December 7th 2020

Chapter 342
Their Secret in the Night

"Are they all down in their sleeping bags?" Riley asked as Maya came down the stairs.

"They are," she nodded. "Couple of them aren't happy about it or being made into bedtime nannies, but I promised them that they could be part of the 'after dark' crew next year," she chuckled, thinking of Eliza and Emma up there as they'd wanted to come back down and join the rest of them instead of being left with the little girls when they were teenagers.

If she was perfectly honest with herself, Maya would have let them stay up with her and the older girls tonight if it wasn't for the baby, and the secret about said baby. As it was, having two less people to worry about was a comfort she couldn't pass up.

It wasn't that the evening hadn't been fun, because as with all past Sleepster nights it had been great. Being that it was so rare that they all got to be together in this way, the plan had very much been to make the most of this night. Everyone got to pick a thing they wanted to do and then they all had to do it. The only rule, of course, was that it couldn't be too long, what with there being fourteen of them if they counted Maisie. Fifteen, actually… It was possible, of course, for a few of them to group up their separate time into one thing if, say, they wanted to watch a movie and could find two or three others who also wanted them all to watch that one movie. That had been the case with Sadie, Ginny, Emma, and Eliza, who had to see a movie together over the previous summer and wanted to see it again.

As to the others' picks, they were as varied as they were sometimes bordering on wacky. Haley, to no one's surprise who listened to her on any car ride to her sister's house, wanted to go up the road and see Trooper over at the Sanderson farm. The group had taken off together up the road, making their way over to the stable after saying hello to the elder Mr. Sanderson. Then, when they'd come back to the house, Cara had chosen as her thing that they should go into the Hex, there to record a song together which ended mostly in everyone singing over one another, not wholly on key, and then a lot of laughing mingled along with it. It was just barely recognizable as the song they had chosen, but when they listened to the result they were all very happy with what they'd done.

Dora's thing had been a 'try not to laugh' challenge. It was something she would do all the time with her brothers growing up, and supposedly she was unbreakable when she put her mind to it. Several of them proved to be the opposite of this, breaking into giggle fits at the slightest provocation. These included Nellie, Sadie and Ginny, Riley, and Eliza. Holding their own well enough, though not without fail, were Emma, Cecilia, Cara, Desi, Haley, and Maya. The true challenger was Gracie Hunter. Sherlock the Mouse was not stumped a single time, keeping a straight face all the way. Finally, it had been down to her and Dora, and the others had been so determined to try and break one or both of them that the time limit had been well and swiftly tossed aside, all for this most important achievement. Maya had been so close at one point to just tossing out her secret, knowing it couldn't not cause some sort of reaction out of them. For their part, Nellie and Haley were just locked in on their sister, believing that, surely, one of them could get to Gracie. They had gone so low as to hold up Maisie in front of their faces, and when this had not worked, they had gone with the dogs.

In the end, bedtime had forced the game to end with two winners and nearly a dozen sore losers. Dora and Gracie had celebrated this, once the game was officially over, by breaking into big smiles and hearty laughter.

Now, under Eliza and Emma's begrudging watchful eyes, Nellie, Gracie, Haley, Desi, Sadie, and Ginny were up in the attic, hopefully getting to sleep, while below Maya rejoined Riley, Cara, Dora, and Cecilia, along with a sleeping Maisie in Riley's arms, as they'd felt it would make more sense to hold on to her until they went to settle in for the night, too.

As much as Maya had done well enough throughout the evening to not blow her secret, it didn't take her long now, with only four others around her, four with much more potential awareness than those left in the attic, to wonder if she might not have had it wrong all along, instead having much better protected by the vast number of people she'd had around her before.

"I have a question for you," Cara sat up as her sister came around the couch, and Maya wondered what this was, catching the almost apologetic look on Riley's face nearby.

"Okay…" she slowly nodded. On their end of the couch, Dora and Cecilia both looked much more on Cara's curious wavelength, and now Maya was just the slightest bit concerned for what was coming. They didn't know, did they?

"How old were you when you had a drink for the first time?" Cara asked. Maya blinked, finding Riley was now giving way too much attention to the sleeping toddler in her arms, better than to meet her eye. This might have had to do with the bottle Riley had brought along for tonight, this part of the night, or maybe even after the other three would have gone up, which had to have been discovered.

"Why?" Maya asked, with appropriate caution. Her suspicion had been correct.

"I saw the bottle in the refrigerator, and I asked if we could try, just a sip. I was mostly joking, but she said no, and when I asked how old you guys had been, she got so very quiet all of a sudden, so… We're just wondering, that's all."

"Oh, is that what the next four years are going to be like?" Maya gave her sister a look, getting a grin in return. Under normal circumstances, she might have said something along the lines of 'I'll take a dare instead,' but then her little fig might have had something else to say on the matter. She let out a sigh. It wasn't like she had anything to be ashamed about. She had always been a very responsible drinker and could only think of two times when she had been properly drunk.

"Neither here nor there," Cara smiled. "So? Spill."

"Sixteen," Maya simply replied, getting newly intrigued looks from Cara, Dora, and Cecilia. "It was the day my parents got married," she recalled, nodding along, "For a little while, I thought we were going to be moving away, leaving Texas, and I was devastated. Lucas and I had just started dating a few months before, after all this time of waiting for the right moment. But then Shawn pulled me aside, and it turned out I had misheard, and we weren't leaving after all. And when I knew that, it just felt like… The whole world had opened up again, and there was one thing I needed to do. I went and I found Lucas, and I told him that I loved him for the first time, and he said it back. It was a great day already, with the wedding, but after that, it was just sort of… electric. Anyway, later, at the reception, we grabbed a couple of little wine cups from a guy with a tray and we went and hid somewhere and drank those up. It was more about trying it, especially to mark the special day, although we didn't really care for the taste. So… yeah, that's it."

The three girls on the couch shared looks between themselves.

"Wouldn't this be a special occasion?" Cecilia asked with a smirk. Inwardly, Maya was also smirking, because she had found her way out of any exaggerated means to refuse the drink.

"The bottle is staying sealed," she declared, much to Riley's quiet disappointment, as she had brought it for them. "If the seal is broken when I look tomorrow," she pointed from one girl to the other, evidently messing around but also being very serious.

"Fine, fine, alright," Cara held up her hands in surrender.

"Any other questions?" Maya smiled.

There were no questions. Instead, they chose to finish the evening peacefully enough, with a movie. Maisie was passed from one to the other throughout the movie, though once she got into Maya's arms she didn't move again until they all went upstairs to the attic to join the others. Maya held her littlest sibling good and snug. She barely got to see her in person that when this changed she would take her fill as much as she could. Adding the pregnancy into the mix, holding Maisie only touched on a whole other thing within her, and remained so focused on the sleeping girl that she had little to no idea what movie they'd even been watching anymore by the end of it.

The three girls went up ahead as soon as it was over, leaving only Maya, Maisie, and Riley. At least by now it was late enough that the bottle became out of the question for that more than the promise made on the seal.

"Can I?" Riley whispered, nodding to Maisie. Maya carefully lifted the small girl away from herself, almost bringing her back again when this made her let out a noise of displeasure before finally allowing Riley to take her. Maisie calmed down again, back to her dreams, and Riley smiled down at her.

"Am I detecting the first spikes of baby fever there, Mrs. Orlando?" Maya teased.

"That's a real thing," Riley assured her.

"Forgive me, Dr. Orlando, yes," Maya corrected herself, making Riley roll her eyes and smile.

"Well, I guess you might be," she looked back down to the sleeping toddler. It was perfectly timed, as Maya couldn't help but let the thought of the two of them potentially having children born close in time to one another rise into an expression on her face which she turned to hide.

They went up to the attic a little while later to find the others had all gone to sleep. Maisie was set in with Eliza, who woke just enough to take her little sister in with her and then went back to sleep.

Settling into her own sleeping bag, Maya breathed out, staring through the window in the roof at the stars in the sky. Tonight had been very good, all the little bits of 'stress' over her secret having little lasting power in disrupting this night's status as a successful Sleepster. What the next one would look like, she had no idea, but it had so much potential.

The good evening had been one thing. Now, she had to get to sleep, and that was difficult tonight. For one thing, Lucas wasn't there, and she was on the ground, in a sleeping bag which felt almost threadbare all of a sudden. She'd been so getting used to feeling how Lucas' hand would linger about her belly button when he slept, and now there was none of that. And then there was the morning, too. She had strategically set her sleeping bag to be the closest one to the stairs, but with the small girls on hand, she had been forced to bring up the stairs and close the trap door to prevent them getting up and risking a fall. She would have to get down as soon as she felt the start of the nausea, and she didn't know that it was doable without waking a good portion of her sisters and guests. The food poisoning wasn't going to pass this time…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners