Chapter 52
Driving Young Mr Friar

"Hey…" Lucas quietly spoke as he woke up to find Maya sitting up in bed next to him, the baby in her arms as he fed. "Did I oversleep?" he asked, rubbing at his face as he turned to look at the clock.

"Little bit," Maya confirmed. "It's fine, you're not late."

"I kind of am," he nodded to Elliott, already with her instead of back in his crib for Lucas to go to and tell him his daily story.

"I don't see him being so set in his ways that he'll mind the order being changed around," Maya pointed out, looking back to their son, already three and a half months old. "Go on and get ready, I'll pass him over to you as soon as he's not kind of attached to me," she turned a smirk to her husband.

"Alright," Lucas relented, leaning to kiss the side of her face before heading out to take a quick shower. It had been one thing when he had been working his two jobs, at the bookstore and the pet store, but now he had been in school for nearly a month on top of everything, which left him with little time to spare. What he had left, he gave to his wife and son, but still he would get to bed at night and be out like a light. The last few mornings he'd pulled himself out of bed to go and tell his stories, abandoning the extra sleep he clearly needed. So, this morning, Maya had turned off his alarm, entrusting herself with the duty to wake him if he got too close without waking on his own.

When he came back and finished getting dressed, Elliott was ready for him and he went into his daddy's arms with a smile and energized hands reaching for him. Maya left them to the tree on the wall and the rocking chair, heading down to start on breakfast only to find Pappy Joe had already seen to it.

"Feel like a walk this morning?" he asked, sliding an omelet into its waiting plate.

"Sure, yeah, not too far though," Maya smiled. "Got a lot of places to go today."

Lucas and Elliott came down soon after, and after settling the baby in, Lucas sat to breakfast with Maya and Pappy Joe. Spotting the sketchbook at her side, he asked what she was sketching. Maya had an air of mystery about her, but finally she opened up the book to the page held by her pencil and he saw what appeared to be their son in a number of disguises, anything from a pumpkin to a plant, a bee, a dragon…

"Halloween?" he guessed.

"I know he won't remember it, but it's his first one, and well… Halloween was definitely big in his story," Maya told him, stealing a glance to Elliott, who was presently enthralled by Pappy Joe's finger, grasped in his small hand.

"A year ago, he wasn't even a blip on the horizon," Lucas recalled, like it didn't seem possible, not when their whole lives had been so altered from the moment… well, from that Halloween the year before.

After Lucas had left for school, Elliott was placed in the sling strapped to his mother, along for the ride as Maya and Pappy Joe left the house with Trix and Lou for a stroll along the lane. It was a near daily activity for the three of them, and Maya couldn't say for sure who enjoyed it the most between herself, her son, or her 'Pappy in law' as she would teasingly call him. As little as he was, Elliott just seemed to liven up to another level whenever they were outside, leisurely walking along. Maya would be certain that it would put him to sleep, but no… he was wide awake here, and he would remain that way until they went back to the house, where he would be down for a solid nap.

For her part, she loved spending this time with Pappy Joe. Much as Lucas' mother and father had long ago started to look at her like she was one of their own, even before she'd started to date their son, Pappy Joe had become as good as her grandfather, by his own design, practically from day one. She'd never had a grandfather of her own growing up, though both men were alive and well in their own corners and far from her. And then here was Joseph Friar, who had shown her what she had been missing, without question. Now that he was living with them, lending such a valued hand in looking after Elliott, she couldn't imagine him being anywhere but right here, walking by her side and regaling her with her own stories, inspired not by a tree painted on a wall but by the wealth of his years.

What he got out of these walks, well… he didn't lay it out for her in words, so she could only piece it together from listening to him, looking at him… He had been pulled from this house when he'd had his accident, but as he'd gone through his recovery and found himself unable to return to live out here, Maya remembered seeing him and sensing just… loss, and realization… He'd been living out here on his own ever since his Susannah had passed on, and whether he'd been ready to admit it to himself or not, a part of him had been weighed down by the ghost of her, when he'd already been weighed down by the ghost of the girl they had lost. The house had so little life left to it, and he had gifted it to his grandson when he'd graduated high school, maybe, in the hopes that he would bring the place back to what it had once been. Now… Now, he'd done that, in ways none of them could have expected a year ago, and to make it better, Pappy Joe got to be right at the heart of this rebirth, got to see the life breathed back into it and into him, too.

As expected, Elliott had gone and dozed off shortly after their return to the house. Instead of carrying him up to his crib, Maya had quickly checked his diaper before getting him into his car seat and taking off for the mall. This was to be the first of many stops throughout the day, and he would be right along with her from one end to the other.

He woke up as she got him from the car and into the stroller, veering only momentarily into distress mode before Maya got him back at ease and on their way into the mall. Soon enough she came to find the waiting duo of Billie Lawson and her two-month-old daughter Stormy.

"Hey, been here long already?" Maya asked, sitting at Billie's side with a quick embrace before looking in on the small redhead snoozing in her own stroller.

"Only by design," Billie assured her, getting her own look in at Elliott, presently attempting to snatch the stars on the underside of the stroller's shade. "Hey there, fella," Billie touched his foot before turning back to Maya. "I texted Ainsley, she'll meet us when she gets her break," she shared as they got up and the four of them started further into the mall. "Where should we start?"

"Well, Ainsley already said that she's still got a lot of the basics from when Cameron was born, and Brianna will be able to use those, so that narrows things down, yeah?"

It wouldn't be long now that the girl would be giving birth, and much as she was settling in with admirable resilience after moving out of her parents' home and into Ainsley's. She was officially emancipated, and now all her focus had gone toward ensuring that she would do everything right for her unborn child. But now the child was very close to moving from un to born, and her friends and fellow new parents had no intention of seeing her go into this new stage feeling overwhelmed by any needs she and the baby would have. Jay would be there, too, and potentially the other 'paternal contender,' but there was so much that they wouldn't think to provide the way their group would, with Elliott, Stormy, Simone, and Cameron between the lot of them.

Ainsley met them a half hour later, on break from her post at the jewelry counter across the mall. She looked like she'd made a mad dash from her store to ensure she'd be with them for as much of her available time as possible. Maya and Billie had figured this would be the case, and they had a smoothie ready and waiting for her when she got to them.

After Ainsley's break had come to an end, forcing her to dash back across the mall to her store, Maya and Billie had continued their double-stroller stroll for a little while longer before they both had to go their separate ways. Billie had to take Stormy in to a check-up, while Maya was expected for lunch at her parents' house. Back to the car she went, putting Elliott into the back for another ride. He needed to be fed soon, which would mean that no amount of car motion would keep him at peace. It was a good thing then that Maya had a second option. She had her voice. Even as they took off from the mall, before he could even start to fuss, she started to sing, letting her voice be like a hand that held his, all the way to the house.

Having expected to arrive and find only her mother, father, and little brother, Maya was surprised to find a couple of blue-eyed brunettes waiting in the window as she drove up.

"Hey, hey," she smiled as she walked in with Elliott in his car seat and the twins came up like a pair of eager pups to look in on him. "Aren't you supposed to be in daycare right now?"

"There's water," Nellie informed her very matter-of-factly.

"Water?" Maya repeated, unsure of what that was supposed to mean.

"Pipe burst," Shawn answered for them. Maya looked up. "So they're closed for a few days. That's alright though, right? More time for me," he looked to his younger daughters, who both gave deep nods. They liked being at home with their dad, too.

On the other hand, much as all this was true, and they wanted the two four-year-olds to believe as much, it would be just as true to say that it would have been easier for them to be at daycare still. Katy's pregnancy had seen a lot of ups and downs, after its start, which had been nothing short of deep, deep down, with a near miscarriage. Things had improved in time, and for a while everything had been fairly normal, as normal as they could be, heading into this fourth round. But now with seven months gone, it had been her doctor's recommendation that she slow down considerably. It had been hard for all of them to hear this without sliding down into the assumption that they should start to worry, but they had been reassured, as best as anyone could be, and for now… all they could do was wait, keep going, day by day.

By now, Shawn did not leave Katy alone at home if he could help it. Cory and Topanga had been indispensable since then, pitching in either by picking things up for them, or staying with Katy when Shawn had to go, looking after the kids sometimes… Maya and Lucas did their own part, too, but then Katy and Shawn didn't want to impose so much, what with them having their own baby boy to look after, in the midst of everything else in their lives. Of course, now, the story had gotten that much more complicated when it had been revealed that the Matthews family would be growing, too, with Cory and Topanga expecting a third and very unplanned child to be born the following April. The big takeaway had somehow become that the old friends would get to be new fathers more or less at the same time, and the way Shawn and Cory had been going at it, they were practically plotting to turn the pair of them into instant best friends to carry on the line.

After having seen to Elliott's needs and checking in on her mother to find that she was napping, Maya had offered to take the twins and MJ out to the park if Shawn looked after the baby.

"Are you kidding? Trading three running ones for one little one? Done," her father had declared, collecting his grandson with gladness. This had earned him a stare from Gracie, the only one of the little kids who seemed to grasp what he was saying. "Only for a little while," he whispered to her. The two of them had grown more and more bonded as Gracie grew up, it seemed, until she could be said to be his favorite, though he would never put it that way. Really, it was just that of his four children, he had gotten three extroverts, and one Gracie.

So, off they went, Maya pushing her littlest brother – for now – in his stroller, while the twins stood to her side, Gracie holding Nellie's hand. She had started to take Elliott out to the park. He was still too small for games and all that, but with how he responded to their walks with Pappy Joe, she had predicted, and rightly so, that he would enjoy himself here, even if it was just about sitting on a bench, or walking around. Sometimes they would stop over at the diner to visit Asher and Joey's uncle.

On the plus side, after being out there more and more, she had gotten to know some of the other regulars, which sometimes also included her own friends. Today, she ran into Aaron with little Simone, and so they alternated looking after the baby girl, and MJ and the twins as the three of them played along. Maya took the opportunity to tell him about the shopping she had done with Billie and Ainsley for Brianna, and he had paid his and Marius' part.

The father and daughter had followed them back to the Hunter-Hart house when it came time for her to drop off her siblings, pick up her son, and carry on with her day. She dropped them off at home before continuing on with Elliott for a bit of grocery shopping, or as she'd taken to call it, parenting in the wild.

After spending much of the time following Elliott's birth just recovering from the delivery, and breaking in her brand new maternal responsibility, she'd gotten to the point where she'd felt at ease taking him around with her. Sometimes they'd just go out to be out, instead of simply being inside the house, or they would go and visit one person or another, or they would go and run an errand or two. It hadn't taken long for Maya to discover how having Elliott, having this small child who depended on her for just about everything, had gone and changed her. There was no way it wouldn't have, no way she could go from being the Maya she had been before that Halloween day when she'd learned she was pregnant, to the Maya she was now, as a mother. Even so, there was no knowing the nature of the change until she went through it.

Back when she'd been in New York, growing up, she had been another person, too. She'd been a girl with a shell, a mask, and no one was ever going to notice, not if she had any say about it. Then he'd moved here, and after being removed from everything she'd known, it was like her shell and her mask had been broken, shattered to pieces, and while she'd been scrambling to pick them all up, build it back together, she'd started to grow, to change. She'd had Lucas, she'd had her new friends, and after that, she just didn't need the cover anymore. It was the purest way of living she'd experienced in a long time.

Sometimes, being out and about, she felt the way she'd done, right after she'd moved here… exposed. It wasn't all the time, and it was fleeting, but then there were people, and she swore something about the grocery store made it that much more of a thing. There were types. There were the nice ones who would just sort of look in at him in his seat, and smile, and move on. There were the nice ones who'd stop her and start to talk with her. More often than not, they left her feeling sort of like… they thought they had good intentions, but they left her with the impression that when they said her son was cute, what they were really thinking was 'oh she's so young, can she even take care of him?' She was twenty-one, sure, it would be considered a bit early, but it didn't mean she couldn't be a good mother.

The thing was, well, she was short, and that along with the rest of her… they probably thought she was even younger, seventeen, sixteen… That was probably what was going through the minds of those who didn't give her smiles, more like looks of disapproval, or pity… Some days it would take everything she had in her not to summon New York Maya from the depths and give them a piece of her mind. Austin Maya knew better than to prove them right in any way. She ignored them, she moved on.

They headed home to drop off the groceries. Driving up the lane, Maya spotted Pappy Joe standing with Missy's grandfather up at the farm, chatting along. She honked her horn and waved at them as she went. They waved back, and she drove on. At the house, she settled Elliott inside before quickly bringing up the bags to put everything away. Once that was done, she let out a breath, looked at her watch. She had a couple more stops to make, but after being out and about all morning, she really needed to eat, and stop a while.

Sitting next to Elliott's car seat, looking in on him as he slept peacefully, eating from her bowl of leftovers from the previous night's dinner, Maya breathed out, looked around… Everything was good. The house had been nothing short of a small miracle for them, and it was going to be a place for her son to grow up… so much more than what she'd had. Not that the size of her childhood home and his made any difference whatsoever about who they'd become or whether or not they'd be happy… not entirely. But then she'd think about the future, and she couldn't help wondering, couldn't help… worrying… a little. Things had been pretty good in the beginning, for all she remembered, and then not so much, so…

Oh, she wasn't worried about Lucas, no. He was solid, he came from solid, but her… she came from cracked, and broken, and patched together by shaky hands, she… she came from runners. She hated to think about it that way, but she did, didn't she? Her mother had run off from home, chasing a dream, only to end up with a baby when she was eighteen. And her father… well, he'd run, too, when she was six, and she knew… Oh, she didn't blame him, not anymore, or… She'd forgiven him, something she'd never believed could ever happen, not for a long time. Between the two of them, what if…

She was pulled from her thoughts by the sound of Elliott's crying.

"Oh, hey, Sprout, hey, it's alright…" she stood up at once, setting her bowl aside and pulling him from his seat. She held him close, rocking him gently. "I'm right here, see? Mommy's here…" she hummed, breathing deep. "I'm not going anywhere," she promised, kissing his forehead. "Not ever, do you hear me? I'm going to outrank your Granny Mel with how much I'll be there. You'll get tired of me, but deal with it." Her heart was drumming wildly, it seemed, like she'd let the floor drop from under her and she'd been falling, falling… But now she'd found the ground again, and she had her precious boy in her arms, and all was well.

When Pappy Joe returned from the Sanderson farm, she told him she was headed to his son's house and asked if he wanted to come along, and soon the three of them were on their way. If Maya had anything left on her face that looked like she'd been spooked, he didn't say a word.

"Oh, here he is…" Tom Friar was there to greet his father, his daughter-in-law, and his grandson. Maya and Lucas would sometimes tease him and suggest that he would attempt to hurry and be first at the door, the better to get some time in with Elliott, because as soon as Melinda got her hands on her Junebug, it would all be over. "Who's happy to see Pappy Tom?" he asked, suddenly transformed into a gooey semblance of a man, with a smile powered by the small boy now nestled in his arms and looking up at him like 'hey, I know you, I like you.'

"Should I run interference?" Maya smirked at him.

"Don't be so sure I won't say yes," Tom laughed, turning a funny face toward the baby, who batted his arms in what Maya would call the 'no, sir, it appears it is I who has your nose' maneuver. It wasn't anything too specific, but she so very much enjoyed personifying her son's little baby habits.

As expected, the moment Melinda Friar came along and spotted Elliott, she had 'gimme' face. She wouldn't go and just snatch the boy out of her husband's arms, but the way she would stand there and look at him, you almost had no choice but to hand him over, and finally Tom did as much. Following the group into the living room, Lucas' father asked about their day, and Maya told him about it… maybe leaving out that little bit back home before coming here. He asked how Lucas was doing, too, and here Maya felt some conflict.

They were his parents, they would want to know how hard it all was for him these days, wouldn't they? Now more than ever, she knew that, if something was ever not okay with Elliott, she would want to be told, as his mother, one of his parents. But she was also Lucas' wife now, and even when she'd been his fiancée, his girlfriend, his best friend, her position would be to know the line. Lucas had a right to his own issues, to have a chance to work them out himself, and if he hadn't told his parents, then it was up to him to decide when he wanted to. If it got to a point where she felt she kind of had to reach out, it would be another story, but for now… For now he was just a new father, working two jobs, going to school, who needed more sleep. It was not so much a problem as it was a reality of their lives now and for the foreseeable future, until Elliott was a bit older than he was now.

Much as she would have loved to stay longer with the Friars… much as Granny and Pappy would have wanted her and Elliott to stay longer… her grandparental tour was not over. She had one more stop to make. She wasn't exactly ticking them off a list, 'getting it over with,' but she had gotten into this bit of a routine of taking Elliott to all three places on the same day, at least twice a week, because it was an easy way to make time for them and also make time to just enjoy this time in her boy's life, when he was here, and he was small, and happy, and just carefree, before the world and life had any chance of getting in the way.

"How would you like to hear some music?" Kermit asked Elliott as he received him from his daughter's arms. Looking at him, with his grandson staring back in wonder, Maya would recall the young man in those videos, from when she had been as small as Elliott was now. That was still in him, twenty-one years later, and to Maya it felt like a second chance… probably felt that way to her father, too… a second chance to get it right this time, with his grandson if not his daughter.

In the time since they'd moved in, Kermit, Abigail, the kids, and Elizabeth, the house had really come together wonderfully. It really had been the perfect choice for them. They went into the den, where Kermit handed the baby back before picking up his guitar.

"I've been trying to remember, there was this song I would play for you when you were… maybe a year old. I always meant to record it somehow, but I didn't, and now I just… I'm having trouble getting it back," he explained.

"You don't remember who the artist was?" Maya asked, trying to think back, as though it would come to her, from way back when.

"Me, I wrote it," Kermit explained. She blinked.

"I had no idea you ever wrote songs…"

"Oh, I didn't, there was just the one, and even then I never came up with the words, I would just… I would sit next to your crib, with my guitar, and I would just start to play. After a while, there was just this melody that started coming together, you know how that goes."

"Yeah, I know," she smiled.

"Yes, well, so, you would look at me, with those big blue eyes of yours, like 'hey, that's not bad, man,' so I kept playing, and it grew like that. I really wish I could remember, for you and… for him," he gestured toward Elliott, who was busy tugging at the end of his mother's braid. He grew distracted, adjusting his guitar. There was a tremor in his hands, barely noticeable. When her father noticed her noticing, he cleared his throat, adjusting his sitting position. "Let me see if this helps me get back into it."

Driving back home after leaving her father's house, Maya was almost glad to find Elliott was asleep in the back. She didn't know that she would have had it in her to sing to calm him at this point. All of a sudden, it was like they'd all been playing along, going with the day to day, all so that they might not think about the elephant in the room. Kermit, he was okay again, wasn't he? All those bad days, the old illness, that was in the past now, yeah?

Pappy Joe had been taken back home by his son, and now he was in the kitchen, doing his bit to get dinner started. Meanwhile, Lucas was back, too, lying on the couch, sleeping. Maya went up and set Elliott back in his crib before coming back down the stairs and sitting on the edge of the couch. After a few moments of her just watching him sleep, Lucas started to stir, and finally to open his eyes.

"Hi," she smiled.

"Hey," he smiled back. She leaned forward to kiss him, sitting back up again to look at him.

"How was your day?"

"Good," Lucas nodded, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes with a yawn. "Some classes were better than others. I'm just happy to be home again, with you, and…" he looked around.

"Elliott's upstairs," Maya told him. "We had a busy day, saw all the grandparents, mostly just spreading joy wherever we went," she intoned with a smile, which made him laugh.

"I can see that. I'll go check in on him," he moved to stand. Maya stalled him.

"Do you have a lot of work to do tonight?"

"One reading, shouldn't be too bad," Lucas replied.

"Okay," she nodded. "Good." Lucas looked at her for a moment, finally piecing together what she was getting at.

"It's fine, as soon as I'm done I am going to bed," he promised. Maya breathed out, nodded. "Hey," he leaned his forehead to hers. "I know you worry about me, I get it, I'm glad… Not about you being worried, I just…"

"No, I know," she smiled. He cupped the side of her face, kissing her softly.

"I've got really good motivation at the end of the day," he pointed out.

"I do what I can," she joked, which made him laugh.

"You succeed, through and through."

"It's been… a weird, long, day," she finally admitted.

"Yeah?" he asked, holding her gaze with that open look of love he had, whenever it was just the two of them, looking at one another. "Tell me about it."

"I… I'm worried about my father… Kermit," she clarified. She told him about when they'd been at his house, him telling her about the old song. They hadn't gotten it all exactly, but he had done one small bit she'd felt as though she'd definitely heard before, nothing she'd know from somewhere else. He wanted to keep working on it, and she wouldn't have thought much more of it except for that tremor. Combined with the search for the song, it had sent her on this path, wondering if he was back to believing his days to be numbered.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners