June 22nd 2020

Chapter 174
Their Night With Knowledge

Missy's mother had returned from work to find her daughter, husband, and in-laws sat out on the porch with their neighbors from up the lane and her daughter's boy friend, each at various stages of consuming the pie they had been served.

"Mom!" Missy had bolted up excitedly as she walked up from her car. "Coraline had the puppies!"

"She did?" Lilah Sanderson smiled, for the news as much as her daughter's excitement.

"Yeah, she started not long after you left this morning. She had nine puppies. Nine! And they're all okay, and they're really cute, come on," she led her into the house. Lilah greeted Maya, Lucas, and Kai in passing as she was pulled along, much to her husband's amusement.

"She's been going on and on about how she can't wait until September, now that you're going to be her teacher," he turned to Maya once they'd disappeared through the door.

"It's kind of weird sometimes," Maya smiled at this. "I know her, and I know she goes there, but it hasn't sunk in yet that she's going to be in my classroom… Hasn't even sunk in that I'm going to have a classroom, especially one I used to go to as a student…" How many hours had she spent in that room, during class or not? Her teacher would just let her come in and work on some piece or another, her teacher… who she was now replacing. Dylan had been getting a kick out of declaring that 'the student now becomes the master.'

She'd met with Mrs. Yang, just last week. She'd called the house one evening, saying that Lindsay Alcott had gotten in touch with her. She'd told the former teacher about her replacement, and as she told Maya over the phone, she could not be happier with the choice. She hadn't gone into details as to why she'd left her post so abruptly, after all those years, though she assured Maya that it had nothing to do with the school or anyone in it. They were lucky to have this fresh new teacher to carry on the torch for the arts. When they'd gotten together, Mrs. Yang had given her a box full of papers separated by grades, containing notes, and works, from those students she had taught and who would now be passed on to Maya's care.

"Don't look at them yet," she had suggested. "You should get to know them for yourself in the beginning. That probably sounds ominous," she'd reflected after a beat, shaking her head with a chuckle. "I simply think it best that you make your own opinions. Then, after three, four weeks, you can get to know them as I know them. Good kids, most of them, and the rest of them… well, they have potential. It's up to you now to help them find it."

It had been so tempting to open the box and look through the files, but she had resisted it. Mrs. Yang was right, she should get to know them first. Assumptions could be correct at times, but they could also be entirely misleading. So, she'd stored the box up on her closet shelf and left it there, to be opened again closer to October.

What she had to look forward to, after the wedding, after the honeymoon, sometime in August, was the opportunity to go into the school, into her classroom, to go ahead and prepare the space before the start of the year. She was possibly much too excited at the prospect, but how could she not be? This would be her room, for who knew how many years to come, where she would welcome her students, get to know them, to teach them, to watch them grow and evolve.

"I always liked art class," Kai commented, with a smile suggesting he was looking forward to it even more now that she would be their teacher. Both he and Missy were starting in the 9th grade this year, which would mean that they would be new to the school, too, although she had that added advantage in that she'd previously been a student there. It wouldn't really matter, not to the students anyway. To some of them she would be 'fresh meat,' until she showed them where they actually stood.

"Well, that makes two of us," Maya smiled back at the boy, showing in her case that she was looking forward to have him as one of her students.

When Missy and her mother came back out to the porch, the girl was still going on about the birth of number four, the one puppy who had truly given them reason to worry for a moment. Lilah received the tale of her daughter's brief anguish and turned a look of some gratitude toward their neighbor. Much like Walt and Joanne Sanderson, who had been a presence for being friends of his grandparents, Lucas had grown up knowing Mitch and Lilah. Although for a while he hadn't seen much of them, between Pappy Joe moving in with them back when Lucas lived at home, and then being off in Houston for four years, he had lost touch with them until he and Maya had moved out here. Missy had been just a tiny kid back then, and suddenly here she was, their zombie ballerina.

He most vividly remembered coming out here, couldn't have been more than five or six. Mitch couldn't have been more than eighteen, and whenever Lucas' grandparents would take him up to the farm, he would just trail along after the Sanderson boy, who would let him assist with whatever work he was doing that day. Lucas always loved it the best whenever they'd be tending to the animals. He remembered when Mitch and Lilah had been dating, and he had been there the day they were married. Now, tomorrow, the two of them would be sitting among family and friends to see him get married.

This was really one of the places where his dream of becoming a vet had started, wasn't it? Sullivan Stables was one, and the Sanderson farm was the other. It was almost too perfect that he was here today and then tomorrow, the ranch… He wasn't going to be assisting in any births tomorrow, but he would be out there, where so much family history had taken place, and he and Maya would go and add their own chapter.

"We really shouldn't keep you, I'm sure you have so much to do before tomorrow," Joanne told the nearlyweds.

"Oh, it's alright," Lucas promised her. "She's not eager to go I think," he tipped his head to Maya, who confirmed as much with a shake of the head.

"Our friends are back at the house, waiting to take me away for the night," she revealed, which made Missy's parents and grandparents smile or laugh knowingly.

"Why?" Missy asked, leaving both Maya and Lucas unsure of how to respond. She was fifteen, it wasn't like she wouldn't understand, but being right there with her family, it felt weird to answer.

"It's bad luck to see the bride before the wedding," her grandmother told her with a smirk. "We did the same thing the night before we were married, your grandfather and I, and so did your mom and dad," she went on, pointing toward her son and her daughter-in-law, who suddenly became very interested in their lemonade. There were too many eyes on them now to be able to pretend all too long.

"It's been seventeen years, alright?" Mitch took the bullet for the both of them. "I'd say we've been very lucky, haven't we?" he laughed. Under more pressing looks, the story was finally shared, after nearly two decades kept in the dark, between Mitch and Lilah.

The night before their wedding, as Joanne Sanderson told it, the bride and groom were separated, spending the night at their respective parents' homes. Only after a while, after finding themselves unable to fall asleep, a call had happened. Specifically, Mitch had been reaching for his phone when Lilah's call came in. In no time, he had snuck out of the house, driving off to her parents' house, where he was let in and the two of them had a peaceful night's sleep before Mitch woke up very early and returned back to the farm and his own bed. Ten seconds more and he would have been busted, but he hadn't, and so the secret had held.

"Any chance we get that on paper and it holds?" Maya grinned, as the Sandersons continued to look surprised at this tale.

"You want to try that with my mother?" Lucas asked her, making her sigh at once. Melinda may have learned from Joanne Sanderson, but she had absolutely outpaced the master.

"Alright, fair enough. Maybe we should start heading back… After we go see the puppies again," she added, leading the way into the house at an eager pace. Lucas followed gladly, along with Missy and Kai.

They had erected something of a barrier around the area where Coraline and the puppies were set up, in case any of those nine 'wrinkly butts' got it in them to wander off in any way. The little family was still taking it easy, as far as they saw, and they almost felt bad to think they'd all have to be taken off somewhere else for the night and the day to come, but there really was no other way without any of them sacrificing something. Besides, Kai was happy to do it, and Missy trusted him.

"I'll ask my aunt to drop by your place on her way in tomorrow, if that's alright," Lucas told Kai. "She can get a look at them and make sure everything's fine."

"Yeah, okay," Kai agreed. Lucas would have been back to see the puppies himself, but then he really couldn't be late, couldn't set anything back. They had been talking about the wedding on and off throughout the day, and across the last few weeks, but somehow this was the exact moment where it all fell into place, felt most real. He was getting married in the morning. His heart was drumming, telling him Maya wouldn't be the only one having trouble settling down tonight.

"If you come up with any names, text me?" Maya asked Missy as they hugged goodnight.

"I've been trying to think of groups of nine," Missy nodded. "So far I only thought of planets, and that might be weird for some of them. Like who would name a puppy Earth? And there's the whole Pluto thing, and… whichever one would get called Uranus…" she mumbled, like she didn't want Kai to hear.

"You'll think of something," Maya laughed. "Please don't call them that," she added in a whisper, which made the girl laugh. Her future student… "Well, you named their mother Coraline, maybe you can get some more names from that book, or other books of his," she suggested, watching Missy's face light up with the possibility.

"I'll look into it."

"Kai can probably help you, yeah?" Maya added, still whispering, and she walked off to say goodbye to the rest of the Sandersons, while Lucas finally came back from seeing the puppies. He was given a hug from their young neighbor as well.

"Thank you for today. I'm sorry you had to come out here instead of staying home."

"It was my pleasure," Lucas promised her, smiling. "You did us a favor, believe me. We're going to remember today a lot more than if we'd just been back there on our own. We'll get to tell the story of when Coraline had her puppies the day before we got married." Missy looked very glad to hear this, like she'd inadvertently given them a gift, through little to no action of her own.

"See you tomorrow," she told Lucas as he went and rejoined Maya and they started back for home.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners