December 19th 2020

Chapter 354
Their Plans For Generations

"You know, there's one image I can't get out of my head," Maya stated as they drove from her parents' house, on their way to the elder Friars'.

"What is it?" Lucas asked, likely thinking she was referring back to when they'd told her family about the baby. Instead, she grinned over at him, as he saw her out of the corner of his eye.

"That we'll be out there, on the tour, in some city somewhere, and we'll look around, and we'll see… your mother, hiding, keeping an eye on us and her grandbaby," she revealed, slipping into her still spot-on Melinda Friar impression on the last word. Lucas chuckled. "Sunglasses, big hat, totally low-key."

"No, absolutely," Lucas agreed, making her laugh. After a moment, bringing up the tour and his mother made them both think about her parents again, when the tour had come up in conversation.

"They won't like that I'm still going, will they?" Maya sighed, looking down at herself, her hand instinctively joined to her small belly.

"Probably not," Lucas shook his head. "But… they'll adjust. They'll have to. It's up to us, our baby."

"You're still okay with it, too, right?" she heard herself ask. In all this time, she'd never actually asked him the question. It had never come up into question, this idea of whether they should or shouldn't go if she was pregnant. Long before it had become real, when the possibility of going on the tour had been offered to her in the first place, they had discussed the chance of her being pregnant while they were on the road, and he'd been on board. Maybe now that it was really happening, that he'd seen their baby on a screen, heard its heartbeat…

"Completely okay," Lucas told her, and she knew it was true. She'd known him long enough now that she could trust he would have told her if he had concerns, if he thought she shouldn't do this. It was only her worries, for how her parents had reacted to that part, and what she expected from Thomas and Melinda, that even had her asking, and he understood. "You know, one day we'll get to tell our kid how they went all over the world, that they got to be on all those stages, before they were even born."

"Little traveler…" Maya smiled. She really liked this thought, and it set her back on track for what was to come. Another surprise, more happiness… "Do we have ear plugs in here somewhere?" she asked Lucas and he laughed.

As much as they had an in to get them in the house with a reason, the better not to raise suspicions before they actually got to spill the beans, this one didn't come so readily with a way to actually make the announcement. They were there to pick up suitcases. They might have gone in with the same ruse, giving Lucas' parents some tour shirts, and they would have been well received, but they didn't want to simply use the same scheme again, taking away from what the first time had been. Luckily, they didn't have to think too hard to come up with something.

"Oh, good, you're just in time for lunch," Melinda greeted the pair of them as they walked into the house. She was practically walking them both toward the kitchen the way Lucas had done with MJ Hunter earlier.

"Hey, Mom," Lucas smiled, stealing a look to Maya as they went. She was just as amused, pressing her lips together to keep from laughing. Arriving in the kitchen, they found Thomas standing at the stove, stirring with a wooden spoon. Much as her stomach wasn't nearly as bad as it had been in the beginning, and morning sickness was now thankfully a thing of the past, it didn't stop Maya's 'problem smells' from remaining that, and Lucas could tell from looking at her that she'd caught a whiff of something unpleasant.

"You good?" he signed, and she nodded. "Hey, uh, where are the suitcases? We can get them in the car while you're…" Lucas turned back to his mother, but she just waved this off.

"They're upstairs, but it can wait until after lunch."

"Uh, well…" Lucas looked to Maya again, thinking he could use the excuse that he needed to study as a way of getting them away from the kitchen and the smell, but she gave him a very discreet shake of the head. She'd be fine. "Okay," he relented, which made his mother smile broadly.

"Good, good. Please, sit."

This wasn't new, really. Lately, she'd been making the most of their time together, as Maya had put it, knowing that she wouldn't see either of them all summer. So, she was stocking up in shared time. Once Thomas had filled the plates and brought them to the table though, it was clear that Maya would have little appetite for what she was served. She thanked her in-laws in earnest, though the look at the back of her eyes read like 'what the hell do I do now?' Lucas sought to rectify this by moving into action right away, instead of after the meal, which would have been the logical step.

"Oh, hey, while I'm remembering, I have to show you these pictures from the ranch this week," he told his parents, pulling out his phone and pulling up a newly created photo album. He knew just the way to get his parents' curiosity, and he passed them the phone when they were both looking at him and made a noise as though to say 'Oh, what is it? Show us.'

The photos had been taken at the ranch, in recent weeks, though he couldn't say that they were anything special. If he ever said as much to Maya, she'd see this downplaying of his photographic skills as an invitation to point out how very wrong he was. He could capture the spirit of the place like no one else, she'd say, because no one could see any of it just the way he saw it. Even so, Lucas and Maya would both see how, after four or five of the images, his parents didn't know what they were supposed to be looking for. It didn't matter. Because the seventh picture would not show a horse in a stable, or running, or with a rider…

The seventh picture would show a sonogram print out, with text added around it. Hello, Grandma & Grandpa! Can't wait to meet you!

It would have been showing that they had never known Melinda Friar a day in her life if they had been surprised for how loudly she shouted upon seeing the image, how she stood from her chair and moved to hug Maya at once. Not to be showed up by his wife's reaction, Thomas Friar let out what could only be the most raucously joyful laugh, looking at the sonogram again, to his wife already hugging their daughter-in-law, and his son… Oh, he looked to Lucas and it brought tears to his eyes, as it did to his son's, too, as he felt the swell of fatherly pride himself, for his unborn child. A moment later, he remembered why he'd hurried this all up.

"Dad, you have to get all this out of here," he indicated the plates, nodding back to Maya. Thomas blinked, not understanding for a moment, then…

"Oh… Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry," he gathered the plates with haste. "Why don't we go in the living room while I air out the place?"

Lucas had to get his mother's attention so she'd catch that they were changing rooms, and it became more of a case of her having released her daughter-in-law to now fall upon her son. Her sweet baby Luke was going to be a father… It was all simply much too much for one future grandmother to take, and she hugged him, and pressed a kiss to his cheek, and hugged him some more. In the meantime, this at least allowed Maya to get up from where she sat and move into the living room, where she could breathe a little easier.

"I can make you something else," Thomas Friar came to find her.

"It's alright, we shouldn't stay too long anyway, Lucas really needs to be studying but he made time so we could come today. We were going to wait until after he finished all his tests, but see," she readjusted her shirt, just as she'd done at her parents' house, the better to put in evidence what she'd been so diligent in hiding up to now. It caused another small outburst to come from her father-in-law, as he now came up and got to hug her, too.

"I can't even begin to tell you how much this means, I…" he pulled back, looking at her.

"Go for it, I'm still at a point where I welcome it," Maya smiled, and with a laugh he touched her small belly.

"When are you…"

"November 16th," Maya replied. "Oh, when Lucas comes back with the phone, there's the video after the picture, too…"

As promised, once he'd been able to get his mother to let go and rejoin the others in the living room, Lucas had shown them the recording from which they'd gotten the photo, letting the room be flooded with the steady pulse of the baby's heartbeat. It might have been the best thing Thomas and Melinda had heard since the day they'd heard the heartbeat of their own child, now a man sitting by their side as they considered the approach of this long hoped for grandchild.

"So, you weren't coming for those suitcases then," Melinda stated, after the phone had been put away, as though she'd understood it now.

"No, no, we were, we are," Lucas nodded. This surprised his mother.

"You…" she looked at him, then to Maya, then to Maya's hand at her bump, as it was not free to settle there at her heart's content. "You're still going?" she asked.

"We are," Maya confirmed with a nod. "It was always a possibility that things would… line up this way, and we were ready for it." She explained again the whole thing about having read Ree into the secret, the better to implement changes where Maya would be involved, and she told her in-laws about the doctor who would be travelling with them the entire time.

"Maya, I have seen how tired you are after one of your shows," Melinda pointed out. "And this tour, all those shows, and the travelling, I can't help but think this is a bad idea, sweetheart." It was so rare that they saw her like this, when the more exuberant side of Melinda Friar would be pulled back until what remained was this infinitely more sober, quiet version of her, that to see it here now… It was her showing how seriously she took this concern.

"My TXNY shows and what I'll be doing with Ree are really very different from one another," Maya promised her. "I won't be playing any instrument, and I won't be on for every song, and even when I'm there, I won't be on my feet the whole time. I need you to trust me when I tell you that I'm in the best position to know the difference, and whether I can or can't handle it. More than that, I would back out of it in a heartbeat if I thought that it would harm our baby," she looked back to Lucas, who reached for her hand even as she did. "And he would tell me, too."

It was hard to say how much or how little this convinced the elder Friars to turn on to their way of thinking, but by the time they left on their way back home, the suitcases were in the car with them.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners