December 30th 2020

Chapter 365
Their Moment of Music

For Start Tour – Day 51 – Show 31 – Los Angeles, California

"Come see our room! Come on!" MJ's voice cleared over that of his sisters' as they all crowded around Maya and Lucas, barely through the apartment's door. The little Hunters were evidently already giddy just for being in their parents' 'other home,' but now their sister and brother-in-law were here, and they hadn't seen it all furnished yet, but the four of them had, and they had their room to show her, and if it wasn't enough, they could show them the room that was for them, too!

"We will, in a minute, hold on," Maya laughed, exercising her ability to call the short pack to attention. "Now…" she turned a smile to the twins, who grinned now, coming nearer, where she could hug them both. They were getting so tall… Oh, they would never get exceptionally tall, not even with that Clutterbucket giant blood in them, but they were her little sisters, and she still had vivid memories of holding them as babies, so this… Ten years old… Ten… Maybe they really were giants after all. "Happy birthday, Miss Penelope," she looked to Nellie, all sunlight and a splash of chaos to make things interesting. "And happy birthday to you, Miss Grace," she turned Gracie, her Mouse-Mouse, Shawn's Sherlock… Most mature of the five of them kids but a child all the same… It made her so happy that all the pieces could have fallen into place, that they could all be together on this day.

"Now we can go," Nellie happily declared, and Gracie nodded in agreement, so off they went.

They had just barely arrived from Seattle, hadn't even gone to the hotel yet. Instead, Ree had suggested to drop them off at the apartment building, tour bus and all. The rest of them would continue on toward the hotel, and they'd be checked in, with Cara and Shae more than happy to stick with Christina and her parents for a little while. They'd have precious little hours to spend here before they had to go off to the venue for the evening's show, but they would spend them well.

"How's your wrist doing?" Shawn asked when he finally got to greet his visiting daughter.

For a few days after the incident, they'd done their best not to bring it up whenever they spoke with him and Katy, and Maya would keep her arm lowered whenever they'd having a video call. They understood too well how worrying from a distance could feel, so it made sense to not give them cause for it when it really didn't feel like so much of a thing. But because she could be a very energized talker, and discussing the tour was only going to play into that, eventually her bad arm had swept into view, the bandage impossible to miss, and so they'd had to explain the whole thing. Katy and Shawn hadn't taken it near as bad as they'd expected, but then again who was to say what the conversation had been like after they'd hung up?

"Oh, it's good," Maya nodded, flexing her fingers as she looked to her arm. "You know, it's more annoying now than anything. The only bad thing now is when I sleep I'll have these dreams about really falling, and…" she shook her head, before the images could grab hold of her mind again. She and Lucas both had lost count of how many times she'd woken up with a start, at night at the hotel or on the bus, briefly disoriented before remembering and confirming that what she'd just seen was only a dream, that she was okay and so was the baby. "I'm working on that," she assured her father.

Even though they were all in the city that day, it didn't mean that Katy was home. She was on set, as she would be for a great part of the day, but this wasn't necessarily a problem so much as an opportunity. They had arranged it so that the family would be able to visit the set, and see Katy at work, before sitting to a birthday lunch for the twins. No one was looking forward to this more than the new ten-year-olds themselves.

When they got to stand there and actually watch Katy in the middle of shooting a scene, it was possibly the most surreal thing, even for having already seen her on completed episodes, on television. For Lucas, it brought back memories of meeting his future mother-in-law when he'd been all of fourteen and seeing how she clearly wanted this so much but was not on any path that would suggest she'd ever actually make it. But now she had, hadn't she? She hadn't made it the way she thought she would, but she'd made it nonetheless, she'd held on, and she was kind of amazing at it. Right then, he couldn't wait to see his own daughter get to discover how great her grandmother was.

For Maya, it was even more emotional than when she'd watched her do theater. Television had been that old dream, and oh how she'd been right there by her mother's side, watching her attempt to claw her way in. She had gone above and beyond in trusting in her abilities to succeed, even when deep down she'd only seen little chance of it ever happening, because what other choice did she have. If her mother made it, then their lives would change, and that was what they needed, wasn't it? And instead… instead, their lives had changed, and evolved, and when they didn't need it, not in the same way anymore, it had happened for Katy, gotten to be her own thing, not the means to an end. And that was wonderful.

X

For Start Tour, Day 52 – Traveling day – Los Angeles to Tucson

"Hey, come here," Maya stretched her hand out toward the girls, in the seats across the aisle of the bus, when Lucas headed to the back to use the bathroom. Cara saw this opening and moved at once to drop at her sister's side, still holding the means of her craft.

She and Shae had gone shopping, the day they'd arrived in Toronto, and of all the things the two teenaged girls could have come back with, they had been eager to show Maya and Lucas the patterns and tools they had picked up. They wanted to learn to do crochet and make things for baby Marianne, especially on all those hours they'd spend on the bus for the rest of the tour. They'd lost count of how many hours they'd seen the two of them bent to their activity, figuring things out, celebrating improvements… And now, barely a week later, here was Cara with what was starting to look unmistakeably like a small orange elephant. She held it up to show Maya, who laughed.

"You're getting really good at this, you know that?"

"I can show you, it's easy," Cara smiled, before Maya held up her bandaged hand. "Right," Cara bowed her head a moment. "When we're back in Texas then, after your hand gets better."

"You're on," Maya nodded. "Excited to be back up here even if it's only for a day?" she asked, nodding out the window, as they were rolling through Tucson proper now.

"Yeah…" Cara breathed, and Maya understood this feeling as much as she envied it a little. "But it's only for a visit, like I'm not coming back here when the tour is over, so it's sort of weird, I guess."

"Worried you won't want to leave again?"

"No, no, not at all," Cara promised. "I can't wait until we're in Austin and I can really unpack and make my room and just be home, with you and Lucas and the dogs and then the baby…" she smiled, very nearly bouncing in her seat.

"Yes, Eliza sent me a picture of the countdown on your wall once," Maya revealed, making her little sister gasp and possibly plan to have a word or two with her little sister. "It just… It never feels good to say goodbye, and when we barely even get to say hello first…"

"I get that," Maya promised, then after a moment. "Okay, I can't do it myself, but just show me what you're doing?"

When Lucas returned from the bathroom and a stop to chat with a couple of the crew guys, he found his seat had been taken from him and wasn't likely to be returned to him anytime soon, so he dropped in at Shae's side, finding her to be constructing what looked to be a red and white cat with her crochet needles.

They would have the rest of the day and some of the next to spend with the Hart-Lanes. The morning after tomorrow's Tucson show they would already be back on the bus, headed along to Colorado with a show in the evening. Even though it would be a very brief visit, they were going to enjoy every minute of it. They had last seen the family five weeks before, back in Japan, and they wouldn't have believed it had been that long if they couldn't just look at the old pictures and the new ones and see how much Maya's belly had grown in that time. That was definitely the first thing they all noticed when they saw her walk through the door with Lucas and the girls.

Cara quickly disappeared along with her younger sisters, the better to show Shae around the house, leaving Maya and Lucas to settle in the living room with Abigail, James, and Elizabeth. As comfortable as the bus could be, Maya especially was never upset to leave it for a place where she could extend her legs more at ease, to stretch and work out the odd cramp.

"Two weeks to go," Elizabeth Hart remarked, as she followed her granddaughter's invitation to sit at her side. "For your tour, that is."

"Yes," Maya smiled, sharing a look with Lucas on her other side. They might have started counting down the days to Austin, too, not unlike Cara had done for her move. They were happy on the tour – the parts on stage and the parts off of it – but being home again would be a different kind of happy without negating the first.

"There was a thought that… maybe I could join you in Austin for a time," Elizabeth went on. "Not in your house so much, I would never impose, but near enough that I could be around, when you have the baby." Her thoughtful smile said so much, of her desire to be near her granddaughter, and her future great-granddaughter, of time lost and opportunities missed.

"You should," Maya smiled at once, grasping the woman's hand even as she looked to Lucas. He of all people knew what this would mean for her, and he only had to look at his wife, at her grandmother, and there was no doubt to what they had to do next.

"We have a room, in the basement, it's yours for as long as you'd like to stay," he told her, and Elizabeth tried to insist she'd find a place somewhere, that it was temporary and she wouldn't want to… "Well, if it's temporary then all the better."

Soon, it was settled. They didn't know for sure when she'd come, or for exactly how long, but Elizabeth Hart would be welcome to the guest room in the basement, whether for weeks, or months, there was no telling yet. It became yet one more reason for them to look forward to the very near future.

X

For Start Tour – Day 57 – Show 35 – New York City, New York

It was not the first time she performed in New York, no, but then the one time she'd done it had been in her former middle school, nothing like where she stood that night, waiting to go on stage. Last time had been pretty special, no doubt. It had been the night where she met Sam for the first time. That was so long ago now, nearly a decade. And even though it had been all this time, and longer still since she'd lived here and considered herself a New Yorker to the bone… To be standing here now, with no disrespect to the many stages she'd walked in the near two months of this tour so far, was just the most special thing she could have happen.

When Ree would call her and she'd walk out there, twenty-seven weeks pregnant, a grown woman, a wife, a teacher, a Texan if she had to identify… She walked out, and for a moment she was thirteen again, Maya Hart of New York, with her city in her blood. Anyone out there who knew her at all, knew her personally… Those people would look at her and they'd know: this night was special.

By the end of it, when she'd stand there with Ree, hearing all those people cheering loudly all around, it would be a feeling… one of those top memories of the tour, so easy to stack right at the top. She took it all in, and it pulled so much emotion from her…

She'd known it would be huge, even as they'd driven into the city this morning, coming in from Chicago and the previous night's show. They'd approached the city limits, and she'd be sitting there, attentively looking out the windows until… there it was. New York City…

"You two want to come along or stay at the hotel?" Lucas asked Cara and Shae when the bus stopped to let him and Maya out while the others moved to go and check-in.

"Do you know where we are? What do you think?" Shae blurted out, making Maya and Cara both laugh.

In the end, it was the four of them and Christina Sutcliffe as well. She couldn't resist the pull either, even if she'd been here many times before, unlike Shayla Blake. This was the most at ease they had been in walking around a city in a long time, with how familiar most of them were with their surroundings. It brought so many memories for Maya, but for Cara, too. She hadn't been back since they'd left, after Kermit had died. Maya understood how that first visit could feel so strange, but this was a whole other layer.

They'd called for a cab which could accommodate the five of them together, and then they'd taken off for what was in some ways a Maya tour of the city, with some guest appearances by Lucas, as they stopped at one point in front of a diner.

"My mother used to work here," Maya told the three girls. "Do you see that window there?" she pointed. They nodded, and she leaned in for a whisper. "That booth there, that's where he and I kissed for the first time," she told them, creating two gasps and a laugh. They passed in front of the middle school, which had been hers and Sam's as well, of course.

It was also a Cara tour, as she would point places out to Shae. The Harts had not lived exactly in the same area as Maya and her mother had done, naturally, but it didn't mean she didn't have her own memories out here.

"Oh! Right there! Mom and Dad took Sam and me there when they were going to have Eliza and they told us. And then we went again when they were going to have Wyatt. We'd been smaller the first time, we didn't remember right away, but it looked so familiar, you know? Then they told us, and it was like 'oh yeah!'"

The next place they ended up was a Maya place again, and why she felt she had to go there, she couldn't say, but it felt important.

"There," she looked up to the building. "This is where we lived, before my mom and I moved to Austin. This is where she and Dad went to live after they found out they were going to have me and Dad got kicked out of his house, and they raised me, until he left. That window up there, that one right there… That was my room."

Lucas looked up there, remembered when she'd first told him about living in this big building, way up there, compared to her house in Austin, her window looking out on the grass, inches away. This building could not have been more different from the Hunter Hart house.

Maya felt a hand take hers, knew it was Cara's without having to look. She'd never seen this place, but knowing their family's history, it meant a lot, and she was thankful for her sister's showing it to her.

The place they went after this was something else entirely. As good as it was to see the places they knew so well, it was just as good, better even, when they got to see the people.

"Ada, don't touch anything, you're going to get them dirty, come here, we need to wash you up," Isadora just managed to catch up the three-year-old as she hurried toward the familiar faces of her aunt and uncle, more commonly seen on a screen but nevertheless known and loved.

"Painting?" Lucas asked, as amused by the wriggling child as Maya and the girls.

"Science kit," Isadora proudly nodded before carrying her daughter toward the bathroom. It was strange to imagine her being so at one with this kind of chaos, but as Farkle had told them, when it came to the kids, the chaos became accepted as a necessity of growth and learning.

He had been the one to let them in, and he'd barely gotten to say so much as hello before Ada had come along. He had some stains of his own, and the explanation of the science kit brought them back by the way of understanding. He went to hug his friends but thought better of it, excusing himself to go and change as quickly as possible. He did just that, returning while also carrying along one-year-old Bertie.

"Oh, please, let me see this guy," Maya gasped, and so he was passed into her arms. "Albert Minkus, good man Bertie, hello…" she spoke, all smiles. As had been the case back with her siblings in both Los Angeles and Tucson, maneuvering the small child around her belly was a bit trickier, especially with her wrist these days, but she found the way easily enough in the end, while Bertie only found the whole thing amusing.

"He looks so much like you," Lucas stated, reaching to shake the boy's hand. It wasn't as though this resemblance was a new discovery, with all the pictures and the videos and the calls they'd had, but something about seeing him in person now only made it feel even more of a thing.

"Reminds me of those baby pictures your mom showed Riley and me once. I think you became a perfect tomato red, right here," she tapped the small Minkus boy's cheeks, making him laugh and wiggle in her arms like it had tickled him but he didn't hate it.

"I remember," Farkle confirmed, and he might have actually started getting red in the cheeks again. "She still pulls those out now, so she can show everyone how much her son and her grandson look alike. I made her promise she wouldn't put him in a turtleneck."

The newly clean Ada Marie came running up now, and she ended up on Lucas' knee. She took one look at Maya and her belly, and her eyes widened with understanding. There was a baby in there. Isadora came along and sat with them, too, and Christina recognized her at once for having seen her in some of the very early TXNY videos. She'd watched them all at one time or another during the tour, on planes, on the bus… Maya reminded her how Isadora had also been their very first songwriter. The former/founding member of the band tried to write this off like it was simply too long ago, and her songs were nothing compared to the sheer amount of great songs Maya had put out since.

Maya, on the contrary, insisted that Isadora's songs were equally special, especially to her. They had been the thing to get her started with writing, and really none of it would have happened, not the band, not even her being here in this very moment, touring with Ree Forster, if it hadn't been for Isadora standing up, when the four of them had just been starting out, and deciding to write them a song. She hadn't forgotten, and it was one of the many reasons she pressed those letter signs at her hip every time she walked on to a stage these pas two months.

X

For Start Tour – Day 58 – Traveling day – New York to Boston

They would have had breakfast down in the hotel that morning, before the tour crew boarded the bus and started on its way to their next destination. Instead, the For Starters called up a cab and made their way to a restaurant, there to share the meal with some very happy fans who had gotten to watch the previous night's performance together with Lucas and the girls but now wanted very much to have some time with Maya as well. The bus wasn't leaving until after lunch, so they looked forward to a morning together.

"I can't even begin to tell you… Oh, I am so happy that you're here…" Betsy Young embraced her cousin's daughter, setting a hand to Maya's belly when she thought she'd felt something and finding herself rewarded with a second kick.

"You know the album has been playing on a loop since it came out?" Betsy's wife, Sasha, revealed, as she got her turn in greeting her. "The house, the car…"

She sounded as though this was easily a choice she supported, loving the album in equal measures, maybe giving Betsy the edge. Meanwhile, their sons, standing nearby, looked as though they'd had their fill a while ago. Dax and Miles, now aged twelve, two years since Maya and Lucas had first met them, had clearly not inherited their mothers' enthusiasm for the music, no matter how hard they tried to pass it on to them. They'd spent the night at some classmate's house while Betsy and Sasha had gone to see the show.

"Listen, I have been a fan of Ree Forster since before you were born," Betsy began her defense, looking to the quartet. Maya imagined if Ree heard this. She'd go and make a face like 'yes, please, make me feel old.' "It was one thing when I went to see her show and there you were, looking like your mama and flooring me with that voice for one song," Betsy tapped Maya's hand as they sat. "But now here you are, and you wrote that whole album, which I will say right now is the best thing she's put out in years, not just because we're family but as a fan. And you're touring the world with her, singing like that, and now, of all times…" she nodded to her belly before sitting back, still just in awe. "Unbelievable, I… That show was everything, Maya, I'm so… I'm going to cry, I'm telling you," she laughed, while Maya wasn't far off from doing some crying of her own as she laughed along. "I called Katy when we got home last night, I was still on that concert high, it was like when we were kids, me and her, and that's… It was a night I won't forget, we won't forget," she indicated Sasha, who'd been smiling and nodding all along. "I wanted you to know that."

Maya still thought about that breakfast by the time they got on the bus and continued toward Boston. She and Lucas would recall and laugh together how it reminded them of the call her mother had gotten from her cousin, the night her first episode of Heal Thyself had aired. Betsy was on the whole a very well put together kind of person, but she also had this other side of her, the one who thrived on those very things Katy had thrived on when she'd been growing up in Arkansas, the things that bonded them so much that, when Katy had run away, she'd run right to her, because she knew she'd be a kindred like no other.

"Do you think… other people think that, too?" Maya quietly asked Lucas, on the bus. "How it's the best thing she's done in years?" she signed, not wanting to make it sound like anything that might be taken the wrong way. Lucas considered it. He hadn't exactly followed her career that closely, though once she'd become involved with Maya the way she did, he had looked into her discography some more.

"I might not be the one to ask," Lucas pointed out. It would be impossible for him not to be biased toward his wife's compositions.

They knew that the album had been doing very well since it had come out, and the tour had been very popular all around, too, selling out most of its dates. If it wasn't for the fact that Maya would be on her twenty-ninth week by the time they made it home, it might have been that they would have added more dates and extended the tour. That was about as much as they knew. Maya didn't want to go and see what other people said about all of it, didn't want to let it go to her head, for good or ill, but that one small remark did leave her to wonder if others thought the same, and what it would mean for the future. She was so ready to hit pause on all of that for a little while, to just stop and focus on her baby girl, but what would it all look like for her when she was ready to hit play again?

They had just passed the state line out of New York. A week from now… A week from now they would be passing the state line into Texas… It was all going by so fast, coming to an end. She could count the amount of shows left to perform on one hand now, and they'd go by in a flash. As much as she loved all this, this was the moment where she started to think she was ready for it to be over. She wanted to be home, with her dogs, sleeping in her own bed… It wouldn't be long now.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners