Chapter 41
The Austin Harts

It had taken some convincing for Lucas to go ahead and leave the house that morning, and Maya couldn't blame him. Even though she had yet to be away from the baby beyond her being downstairs while he was upstairs or vice versa, she had that same reflex he did of not feeling entirely able to step away. Sometimes just making herself go and have a shower left her caught with this feeling in her stomach like she was rooted to the ground and she couldn't make herself go. It was silly, she realized it, but she hadn't found a way to stop herself feeling it, not yet.

So for him to go off to look at houses with his mother and hers, for what was likely to be hours on end, he was definitely going to be having that feeling, too. She could see it, the way he walked around with Elliott asleep in his arms, his head bowed to look at him.

"Can you stop for a second?" Maya asked him. Lucas stopped and turned to her. "No, no, just go back the way you were but stand still for a bit," she instructed, pencil squeezed between her fingers. He looked down now and saw the sketchbook in her lap.

"Were you drawing me?" he asked. He hadn't even seen what she was doing.

"Both of you," she smiled. Lucas came to stand behind her, so he might get a look at what she'd added to Elliott's sketches. "I'm going to call this one… Daddy doesn't want to go."

"That obvious, huh?"

"No judgment here," Maya promised. "Everything's going to be fine. I have my backup. You think he'd be opposed to me calling him Nappy Joe now?"

"Do I even want to know where that came from?" Lucas chuckled.

"The ways were many, each sillier than the last," Maya informed him.

"Well, just have this guy nearby and you might get away with it," he offered, moving around the couch so he might pass their son over to her. The book and pencil were set aside so she might freely receive him. "I changed him before I came down here earlier, he should still be alright. Do you need me to grab you anything? I think I left his blanket upstairs…" he stood back up. Maya stalled him, getting hold of his arm.

"Everything's under control. Go, we'll be fine. We'll just be chilling out here, there may be songs, there may be stories… Once your grandfather gets back from his walk, there will definitely be stories. And you have some houses to check out, and take pictures of… for me," she smiled innocently.

"Okay, alright," he relented with a laugh. He leaned down again to kiss her and look in on Elliott one more time before finally heading off to get their mothers and start the visits.

"Your dad is kind of hot when he's being all protective like that, isn't he? I don't know, maybe that's just me…" Maya looked down to the baby, gently rubbing at his back. Elliott went on sleeping. "Is it bad how much I enjoy saying things you won't even remember? Just because you're only two weeks old and are still working out how to hold you own head up, much less complain about how I keep going on and on… I can't help it that you like the sound of my voice, and if I stop for too long you'll wake up. After a while, you need to explore new subjects. For example, the need to prepare yourself for the fact that, one day, when you bring someone home to meet your parents, they will discover you have been blessed with one real good looking dad," she fondly shook her head, smirking to herself.

At the sound of the key in the door, Maya looked to the sleeping boy and held her finger to her lips regardless of his being able to see or understand it. Our little secret.

"Finally got him to go, did you?" Pappy Joe asked.

"I can be very persuasive," Maya informed him, which made him laugh. "Good walk?"

"I've been walking this area for decades, or I did, until I had that fall that sent me living with Tom and Mel. That was the first time I did my old circuit since then."

"And it felt like you never left?" she guessed.

"No, it made me wonder how I ever did it every day every time," Pappy Joe breathed out as he sat on the couch with her.

"You're just going to have to practice. I'll go with you when I'm up to it. We both will," she looked down to find two open eyes blinking up at her. "Yeah, see? He already wants to go."

"You got yourself a deal," Pappy Joe stretched out his hand and she shook it. "I'll have to keep going at it by myself until then." Looking at him, it did get to feel like there was more happening underneath. Memories, she suspected, brought to the surface again by those long traveled steps. There were things she'd been meaning to ask, things she knew deep down he needed to let out, but the last thing she wanted was to go down into places he wasn't ready to go.

"So long as you come back. I might have to go out there and drag you back myself if you take too long. This one doesn't sleep in the afternoon anymore if you're not there to talk him down."

"Is that right?" Pappy Joe laughed.

"I don't know, I'm not exactly looking forward to testing that theory," Maya informed him. It didn't feel right to take him down this direction, especially with how happy he looked at the moment, but she knew that this was as good of a set up as any for her to broach the subject. "I really love those photos there," she nodded to the array of frames on the walls. They had been selected from his albums, a chronicle of years in this house, and the people who'd called it home or just… a place of safety.

"Susannah took most of those. She had an eye for that sort of thing, you know? Well, of course you know, photographer you are." Maya smiled for a moment, looked down just as quick. She couldn't do it. But it was too late. One look at her and Pappy Joe understood where she was going with her compliment for the photos. "You want to know why I didn't give you any with her in them," he slowly stated. Her. Not his late wife but their late daughter.

"I… I've never actually seen her."

"You wouldn't have," Pappy Joe confirmed. "And that's nothing against you, or anyone else. Susannah, she just hoarded all those photos we had of her, guarded them like they were worth more than her own life. She was terrified that any of them might get damaged, or lost, that… that we'd forget what she looked like. After she passed, I guess you could say I took over."

Maya remembered, when they'd helped him unpack… There was one box he had set aside and told them to leave alone. Even when everything had been brought in, Lucas' father had carried a box into the house she was sure was that box. He'd given his father a look as he'd gone by him, like he knew how important that box was.

"Here," Pappy Joe pulled his wallet from his back pocket. From it, he extracted one picture, long ago laminated, frayed at the edges, but overall unchanged, decades after it was taken. The man looked very much like Hank Hillard, Lucas' uncle, and the woman had his ears. The boy looked very much like his future son, and the girl… She did look about two here, and the notion of how she would still have been about…

They had suffered a tragedy, no two ways around it, when they'd lost her. It should never have been like that, and right now, holding her infant son in her arms, she felt it deeper than ever. But looking at that little face, Maya felt that the most important thing about Annabeth Friar was not that she'd died but that she'd lived, and in that precious short time, if this picture was any indication, she had brought much joy into the lives of her parents and her older brother.

"Do you think Susannah, wherever she is now, would feel alright with letting… at least one picture go up on that wall?" she looked to Pappy Joe, who looked to be fighting a losing battle against keeping it together. Maya put the picture back in his hand and he took a deep breath, eyes locked on that small girl's face.

"I think…" he cleared his throat. "I think she'd be okay with that."

"People are going to want to know about her when they see her," Maya pointed out, even as she thought about it. "Are you going to be okay with that?"

"I'll have to be," he told her. "You know, I never really talked much about her with Lucas when he was growing up. He was too young, I told myself. He didn't need to hear it. He never seemed old enough, but maybe that was just me. And now… now with you and him out here, with this baby boy… It's just not something I'd want to put in your heads, or…"

"You know if you just try to keep protecting everyone all this time… no one's going to be able to do the same for you," Maya told him, and she knew that he understood what she meant. Keeping his daughter to himself all this time, he hadn't been keeping people from the feelings it would rustle up. He'd been keeping himself from it all.

"She was fine, and then one day she wasn't. Not one month later, she was gone. There was nothing more they could do for her, they said…" he recalled, shaking his head.

Maya stood and set Elliott down in his seat before going back to the couch, so she might embrace the man as he relived those memories. Joseph Friar was by no means a hard man, but in itself the fact that he let himself be held spoke plenty.

By the time Lucas returned from his visits, he was just eager to be with his family again. It wasn't as though he worried that something might happen so much as he was in this headspace now where it almost felt wrong not to be near them. Maybe that was because he'd been with them around the clock most days since the baby was born, but either way… He was home now, and he felt a weight lifted.

Driving up, he could see Maya sitting out front in the shade of the porch, the baby in her arms. As soon as she'd spotted his car coming, she'd been following his progress along the lane and then up to where he parked and got out. When he jogged up to join her, she smiled, holding a finger to her lips to let him know Elliott was asleep. He came and sat at her side, looking at their boy curled up against her in peace.

"I'm kind of obsessed with the way his tiny little fingers move when he sleeps," Maya whispered, and Lucas smiled, seeing it, too. "What are you dreaming about, sprout? Huh? What's going on in there?"

"Maybe just this," Lucas suggested, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. "How was your day?" he asked her.

"Quiet," she replied after a beat, brushing at Elliott's hair with her finger. "Tell me about the houses?" He held up his phone. "How many pictures did you get?"

"According to my mother, 'a dozen rolls,'" he informed her.

"Nice. Okay, but before you show them to me, which one did you like best?"

"The first one, the one we sent out to your father the first time, was even better than in the pictures we saw on the listing. Then the other ones, the comparison houses… One was really only just okay, but the last one might be right up there with the first."

"Okay, so forget the middle one, pros and cons for one and three?"

"First is bigger and closer to here, third is better located, with the schools and all that. They might not mind having to go a bit further to get there though if it meant they were closer to us, I don't know." He showed her the pictures, and it was very much as he'd said it. There were things about the first house they hadn't seen before, which was to expected, and the third one really was on par with the first, to the point where the houses themselves didn't even feel like they were the selling points anymore. They were great, and now it was down to the perks, like locations.

"Kind of glad I'm not the one who has to choose," Maya finally declared. "Did you send them the pictures?"

"I did, yeah. I figured, since they want to try and make an offer on one of them as soon as possible, it was better not to keep them waiting. The people we spoke to… Okay, the people my mother spoke to while yours and I stood back…" Maya chuckled. "They all sounded like they wouldn't make anyone jump through hoops to make the sale happen, so they could close it quick."

"Good. I never like keeping secrets, even if it's for good reasons," Maya nodded. It was all moving fast, from the day her father had called to mention the idea up to now, and if they wanted to be out here in time for school it would continue to keep moving fast. That was more than alright with her. Now that it was something she could look forward to, she was just so anxious to have her brothers and sisters around her all the time… and her grandmother… and her father and stepmother…

While I can…

"Hey…" Lucas spoke, and she sighed. Him and his ninja detecting skills. "What is it?"

"It's nothing, it's fine, just me thinking about my father, and the move, and… maybe what's motivating it, deep down." Her conversation with Pappy Joe earlier may have played into this, too. "Hey, so… How would you feel about going out on one more errand today? Shouldn't take very long."

"What is it?" he asked with a nod.

"Can you go with Pappy Joe so he can get a picture frame?"

X

"Okay, bud, are we ready for this?" Lucas quietly asked, smiling as Elliott moved about while he was being readied for his bath. "You were looking ready to go off to sleep before, now you're wide awake. You're not going to stay that way very long though, I think. It's going to be right off to sleep with you after this, isn't it?" The boy looked up at him. Much as he was still very young and unlikely to have loads to offer in voluntary communication, it didn't stop him from giving enough of a reaction, on which his parents had started picking up. Right now, Elliott Friar was happy as a little fish, or he was about to be.

They had quickly decided that bath time would be handled by Lucas. Maya had, for the time being at least, sole control over feedings, and it continued to be a time for her and Elliott to share and bond over. Baths were not so frequent as feedings, but Lucas looked forward to them very much… Clearly, so did Elliott.

When it was all over and he'd gotten the baby all set and cozy again, he'd brought him into his and Maya's room, where he found his fiancée sitting on the bed with the laptop open in her lap. It looked like she was on a Skype call with someone, and he soon found it to be Kermit Hart, over in New York.

"Hey, Mr. Hart," Lucas greeted him, sitting next to Maya, who looked down to their son with a smile and took his hand by slipping her finger in his palm.

"Evening, Lucas," Kermit nodded. "How's the little guy doing?"

"Oh, well he just had his bath, so he's great," Lucas reported, moving enough so that the man on the screen might be able to see his grandson. "Any news on the house?"

It had been a week since they'd sent the photos, and the next day an offer had been made. Since then, there had been no news except that the process was ongoing. The call coming along here suggested, hopefully, that things were about to change.

"I was just about to tell Maya, but now that you're both there, I can tell you together that… we got the house," he revealed with a smile. Both Maya and Lucas looked like they had been about to cheer a bit louder than they ended up doing, when they'd remembered Elliott and instead went for an expressive but quiet cheer. "If you could pick up the keys, that would be great."

"Absolutely," Lucas nodded.

"Have you told the kids yet?" Maya asked him.

"Well, at the risk of surprising no one, Sam figured it out a couple days ago. I think he was under the impression that Abby and I were splitting up and I was looking for a place to stay…" Kermit admitted. It might have been something for them to laugh about, if not for the history he had with leaving, and how the possibility had haunted Sam more than anyone. "He's been keeping it quiet, but now that the sale went through, we're going to have to start seeing to putting our house on the market, and then packing… We couldn't keep it from them any longer. We took them out to dinner tonight, and we told them we would be moving to Austin."

"How did they take it?" Maya asked. She couldn't help but be worried, either as a big sister or a new mom… Sure, the prospect of being close to her might be something they'd be happy about, but leaving the city where they had been born, where they had lived their whole lives… Would it be worth the trade off?

"They're all excited," Kermit assured her. "Wyatt can't wait to play uncle, Eliza practically asked if we could leave tomorrow morning. Sam and Cara, part of them is sad to leave, I think, but more than anything they are looking forward to being close to you."

"I'm looking forward to that, too," Maya smiled, on the verge of tears.

"When I went in to say goodnight, Cara wanted to know our new address so she could look up what's around it," Kermit revealed. "And she wants to know about her new school."

"I'll send her some information in the morning." After they hung up, Lucas put his free arm around her, bringing her closer as she set her head to his shoulder, rubbing their sleeping son's back. "You know what I'm realizing now?"

"What?" he asked.

"Of all the things I never expected… If he keeps at it long enough, Mr. Matthews will now get to teach all of my siblings, the Hunters and the Harts… The poor guy will never catch a break." Lucas laughed. The more she thought about it, the happier she looked. It was like, even though they had been looking for houses, and at houses, and hearing about the whole process, it had not felt entirely real to her until it was official. And now that it was… She was overjoyed.

"Do you think it would be crazy to have them just… fly the kids out ahead of time, while they're finishing up with the packing? Maybe just Eliza and Wyatt at first, Sam and Cara whenever… It might be too much, with Elliott, and me going back to work in a couple days…"

"Oh…" she blinked. Given a couple more minutes she would probably have had the same idea, but he was right. It would have been so easy to jump all in, put the idea to her father and Abigail… But they had Elliott to think about, and how much looking after him could be an all-consuming kind of thing. Would they really be able to look after a newborn, and a four-year-old, and an eight-year-old? They wanted more kids, they would have more kids to handle at one time, but by then they would have been through this before, they would know what they were in for… hopefully…

"You want to do it, don't you?" Lucas guessed.

"You know I do," she nodded. "But, well…" she brushed at their son's hair. "Where would we even put them?"

"We can get something set up in the nursery. It's not like Elliott's actually staying in there yet, so it could be space for them, for a few weeks. And we're not alone. You know that even if we don't ask for it, your parents will want to pitch in, and mine, too, and the Matthews…"

"Okay, let's just…" Maya pulled away in order to sit up straight. "If we take him out of the equation," she indicated the baby, "We would do this, without question."

"We would," Lucas agreed.

"There's no taking him out of the equation though, not when he's basically… the whole thing, most of the time."

"He is that, yes," he looked down to the sleeping babe and his dreaming fingers in flex.

"But they're family, and this would help them, and… they'd be thrilled to be here, wouldn't they?" she couldn't help but smile.

"Uncle Wyatt and the Lizard? They'd be lining up to change his diapers."

"How fast can we get them here?" Maya asked with a straight face before bursting into laughter she tried to muffle, so not to wake the baby. "So… We're doing this?"

"A little preview of things to come?" he nodded. She leaned back in and kissed him.

"Couldn't have asked for a better partner in accelerated parenting."

The next morning, they would call Kermit again, and they would present their idea, to host the littler kids first, and then in due time, possibly the older ones, too, ahead of the move, which would likely take place at the latest in early August. As expected, there was resistance, not so much because they didn't believe that Maya and Lucas would be able to look after them properly, but because they didn't want to impose upon them, what with the baby and all. They had pressed on it though, insisting that they had thought this through, and they wanted to do it. So, it was agreed. Eliza and Wyatt would be flown out the following week. It would give the two of them time to say goodbye to their old house, and see their belongings packed up, and it would give Maya and Lucas the time to prepare for their arrival.

"You realize that, by the time they come down here, Elliott will be one month old already?" Lucas asked Maya after they'd hung up. She looked at him like with a bit of a trembling face, hit with the thought that their baby boy was so close to hitting another milestone.

"You had to say that, didn't you?"

"I know, I know, I regretted it as soon as I said it…"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners