spending weeks here. They could have come up and stayed here with the rest of them, too, but then family or no, they still had work to do, and it would just be easier if they stayed at the house.

Sam would be the only one of the three of them to stay with Abigail and James and the others. And as much as part of them would feel that they missed having him around the house, Maya and Lucas would have been lying if they said they weren't looking forward to having the house to themselves for that time.

"Hey, look, it's Mrs. Carlton!" Sam pointed out the window as they approached. "Wow…" It took them back to that first summer of coming here. It didn't matter that they had been going to Sophie's house for near on two years by then, seeing the summer house would be one of those things that reminded them again just how the Zvolensky were in a whole other bracket than they were. Even now, after seven years, they could still be caught by surprise.

"She's not spending the summer out here, too, is she?" Maya quietly asked Lucas.

"I don't think so," he whispered back. "Maybe she's just here to open the place."

That turned out to be the case, more or less. She'd come to do her usual walk through, preparing everything for the Hart-Lanes' arrival, and to give them the tour, sharing all the information they might need, such as nearby stores, restaurants, phone numbers they might need, and to hand over the keys.

When the other car pulled up and everyone climbed out, they all had that look on their faces like they thought they were in the wrong place, even Teddy and Wyatt, who had also seen the Zvolensky house and could have had some inkling. But then there were Maya, Lucas, and Sam, so they had to be in the right place… right? This wasn't a prank?

As it really was not a prank, this first surprise was followed up with the tour, as given by Mrs. Carlton. The woman had barely gone on her way back home that the Hart-Lane kids, from Sam on down to Wyatt, had taken off running to go upstairs again and decide who would sleep where.

"Don't break anything!" Abigail called after them, which was responded to by a chorus of 'okay, Mom!' by the lot.

"They are definitely going to break something, aren't they?" James mumbled to himself before looking back to his wife, who tried not to laugh, and then to his stepdaughter and her fiancé.

"I have a feeling Mrs. Carlton may have put away anything too breakable and valuable while she was here before," Maya told him. "Sophie told me how somewhere around when she was twelve or thirteen and considered 'more mature,' she started to notice some stuff around this house and their actual home that she'd never seen before, like suddenly she was considered less likely to knock things over."

"Right, well, at least when they break something it won't actually bankrupt us to replace it," James nodded.

"Maybe we should go and make sure they won't tear the place apart over who gets which room," Abigail suggested, and so she and James went up in search of their kids, while Maya and Lucas trailed behind them.

Up in the hallway, they stopped to find the kids were all mostly standing there, moving from one doorway to another. They would stand in a doorway as though they were claiming it, but then someone would wish to be next to someone, or across the hall from someone, and then that would jumble everything again. It was turning into a game and, if left unsupervised, it might have lasted all day, with everyone satisfied for it.

"You all keep this up and you'll fall asleep right where you're standing now," James pointed out.

Finally, with all the rooms selected, their bags were fetched from downstairs and unpacked to whatever degree their owners saw fit. Then it was time to go swimming in the lake.

Maya and Lucas had stayed there at the house until most of the kids had gone to bed, after which they'd hit the road for home. It had only been the first day and already they couldn't wait to see what the rest of the family's visit would bring them. As often as they had all been out to Austin by now, whenever they'd visit Maya, there was a lot they still needed and wanted to see, and there was no doubt they would have some very willing guides to get them around. Then of course there would be Cara and Teddy down at Stage Ready camp, and any number of days playing and swimming and eating together… They had already promised everyone a camping trip worthy of Pappy Joe.

"It's so weird…" Maya declared, a few seconds after they'd walked back into the house.

"What is?" Lucas asked.

"Just that… it's going to make it sound like he was loud, which he really isn't, but… the house feels so quiet right now without Sam." Lucas looked around, both of them silent.

"No, you're right," he nodded. "Just give it a second though, I'm sure…" Like they'd been summoned, the dogs came trotting about, Archer giving no mind to it being late as he barked up at them in greeting. "Oh, buddy," Lucas reached down to pick him up. "If we thought we were going to be the ones missing Sam these next few weeks…" he shook his head, scratching the pup.

"I'd say take him to the summer house, but if we do they're all going to want to take him back to Tucson in the end," Maya came up smiling at little Archer, too. "You're staying right here with us," she whispered at him. He barked. "Good, then it's settled."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners