August 10th 2020

Chapter 223
Their Blaze of Cheer

"I forgot the singing," Maya mumbled, as she woke up on Christmas Eve to the sounds of her mother-in-law from below. Lucas laughed, only to find this stalled by her hand over his mouth. "The thing about us being quiet up here is that she doesn't know we're awake, and then she'll leave us alone. And if she leaves us alone, well then who knows what might happen," she gave him a pointed look which left him with a look that suggested he was thinking strongly about these supposed possibilities.

"It's Christmas Eve morning, there's no escaping her," he finally had to concede. Maya sighed.

"I know, I know," she promised, taking her chances at the very least to hold on to him a little while longer before they had to go downstairs.

The singing had begun, and though in itself it was very much appreciated for how it showed Melinda's recovery from the fire and the smoke, it was more than that. Maya so well the first year she had found herself waking in the Friar house on a twenty-fourth of December. She'd heard that same cheerful bit of carols from beyond Lucas' room, been woken up by it with a confusion her then boyfriend did not share. He'd told her how this was an every year thing in his parents' house, how it meant his mother was already working at whatever food things she could get done the day before, for Christmas Day.

"I remember being seven, barely awake and standing next to her on a step stool, rolling cookie dough in my hands," he'd told her, smiling at the memory. "Every year after that, if I didn't come along on my own, she came looking for her 'favorite helper.' When I moved out, I think that's one of the things she regretted the most."

Rather than to have her come and seek them out, Lucas and Maya got out of bed and headed down the stairs, where they were first greeted by the dogs, which now counted Trix, Lou, Archer, and Crowley, and of course Duke. The elder Friars' dog had been a fretful mess when they'd first brought him back from the neighbors'. Lucas had been doing his best to help him in the days since, and while he had gotten better, to a point, he would still get jumpy, would still be found hiding under the kitchen table from time to time. He was there now, watching Melinda as she worked at the counter, with her holiday apron on and everything.

She had not been back to her own house since the fire, but her husband, son, and daughter-in-law had all been out there a few times. After a couple days of uncertainty, they had gotten some good news. While the kitchen would need extensive repairs, inside and out, the fire had not caused any damages sufficient to make the house unsafe. They could go back inside, though there was no question of them staying there until the repairs had been completed, this being decided by Lucas and Maya, who insisted that the parents could stay with them as long as it was needed, as much as by Melinda's ongoing inability to walk into her own house and see what the fire had done.

Those repairs wouldn't start until after New Year's Day, but at least they had been able to collect some items to bring over to the younger Friars' house, to make Thomas and Melinda feel a bit less displaced. This included the infamous Christmas apron, which had survived for having been in the laundry room when the fire happened. Really, there was nothing for them to save from the kitchen, and it had been so disheartening for all of them to see it the first time. Just having to tell Melinda that her cookbooks, including her mother's handwritten recipes, had been lost had felt like knocking someone down while they were still trying to get up from the last blow.

This had been softened somewhat by Melinda's brother, Michael, who had surrendered his own copies, after having scanned them to his computer for himself, as an early Christmas present. He had been just one of the elder Friars' family to have been brought around by the news of the fire.

Pappy Joe and Patty had come over from Houston, along with the Hillards, two days after the incident. That was when they had been told about it, and Maya had never seen Lucas' grandfather so upset, not just at the fire, and the injuries it had caused, but almost primarily at the fact that it had taken this long for him to be told. They could all see the source of this upset was really just that his son and daughter-in-law had been put in peril, but they carried on as though they had no idea, for his sake.

And though bound by their children's union most of all, Katy and Shawn had been indispensable in those few days, for whatever purpose they might have been needed. The whole thing really just made it feel as though Christmas had been turned into a week-long event, with the constant flow of family and friends dropping by the house on the lane, so much so that they could not count one dinner, and hardly any lunches, some breakfasts, too, where they hadn't had at least a couple of guests on top of their temporary lodgers in the basement. They would not have wanted it any other way.

Approaching the kitchen now, the singing felt almost like a siren song, drawing them in. Melinda Friar could count among her many talents the fact that she could mostly carry a tune. Oh, she would never have taken to a stage or been asked to, but on the whole she was solid. She had been keeping mostly quiet in the days after the fire, Thomas had suggested, for the express purpose of letting herself recover enough to be able to maintain this small tradition. And though they had been able to hear from her how she had genuinely recovered for the most part, over the previous day, her singing now… That was the most they'd heard from her since before the fire.

"Oh, good, you're awake," their song bird beamed as she saw them. She was in her element right now. She still had trouble doing certain things without feeling afraid, but if she could do the rest then she could convince herself that everything was fine. She needed that today, and it would be their express privilege to enable her to carry on.

"We heard your call," Maya smirked, and her mother-in-law laughed, moving up to embrace her and Lucas both.

"Well, I'm hardly on your level," Melinda humbly insisted, and Maya smiled, accepting the compliment.

"What can we do to help?" Lucas asked.

"Can you go and see if your father is awake? He…" she started to ask, only to stop and look a bit crestfallen at realizing what she'd been about to ask. She'd just gone and gotten carried away by the spirit of the morning, forgetting how her Thomas could not help her this year, as he had done for nearly thirty years. Sure, he had gotten better at managing despite the state of his hands, to a certain point, but he still needed help for so many things, and there was just no way he would have been able to do anything to help his wife today.

"I'll go see," Lucas touched his mother's shoulder. "He'll love to hear you singing," he smiled, and Melinda smiled back with a nod.

"Only if you'll join me," she turned to Maya. "A little harmony with my favorite daughter."

"You hear that?" Maya grinned over to Lucas, as though she was not the one and only. He chuckled, heading down to the basement.

Thomas Friar was indeed awake, and, as the sound of Melinda and Maya's voices echoed out from above, Lucas found him sitting on the edge of the bed, feet on the ground, hands on his knees, just listening. He blinked and moved to rise when he saw his son.

"Help me with my robe, will you?" he pointed, and Lucas moved at once to get the blue thing and help his father get one arm in and then the other. Every time he heard his father wince, or felt him jolt from pain, Lucas felt a pinch of his own. He hated seeing him like this, when he'd always been so solid. It was temporary, he knew, and really he should have counted it as a good thing that he at least felt something, but it didn't make it easier at all.

"How long have you been sitting there like that?" he asked his father.

"Oh, well, I woke up and I could hear Mel," Thomas explained. "When I did, I could barely move. I didn't realize until now how much I had missed her voice." He turned a smile to his son at this, and Lucas returned it. The two of them were easily best placed to understand the power of Melinda Friar – née Sullivan – and the way she spoke… a lot and with great energy. Some not so accustomed people may have been thrown off by the volume of it, but to those who knew her best, it was just such a part of her. They had never felt this so true as they did in the last few days, when they didn't hear it. "I sat up when she stopped, and I knew you and Maya were up there with her." He paused for a moment, listening. "They sound good together," he smiled.

"Yeah, they do, don't they?" Lucas turned his eyes up, catching his mother and his wife singing along. Maya could have easily overpowered, but she didn't, instead matching her mother-in-law. "Next thing you know, they'll end up in the Hex." Thomas laughed, signalling to the stairs. Lucas nodded, and he went and stood behind his father as he started on his way up. It wasn't as though he had never gone up or down stairs without holding the ramp, but now that he couldn't, he wanted to be careful, especially for how his leg would complicate this trek up or down. For that, he always had someone in ahead of him when he went down and behind him when he went up.

Even as they got to the top of the stairs and approached the kitchen, the two Friar men couldn't help but stand back and listen in on their respective wives, caroling along. Sam was off with the Hart-Lanes, who had flown in a couple days ago to spend the holidays here. They had heard about the fire, of course, and so they had changed their plans, making the trip over from Tucson rather than to have Sam come to join them, when he clearly wanted to stick around Austin to be near Maya and Lucas and the elder Friars. They were staying up at the Zvolensky summer home again.

"How long do you think we can stay out here before…" Lucas whispered, only for him and his father both to be surprised by Maya as she popped her head out of the kitchen.

"You know, you can hear so much better from in here," she squinted at them in mock 'ha ha, caught you' tones.

"That would make sense, yes," Thomas slowly nodded, as Maya smiled now, coming up to greet him.

"If you join in, you get extra bacon," she informed him as he carefully hugged her back.

"Now this just got interesting," he laughed, sounding much more like his own father now. The trio headed into the kitchen, where their Christmas Eve morning concert resumed in full force, to the betterment of each of their singers' hearts.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners