August 13th 2020

Chapter 226
Their Visitors in Starts

"How is she already awake?" Maya whispered, sitting up. At her side, Lucas yawned, scrubbing at his face to wake himself up before joining her. "It's not even light out, she should be asleep. I get that she likes to help around, but she doesn't have to be up right now…"

"As far as she's concerned, she kind of does," Lucas pointed out. "I think she's looking forward to seeing us off to school." Maya couldn't help it at that, she had to smile.

"Alright, fine, but the other days…"

"I'll quietly suggest she explore the benefits of sleeping in. I'm not making any promises," Lucas nodded, and Maya leaned over to kiss him.

"Thank you, sir."

"Sir?" he grinned. "Hold on now," he locked his arms around her, dragging her back down to the mattress and causing her to burst out laughing.

"Huckleberry, Huckleberry!" she tried again.

"Better," he grinned, kissing her now.

"I've got loads of other names for you, what are those going to get me?" she inquired.

"I don't know, maybe we can find out…" he started to lean again. There was a knock at the door, familiar enough in its cadence to reveal who was on the other side. Maya and Lucas collectively bit back a sigh. "To be continued," Lucas whispered, kissing his wife one quick last time before they sat up and got out of bed. "We'll be right down, Mom!" he called out.

"Good! Wouldn't want you to be late!"

Lucas turned back and found Maya was already going about getting dressed for the day. Even though it was only her first day back from holiday break, not the start of a new year, or a new semester like he and Sam were having today, his mother's presence took him back to that last first day, back in September, and all he could see was how much she had changed, grown in confidence as a teacher. It wasn't all unknown anymore, it was her work, and she took such great pride in it, day after day, none more than she did in her kids. Oh, how excited she was to see them all again today.

And then him… He was starting his second to last semester before he was officially done with school. More and more, their lives were getting to be about looking forward to the future, with careers, and so many of their friends already starting families… The thought didn't hold him back. If anything, it propelled him. He wanted to give everything he had, to succeed, and eventually join them.

"I'm going to miss you at lunch today," Maya stated as they moved to make the bed once they were dressed. "It was good, every Monday…"

"I know," he agreed. "But now it'll just be every Friday instead. Like a treat at the end of your week." She laughed. "Yeah, I heard it as I was saying it," he smiled.

"You're right though. Now I'll be looking forward to it every day."

"That makes two of us."

With his class-free/work-full day of the semester landing on Fridays this semester, they had shuffled Maya's two habitual lunch buddies, swapping Lucas and their lunch date with Lily and their lunch meeting about the theater. To compensate with this being the first day back, Maya and Lily had met the previous day, with her assistant and her family being invited to lunch here at the house. They would have their first Monday lunch meet the following week.

As they came down the stairs, they could hear Melinda Friar's voice, which sounded as though she was talking to someone on the phone. It only took a few key words for both Maya and Lucas to figure out she was talking to Katy… and planning to go out and visit her. Lucas turned to his wife as though to ask if she had anything to do with this, knowing her 'issues' with leaving his mother on her own in their home while they were at school and his father was out at their house to look after the repairs, which had started just a couple of days prior. Maya shook her head. This wasn't her doing, but she had to think maybe her mother had thought of her and guessed her unspoken concerns before deciding to intervene. She still had a few days off before returning to the theater.

At the table, Sam was already eating, looking through one of his new textbooks. Thomas Friar, his hands no longer bandaged as they had been but still in many ways lacking in the mobility he might have liked to have, was cautiously having his own breakfast, doing his best not to show much of frustration over his clumsiness in the effort. He didn't want to be helped as he'd been in the time following the fire, whether he might have needed it or not. It would sometimes flare up in him, and much as he would try not to take it out on those who would naturally only want to help him, sometimes he would lose himself and quickly apologize.

"Your mother and I are going to shop for new curtains for the kitchen," Melinda told Maya with a great smile. "We are going to look at tables and chairs as well, and dinnerware, and… Oh, there is just so much, so…"

Her voice trailed off, and they knew she was falling back into the memory of everything they had lost in the fire. The first thing they had done, once they could start going through the kitchen, was to clean out everything that had to be thrown out, at the same time hoping maybe to find anything at all they might have saved, for Melinda's sake more than anyone else's. There really had been very little worth salvaging though, and that realization had not been nearly as hard as having to tell Melinda about it. It wasn't just about objects, belongings, it was memories. It was three decades of their lives, their marriage, their family, and the idea of starting again from the ground up, while it could be seen as a fresh start, really only amounted to this big part of their lives being gone.

For her especially, when she loved so much to welcome people into her home, to cook and bake for them… For her who could look at one plate, with a crack or a chip, and remember exactly how it had happened, when it had happened and why, who had prided herself in the sturdy quality of their table… For her, starting over was harder than she could say.

"Hey, can I show you something?" Maya asked her, even as she had a thought. "Upstairs?"

"Sure, sure, yes," Melinda blinked, and they took off for the stairs, as Lucas went and fixed himself a plate and filled a cup, taking all this to the table, where he sat next to Sam. Thomas cleared his throat, and when Lucas looked at him, he turned his eyes to Sam, tipped his head to his book. Lucas wasn't sure what he was trying to say, but then looking at his brother, he saw it. Sam wasn't reading, or at least he might have been reading, but now he'd just spaced out.

"Hey," Lucas nudged his foot with his own and Sam startled, his knee hitting under the table and shaking everything. Thankfully nothing spilled. "You okay there?" Lucas chuckled.

"Yeah, fine," Sam rubbed at his knee.

"I could tell you weren't focused on that, but now I have to ask," Lucas indicated the textbook before turning back to Sam. "Something on your mind?"

In response, Sam pulled out his phone and opened up what Lucas soon found to be one of Cara's social pages. His and Maya's sixteen-year-old sister, still very much her older sister's mini-me, could be seen here in a selfie, lip-locked with a boy Lucas had never seen.

"Boyfriend?" Lucas guessed, as both he and his father had the same reaction of knowing exactly what was troubling Sam now and having to pull in the urge to smirk.

"Boyfriend," Sam frowned to himself, a very conflicted 'she can do what she wants, but she's my kid sister and I'm far away and I don't know this guy' sort of look on his face.

"I'm sure he's nice," Lucas tried to encourage him. "Does Maya know yet?" Sam shook his head. "You going to tell her when she gets back?" Sam looked at him.

"You just want to see the look on her face," he 'accused.'

"If you could see yours, you would understand why, dude."

Upstairs, Maya had taken her mother-in-law all the way into the attic. Melinda hardly ever came up here, but when she did it would mostly be so she might see the view from the windows, far off this way and that. From one of the drawers on her desk, Maya pulled out a small stack of photos and laid them out over the top of the desk's surface. Each photo had been taken in the elder Friars' now lost kitchen, as recently as the previous summer and as far back as when Maya had been the new girl in town and Lucas' new friend.

When Melinda saw these, her eyes welled up with tears at once. She would pick one up and then another, smiling for the memories but also clearly still retaining some effects from being in the fire, and knowing it would never be this way again. Maya let her have this moment, head almost to her arm in support, before she could reach into the drawer again, pulling out a box she put on the desk before opening it and reaching in for something. It was a roll, and as she pulled to unfurl it on the desk, her mother-in-law gasped.

Maya had made something like this before, for Eliza's room, although in that case it had been more free-hand, and it didn't matter so much for everything to be exactly a certain way. This one here, this was a reproduction, painstakingly made from staring at those pictures, and consulting Lucas, all in secret, whenever she had the time. She wasn't done yet, but it didn't matter. This was as close as they would get to the old wallpaper in the lost kitchen, the one they'd had for so many years they would never find it again if they wanted it again.

"I know a lot of things are going to be different, but I thought maybe… this could be one thing that could be the same again… mostly the same…" Maya explained. The way her mother-in-law looked at her in that moment, she could not have loved her more if she had brought her into the world herself. It was in her face as much as in her arms as she then went and hugged her. Maya hugged her back, happy to see she had seen the idea through.

When they had gone back downstairs, the guys all looked at them as though wondering what had happened upstairs. They both looked like they'd been taken by emotions beyond what this early morning and its barely risen sun should have held.

"Hey, what did we miss?" Maya asked, the better to redirect the conversation. After a beat of silence, the three guys shared a look, with varying expressions of amusement and awkwardness. "What?" Maya asked. When Sam slid his phone across the table, Maya and Melinda both looked at the screen. "Oh, Declan!" Maya smiled, picking up the phone. "Oh, I have to call her later," she happily declared.

"Wait, you knew?" Sam blurted out. Maya laughed, returning him his phone.

"I'm her big sister, of course she told me," she told him, sticking out her tongue in victory. Sam looked at the picture again, and she could almost see him mouthing the boy's name, like he was getting ready to take a deep dive to find out if he was worthy of his little sister. "Call off the dogs, Sammy, let her have this. Come on, I can drop you off at university when we're ready to go."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners