May 2nd 2020

Chapter 123
Their Rally Around Plans

"Yes, absolutely, you will receive the list on Friday at the latest. Yes… Alright, thank you."

As she hung up the phone, Maya had a moment of just hearing her own voice that made her smile. Every so often, her father would come to pick her mother up from the theater, and some of her siblings would be along for the ride, so they would naturally come and say hello to their big sister, too. On a few of those times, she'd received calls and had to answer them while the twins looked on. They would look so amused, and finally, Maya had asked what was so funny. Gracie, of course, wouldn't say a word, but then Nellie was much too amused to stay quiet, and she explained that she thought Maya sounded like a 'grown up' when she answered office calls.

"I'm a what now?" she would pretend to be shocked, which would make both girls laugh.

She didn't know if she would qualify it as a 'grown up' voice, she was just putting forth as much of a voice that would get people to trust she knew what she was talking about, not some kid or… Alright, maybe they had a point. Personally, she thought she sounded a lot like their mother when she was on a theater call. She wondered what her mother thought she sounded like when she was on the…

"Maya?"

She blinked, thinking for a moment that she was conjuring up that voice in her head, only to realize her mother stood just at her office door.

"Hey! Sorry, I was just… What's up?" she sat up. Something about working with her mother made her very conscientious as to whether she was slouching or not. Katy stepped into the office and shut the door. When she turned around, she had a great big smile on her face which gave Maya pause as she tried to interpret it. "Mom?" she stood from her chair, wondering more and more what this was about. If this was another new sibling, she was going to lose her mind…

"I got the part!" Katy whispered excitedly, and Maya's breath released before she could go ahead and hurry into her mother's arms to congratulate her.

"I knew you would," she squeezed her tight.

"It's going to complicate things," her mother declared with a bit of a sigh, like she could only be so happy without also feeling guilty for doing this even though others would have to make some sacrifices in order for her to be able to go out to Dallas for the performances. Mostly, it would be likely to affect the Hunter kids, who might have to go without their mother for days at a time. It would have been one thing if they were all still very small, but the twins were in school now, and MJ in preschool, and Haley in daycare… They couldn't all go with her, and even if they had, someone would have had to go with them…

"Dad and I already told you we would make it work if you got it, and now you did, so we will," Maya stated, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. "Okay?" she jostled her mother's arms so she would get excited again. Katy laughed and she was hugged again for it.

A knock at the door halted the mini celebration, and when Maya looked to the window panel next to her door and spotted a familiar looking crutch, she went to open the door. The surprise of Cecilia's visit was one thing, but the discovery that she was accompanied by Dora Cassidy only heightened it.

"Hey," Maya smiled. "What are you doing here?" As Katy excused herself and went back to her office, the girls walked in.

"I texted Dora at lunch, and we got to talking," Cecilia explained, looking over to her friend. "I told her about Thanksgiving, and how, well… Sam's been kind of off the last few days, distracted," she went on, as Dora gave a nod to indicate she agreed with this assessment. Maya looked to the two of them and let out a breath.

Oh, she'd been aware of it, too, how could she not? She saw Sam every day back home, and it was as the girls said it. His mind was in many places and rarely was that place centered on what was happening around him. The news of his mother's pregnancy had more or less run through his mind like a chaos beast, unlocking all those little pockets where he would think about home and how he missed his family until they sprang from their hiding places and melded into a single, raging beast. Now, that beast sat in the middle of his mind, blocking the view he might have had of the rest of the world. And every day, the beast grew stronger.

"I know, I've seen it," Maya told the girls, motioning for them to sit in front of her desk, while she brought her own chair around to be with theirs.

"He misses his family, his other family," Dora stated, in a voice that said plainly 'we all know this, but someone has to actually say it.' "Maybe we could go and see them, just over the weekend," she suggested.

"From experience, that doesn't tend to go the way you think," Maya had to tell her, much as she appreciated the initiative. "Mostly it just confuses things even more, and then he'll come back here and it'll either be the same or it'll be worse."

"Oh…" Dora bowed her head a moment. Cecilia looked much the same, which told Maya this might have been her thought as well.

"Look, Sam chose to come here, and he's been doing great, especially with you two being there for him," she told the two girls as they looked back up to her. "It was still hard for him to go, with our father dying, and how much it affected the other kids… He's told you about that, hasn't he?" They nodded. "Right," Maya nodded along, rather than to say 'oh, good, I could have been putting my foot where it didn't belong.' "He didn't want to leave them behind, and now this new baby is coming, and it's like he's gone back to that place in his head, where he needs to be with them, to be the big brother."

"After my mom died, my father took me with him to the dance school where she worked. I'd been there so many times, for as long as I can remember, but it wasn't the same. I missed her so much…" Cecilia recalled openly. The room remained silent for a few beats. "So what do we do instead?"

"I…" Maya shook her head, trying to come up with an answer. There was no single right one, was there? It all stemmed from who needed the help and who was doing the helping, didn't it? Given the right combination, they could make something happen for the better, otherwise… "I think the two of you are in the best position to help him," she finally stated, going by way of truth if nothing else. "You can figure it out together, and I will do what I can to pitch in if you need me to."

The girls looked to one another. No one would ever imagine that they had recently gone through that whole debacle over Halloween. Cecilia had figured out for herself that Dora had these feelings for Sam, while Dora gave every impression that she had pieced together the fact that Cecilia was aware. And despite all that, the two of them showed not one drop of animosity or jealousy. If anything, this connection might have brought them closer together as friends, because for all they knew, there was also trust, unbreakable, between all parties involved.

"Are you busy Friday night?" Dora asked Cecilia, who shook her head. "Can we come over Friday night?" Dora turned to Maya now.

"Absolutely," Maya smiled. Just like that, Dora motioned for Cecilia to follow and the girls left the office.

Maya sat back in her chair for a moment before stretching her arm across her desk to grab her phone and text Lucas to let him know they'd be having company on Friday night, possibly into Saturday morning, depending on what the girls would decide to do.

Lucas: Sam?

Maya: Better that than finding them at a train station in the middle of the night.

The callback was a joke, mostly, but maybe something honest in the middle, too. She could look to all of her siblings and pinpoint some quality in them that they shared. Nellie was so like her in how scattered she could be, right up until someone she cared about needed comfort and support. Gracie was patiently observant about her surroundings, picking up on details others might now. MJ would find joy in the silliest things. Haley… she was only two, but she could recognize in her something that felt a lot like the way she responded to new people. On the flipside, Cara was just as deeply grounded in musicality as she was. And Eliza… her sweet Lizard simply thrived on passion, on inspiration. Wyatt, who she'd known from the youngest age of her paternal half-siblings, had grown from a babe in arms to a boy of seven years, and still in all that time had remained someone with a world in his head larger than what his brain could ever hope to carry.

For all that, and even though their characters may have appeared vastly different on the surface, Sam was the most like her. He had her heart, weighed in insecurities, in a sense of duty to the people in his life, who could bring him to his highest highs and lowest lows, simply for being present or absent. She knew exactly what he was feeling right now, how it would weigh on him, and for all that she also knew that she couldn't be the one to restore his balance. For her, it had been Lucas. It had been him, and Riley, and all the friends she had made here, and for Sam it was going to be those two girls who had come to her today, seeking guidance on how to help him. He was as lucky to have them as she was to have her own circle of friends.

As much as she knew Cecilia and Dora would have to be the ones to remind Sam that he was okay here, that the others would also be okay out in Arizona, and that the distance would not mean so much as he felt it did now… She still couldn't help but sit here and try to figure out what to do for him. It was as she'd told Dora, they couldn't just take Sam out to Tucson for a quick visit right now. It would only get him worse off once he had to leave again. The reverse would also be true, if his family came over to Austin. He needed to be balanced again before that could happen.

"Hey, I'm not calling at a bad time, am I?" Maya asked, when Abigail picked up.

"Not at all," her stepmother replied. "To be honest, I was expecting this sooner or later."

"Makes sense," Maya had to smile. Back in the day, she couldn't explain how she and this woman who had essentially gotten the life her own mother had never gotten had bonded so swiftly, but today it was all so clear, wasn't it? She and Sam were so similar at heart, and Abigail had recognized it in her husband's firstborn from the moment she'd met her. "So… What can we do about Sam?"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners