A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

August 12th 2020

Chapter 225
Their Blaze of Renewal

"I really just want to poke my head in a few minutes," Maya insisted as Lucas and his parents followed her out of the car and toward the theater. It had only been meant to be her coming up here today, but then as soon as she'd mentioned she was going there, to get a look at how things were working out with the holiday rush camp, her in-laws had jumped at the chance of seeing it all in person. So they had all gotten into the car together and made their way here. Maya had barely been able to get involved with this shortened camp period, what with the situation with the elder Friars being piled on top of the holidays, but Lily had been keeping her updated the whole time, so at least she knew that all was well.

"Maya!" a cheerful voice greeted them from the top of the aisle inside the auditorium, and suddenly they were watching the fast dash of Lucas' twelve-year-old cousin as she came up toward the group and locked her arms around her teacher/coach/mentor/cousin-in-law. Her enthusiasm never presented itself as anything short of excessive. They would joke that the Sullivan genes were strong enough to surpass adoption, with how much it reminded them of Lea's Aunt Melinda.

"Hey!" Maya laughed. She had gotten much better at bracing for these running starts. In two years of the girl's attending Stage Ready, the only times she hadn't come to greet her this way was when Lea was already on stage when Maya arrived, and then all she could do was wave or smile until she came back down. "You next?" Maya guessed now, from how Lea had more or less posted herself near the stage, ensuring no one would take her spot.

"Yeah! Can you all stay to watch?" she asked, looking to her cousin, aunt, and uncle excitedly.

"Wouldn't miss it," Melinda promised her, and Lea smiled, catching her hand and pulling her along back down the aisle.

"Be right back, okay?" Maya told Lucas and his father. They nodded and she hurried off to find Lily, sitting near the front with Siobhan. The camp, as much as the regular sessions of Stage Ready, had a way of drawing in some of the theater's staff, from Siobhan on down, who would come now and then to sit in the auditorium and watch whatever was happening that day.

Maya rejoined the others just in time to sit and listen as Lea sang her song. One of the things that made Maya so driven to remain attached to the theater and to the program she had created was… this. Progress. Lea had been with them for a couple of years now, one of their top regulars, and it showed. She had already been so confident in the beginning, and while she did have notable talent in the beginning, talent and potential, now here she stood… and they could hear and see the work she had put in. She loved it as much now as she did then, maybe more, and that showed, too.

"Did you get it all?" Lea came bounding back to her aunt, who'd had her phone out and framing her the whole time.

"Every second, come here," Melinda was all smiles, pulling her niece into her arms. "Want me to send it to your fathers?" Lea wanted this very much. "Sending it now," Melinda promised, as the girl turned to her uncle and looked at his hands. It was hard not to, even now.

"You know, if you're almost done here, we're on our way to the skating rink, by your cousin's house," Thomas told her, tipping his head to Lucas. "If you want, we can call your dads to meet us there with your sisters. I won't be getting out there," he indicated his hands and his leg, "But that's all the more reason to have more people to take my place."

Soon, they were leaving the theater, the five of them, to be met by the rest of the Sullivan-Reyes family down at the rink. Lucas sat out the first bit of skating, watching his wife, mother, uncles, and cousins going about on their skates. Melinda went along, sandwiched between her brother's younger daughters, Lara and Lydia, aged nine and six. It was as Thomas had told Maya on Christmas Day, she was a natural on the ice.

"I know what you're doing, you know?" Lucas told his father, who looked over at him with intrigue. "You invited Michael and Keith and the girls so Mom wouldn't feel so bad about leaving you out here on the sidelines."

"Lucas, you know as well as I do that your mother is an excellent multitasker. Just because she's out there, doesn't mean she's not keeping an eye on me at the same time," Thomas pointed out, and Lucas looked back to the ice, just in time to catch his mother stealing a look toward them.

"Yeah, okay, alright, I get your point," he chuckled. For a few seconds, they just watched everyone out there. Maya was skating backward, leading the way with a sort of shimmy that made Lea and her sisters laugh. "But you still invited them because of Mom," Lucas told his father without looking away.

"Guess we'll never know," Thomas echoed his tone.

"Hey, Huckleberry, get your butt out here!" Maya called out a moment later.

"You've been summoned," Thomas smirked as his son moved under the rail and slid along the ice to join his wife, who promptly took off, the better for him to have to race after her.

The whole thing nearly ended up in a worst spill than the one that came when Maya looked over her shoulder to see how close he was getting and, upon finding he was no more than an arm's length away, attempted to pour on some speed and ended up tripping over herself. Now he was the one to speed up, just enough to catch her and stop her from face planting, but the motion still managed to send them both falling in a heap on the ice. By the time Keith Reyes skated over to check on them, they were both just sitting there, laughing and wincing at the same time.

That didn't stop Melinda Friar from jumping right into nurse mode once everyone had returned to the house. Lucas and Maya both were made to go and get changed, so they might have a better idea of what needed attention. Lucas had an aching back and a scraped elbow to contend with, while Maya had bruised her hip and somehow managed to get both her knees bloodied up, but on the whole it was nothing that ice and some band aids wouldn't see to. All of this had been seen to by Melinda, who right about now genuinely needed her brother and his family around in order to remind her that they'd had a good time skating.

"She always worried if anyone got hurt, but I think after the fire, it's worse now," Maya cringed as she made it to the top of the stairs that night. Lucas was right behind her, showing he was not far from her as far as feeling the effort of the climb.

"I don't think that'll ever really leave her," he agreed, keeping as best he could to the posture he'd found to minimize the pull at his back.

"We might have to rethink the whole spoon bit for a few nights," Maya pointed out as they headed into their room for a bit of very cautious changing for the night.

"Realizing that now," he was forced to admit. "What's the plan here?"

"Well…" she considered for a moment, looking at herself and then at him. Right now, her knees were just patched up and barely able to bend because of the bandages and the mess underneath them, while her hip was a field of colors rivaling with her tattoos. "I'll be on my back, and you…"

"Definitely not on my back," he shook his head.

"No," she gave a pitiful laugh for his sake. "I think you might be stuck on your stomach there."

"Not a fan, but I'll endure," he sighed, approaching her for a very light embrace.

"Don't worry, you'll be good as new next year," she teased with a smile against his chest. "Good thing for both of us that is just a few days away."

The last days of the year had been both very relaxed and bordering on tense, as Nurse Melinda ruled the roost over her husband and his recovering burns and her son and daughter-in-law with their scrapes and bruises, all three of them essentially grounded on the living room couch, where they might be brought whatever items they might need to pass the time, books and magazines, sketch books, laptop, remote control, and of course whatever they might need to eat or drink.

"I don't know about you guys, but I don't think she's been this happy since she came out here," Maya declared, as Melinda had walked off to see if they had more chocolate sauce and her daughter-in-law was left to contemplate how to dig in to the great bowl of ice cream she had been given.

"Yeah, why didn't we think of getting hurt sooner?" Lucas joked before accepting the spoonful he was offered.

By the time December 31st rolled around, neither one of them could say that they were a hundred percent back to normal, but they were in a much better state than they had been earlier that week. After the packed house of their Christmas party, they were now looking to ring in the new year with a less hectic sort of gathering. The Hart-Lanes had returned to Arizona, taking Sam with them for a few days with the promise of his being back the night before his classes started. New Year's Eve would thus feature the four of them plus the Hunter-Harts.

"You know that means there will be ten of us here," Lucas told Maya as they stepped out to help Shawn and Katy unload the kids and everything else they needed to bring in from the car, from food to some of the gifts MJ and Haley had received for Christmas, without which neither would leave the house. "It'll be like our own countdown made out of people."

"If we're assigning numbers, I'm in, and I want to be ten," Maya declared.

"Why ten?" he had to ask.

"Well, I get to lead the way," she explained, and he laughed.

"Ya-Ya, look at my doll, please!" Haley politely requested, hoisting up the thing, which was almost as big as her. Even as she did so, her attention was drawn – arms and doll still in the air – to her sister's knees, poking out from under her dress' skirt and showing cleaner, smaller, but still noticeable band-aids. "What's that?" she inquired, turning her eyes up again.

"Oh, I fell down the other day and hurt my knees," Maya explained to her little sister, who received this information with the instant resolve of very lightly touching each of Maya's knees like she had kissed them to make them better. "Thank you so much, that helped a lot," Maya lifted her up, planting her on her uninjured hip. "And I love your doll, is that the one Santa brought you?" she asked, as though she hadn't been the one to buy it for her. Haley nodded happily. "Does she have a name?"

"Daisy," Haley replied at once.

"That is a good name," Maya decided, giving her sister several kisses on her cheek, which earned her giggles and a good hug. Maya accepted it, basked in it, thinking how fast it would be before her littlest Hunter sibling was no longer little this way and how much she would miss it. "Is it because she has flowers on her dress?" It was. "Then I know she has to love her name, too." Haley agreed.

"What's midnight?" she leaned in until she was nearly nose to nose with her big sister and whispered. Humoring this covert conspiracy, Maya looked around, waved for Lucas to step back, which he did, not understanding precisely what was being passed between the pair but choosing to humor it.

"That's the time when one day turns into the next one. It usually happens when you're sleeping so you don't notice. And the one that's going to happen at the end of today, it's special," she revealed, in that same hushed tone. Her little sister stared in saucer-eyed awe.

"Why?"

"Well, because this one won't just be when one day turns into another one, this one is when one year turns into a whole new one." As impressive as she might be able to make her voice sound, it gave no guarantee that the three-year-old would make much of any sense from it except in that clearly there was something special about it. "Okay, well…" Maya racked her brain, trying to explain it in a way Haley would get it, all the while repositioning her a bit, as her free and recovering hip was starting to complain. "I was born in the month of January, and you were born in…"

"July!" Haley exclaimed out loud, too happy to have this answer to give. She immediately gasped and covered her mouth before opening out her hands again a moment later and whispering once more. "July…"

"Right," Maya struggled not to laugh. "Well, right now it's December, yeah? All of those are months, and there are twelve of them in a year, January first, December last, and July about in the middle," she set her forehead to her sister's for a moment, which made her smile. "And every year, the months start over again, so in a couple weeks it's going to be my birthday, just like it was last time it was January. Do you remember when we had your birthday last time?" Haley nodded. "Right, well, that means that in a few months, since the year started again, it's going to be your birthday again. That's why this midnight is special, because the year starts again, a new one though. By the end of that one, you'll be this many years old," Maya held up four fingers. Haley was impressed. "Later, if you go to sleep for a little while, maybe Mom and Dad will let you wake up again and you can see it happen. Would you like that?"

"Yes, I want the midnight that's a year," Haley declared with a firm nod.

"Something else that you like is going to happen when it's midnight, you know that? Remember the fireworks? The loud lights in the sky, like they had around your birthday?" Haley tipped her head. "What's the matter? Don't you like them anymore?"

"Daddy said that was because of me," Haley informed her, and Maya could barely handle her tremulous little pout. She reached up to stroke her cheek in reassurance.

"Well, those ones were. And they will be again, next year."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners