August 17th 2020

Chapter 230
Their Visitors in Curiosity

"How bad was it?" Lucas asked. Maya didn't hear him, standing at her dresser, pulling her hair out of the braid it had been in since that morning. "Maya," he called her name and she turned to him, braid fanning out in twists and curls.

"What?" she blinked.

"How bad was it? Your talk with August," he clarified after she frowned, looking lost. Her face changed now, and she reached up to finish undoing her hair.

"Oh, that… I…" she hesitated. Giving her head a shake when she was done with the braid, she pulled her hair around her shoulder, feeling somehow as though she'd relieved herself of a bit of stress in this small action. "I don't know how to…" Much as she'd been privy to information from her students, some of it private, some of it difficult, this felt like something completely different and she didn't know how to handle it.

"Hey…" Lucas approached her now, her distraction suddenly contextualized. "Are you able to tell me?" he asked, and she looked up at him. Leave it to him to acknowledge August's privacy first and foremost.

"Honestly, I'm not entirely sure," Maya admitted, with apologies in her eyes.

"Then until you are, don't worry about me," Lucas shook his head. "Just tell me you're going to help him if you can."

"You know I will," she managed a small smile, and her husband kissed her forehead, held her close. She let out a breath and held him. Even if she couldn't tell him everything, he was still there, he still had her back, and that meant so much more than she could say. "I just don't know what it's going to be like tomorrow when I see him…"

She had trouble sleeping that night, took at least two hours to fall asleep, and that hardly lasted one, took another to doze off again, and that took her to forty-five minutes before her alarm was set to ring, so she gave it up and carefully got out of bed without waking Lucas. The whole night, she'd tried to focus on him, as he had fallen asleep very easily, holding on to her like the good big spoon he was. She'd listen to the sound of his breathing, try to fall in synch with the rise and fall of his chest at her back, that it might lull her to sleep, but it was no use. She just kept thinking about August, and the talk they'd had.

All this time, since September, she had been left to wonder what had happened to him, what was it that turned him into this other person when he was at school. She had an imagination vivid enough to provide her with several options, each landing anywhere on the scale of bad to worse, and there had been plenty of those along the way, but now that she knew… Guilt. That was the thing that weighed on him, guilt, and fear, and shame, and something like a ticking clock, to the moment where it would all blow up in his face, or… or he'd get roped into some other situation, which kept him from wanting to draw too much attention to himself. Thinking about him now, being on the basketball team, she knew he could have been playing out there all this time, but then something had stopped him, last year and the year before that. He would have been a star player, easy. It wasn't until this year, when he and Tony finally became friends, that he went for it, and between him and Milena, right now she was so utterly appreciative of the Janacek siblings being there with him.

It was hard to think about how this had been going on, since two and a half years ago now. That was when they had all been back from Houston, living in Austin again. But she hadn't seen it, and Riley hadn't seen it… If only they could have figured it out earlier, they might have been able to do… something, anything… They'd let him down, everyone. She had to believe that, couldn't help it. He hadn't even been able to come to any of them, to ask for help, and instead he'd done what he thought he had to do in order to make this go away, and then it hadn't, not even when those guys had left the school.

When she got up that morning, giving up on the idea of getting back to sleep when she had to be up in less than an hour anyway, she'd followed her very first thought, for better or for worse. Grabbing her laptop, she headed down into the kitchen. With coffee made, she went to the table and started her search. She didn't know what she expected to find, or what she was supposed to do once she found it, but if she knew who those boys were…

"You're up early."

She jolted, closing her laptop screen by reflex before looking up to find her mother-in-law, looking much too bright for this time of the morning.

"I woke up," Maya shrugged. "What about you?"

"Oh, I'm a light sleeper myself, I heard you from down there," she nodded back toward the basement door. When Maya moved to stand and get her a cup, Melinda shook her head and went to serve herself rather than to make her go.

Settling back in her chair, Maya looked to her laptop and moved it aside with a sigh. It was probably for the best that she didn't go digging like this. What would she even accomplish in finding those boys now, when it would only drag August down with them. Yes, he had been coerced, but in the end he hadn't found a way out, he had made the choice to go and do what they asked, over and over. It sucked, so much more than she could even say, but there was nothing to do to get around it.

"Are you alright, honey?" Melinda approached the table now, setting her cup down and taking a seat next to her daughter-in-law.

"I'm fine," she told her, finding herself smiling. She could feel so much love in the pet name, and every time she heard it, she felt it again. "I didn't sleep that well, that's all," she went on to explain.

"Bad thoughts or discomforts?" Melinda asked, looking like she wanted to reach over and feel her forehead, and also a little bit like her granny bells were bracing themselves to ring, whether she realized it or not. Maya sighed. That was another thing.

They still hadn't explained to her about their plans. There was no real reason behind it, except, well… Maybe with everything going on over the last few weeks, it had become that intent and follow through were not on the same page. So as much as they felt they should tell her they didn't plan on getting pregnant until the end of this year at the earliest, they could only get as far as to look at her, and then they didn't see themselves taking that little nugget of hope that it would happen sooner than that. It wasn't like she'd be upset, really, the fact that it was on the agenda alone would have sufficed, but… well, what was wrong with a little hope right now? Nothing wrong, nothing at all, and still in that moment Maya heard herself say it.

"I'm not pregnant, I just couldn't sleep." Melinda looked back at her, like she wanted to say that this wasn't what she was insinuating, but after a beat maybe she realized that she had been asking, subconsciously.

"Do I do that a lot?" she quietly asked, and Maya laughed.

"Just a bit, Mom," she confirmed. Melinda looked as though she loved her new title as much as Maya did hers.

"You know, when Thomas and I were just married, his mother and mine were the same," she admitted.

"Yeah?" Maya asked, smirking.

"Oh, they were relentless, so was Joe," her mother-in-law nodded. "Honestly, I didn't realize I was coming on that strong. It used to drive me mad when they'd do it to me, I hope you're not upset I…"

"No, no, of course not, I… Look, it's going to happen, it is. Lucas and I are looking forward to it even more than you are, if you can imagine that." Now Melinda was the one laughing.

"That's good to hear."

"If it happens before, we'll be just as happy, of course, but we talked it out together, and we wanted to wait so he could finish school, and I could get through at least one year of teaching, before we have a baby to look after."

"That is a very thoughtful idea," Melinda declared.

"Yeah, we thought so, too," Maya told her. "So, we're just going to start really trying in like November?" she went on to explain, trying not to roll her eyes at herself for how her voice dipped down at telling this part, like it wouldn't already go without saying and she was the only one who was making it awkward. She cleared her throat, took a sip of her coffee, and moved on. "What was it like when you finally told them you were having Lucas?"

"Oh," Melinda sat up at this, happy to delve in the memories. "Well, the first person who knew, even before Thomas did, was my mother. She knew it before him, and even before me."

"How?" Maya wondered.

"I went to see her at the ranch one day, she was in one of the stables, looking after one of the horses. We were talking, and she just looked at me and the horse, how he was responding to me, and from there she put it together. I still had no idea, but then she was looking at me with just…" she demonstrated a look which came off as 'emotionally surprised.' "She asked me if I had been feeling any different, and once she'd mentioned it, I guess I put it all together, too. I left the ranch and promised I'd let her know as soon as I had any news."

"Then what happened?" Maya asked, sort of enamored with the idea of hearing how the world got to know Lucas was on his way.

"I went and bought a test, and I drove straight to Thomas' office. I went in, didn't tell him why I was there, and I took the test in his bathroom, came back out and showed him when I saw it was positive. I tell you, if I had your talents, I could still draw it from memory, the look on his face when he found out he was going to be a father."

"Maybe I'll see it one generation down," Maya smiled, imagining the day Lucas would be the one hearing those words.

"As much as our parents all had been on us about when we would start our family, it was… miles away from the kind of happiness they showed when we told them," Melinda recalled, a small, bittersweet smile brought perhaps at the memory of her mother and Thomas' mother, no longer with them today. "A few more months won't change a thing where you and Lucas and all of us are concerned," she promised.

"I know," Maya nodded, and her mother-in-law scooted over in her chair so she might embrace her. Maya received and returned the gesture. "I didn't wake you up, did I?" she asked after a few seconds. Conversation aside, she'd figured this much from the beginning. When they pulled back apart and she could see her mother-in-law's face, she knew she'd had it right. She'd been having nightmares about the fire. She tried not to 'make a big deal' out of it, but she could only do so much to hide it. "I know you don't like the idea of going to talk to someone, but I'm here, if you do want to talk to me." Melinda Friar had a smile, looking to her daughter-in-law, and it was so similar to one her husband had, the one that said they could not imagine their son having found anyone better to join his life and their family to.

"I'll remember that."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners