Chapter 44
The Next Big Thing

They had timed it so that Eliza and Wyatt would arrive in Austin just as Lucas had a couple days off work, with it being the fourth of July weekend. It had allowed them some time, after the two of them had landed, to really get settled in, not just at the house but in the city itself. It wasn't all going to happen in the blink of an eye, of course, but it would be a start. Now, this morning, he was back to work, which left Maya to her own devices – unless Pappy Joe would be around – as she looked after her son, her brother, and her sister.

She decided to take them to her parents' house. It wasn't that she couldn't cope with looking after the three of them. On the whole, her siblings did not need so much supervision. It hadn't taken Maya long to figure out the best ways to focus the pair, if either of them showed any sign of being one good distraction away from running up the walls. It was sort of how Lucas had said it… or maybe she'd said it… She was so tired half the time that she couldn't remember for sure… Either way, one of them had found the key: Eliza and Wyatt were both the aunt and uncle to her one-month-old son, and she gave them some kind of task to involve them in Elliott's care in some way… they were good to go.

Not that this hadn't come with a bit of a lesson in wording.

Wyatt especially needed to understand that, as well intentioned as he always was, he was still only four years old, and his abilities often times did not align with his goals. This showed when he attempted to change Elliott's diaper all on his own. He'd seen it done before, he was secure in his knowing everything that would be needed, and for what set-up Lucas had found when he'd come hurrying up on the trail of his son's cries, maybe it had started up alright. Wyatt had laid a blanket on the ground in his sister's room, found a clean diaper, and wipes… He'd even managed to get Elliott and – very carefully – set him down on the blanket, watching his head the whole time. He repeated this many times afterward, like he wanted to make sure they knew so they wouldn't be upset with him.

The troubles had come when Wyatt had had difficulty getting the diaper undone, and then more so when it had been opened and mayhem of various kinds was found within. Panicking just a bit and not knowing what to do, Wyatt had tried to just close the diaper again, which had not pleased his young nephew one bit. He'd started hollering, and he would not be silenced, until finally his father had come into the room and taken him up and changed him.

"So what happened here?" Lucas had asked, sitting on the ground as he kept rubbing Elliott's back to calm him down.

"I-I-I…" Wyatt sniffled, with some turmoil of his own. "I-I just… just wanted to… to help, like… like you guys said I-I should," he finally managed to explain.

"Hey, hey, look at me," Lucas told the boy, his voice remaining calm at all times. "You're not in trouble, alright?" Wyatt looked up. "But you have to understand, you could have been, okay?" He nodded, wiping at his eyes. "I love that you want to help, I really do. You know how when you hold him we make you sit down first?" Another nod. That's because, as little as you both are, there's a chance you could drop him. I know you didn't this time, but you could have, alright? And Elliott, he's very fragile because he's new. It would be like… like Maya trying to lift up Sam." This made Wyatt smile. "Maybe she could do it, or maybe she'd fall and then they could both get hurt. Do you understand what I'm saying?" Wyatt promised he did. "Next time, how about we just do it together. Yeah?"

So, on the morning when Lucas went back to work for the first time after Eliza and Wyatt had arrived, Maya had not necessarily gone to her parents' because she didn't think she could look after all three of them on her own. Was she in any way concerned about the potential disasters they could encounter? Oh, absolutely. She had a vivid enough imagination to take these possibilities into high gear.

What her reasoning actually had been was that Eliza and Wyatt might have had a better time of it if they got to play with other kids, like the twins and MJ. And on top of that, she did try and enable all the grandparents to spend time with Elliott as much as possible.

"I hate to break it to you, but I'm looking at this kid and I think he's got his dad's height in him," Shawn declared as he picked up the boy out of his car seat, looking him over as he brought him close. To see the love in him, as he held his grandson, was something Maya would never get enough of. All the same, to watch as Elliott would settle to him, understanding in his little baby brain that he was safe, and loved… She couldn't wait to see the kind of bond those two would have as her son grew up.

"Why is everyone so interested in pointing out his growth to me, can't he be small like this for a little longer first?" she rolled her eyes at him as she fished through her bag. She wasn't even looking for anything, truth be told, but it was getting to be a compulsion for her to look and confirm that she hadn't forgotten something at home that she would need for the baby. The worst was when she'd catch herself looking a second time, after she'd already confirmed to herself that she had everything. If she ever looked a third time, that would be a new record.

"Because whenever we do, it makes your face do that thing, right here," Shawn pointed to his brow. "It's hilarious, isn't it, Stretch?" he looked to Elliott in his arms.

"Oh, don't you dare let that stick," Maya pointed at him with a gasp.

"What? Stretch?" Shawn casually asked, looking at her, then at Elliott again. "He doesn't look like he hates it."

"He also can't hold his head up on his own and his life revolves on a cycle of eat, sleep, poop," she nodded to the baby. "You and I, we've known each other a long time, how well do you see this 'Stretch' thing going, Beardo?"

"I got years on you with this game, kid, I've been called worse," Shawn confidently replied, with a look that said 'try me.' Maya cleared her throat, sitting back in her chair, squaring him down as he sat there, balancing Elliott on his arm so he might look at him and kiss his little outstretched hand.

"Right, I got it," Maya sat back up after a few seconds.

"Hit me," Shawn looked at her, his words muffled as the baby had gone and taken hold of his lower lip.

"Mr. Hunter," Maya declared, sitting back with a solid 'mic drop' gesture. Shawn frowned.

"I don't get it, besides…" he started, then paused, catching on, which made Maya smirk.

"You were about to say something like 'I'm not Mr. Hunter, Mr. Hunter's my father,' weren't you?"

"That's a loaded one right there, but let's say I was… maybe…"

"Four, almost five kids now, and a grandson. You are totally Mr. Hunter now."

"Yeah, you did that," he 'accused.'

"Hey, I don't have to call you that," Maya promised, holding her hands up in surrender. "So long as… you know," she nodded to Elliott. Shawn let out a breath.

"Wow… Looks like I need to pass on that crown, don't I?"

"Afraid so," Maya grinned.

"Your kid's going to be taller than you someday," Shawn gave as his last volley and she burst out laughing.

With Grandpa Shawn in total control of the situation with the baby, Maya went off to see what her siblings were getting up to. Considering the fact that there was eight-year-old Eliza along with four-year-old Wyatt, and three-year-old Nellie and Gracie, and one and a half-year-old MJ to contend with, she had a good idea of the overall standings, and she was soon proven right.

Eliza, being twice as old as the next oldest one, had elected herself ruler of the roost and a babysitter in training. How she'd chosen to exercise her power, on this day, was pretty much all she could have hoped to find. Maya found her reading a book to MJ, who sat in her lap, while the other three were belly down on the floor of the twins' room, drawing on large pieces of paper kept in a box with the crayons on top of the small bookshelf.

It very nearly brought her to tears, seeing them all just hanging out together. Siblings from one side and then the other, but in a matter of weeks they'd all be co-existing in the same city, and in the same houses. They would grow to be friends, those three on the ground would likely go to school together, same grade and all… with Mr. Matthews as their teacher… It had all the makings of a really good dream, except it was reality.

"Hey, guys," she walked into the room, moving to sit next to Eliza.

"Ya, do scary voice," MJ pointed at her before indicating the book in Eliza's hands.

"You want me to do the scary voice?" Maya asked, and he nodded. "I don't know, maybe she can do one, too," she nodded to the storyteller. MJ turned his head to look at her expectantly.

"Liza, do scary voice," he now requested, which made her smile.

"There's no scary people in this book," she still felt she had to point out.

"I don't think he cares about that," Maya laughed for how MJ just kept staring at Eliza, waiting. So, she did what she could, which turned out to be a solid kind of scary voice, going by how wide MJ's eyes went, about half a second before he scampered from one Hart girl's lap to another's. "Okay, maybe less zombie and more giant up the beanstalk," Maya instructed, reassuring the boy clinging to her.

"Sorry, I'm sorry," she told MJ, who looked like he'd need a little longer to reconcile 'Liza' with who she'd been Before The Voice.

"Don't worry about it, it's just how he is," Maya assured her sister. "You're a big cuddler, aren't you?" she asked MJ, who just sat there now, quietly sucking his thumb. "He won't remember it next time. He loves getting read to… maybe more than anything so far in his life. That puts you way at the top of his list for favorite people. Go on, keep going, just… regular voice this time, yeah?"

"Okay," Eliza nodded, and she picked up the story where it had been left off. As predicted, in a few pages' time, MJ's attention had started to turn back to her, and the book, and a few pages more saw him crawling over Maya's knee so he might look at the images. He finished out story time halfway on one girl's knee and on to the other's.

The next day, Maya had taken her merry band of three off to the Friar house for some 'quality time with Granny Mel.' The joke between her and Lucas was getting to be that she was starting to suspect one of these days that his mother would not let her and Elliott go away again.

She was always so happy for their arrival, coming to meet them at the car to help take everything in, where 'everything,' more often than not, stopped at Her Junebug. It didn't matter that he had been born on May 31st, he had been and would forever remain her Junebug. I'll take that over Stretch… Still, once she had Elliott in her arms, the rest of the world tended to lose its attraction. It was hard to be mad at it when she clearly just loved the little guy so much. On the whole, so far at least, it was really as 'bad' as it got. Maya and Lucas both had been envisioning her just barging in and declaring they were doing this thing wrong or that they should or shouldn't do one thing or another… Whether she was thinking of bringing those things up, well, that was up to her and her thoughts, but outwardly, so far, she'd been leaving it up to the two of them.

If their arrivals were an affair of joy, when the time would come for them to go home, for her to be parted from her Junebug grandson, she'd look almost in distress, and thus the inside joke had been born between the new parents.

"Where are we going?" Eliza had asked from the backseat as they neared the house.

"We are going to see Lucas' mom. You remember her, right?" Maya looked into the rear view mirror for a moment. Wyatt was looking out the window, kicking his legs about, and in the other mirror which allowed to see Elliott, she saw her son was sleeping just as she'd expected.

"Yeah," Eliza nodded. "She's very…" she started, but then paused, unsure of what word to use to describe Melinda Friar. A common affliction.

"I think you've got it covered with 'she's very.' Because yeah, she is," Maya told her sister. The girl gave a laugh. "In a good way though," she had to add. Intense as the woman could be, Maya would stand at the head of her defense squad, any day, for who she was under that intensity and all she'd done for her, and Lucas, and now for their boy.

"What are we going to do there?" Eliza asked now, and admittedly Maya could see why she'd ask, why she might prefer going to the Hunter Hart house, where she and Wyatt could hang out with the other kids.

Almost as though the universe was listening, they were just arriving when Maya got a phone call. She could see Melinda making her way out to greet the car's passengers, as she would, when Maya answered her cell and found herself on the line with a woman from the bridal shop where she'd bought her dress months ago. She wanted to know if Maya would be available to come in that afternoon for a fitting. She was supposed to go out there in a few days, but now…

"Hey, you two want to go see the others again?" Maya turned to Eliza and Wyatt in the back, and as she received a couple of eager nods, there was a knock at the car window. Holding a finger up for Lucas' mother, she'd told the woman from the shop that she would be there and hung up. "Sorry, I had a call," she rolled down her window. "So, uh, change of plans, I'm going to drop off those two back with my dad and then I have to go try my dress at the shop, you want to come?"

Of course, Melinda Friar wanted to come, and a couple minutes later she was sitting in the car with them as they drove off to the Hunter Hart house. Eliza was just a bit upset now, for not being taken along to see the famous dress, too. It had taken most of the ride to convince her, mostly playing on the notion that she was to be everyone's babysitter again and she was needed there, and to have her smiling again. She was left with Shawn, her and Wyatt, too. After thinking about it briefly, Maya had decided they should bring Elliott along. Much as it gave her a brief sort of nightmare flash of him filling that place and its racks of finely expensive dresses with the stench of one bad diaper, it still made more sense to have him there with her.

Also, Granny Mel would be all too happy to look after her Junebug, same Nana Katy once they picked her up from the theater.

Also, maybe she still just didn't like being away from him.

"Your mother is alright to work?" Melinda asked as they drove to pick her up.

"She's been lucky enough to be able to do most of it from home, but every once in a while she still needs to go in," Maya explained. It was hard not to look at her mother and be in this state of constant concern that something might go wrong with the baby again, even though everything had been mostly smooth sailing since that one day at the clinic. Katy herself had been extra careful with this pregnancy, this second son expected for November. "She's stopping in a few more weeks though."

When they arrived at the theater to collect Katy for the unexpected trip to the bridal shop, it took a few minutes for Maya to even make it to her mother's office, an effect she'd come to expect whenever going anywhere with the baby, especially anywhere that brought her in contact with people she knew to some degree or another. For several of her mother's co-workers, who had known her since she was thirteen, it was the first time they saw Elliott as anything more than a photo or a video. He was soon to be held by one person or another, who would melt and turn into the silliest version of themselves, much to Maya's amusement.

Finally, there was her mother, having been drawn from her office by the sound of voices and that telltale sort of pitch that came in dealing with small children and babies. Maya explained the reason for the visit, and soon they were headed out of the theater and on their way to the bridal shop.

If seeing the theater people go into baby talk mode was fun, seeing the men and women at the bridal shop go from very polished, very pulled together, into cooing voices and funny faces was just something else above that. None was happier to see little Elliott Friar than the woman who had helped the pregnant young bride find her dress all those months ago. Selene had been essential to her finding what she needed on that day, and to allow Maya not to lose herself in how she had to try those dresses over her growing belly and how she wouldn't know what she'd look like once she put it on after the baby was born… Now she was here, and though it wasn't exactly part of her job, she had wanted to see to the fitting herself, which Maya appreciated.

Ever since Elliott had been born, as she and Lucas were working out their parenting skills for the first days and weeks, there had been another thing they needed to think about, and they had to admit that they hadn't done as much of it as they could. After the birth of their son, the next big thing coming down the pipe was their marriage, their wedding… It had seemed far away when they'd gotten engaged, even when they'd set the date, but now… Now it was just two months away, even a little less than that. They were going to have to start thinking about it more and more, which was easier said than done with a one-month-old baby, plus Eliza and Wyatt staying with them, and soon enough Sam and Cara as well… They'd already been talking with Kermit and Abigail about sending those two along in the next couple of weeks, while they finished up back in New York and followed along for the move. Plus, Lucas was working, and in a matter of weeks he'd be starting school again, out here in Austin for the first time since they'd moved to Houston… And there was her mother and this baby, and…

The wedding… Today was about the wedding. She took a deep breath, leaving Elliott in Granny Mel's very capable – and very eager – hands as she followed Selene behind the curtain and went about changing out of her clothes to put on the dress.

Looking at herself, standing there in her underwear while the saleswoman got the dress ready, Maya couldn't help but consider the changes her body had undergone in the last year. Looking back on the first time she'd been in this shop, she really hadn't been so big yet. She'd been growing, sure, but until not too long before that day she'd still been able, with the right clothes, to keep her belly hidden. Thinking about what she'd looked like near the end, it really had been next to nothing.

Since then, she'd reached the end of her pregnancy, she'd had Elliott, and after that, well… She wasn't back to how she'd been before, of course not, but she had found herself somewhere about where she'd been, now that she thought of it, the day she'd first tried on her dress, where she could almost put on the right shirt and no one would know, unless they knew her. From there… She'd thought maybe she'd be more concerned about losing that baby weight than she actually was. She would get there, she believed it. Except, well, there was the wedding, and this dress, and she had in mind that she'd look a certain way on her wedding day. The best she could do was to try and eat right, and as for exercise, well… once she'd recovered from the delivery to some degree, she had the baby to look after, and she had her walks with Pappy Joe… It would have to do, wouldn't it?

"Is it weird if I want to keep my eyes closed for now?" Maya asked, as Selene asked her to step into the dress.

"If it is, then we spend our days doing nothing but tending to weird women," the woman chuckled. "Do us both a favor though and wait until you've stepped in, then you may shut your eyes and let me do the rest. Does that sound alright to you?"

She could still remember what it had felt like when she'd put the dress on for the first time. She remembered the feeling it had left her with, especially her concerns over the price. That had been seen to by the people she loved, who loved her in return… It had still been difficult for her to just sort of accept this generosity, after they had received so much already, in anticipation of Elliott's birth. And now, as she waited to see how it all looked, maybe a part of her had needed to keep her eyes closed because she was scared of how it would all turn out, and if that generosity had been worthwhile.

"What's the matter?" Maya asked, eyes still closed, when she heard Elliott crying from beyond the curtain.

"Nothing to worry about, dear," Melinda replied, in a tone directed at the baby she'd be attempting to calm. Maya hated how little she was managing to resist running out there to see for herself, but she stayed where she was, as Selene seemed to speed up to finish, like she expected her to run, too.

"All set now," the woman told her, pressing her hands to Maya's shoulders. "Just one last thing, let me just do this…" She felt her hair being pulled together and twisted over her head, pinned in place. "There, better. Would you like to look now or should I open the curtain?"

She opened her eyes first. It had been hard not to get distracted because of Elliott's crying, but now that she could see herself, and now that she could hear him settling down, it was like no time had passed. She remembered the feel of the dress, and now that it had been adjusted… Her first reflex was to reach over to the back of her neck, where the dress would close, to see… well, to see if it would close.

"All the way to the top," Selene assured her, and Maya breathed, nodding to herself.

She touched the fabric carefully, felt at her midsection, all about, checking for herself that nothing felt too tight anywhere, or in any way out of place…

"Still a little tight?" Selene asked knowingly.

"A bit," Maya admitted.

"Yes, well, now your wedding is still a couple of months away, yes?" She nodded. "Then I would trust that things will find their way by then. You'll be coming to see us again before your big day." The words and the voice said 'trust me,' and Maya genuinely did. "Ready to show?"

"Yeah," she smiled, taking a breath as she moved to turn around.

To her credit, Selene stepped out and took charge of the baby, leaving the mothers of the bride and groom to stand ready for the big reveal. They had seen it before, sure, but it had been so long, and so much had changed… To look at them, as the curtain was pulled back, you would think they had no recollection of seeing Maya in this dress before. One thing was for certain: they loved it. Maya couldn't stop smiling, and as she turned back to the mirror, looking at herself from all angles she could, to see the front and the back… As good as the reactions from the moms had been, there was one in person in particular she could not wait to show this dress to. She would have to, of course, for a little under two more months…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners