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

December 9th 2020

Chapter 344
Their Secret in Play

It had taken the promise of a trip to the movie theater to convince Luna's girls to go with the twins and the rest of the Hunters rather than accompanying their cousins to the university. It just made more sense to keep the group as small as possible. There had been a brief window in which they had considered leaving Maisie with them as well, but she'd made such a fuss, after being reunited with her mother and father, at the prospect of leaving them again so soon, that finally they'd changed their minds. She would be brought along to the tour, with Maya and Lucas and Abigail and James and the other Hart-Lane children.

"Hey, we'll just be a minute," Maya called to them as anyway the parents were hearing about the previous night, from the boys and the girls. They barely noticed them going back in the house. "You talked to Wyatt?" she asked Lucas once they were alone.

"Yeah, well, I didn't have much of a choice," he explained. He'd sent her a text to let her know when he was on his way back from Dylan and Riley's house, and he'd mentioned the fact that he'd spoken about Kermit with Wyatt the night before. Now he gave her the added context he couldn't put down in a short message. He told her exactly what he'd told Wyatt, told her how he'd shown the video and left the whole thing more or less open-ended. Obviously, there was more to the story, and Wyatt would come by it when he was old enough to understand. Otherwise, he could and probably would still speak to her about it, too.

"Thank you for that, really, I…" Maya sighed with relief as much as unavoidable concern for Wyatt. "You're a pretty good big brother, you know that?"

"I do what I can," Lucas smiled, putting his arms around her and rubbing at her back. "How was it for you this morning?" Maya chuckled dryly. "That good, huh?"

"Kind of put myself in a no-win situation up there. I learned that nausea and forward motion don't get along. So… Cara knows now," she revealed with a small smile before sharing the story. Lucas didn't do so well in keeping his laughter in check, but then she guessed she couldn't blame him. Now that the bad part was over and well removed, even she could see the humor of it, particularly Cara's very effective diversion act. "Now she wants to go on the tour with us as my… helper in situations where you can't follow… who coincidentally also gets to travel the world in the process."

"Imagine that," Lucas smiled. "What did you tell her?"

"I said that I'd think about it," Maya shrugged. "I mean, if it's just up to me then I tell her 'pack your bag, kid, we're off!'" she intoned. "But it's not just up to me, and Ree already has to add a doctor to her contingent, and do all these changes… Now if I add an extra passenger…"

"She can stay in our rooms, can't she?" Lucas asked.

"Look at you, pleading her case for her," Maya hummed. "Ree is supposed to call me back about the doctor thing this week, so… I'll mention it to her then."

With both of them having caught each other up on new developments, they went ahead and joined the Hart-Lanes so they could all take off for the university.

Arriving there, they ran into Sam's friend, Josiah Schmidt, who worked as a tour guide for the university and would be theirs for the day. After a while, it sort of got to feel as though both boys were giving the tour together, as they were both about to graduate from here. Josiah would do his best to stick to his usual script, while Sam would jump in with details which weren't exactly part of the tour but would definitely be useful for his little sister to know about once she was a student here. Josiah would almost looked annoyed whenever Sam chimed in, but then he'd kind of have to admit that it was something valuable to know, and so he would move along. Cara just found the whole thing amusing, sometimes encouraging her brother to provide another piece of information about one thing or another, which he would gladly do.

It was so easy to see, looking at them here, how they were very excited, too, about Cara's moving to Austin to go to school, as it would mean that, for the first time in nearly four years, they'd be living in the same city, and they would get to spend so much more time together. They had missed each other very much, no matter how much they loved to nag one another. Underneath it all, it had been just the two of them when they'd been little kids, and still when Eliza had still just been 'the baby.' They'd been each other's best friend until they'd grown and expanded. Maybe now they'd get to have all that again. Distance really had made them so, so much fonder of one another.

Near the end of the tour, they'd run into Bethany, she of the old fight back in New York. No one but Lucas had known about her being here that day, as it turned out Cara had not told anyone else. The reactions, once they realized who this girl was, had been understandably varied but on the whole tipping on the side of weariness and old anger. She had once caused Cara so much pain, physical as much as psychological. Time had passed though, and as hard as it was for some of them to keep that in mind, they did hold their tongues and let Cara act as she would. She excused herself and went off with her former classmate, the two girls sitting on a bench where they might speak, while the rest of the group hung back and waited.

"I should have said something, it completely slipped my mind," Lucas shook his head, speaking quietly with Maya.

"Wait, how come you…" she asked.

"Cara mentioned it, yesterday, on the way from the airport," he told her. "I figured she would tell you, and then we were going off to do our things." He relayed what information he had, finding a few ears nearby possibly listening in.

When Cara returned to them a few minutes later, Bethany was nowhere to be seen, as she had gone back to find her own family and continue her tour. Cara didn't seem upset, so they took this as a good sign, though they didn't press for her to tell them any of what she and her past tormentor had gone on about. If there was anything she wanted to share, she would do it.

After they'd completed their official tour with Josiah, Sam had taken his family along to a few other places they hadn't gone, stepping into guide mode for his little sister.

"Did you teach him your special guide moves?" Maya whispered to Lucas and he laughed.

Their 'supplemental tour' done, the family had made its way back to the younger Friars' house, just in time for dinner. This proved to be an unexpected challenge to the secret keeping, as some of ingredients met with resistance from Maya's sense of smell. It was in attempting to help her divert the attention of the others in the kitchen that Sam came to realize that Cara somehow knew about the baby, and he stole a look to Lucas to make sure that this had been done intentionally. Lucas responded with a discreet sign, promising a story later on.

"Can I help?" Wyatt asked, popping up next his sister at the counter, where she was cutting vegetables. Maya smiled, finding him a knife and a cutting board. James was teaching him how to cook, back home in Arizona, and he was getting pretty good. He was fairly skilled with the knife, knew to protect his fingers, and any chance to practice was one he did not waste.

"Are you going to be okay to do it, with…" Maya indicated the bandage on his palm, from his fall the night before.

"Yeah," Wyatt nodded, displaying how he could bend and unbend his hand and his wrist without problem.

"Okay, good. Can you do those in dices?" she indicated several carrots recently peeled. Wyatt got started at once.

He looked well, not disturbed in any way, and Maya hoped this meant that it was as Lucas had said, that he had taken what he'd been told and that it had been enough, if only for the time being. If he wanted to talk more now, or at any time, she had to hope that he knew he could come to her whenever.

Abigail and James had taken the kids off to the hotel with them for the night. They were flying back home early the next morning, and so they all said their goodbyes at the house, bringing the short visit to an end. Sam had gone off to the hotel along with them, happily taking those extra hours with them while he could, which left Maya and Lucas with the house to themselves.

"Maya?"

"Up here!"

He found her standing in the doorway to the room across the hall from theirs. For as long as they had lived here, its function had been that of occasional extra storage, or of guest room, especially whenever her siblings would come and stay with them. Even when they had moved in though, as freshly engaged, they had known very well how someday it would have another function. Now that time was coming, wasn't it? In a few months, it would be a nursery.

"What are we going to do next time we need to watch them again?" Maya wondered, looking back at him when he came to stand by her. "We can't stick them in the basement, that's too far, and they'll get scared, or…"

"There's already a guest room down there, and whoever is in that room down the hall at the time, I'm sure they won't mind spending the night down there and having the little Hunters borrow their room for however long. Either that, or there's the attic."

"It is a popular spot," Maya looked to the open trap door. "It's got a great view."

"Hey, come here," Lucas pulled her into the future nursery, brought her to stand in the middle of the room. Right now, it was mostly empty, save for the baskets of clean laundry they still needed to put away. One room was almost entirely covered with the pages of a comic project Sam was working on, the better for him to 'take in the big picture' and see where he might take it or improve what he already had. "Just try and picture it, how it'll be. What do you see? Give me that artist's vision." She laughed, letting her eyes move about the room nonetheless. The room had just been here, the last few years, and she could have imagined it a thousand times over, but it was as though she'd kept herself from getting too close to it. For the time being, it had been everything it needed to be, everything else but what it would soon be, never having a defined purpose. That was changing, as of today.

"You know what I've noticed but never really just noticed?" she asked.

"No?" Lucas replied, not yet following.

"This is maybe the only room in the house that gets good sunlight but not too much sunlight, in the morning. Do you know what I mean?" Lucas considered this for a moment and… yeah, she was right.

"I do…" he smiled. It would be perfect then, for the baby.

"So, you know… crib," she pointed to one spot. "Although maybe it would be easier if we had that in our room at first. We have space, yeah?"

"Yeah, we can definitely do that," Lucas agreed. "What about a bookcase over there?" he pointed. It had really been a weird kind of struggle for him, whenever he was at work now. It wasn't just the pregnancy book section he would be drawn to but also the whole kids' section. Sure, it wouldn't nearly as much suspicion for him to be there, though if he spent enough time there, Maeve and the others would definitely start and wonder why. Once it was all out in the open and people knew, oh… he was already making lists.

"Definitely need that," Maya breathed, continuing her observations. The biggest thing she wanted… Well, that was easy to tell, wasn't it? How many murals had she done in other nurseries before? She needed to do one here most of all… Though this begged a few questions. A small one, like… "What do you think the theme should be for a mural?" she asked. Lucas smiled, showing he had expected this as well.

"I'm not sure," he looked around the walls. "Right now, looks like superheroes," he nodded to Sam's pages.

"Yeah," Maya smiled, looking at them as well. He had gotten so much better with time. "We could do it together," she told herself. "We could do horses," she looked back to Lucas. "The kid's a Sullivan in there somewhere." The notion settled very well in Lucas' mind. Now, the second question, the bigger one. "I know it's still pretty far away, but… What do you think about finding out what we're having or waiting to be surprised?" she asked.

Lucas had considered this before, mostly in errant thoughts. Now with the question put to him, thinking about it in earnest… It was hard to say.

"Sometimes I think maybe it would be good to be surprised," he told Maya, who nodded in agreement. "But then wouldn't it help for us to get ready if we knew what to get ready for? Not that I want us to force anything on the baby one way or the other…"

"No, I get it," Maya nodded. Just thinking about this potential of knowing, it also brought up the notion of names, which they hadn't really addressed as of yet, but seeing as the child was – as stated many times over – still just the size of a little fig, it didn't feel like the most pressing matter just yet. "So… Maybe we don't decide yet. About any of that. When the time comes, we'll be with a doctor, and they'll ask if we want to know… and we can decide then."

Lucas smiled, putting his arms around her, as he was so drawn to do, more than ever.

"I really like that plan."

"Yeah?" she grinned.

"Yeah," he leaned to kiss her. As much as he looked forward to telling everyone, and as much as he knew she looked forward to it, too, it was kind of nice to be just like this, with so few people knowing. For now, this baby was all theirs…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners