May 5th 2023

Chapter 125
We Feast On Stardust

There were layers upon layers of ways in which this day would already have been magical even before they added the one where Baby Girl Buckley-Lejeune had now been born into the world, and maybe that was just as well. The way both Maya and Lucas had come to illustrate it together, there was this one pin hovering over the balloon of their family's joy on Christmas. It was so very close to it, but it might never get there, all thanks to those happiness layers wrapped around them, stalling its approach.

The Friar sisters were each of them a layer, in and of themselves and for what they brought along with them. Maya and Lucas were layers to one another. Their families, their friends, Finneas' first Christmas, the Houston families relocating, Betsy, the series at the ranch, the exchange campers, Lucas and Sylvie healing, Maya's students, and their steadfast efforts against the press of their principal, layers, all of them, all against that one sharp pin.

It was Christmas and, for the first time, Melinda Friar wasn't there to celebrate with them.

Lucas' morning began with kisses, as Maya decided it needed to, and he was more than on board with the choice. Whatever other thoughts may have taken root in his mind, none of them had any sway, not the way her warmth and tenderness settled over him.

"Good morning and Merry Christmas," he told her, smirking, and she snorted.

"Good morning and Merry Christmas to you, too, Huckleberry."

Even if they hadn't been awake yet - which was doubtful on such a day as this - their voices, quiet or not, would be as a beacon, alerting the nine and under crowd that their parents were awake. And that could only mean one thing: Christmas was officially on.

In next to no time, the room was run over with young, giddy blondes, seeking out their parents for the equally important goals of greeting them with Christmas wishes and inciting them to get up out of bed and head down the stairs.

"What do you have there, Macaw?" Lucas asked when he got on to his feet and spotted the three-year-old with an object so snug in her arms that he could not identify it right away. Mackenzie's eyes flashed up at him and she flipped the object to reveal that it was the frame he had gifted her, months ago. Each of her sisters had one just like it, displayed where she saw fit. The picture of his smiling mother stared back at him, and the needle trembled.

"I can bring Granny with us, right, Daddy? For Christmas," she nodded, all fierce determination, far beyond any constraints of stature, and all Lucas could do in response was to reach out his hands, inviting her to walk up close to him. When she did, he put his arms around her and smiled down at her.

"Of course, you can."

Mackenzie was as good as they came at stairs, but they couldn't help but watch her all the way down as she went, frame in one arm. They all made it down well, and so 'Granny Mel' joined the family for breakfast, planted on the table between Marianne and Mackenzie. As strange as it could have been to have the image sitting there, to cast on to it the idea that Melinda Friar was among them, to the family it was a comforting thought, and so she 'stayed' with them as they next moved to open presents in the living room.

Of so many memories already made and bound to be made that day, there would always be a very special place for the memories they'd keep of Wyatt and Finneas. Maya's little brother had been so excited about this being his son's first Christmas, all month long, and today was the big day. It didn't matter that Finn was only half a year old: they were going to have the best time together. They'd seen it right from the moment when Wyatt had come down from his room, the baby held in one arm, decked out in PJs that matched his son's from top to bottom. Aside from Finn's darker hair, inherited from his mother, the two of them were so alike by now, and to see how much Wyatt's love for his son was echoed to pitch perfect melody by how the boy felt for him… His father was his favorite person in the world, and he might not remember this day, but they'd tell him all about it in time.

It wasn't until after they had gotten through breakfast, and presents, and they were all dressed up and ready to go, that they learned of their stop on the way to Pappy Tom's house. When they found out that Stella had given birth to her baby the night before and that they would go to meet her, everyone was beyond excited; some of them were also just a bit blindsided.

"I didn't finish my card!" Marianne blurted out.

"You can give it to her when it's done," Maya told her daughter. "Trust me, she'll be just as happy to get it then."

That was her guess, at least, and she knew she had been completely right as soon as they arrived at the hospital and were welcomed into Stella's room by her husband. She'd been all of fifteen when Maya had first laid eyes on her, just a shy bird, paint all over her and made smaller than she was by her posture and her demeanor. On that Christmas morning, as she sat up in her bed, she may not have been that much taller than she'd been eleven years back, but she had her bundled newborn in her arms, and there was nothing closed in about her. Her smile was infinite, and when she looked up and spotted her colleague, her former art teacher, she had such a look to her, a look that could have read as 'Mrs. Friar, look what I did.'

They were all so happy to be there, to come up and see the baby girl, but Maya was the only one to cry, happy tears blurring her vision as she smiled and looked at the two of them together. Maybe it was too early to call it, but for what she saw of her in that moment, there was no doubt to Maya that Stella's baby girl would grow up to look just like her.

The Friar girls were all full of questions, and they piled over one another, but that didn't keep them from being understood. They all wanted to know everything about her, the smaller among them wanting to know if she'd done this thing or that thing yet or if she could come and play with them, either not knowing or really caring what a child of her age and size could do or not. Most of all, they wanted to know if they could hold her… and they wanted to find out her name.

"Well…" Stella looked up from her daughter's face, briefly, exchanging a look with François.

"We thought about what we might do, if she was born today… or yesterday," he explained, a small smile gaining on him as he remembered that she was born the previous day. "If we were going to include that in her name, call her Noelle, something like that," he went on. "We chose not to."

"I told him that I couldn't do it, not spending my days with teenagers and thinking about when she'll be one, too," Stella cut in, and most of the Friar girls may not have understood what she meant by that, but everyone else did, and they chuckled. "We decided we'd wait until we saw her before we decided for sure, and once we got to do that… She's our Mathilde… our Mattie," Stella smiled, eyes on the hours-old babe, and Maya and Lucas knew just what would be going through her mind just now, simply getting to look upon her daughter and say her name. It was as though every time both the girl and the name were united, they became stronger and more tightly bonded.

"Now, fifteen years is a long time, but if you find yourself attending your mother's old high school, Miss Mattie Lejeune, and yours truly is still out there in the art room, oh… I'll be waiting for you, yeah? Yeah?" Maya crooned, holding the baby.

She was the first of them to hold her aside from her parents and grandparents, her aunts both biological and… well, Phoebe… and she was as honored as though they had handed her the baby as soon as she'd been born. The girls had disappeared, escorted by The Young Frank, and both Maya and Lucas had a good feeling of where they'd gone off to. They had presents for the new parents back home, had decided to wait until the new family was home again before giving them over, but now that the baby had been born, there was no way they could let the day go by without giving the newborn her very first Christmas presents. They'd do their best with where they were.

"I didn't disrupt things too much for you guys today, did I?" Stella asked her fellow teacher and her husband, now sitting near her bedside.

"Oh, don't worry about it. There's nowhere else we would have been," Lucas smiled up at her. "Plus, I'm pretty sure you just won the honors of Best Present for this year," he added, tipping a look to his wife, still so taken with the newborn she held but not so much that she couldn't hear him and give him a bit of mock side eye.

"I mean, he's not wrong," she quietly informed the baby. She was barely awake, little eyes all of a sliver, but she was at ease where she was, and Maya was not about to disrupt her… or part with her, not as long as she could carry on looking at her.

It felt like one more tug, one more reminder that, in her heart, even with as many children as they had, she could still see herself having more. They had opened the way for it to be possible again, but then with what had happened to Lucas, the time just wasn't right, in more ways than one. But she kept looking at The Young Mattie, and her hope was untarnished. Lucas would feel the same way when the baby would be placed in his arms. Here was this little one, so full of life, of all good things that a newborn should be full of, and to him, it felt like it held the pin so far from him, until he could not even consider his sadness for not having his mother around at Christmas… or anytime… She was with him, with all of them, in so many more ways than the one that they missed.

"Best Present, that's you, alright?" he told the baby, who responded with a yawn. It made him laugh.

The girls returned with what felt like half the gift shop between the six of them, most of it for the baby but some of it for her parents, too, because they couldn't help themselves. They would all get to hold her before leaving the hospital, some with more supervision than others. Marianne went last, pro that she was. She looked upon the baby girl, born on the twenty-fourth of December, and her parents knew that, in her head, she had just introduced her into a brand new club that counted just the two of them, the Halloween baby and the Christmas Eve baby.

They almost wished they could have brought Mattie with them as they went on for their Christmas Day. They could have brought the feelings that she inspired and shared it on to their hosts for the day. They were headed to the elder Friars' house, where Thomas had insisted to hold the traditional Christmas Dinner, the way Melinda would have had it. It was his way of honoring his late wife, and all of them would be there to help him do it. They fully expected the day to be a mix of deep joy and deep sorrow, and they may not have had that baby bird of a girl with them, but they would have each other, and that was a power all its own. It would be a good Christmas, and they would remember it well.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners