December 3rd 2022

Chapter 337
Our Family in Tucson

As difficult as it could feel at times to have part of their family out of state, whether that was in middling distances like Arkansas and Arizona or the much further New York… or Australia… there was one thing they could consider as a silver lining. They didn't see each other very often, but when they did, oh… It was almost magical. And this weekend, if for a brief visit, they were going to experience some of that magic. They left Austin on Friday afternoon, as soon as everyone was out of school – having exceptionally moved detention to the morning – and flew off to Tucson for the next two nights, returning on Sunday.

"Do you see it? Annie? No, hey, get back here, kit, hands to yourself, alright? No, I know, you want to walk around, but we need to get our bags first, okay, Macadamia?" Maya hushed at Mackenzie, held in one arm, while she kept a hand on Remy's shoulder so she wouldn't rush forward. Lucas already had Kacey in one hand and the stroller in the other, Lucy diligently holding on to Aubrey's hand where she sat, entertained by the parade of multicolored luggage.

"I don't want to say it," Lucas shook his head.

"Then don't," Maya sighed, looking, looking…

"There! Behind the green one!" Marianne excitedly pointed.

"Stay with the stroller," Lucas nodded when he saw it, switching places with her and moving to grab hold of their missing bag, all the while having to tell Kacey not to try and help him; it would only complicate things. She was compensated in this by being given the rescued bag to hold once she was put back on her feet. "Let's get out of here, huh?"

They had to laugh about the highs and lows of traveling with six small children now. It had been a part of their lives for enough years now that they would go and visit their friends and family in this way, and it had been one thing when there were just the two of them, but by now… By now, the joke was that all their years of chaperoning school dances and field trips were finally paying off. Six small daughters versus many, many high schoolers? They had this in the bag… so long as it didn't get lost.

"Flying out of state after a whole day at school, what was I thinking?" Maya breathed after they'd made it to the Hart-Lane house and up to their room. The girls were downstairs being coddled by their grandparents and young aunt and uncle, giving the two of them a few minutes to sit and enjoy a bit of quiet. "Is this what getting old feels like?" she gave a slight pout that generally contradicted her question. Lucas chuckled and came to sit with her.

"I think our views might be a bit skewed by the whole…" he gestured, looking for the right words.

"Gaggle of small blondes with grabby hands and short attention spans?" Maya offered.

"That one, yes," Lucas pointed at her. "And half the time, those hands are sticky and you're not sure why…" he squinted, which made her snort. "Not always sure I want to know why."

"No, definitely not," Maya agreed, and she was about certain they were thinking of the same incident. "Saying that…" she continued instead, redirecting their discussion with a smile, "I'm really glad we got them here."

"Me, too," Lucas smiled back, and they kissed, very briefly, before the sudden eruption of a screech followed by crying set them in motion to head back downstairs. They knew before getting there that it was Mackenzie who'd cried first, only to get Aubrey crying, too, for the sole reason that someone was crying, and it startled her.

Abigail was trying to calm down Mackenzie, while Wyatt had taken up the baby. When Maya and Lucas arrived, they found out that their little Mack Attack – just weeks shy of turning two – had spotted something around the dining room table and, rather than walking or running around it, had decided to crawl underneath… which hadn't gone well. She'd bumped her forehead, just barely, but it had been enough to hurt, and enough to leave a small cut now showing red.

There were a lot of apologies being given, as though all of them, with the number of children they'd each had in their care, had never had any innocent accidents like this to deal with. Maya took up the girl, who immediately clung to her like a lifeline, and took her to the bathroom to get a look at that cut. Mackenzie didn't want to be put down, so they compromised by having her turned around, resting against her mother's front, so she could look at her in the mirror. Maya sang quietly to calm her down, and it helped some of the way. Once she actually had to tend to the little cut, she met some resistance, but she had the patience of practice, and in due time, the cut had disappeared behind a bandage, a good and colorful one, because Abigail and James were always stocked for their grandkids, no matter how spread out their chances to visit were. From there on, it took maybe an hour more of Mommy cuddles before Mackenzie decided she was up for playing again.

"We do think about… following him sometimes," Abigail admitted, when it was just her and James and the young Friars. Her eyes were on her youngest son, just a couple of months shy of graduating high school and already accepted into university back in Austin. Lucas and Maya both looked at the couple in surprise. For as long as they had talked about it, the subject had always felt much more like a kind of in-joke than something they would actually do. Selling the house? Uprooting their lives again?

"It's a lot of things," James told them, sensing the thought. "We know Maisie is not liking the idea of her big brother going away and leaving her 'all alone,'" he air-quoted with a small smirk, as though he and Abigail were apparently not counting to their youngest. "And then it feels like… if all of our kids are in Austin, then why aren't we? Then there's all the grandkids…" It just made sense. That was what it boiled down to.

"We haven't talked to any of them about it yet, especially Maisie, though I know the first thing on her mind will be that she'll get to be in your class someday," Abigail commented with a laugh, which Maya echoed. "But we have started to look into houses and…" She paused, because Lucas sort of seized up all of a sudden, like a thought had just about rocketed into his mind and nearly knocked him off his feet in the process.

"What's the matter?" Maya asked him. He looked conflicted for a moment, but only just. "What?" she laughed, urging him on.

"I wasn't supposed to say anything yet, and they haven't even listed it yet. For all I know they're not actually going to do it," Lucas told her and her stepparents.

"Do what?" she asked, confused.

"The Oswalds are talking about moving, selling their house," he revealed, and now she was the one gasping, realizing what he'd been left to consider. The only ones who still had to do a bit of catching up were Abigail and James, though they mostly had it already.

"Those are the people whose land you use for your maze at Halloween, yes?" Abigail asked, and Maya and Lucas nodded. Now she blinked, and James blinked… They could probably see it in their heads: the house, across the road, just about halfway between the Friars and the Sandersons. If this actually worked out, they could be right there, within walking distance. Lucas gave them a look. Should he get in touch with the Oswalds? See what they had to say? They had nothing to lose by trying, right?

"Would Wyatt mind?" James wondered of the boy who'd been his son since he was all of six years old. "Wouldn't want to… encroach on his college experience," he smirked, and the others matched him. It would be to wonder if there was even a point in him moving in with his big sister if his parents and little sister were just a minute or two away on foot.

"You couldn't pass up being the Hart-Lanes on the Lane though, could you?" Maya told him. "Think of the opportunities… and the holiday decorations, between our house and yours? I'm not helping, am I?" she swerved away from the ideas already pouring from her mind, knowing there was still no guarantee that this would happen.

The Oswalds were still figuring some things out, so they couldn't make many commitments as of yet. However, because these were the Friars, who had been wonderful neighbors every step of the way, even back when those Friars had been Joseph and Susannah and their son, they saw what this would mean for them. For that, they had assured Lucas that, when they knew more, they would let him know. As far as they were concerned, if this all shaped up the way they wanted, the Hart-Lanes would be the very first and possibly the only people who would get a shot at the house.

This very rapidly changed the shape of their weekend in Tucson, even though the Oswald house thing remained a secret between four people. Now it felt like they had a present in the closet, all hidden away, wrapped up and topped with a bow, and no one knew it was there but them, which was leaving them a bit fidgety because it was a Big One, and the response would be one as well, but it couldn't be let out just yet. People got suspicious, so much so that they had to come up with this idea that they were planning 'secret graduation things.'

It wouldn't have been a complete lie, except for the fact that they had already been discussing what they would do for both Wyatt's high school graduation and Emma and Eliza's college one, so they were already in the clear for that. The important part was that it got people off their backs… for the most part. The sneakiest in the bunch were Marianne and Maisie, which in turn seemed to cause cracks to snake across their poker faces. The seven-year-old and her young aunt, who would be ten years old in just over a month, had always gotten along, but more and more so as they grew up. Marianne looked up to Maisie, while Maisie considered Marianne like the little sister that she never had… and now there was a strong possibility that, by next fall, they would get to be neighbors, just up and down the lane from one another…

"What are the odds that we could talk Luna into moving, too?" Maya hummed, that night, as she and Lucas crawled into bed. She knew the odds were slim to none in their favor, but she couldn't help where her mind went. It was like watching game pieces on a board, some over Austin, others over Tucson, and little by little, over the years, Austin had been depleting the Tucson pile. Soon, with Ginny and Sadie off in college, it would be down to Luna, her husband Oliver, and her father Charles. Their situation wasn't the same, sure, but she would be lying if she said there was no part of her that wished she could have all of them somewhere she didn't need a flight to get to them.

"Do you want the honest version or the hopeful one?" Lucas asked her.

"Oh, do the second one, I know what the first one is already," she waved that one off, and he smiled, kissed the flowers at her shoulder.

"Well, hey, you never know. A few years back, Abigail and all of them were in New York, and now they could be across the road from us before long, so…"

"Yeah, that's definitely the better answer. Thanks, Dockleberry."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners