A/N: Morning! A second deleted scene has been added! Another later today hopefully!

March 28th 2020

Chapter 88
Their Summer in Chores

"Can you reach it?"

"I think so," Lucas braced himself on the ladder before looking down and carefully climbing up to the next step.

"I got you, go ahead," Pappy Joe told him, standing below, holding the ladder.

"I know," Lucas told him, smiling to show he was not concerned. "Okay, I'm good," he reported.

"You really didn't have to," Patty insisted, standing nearby and looking up as well as he went about dusting the framed artworks high on the wall. "No one really notices, and if they do then they know to keep their mouths shut about it." It made Pappy Joe laugh. "Joseph, the ladder," Patty warned.

"Sorry, dear, I've got it, don't worry."

It had been so much a part of his life growing up, the big house cleans every season. Growing up with Melinda Friar, cleanliness had been right near the top of the list along with courtesy, politeness, honesty… And every summer, this would extend to Pappy Joe's house as well. He would usually grumble and tell his daughter-in-law it wasn't necessary, but then he knew her well enough to guess whether or not that would make any difference, so he'd let her do it anyway. After he'd moved in with them, after his fall, it had fallen to just their house, and then he'd moved in with the Hillards, and finally with his new wife, Professor Robinson, so that had been that.

But then on a whim, when the two of them had come to Austin to see Katy's play, they had been talking and he'd said that if they ever wanted it, he'd be happy to come over and see to anything they might have needed help with around the house. Now here he was, up a ladder.

Dusting the top frames had seen him have to continued down with the next row, and the next one, but finally he was back on the ground and he looked up.

"There," he breathed, knowing that he'd be coughing if not for his having covered his nose and mouth with a makeshift mask before going up the ladder.

"Do you know what, I'd forgotten that big one there had those gold details in the wood," Patty pointed to a big frame in the top row. "Now I'm kind of sorry I didn't get it done earlier," she pressed a hand to her cheek, smiling sheepishly.

"Happy to do it," Lucas nodded. Pappy Joe chuckled, reaching over to bat some dust off his grandson's head and shoulders.

"You look like you're off to rob a train there," he declared before Lucas got the scarf off from around his face.

"I'll get started on the windows," he told his grandparents, folding up the ladder.

He remembered the first time he had been to this house, with Maya. The both of them had been left sort of in awe to even be here, at her professor's home. The place wasn't massive, by any means, but it had that refined quality to it, which went right along with someone like Patty. She'd want them to call her by her first name, but they'd still feel that compulsion born of manners to call her by her title and her surname. It didn't matter that she treated them both like family already, it was all so natural to them.

And then she'd gone and become his grandmother, by marriage as well as by her own caring nature, which was, according to Sophie, to be 'the world's best grandma.' And now Pappy Joe was living here with her. Since he'd moved in here, the place had not changed so much, but they could definitely spot out the changes which would have been brought on by his presence. If there was ever any doubt that the artist and professor could belong with the man who still looked like he was followed by a twangy soundtrack wherever he went, they only needed to look at the two of them together, in this place, and they'd know Joseph Friar and Patty Robinson could never have ended up anywhere else than here, together, so long as their paths ever came to cross.

Lucas could not speak to the state of his new grandmother's life before the marriage, but as to his grandfather… He knew that he'd gone through enough in his life, suffering losses that affected him so deeply, from his little Annabeth long ago, to his first wife and Lucas' grandmother, Susannah. His fall down the stairs and the effects it had on him, physically, that was all different, but it was impactful nonetheless. Joseph Friar had always been an active man, a man of strength and practicality, and all of a sudden to find himself limited… It had forced him to face the fact that he was growing older, to the point where it had felt as though everyone else had forgotten his age, too, and suddenly… suddenly he was old. Lucas had worried, just as his father did, that, if this kept up, they could lose him, so much sooner than they ever expected to.

And then Patty Robinson had happened, and she'd been brought into his midst, and it was like he'd found his fountain of youth again and bounced back… maybe not exactly the way he'd been before the fall, but near enough as to make it feel like none of it had ever happened. Lucas didn't know that he'd seen his grandfather be quite so happy, not since… well, not since before Susannah Friar had passed.

For himself, Lucas had not known how he would deal with the idea of a new grandmother. He'd had… two of the best ones there could ever be, Susannah Friar and Marianne Sullivan. Having lost them both so long ago now, it was easy to see them as sort of the idealized versions created by a boy, but then he only had to hear the way people spoke about them both, missed them both, and he knew he remembered them as they were. He had been made into the man he was today, in great part, for who they had been to him as a boy.

And when Patty had come along, well… She'd started to have a place in his life, even before the thought of her ever becoming family was ever on the table. She'd been Maya's new professor, who was wonderful and inspiring to her, and then he'd met her, and he'd seen why Maya would be so pulled toward her the way she was. Then when she'd met Pappy Joe, it had never really occurred to him that the two of them would end up married, but… he saw how happy she made him, and if his grandfather was happy then Patty Robinson was right where she belonged. Before long, he would come to see that… yeah… he wanted to call her his grandmother, and so he did. She was not erasing the presence of those who'd come before her, no. She was joining them, a third pillar, bringing that much more stability.

It had also gone and opened up this position where Thomas Friar found himself with a stepbrother in Patty's son, Nick. And there was Nick's daughter, Maddie, who had been one of Lucas' campers back when he'd been a counselor and was suddenly his… step cousin? Whatever the term, the girl had been very surprised and actually amused to learn that they were now family, and especially for the link it gave her to one of her favorite singers. She had introduced her grandmother to TXNY years back, and then Maya had been her grandmother's student, and now she was going to be married to her new cousin, so that as good as made it so Maya was her cousin, too.

"I think you've done enough for today," Patty came to find him, in mid-afternoon.

He was up on his ladder again, cleaning the top cupboards in the kitchen, silently singing along to the music on the radio, something that almost came naturally, like it was part of the activity, per his mother's example. It all sort of happened automatically, so much so that he wasn't even thinking about what he was singing to as he did it. Instead, he was thinking – as ever, this summer – about his 'buddy' down at the shelter. Every time someone came into the shelter looking to adopt a dog, there'd be this pause where Lucas and whoever else was there at the time would wonder if they should bring out Shadow or not. Maybe he'd find his people, but at the same time, maybe he'd go haywire again and scare them away…

Lucas stalled mid-lyric and looked down at the sound of his grandmother's voice, hoping that he didn't look too much like he'd been busted in the act of doing something much more shameful.

"You can come down and I'll get started on dinner."

"I'm almost done," he promised, pointing to the cabinets.

"Well, I won't stop you, I'm too much of a completionist to argue with that," she smiled up at him.

"I think that might be me, too," Lucas laughed, getting back to work. "Sophie said you guys went to visit her the other day?"

"Yes, Thursday," Patty told him. "She's coming along on her recovery, what a relief…" she breathed, and Lucas could only nod. "At the risk of being too forward, has she spoken about nightmares again, or have those stopped?"

"Not stopped, no, but I think they've been happening less," Lucas replied, the thought of it leaving him pulled out of focus for a moment. That Sophie had these problems was not a secret. They knew about the nightmares, just not what they were. They didn't know the specifics of what had happened to her that night and if she wasn't ready to discuss it then they wouldn't push her, even if it opened up their minds to any number of horrible possibilities.

"She will get through this," Patty declared with confidence.

"She will," Lucas agreed. Sophie had told him about the visit because she'd been so touched that they'd wanted to look in on her, and he was left feeling the same way. Pappy Joe and Patty had hosted him and Maya through those days they'd spent back in Houston after the incident. They hadn't gone by the hospital to see Sophie, not wanting to crowd her in those more difficult first days and weeks, but they'd sent flowers and treats and books, by way of Maya and Lucas, while also asking after her every time the two of them would return to the house…

"What would you say if we just ordered in?" Patty asked, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"Oh, sure, yeah, I just…" he started, then paused. His ear was drawn to the music coming from the radio on the kitchen counter.

He knew that melody, he'd heard it… He'd heard it hummed by his fiancée, for days upon days, weeks ago. And the words… He knew them, too. The voice was new though, but he'd known to look for that, he'd known…

"Oh…" he moved off the ladder as quickly as he could without falling, sweeping over to the radio to turn up the volume.

"What is it?" Patty asked, while he was tapping away at his phone.

"That's Maya's, she wrote it," he quickly explained. "The first one, with the contract… Had no idea it would come so fast…" His face was locked in a smile, and it took him back to that night of Katy's premiere, seeing Shawn's face turned up to the stage. He knew he must have looked something like that right about now. When his phone rang, seconds later, he picked it up and knew it would be her even without looking at the screen.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners