November 6th 2020

Chapter 311
Their Welcoming of Lights

"Are you building yourself a private stash or something? Got some private decorating plans?" Maya asked as she found Lucas setting one of the garlands in a box where he'd already put some string lights and a few ribbons.

"No, that's just for later, after we finish here," he replied, returning to where she was checking the lights about to go along the roof. "Every year, at Christmas, my grandmother would decorate the stables, to bring some of all that cheer over to the horses. After she died, my mother and I did it for her for a while, and eventually Juliet took over. I figured I couldn't let Trooper miss out this year, just because he's not at the ranch anymore."

"No, you really can't," she agreed and smiled.

"But first things first," Lucas joined her in the light check.

It was his day off today, and so they were using it to transform the house into its most jolly of settings. Christmas was still about three weeks away, but really it was about time. Lucas didn't think Maya could have waited even one more day.

"Would I be jinxing us if I said that I can't wait until next Christmas?" he asked as they moved out with the bunches of lights. He looked back at her and was happy to find her smiling, understanding what he was getting at.

"I can't wait either," she told him, and he leaned in to kiss her, lightly so. Next year, provided luck was on their side, there would be one more stocking up in their house. "Where is your assistant?" Maya inquired when he pulled back. "Not that I'm not ready to go up there with you, but what is the point of having a kid brother if you can't make him do stuff for you?"

"I am pretty sure he's upstairs… making out with my cousin," Lucas cleared his throat.

"Oh, that…" Maya slowly nodded. "They're really slipping on the whole subtlety thing, aren't they?"

"When were they ever subtle?" Lucas wondered.

"Not one second," Maya agreed. "Should I go get him?"

"You might want to announce yourself as you go."

"You are so funny. Hilarious."

Maya did call out Sam's name as she reached the top of the stairs, and for the way both he and Dora came from his room, she had to think a minute more would have taken them into a whole other zone. After telling Sam where he was needed and watching him dash past her, Maya turned back to Dora. Even fully dressed, she still looked like she had not forgotten one bit of that awkward encounter on Halloween. Whenever it was just the two of them, there would always be that little hiccup, and Maya resisted showing how it just made her laugh now.

"Can you help me get the ornaments from the basement?"

"Yes, I can do that," Dora breathed before following back down the stairs.

Outside, Lucas stood a few paces from the house, the better to recall the 'route' he would take to achieve the lay of the lights along the roof. It didn't exactly change from year to year, but it still made sense to him to run it back through. He could imagine that, after several years of this he would be able to do it all with next to no second thought.

This would be their fourth Christmas at the house already, and that felt impossible in and of itself. Every year, there would always be that moment where he'd wonder where the time had gone, and he couldn't say if he looked forward to not feeling it anymore or if he hoped to feel it for as long as he could. This year, this Christmas, did feel like the last of a small era in this house. The Sam Years, they could call it, or the years before he and Maya became parents… Both would have been appropriate.

For all the times they had wondered, Maya and him, about what Sam would do once he finished college, once his whole purpose for even moving to Austin had run its course, they couldn't say that they had ever foreseen this curve in the road. They had long hoped for him to stay in town with them, couldn't help wanting him to stick around, and then they'd gotten it. He was staying here… The way things were going, they saw him and Dora moving in together by summer's end. Whether or not it was logical, with how recent things were between them and not even defined in any way beyond the physical side of it all, Lucas and Maya both could see his cousin and her brother looking to one another, thinking that this would be a perfect solution. He wanted to stay here, she had an apartment and a roommate who was leaving Texas at the end of the year… Who knew, maybe they'd make it work. If this all just crashed and burned on them, then… Yeah, it might have been better not to think too far ahead. For now things were just… what they were.

As to the other part, the other chapter closing, well… It wasn't closed yet, was it? They were putting so much faith in the belief that they'd be expecting their first child before long, but there really was no telling, was there?

Lucas had spoken with his father, not long after his worries had emerged, after Mia Babineaux had come into their world. He'd needed to speak to him, to have him say the things only he could tell him. He'd told Maya all about it, as promised, and he was glad for her words, always, but this was just something else. He needed to talk to him, father to prospective father. It had done him as much good as he could hope to find, both conversations had, and now… Well, it wasn't as though he didn't keep wondering when it would happen, didn't keep feeling the burn of that baby fever, but it did feel a bit more like he was in control of himself.

"Hey, I'm here, sorry," Sam came to join him.

Lucas gave him a look, and his face gave the slightest twitch like he had resisted the urge to run. Sooner or later, Lucas would have to tell Sam he didn't need to have to go around like he was going to get smacked for going after Dora, but then he sort of didn't see why he should. Sure, he understood that it came from a place of respect, and of not wanting to do anything that would alter their dynamics as brothers, but then what did he really owe him? It wasn't Lucas' place to decide what his cousin could or couldn't do, and the same could be said for him and Sam. It might have been another matter if Sam wasn't a good guy, but that was neither here nor there, was it?

Maybe the reason he hadn't said anything to Sam was that, much as he didn't disapprove, it would just have felt weird to put himself in the middle of all that… It was his cousin.

"You remember what to do?" Lucas moved to climb the ladder.

"Yeah, I got you," Sam promised.

While the guys saw to the lights outside, Maya and Dora worked to get the tree decorated. Dora would share stories of coming to Christmas parties out here when she was little, back when Pappy Joe still lived here, and how she would play hide and seek with her brothers and Lucas. She told of one year where she had ended up finding a hiding place which was already occupied… by presents. It was the first year after she'd known that Santa wasn't real, but then her younger brother had still believed. She'd been so concerned with preserving that secret, and so she'd been very quiet, the better not to be found, and then to protect the secret stash.

Lucas was the one tasked with finding the others on that round, and he had found her. When he'd realized where she was, he must have had the same thought about his cousin Alex. He'd allowed Dora to remain unfound and then, once the Cassidy boys had been found and brought well away from her hiding spot, Lucas had admitted defeat and she had snuck out and finally revealed herself. Alex had never found the presents, and the secret was preserved… at least until a few months later, when the cat had been let out of the bag. What mattered most was that that they gotten him through one last Christmas.

"Was it a good hiding spot?" Maya asked. "Just to know, for future reference." Dora happily showed it to her, and Maya was stunned that, after nearly three and a half years, she had never been aware of some aspect of her house. "Huh…" she blinked.

The lights were up outside, along with the rest of the decorations on and around the house, just as the tree was completed and joined with a number of indoor decorations. The house could not have been any readier if it tried. Now, they had one more box to unload, and it took them up the road to the Sanderson farm.

"We're just going to go check out how crowded the skating rink is," Sam told Maya and Lucas, indicating himself and Dora as they went.

"Sure, alright. Just be back for dinner," Maya told them, and they were off. "I mean, they're cute, you gotta give them that," she stated. Lucas chuckled.

Reaching the farm, they waved to Missy, who was in the midst of some decorating of her own along with her mother and grandfather. They continued on toward the stable, where they were greeted by a very happy horse. Trooper had settled well enough into his new home by now, and it certainly helped that Lucas and Maya both visited as often as they could.

"Hey, Troop, look what we got for you," Lucas smiled. As they got the decorations up, the horse did look as though the additions reminded him of something from before. Maya could see this, as much as she saw how happy it made her husband to bring this touch of his grandmother to the animal.

"I know I've said it before, but I really wish I could have known her when she was alive," she told him as they took Trooper around for a walk out of the stable before they'd head back home to start on dinner. Lucas had loved his Granny Marianne so much, it showed whenever he spoke of her. More than that, the more she learned of her, of all she'd done, Maya really got to admire the woman.

"All those horses, they mattered so much to her. She could have lost the ranch and she wouldn't have batted an eye, not so long as she knew that the horses would go on to places where they'd be well cared for and looked after."

"No wonder she wrote you into her will then," Maya chimed in, loving to see how the notion made him smile.

As Trooper was returned to his festive stable, Maya and Lucas walked back up the road toward home. The sun had started to come down already, giving just enough of darkness so that they came upon the house with its colorful lights and it really just felt like Christmas was upon them. They never got tired of that first sight of it.

"Hey, so Dora told me about that little hidey-hole where your grandparents used to hide the presents," Maya revealed as they continued up toward the house. Lucas let out an almost exasperated sigh, which Maya took to mean he had been using that space to hide gifts from her, and now he couldn't do it anymore. "Sorry," she sheepishly laughed. "We'll come up with a code. I won't look, I swear."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners