September 6th 2020

Chapter 250
Their Flight to Brothers

The first time she had met Wyatt was over a computer screen. He'd been all of a year old, and at the time Maya remembered how much the notion had affected her, in that he was the same age as her little sisters in Austin. Whatever she might have been left to feel about her father and how he had gone and made himself a new family after leaving her mom and her, here was this boy, this babe in arms, smiling with those baby teeth of his and a complete unawareness of the complicated construct of their family. He could not yet even understand that she was his blood relative and not just some random face on a screen.

By that virtue, on the flipside, he did not remember a time before she'd been part of their lives. She was Maya, she was his big sister that lived far away in Texas when the rest of them lived in New York. She was his sister, and he loved her as he loved all his siblings, with all his heart. Abigail would tell her, in those early years especially, how Wyatt had just about elevated her to something like divinity for how he'd go on about what she had said or done after they'd had a call, or a visit. The distance had likely played into this, seeing as he did not get to interact with her in the same way as he did his other brothers and sisters.

And when they had moved from New York to Arizona, after Kermit's passing, part of his coping with the loss, and the move, and then Sam's departure to go and live in Texas, too, had been achieved in letting his imagination turn the attic room, Maya's room, into his very own spaceship. Oh, the adventures he had up there…

Wyatt was eight now, coming on nine. Whether he still went up into the attic and pretended to sail it, standing at the big window facing out to the street below, Maya couldn't say, although according to the girls, he still went and hung out up there a lot of the time, usually when he'd be building things, which explained the big containers full of colorful bricks and drawings in the corner of the room when she'd gone up there today. Sitting on top of one of the clear bins was a half-made rocket. He may not have flown the attic ship anymore, but his love for space and space travel had not gone away.

His room definitely showed this, from the wallpaper to the bedspread, the curtains… and of course the multitude of stars glowing across the ceiling when the room was dark.

When Maya came down from the attic to go and see him, the door still hung open by a sliver, and she could see the lights were off. It wasn't dark outside, but he would have had the curtains drawn, the better to call on his stars. She found him there now, sitting on his bed, flashlight in hand, casting some light around himself. Most of his issues following the loss of their father had subsided over the years, and it was anyone's guess whether his fear for the dark was a remnant of these or just where his eight-year-old brain was at. No one had the heart to ask him how much he remembered of Kermit, as he'd been all of four when they'd lost him, though they only needed to listen to him speak sometimes to know that what he retained of him was not nearly as much as his older siblings. Instead, he had bonded so tightly to his stepfather, James, that he might have been the only father he'd ever known. James took this fact and this responsibility with great care, and still he ensured that Kermit's memory lived on in his young son.

Still, his young life had been the site of so many changes already, people coming and going, that it was no wonder he had attachment issues. Today, it showed in this bit of self-isolation.

"Can I come in?" Maya asked, her voice in quiet, hushed tones as she peered into the room. Thankfully, Wyatt simply nodded and didn't send her away. She walked in, returning the door to the way it had been before. When she went and sat across from him on the bed, her brother set aside his flashlight and moved to hug her, a good tight grip she welcomed with her own hold. "I have missed you so much," she spoke at his ear, rubbing his back and pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

"Missed you, too," Wyatt spoke into her shoulder.

"How come you're hiding in here, huh?" Maya asked as he pulled back. They sat here now, brother and sister in the dark save for a small pool of light from the flashlight on the blanket next to them and the stars on the ceiling. Wyatt lowered his eyes at this, a tiny bit ashamed. "I'm really sorry we didn't have everything the way we had it before. That doesn't mean you have to stay cooped up in here. The way I see it, we're the ones who made the rules, which means we get to decide if we want to bend them a little. We're going to go eat somewhere and then go see a movie. I'm going to need you there, bud, it's been too long, and I didn't come all this way not to spend time with all of you. Please come with us? Please?" she gave her best pitiful smile, bowing her forehead to his. "We get to see Cara be all weird cute around her boyfriend…" she offered as incentive, which tugged a laugh out of the boy.

"I like Declan," he stated.

"Yeah? What's he like?" Maya asked. The only description she'd really gotten had come from Cara, which would possibly skew the results.

"He's nice," Wyatt nodded. "He knows all the best candy mix at the movies. And he has a band, too!" Maya smiled. Of course, she'd heard all about Declan's band from Cara. She would sometimes sing with them now. Declan played the guitar and sang, just as Cara did, just as Maya did. It was one of the first things they'd bonded over. "Cara and him, they took me to the planetarium last week."

"Well now I can't wait to meet him even more," Maya nodded.

"When Sam came last time, he met him," Wyatt jumped in, and Maya chuckled.

"I heard about that, yeah."

"He kept looking at him funny, and Cara would tell him to stop, but Declan didn't mind it. He's got little sisters, he said, so he got it." Even as Wyatt gave this report of the first encounter between Cara's older brother and her boyfriend, he looked like he clearly didn't understand all of it, especially what it was that Declan 'got.'

"How do you think I should be, when I meet him? Scary or nice?" Maya asked, which made her brother laugh. "Oh, what, you don't think I can be scary?" Wyatt shook his head. "See, I'd try to show you, but I can't be scary around you, all I want to do is hug you like this!" she just about pounced on him, making him laugh even harder. "So, are we good?"

"Yeah!"

"Didn't quite get that, you're laughing too much," she smirked, as she went on tickling him. "Good?"

"Good!" Wyatt laughed. He was finally released as Maya's phone rang with the familiar tone of a Skype call. When she took out her phone, she smiled.

"Hey, look who it is… Go turn on the lights?" she asked her brother, who rolled off on to his feet and hurried to flip the light switch, returning them from the starlit darkness, before dashing to hop back on to the bed, making his sister and the phone shake. "Come here, come here," she pulled him until he sat in front of her and she could put her arms and the phone in front of them both, where Lucas, Sam, and Dylan all stared back, smiling and waving and greeting the siblings from back in Austin.

"Hi!" Wyatt waved back at them, his smile big and toothy… mostly toothy… He was missing a couple on the bottom and the top rows. Whenever he'd have straws, his favorite thing would be to stick it in the empty space between two teeth.

"Hey, dude, did you lose another one?" Sam asked his little brother, pointing to his mouth.

"Yeah," Wyatt pointed to the point in question. "That one had a lot of blood," he reported. "It was gross," he added, though this sounded more like 'it was great!'

"Sorry we couldn't be there this weekend, Wyatt," Lucas told him, and Maya had a feeling maybe they'd found out through one person or another back in the attic that the boy was having issues with them not being there, and now they were attempting to remedy the situation. "But you know, it doesn't mean we can't do something, just us guys, right?"

"It doesn't?" Wyatt asked.

"No, come on, it'll be like with you and Teddy and me, when we play video games," Sam pointed out. "Except there'll be all three of us, and you two, and MJ's on his way now."

"He is?" both Maya and Wyatt asked at once.

"Yeah, we called the Hunters a minute ago, he'll spend the night out here, so the six of us can have our thing, even if we're not all in the same place," Lucas explained. Wyatt turned his head up to look at his sister, who had to blink and release the look of amusement from her face. Leave it to those guys to remedy the situation so quickly. Now Wyatt was giving her a look she took to mean 'I know we just said we would bend the rules and I'd go with you, but is it okay if I stay here and do this instead?'

"Look at that," she smiled down at him. "Problem solved."

"Can I…" he pointed to the phone, and Maya handed it over. In a moment, Wyatt had dashed off, carrying three brothers in one hand as he went seeking another.

Maya turned off the flashlight, stepping back into the hall to come upon the last of her siblings in Tucson, presently carried by her mother. With a gasping smile, she happily received little Maisie, who appeared equally happy to see her.

"Hey, you know who I am, don't you? Yeah, you do, hey sis," Maya held the girl, the last of her siblings to be born, in just about every which way. Shawn and Katy had no intention to have another, and Abigail and James already had more than enough though they left themselves the slightest bit of room for a change of mind. As last ones went, Maisie was about the sweetest thing they could have asked for. Right now, she was also throwing Maya's baby fever for a loop, and she had to take a deep breath to focus on her sister and her mother.

"You've barely been here for five minutes and you already fixed Mr. Grumps back there," Abigail laughed, nodding to the attic, where her second youngest had disappeared a moment ago.

"Give me a wrench, I'll fix anything else you got," Maya cooed, lightly prodding Maisie's squishy cheeks, making the girl laugh. "I came this close to getting you and James a mostly kid-free night."

"Oh, no, we're out of here for the night, too," Abigail told her. "We'll be at Luna's. We wouldn't want to intrude on your Sleepster," she smiled, saying the word like she'd been hearing out of her kids all week. Maya chuckled, handing Maisie back to her.

"You could never."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners