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

November 25th 2020

Chapter 330
Their Possibility to Help

Lucas had made as quick of a go of his errands as he could, down to his stop over at his parents' house to drop off what he'd picked up for them, all for him to then head on back home as soon as he could. He knew Maya struggled with waiting to hear back from her mother, and even though he didn't worry about her, not so much as to make him want to stay close all the time, but he still preferred to be back there with her right now. So, he did what he had to do and then he started back for home.

He was about halfway there when she called him and let him know that her mother had just called. She wanted them to come over for dinner if they could. They didn't have any big plans to begin with, were probably going to reheat their leftovers from lunch, and even if they did have plans, unless they'd been remotely unbreakable, the answer would have been the same. Of course, they would go. So, he carried on toward home, and from there he picked up Maya. Sam was staying behind, might see if Dora wanted to come over.

The ride to the Hunter Hart house was about as quiet as he'd expected it would be, with the wait for the news existing within his wife's heart as it did. She would do her best to let nothing show in front of her siblings once they got to the house, but she would still be thinking about it all inside her brain, waiting for the answer from her parents.

As it turned out, they wouldn't have to wait all too long, showing how equally aware Katy and Shawn had been. They would undoubtedly have wanted to make this wait a lot shorter, but this had been the best they could do. When Maya and Lucas arrived, they learned that the kids were down the street still, playing with friends. So, the four of them were free to sit around the kitchen table, to speak freely without concern of little ears catching anything they weren't yet meant to hear.

"Did you figure it out?" Maya asked, starting them off. She knew they'd have to say yes, that this was what it was about, but she asked it anyway.

"We did," Katy nodded, looking briefly to Shawn, who met her gaze with his own. "At least, we're hoping that it will work out this way. At this point, all we can do is try, and if it doesn't work out, well… We'll find another way."

"So what does option 1 look like?" Maya looked from one to the other.

"We talked about it… a lot, broke it down as much as we could, between what we needed, and they needed, and you needed, and what should or shouldn't happen, could or couldn't happen," Shawn started. "It was kind of a mess. But then there were the big things we both agreed on right away."

"Whatever we decided, the two of us weren't going to let ourselves get split up, with me out there and him back here," Katy nodded. "Send me out there with no backup and I won't last a week." Maya could only agree on that, giving a small nod.

"And then we thought about the four of them," Shawn breathed out. Oh, how much he loved those kids… He would do anything for them, no question to it. "This is the only home they've had, and it's a good one. Neither one of us had that growing up, not the way they do. It wouldn't be fair to take it away from them."

At this, Lucas could just see the tiniest glimmer of hope return in his wife's concerned face. Maybe there was a chance.

"Taking things from there…" Katy followed, looking very much like now she had concerns to air, "We realize it's one thing to say we won't make them go anywhere, but it's still going to be very hard on them to be away from us for any period of time."

"It is," Maya nodded.

"I'll do my best to come back for a few days whenever I can," Shawn revealed, and to Maya it called up memories of the early days, when he would drop in on her mother and her from time to time, for 'assignments.'

"And when the studio made its offer, they really wanted to make sure I'd take it and come aboard for the series. So, I made certain that I'd be able to fly back from time to time while we're shooting, when the schedule allows it," Katy followed. Maya and Lucas both nodded. "All that, me and Shawn, that's one thing, and it's not the main thing."

Of course, it wasn't. The main thing was and always would be Nellie, Gracie, MJ, and Haley.

"Knowing what we knew already, I left that up for her to decide, and I would back her up," Shawn looked to his wife with a look of complete confidence. Katy smiled at him, looking back to their daughter and son-in-law.

"I did something I probably hadn't done in more than… thirty years. I asked my father for his advice," she revealed, and this caught Maya and Lucas' intrigue.

It was still not so long ago that Katy and her family had been reunited, after they'd all gone up for their anniversary, and from there they'd all been building and fixing bridges, each of them at their own pace. Maya knew that her mother and her grandparents were talking from time to time, though she never pried to find out any part of it unless her mother felt like sharing.

"How did that go?" Lucas asked. It was a valid question, knowing how things had been between the two of them, all those years ago, bad enough that Katy had felt compelled to run away to New York and never return, not until very recently.

"Honestly, I was scared, like I was a kid all over again. I could just see the look on his face whenever I'd bring up wanting to be 'a big star,' so I didn't figure he'd have anything good to say about me wanting to go out to Los Angeles to be on television and leaving my kids back here in Austin without their parents."

Without needing to say a thing, Maya and Lucas were both of a mind that, based on the words alone just about anyone would think she was crazy, but then to people who actually knew her, knew the family… It was more of a sound thing than people would think. They were all just sort of in the middle of a very big jump, they were spinning in the air. Now they just had to stick the landing.

"What did he say?" Maya asked.

"He asked a lot of questions," Katy tipped her head, recalling the conversation. "About the show, about the kids… He told me that he'd seen the episodes I did before. I knew that, Charlie told me he and Mom went to her house when it aired, but it was important now that he said it, too, and that he told me how he liked what I did." As much as it had meant to him to say it, they could still see how much it had meant to Katy to hear it, too. "Then, he told me that he'd call me back."

"How long before he did?" Maya had to ask.

"Oh, maybe ten minutes?" Katy looked to Shawn and he nodded. "He said that he and Mom spoke, and they had… an idea. They said that they would be willing to come up here, the two of them, and they would stay here, in the house, and they'd look after the kids while Shawn and I were in Los Angeles."

Maya received this news with a feeling of complete relief mixed with complete disbelief, the good kind, if there was such a thing. Meeting her maternal grandparents had been the forever unexpected delight she had sort of given up on until it had actually happened. They'd keep in touch, as best they could, but there was still so much she didn't know about them, and wanted to know, and oh… she really wanted that for her siblings. They'd never had grandparents, not until the Clutterbuckets had come into their lives, and it had been something so good for them, in ways that could really only be seen in how they interacted, those times they saw one another, or spoke to one another, or when one of the kids would mention their grandmother or grandfather off-hand, like they were wonderful giants in both stature and importance. If they lived out here, with them… It would give them this opportunity… not unlike the one Maya and Sam had over the last few years.

"They're moving here?" the words stumbled from her mouth.

"Oh, well, not exactly. I mean, they're not selling the house back in Arkansas. They'll go back over the off season, and whenever the series or my time on it ends and Shawn and I come back. If something else comes along then and we need them again, then they'll return. That's the plan for now at least. Maybe in the long run they'll decide to stay here for good. Or maybe it won't work for them, this whole arrangement… But they would both very much want to try," Katy explained. "To help us, and to get to know their grandchildren," she smiled back to Shawn, even as Maya and Lucas shared a look and an accompanying thought. And their great-grandchildren, in time.

"When are you going to tell the kids?" Lucas asked his in-laws. It brought them back to a more serious demeanor. It was all well and good that they'd come up with this plan, but they still had to let the kids in on this major change coming into their lives. If they didn't sell the four of them on it, this whole thing would bring them very little in the way of comfort or reassurance. No amount of grandparents in the world would fix it.

"Soon. Not yet though. We want to be able to tell them more. The last thing we need is to get stuck with an 'I don't know,' we'll lose them after that," Shawn shook his head.

"You know Gracie knows something's up, right?" Maya told her father.

"Sherlock Hunter? We figured as much," Shawn sighed, and she tried not to be too amused for his own nickname for another of his girls.

"All we could do right now is let her feel safe, no matter what. We're working as fast as we can to get to the point where we can talk to them. If that fails, we'll at least talk to her, but we don't want to put the pressure of keeping secrets on her, even if she'd do it if we asked her to," Katy went on.

"Okay…" Maya nodded. "Have you started looking at houses, or… an apartment?"

"We did, a little," Katy replied. "Obviously, it'll just be the two of us most of the time, so we don't need anything that big. We're not settling down anyway. But we still need room, so when we bring the kids over to visit…"

"And that includes you," Shawn cut in, pointing to both Maya and Lucas. "And anyone else who might come along…" he 'subtly' added, earning a chuckle from his son-in-law and a squint from his daughter.

"So, we're looking," Katy pulled the conversation back.

"If you need opinions, please do send all that to me," Maya told them, and they gave a look to suggest they were already way ahead of her where this was concerned.

With what they had to share for the time being now out on the table, it was finally time to go and bring the kids back around for dinner. Shawn went and got them, and they must have spotted the familiar car outside, as they came into the house already looking to find their sister and brother-in-law. MJ had won the race, hurrying to Maya and locking his arms around her waist to embrace her.

"Hey, bud," she laughed, hugging him back, and maybe for knowing now how very small the odds had become that he wouldn't be here when she came back from the tour… It became nothing short of an unforgettable hug. She held him, kissing his forehead when he lifted his eyes up to her… The more he grew, he really looked more and more like a miniature version of their father, except with their mother's hair. She also had a feeling he might have inherited some of that Clutterbucket stature, either that or the relief in her just now made him seem taller all of a sudden.

Those feelings carried well through dinner, making the whole thing feel like such a return to form, to happy conversation interspersed with some funny little thing one of the kids might throw in. They were all on board for this, although both Maya and Lucas and Katy and Shawn had clearly caught on to the occasional looks thrown around by Gracie. She was checking them out, little Sherlock that she was, like she felt that something had changed and she wasn't sure yet what it was.

"What's up?" Lucas asked when he felt a tap at his arm, midway through the meal. Looking to the side, Haley was looking back at him, all the while pointing to a section of her plate, which had been emptied almost in exclusivity, where the rest remained sampled at best. "You finished your tomatoes, huh?" he asked, and she nodded. If Lucas knew one thing about that kid, it was that she loved her tomatoes, cherry ones especially. So he had no trouble interpreting her sustained look as 'I would like more of them, please?' "You gotta eat the rest, too," he pointed out, and for the next minute, Haley speared and ate several more bites, eventually tapping Lucas' arm again. "Alright, that's fair," he laughed.

"I'll get them," Maya got up, heading to the fridge. Spotting a pair of shoes from under the open door, she was therefore not startled when she looked back and found Gracie standing there with an empty bowl.

"For the tomatoes," she insisted.

"Right, good thinking," Maya chuckled, and they went to the counter so she could cut a few pieces and put them in the bowl. When she was done, she turned to face her little sister, leaning in for a bit of 'privacy,' the better to give her a look she hoped would read as 'all is well, just you wait.' Gracie smiled now, nodding before she hurried back and presented her little sister with the extra tomatoes. Haley descended upon the offering, and dinner carried on.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners