Chapter 28
Charles and Elizabeth, aka

Maya: Can you let Etta know I won't make it in today? And Ainsley, too, if you see her.

Billie: Sure. Are you okay?

Maya: Yeah, I'm fine. Family stuff. I'll explain later.

The ride up from the house had been spent in silence. On the one hand, Lucas wasn't sure if she wanted some quiet to think about what they were going to be walking into, and on the other… Maya was having too many thoughts to even manage to sort a single one out.

Her grandparents… No, her father's parents. They had never been grandparents to her, and they'd barely been parents to their kids, kicking one out and estranging the other… If it wasn't that she worried for what their presence might do to her mother, with the state she was in, and if her father hadn't asked her to come… She took one deep breath after another, one hand planted low on her belly and the other running up and down its curve. The baby wasn't being so active right now, which was probably just as well.

She had to figure out what to do before they got there, some kind of plan or…

"Damn it…" she muttered under her breath, taking her phone from her bag and putting in a call.

"Hi!"

"Hey, Lizard," Maya couldn't help but smile. "Is Dad around? I need to talk to him right now."

"Daaaaad!" Eliza's voice could be heard calling. "Maya's on the phone!"

"Well, this is a nice surprise, this isn't our usual…" Kermit's voice came on a few seconds later.

"I need your help," she told him, words she never saw herself speaking to him. "Your parents are here, in Austin, at my parents' house." There was an extended moment of silence, and she didn't need a video to tell her what his face must have looked like. He wasn't about to ask her if she was joking or anything; why would she ever joke about something like that? "I'm on my way there now, no way I'm letting Mom handle them on her own, especially now. She's pregnant, too, just barely, and she already almost lost it once. But I don't know what to do when I get there. Why would they come here?"

"I… I don't know," he told her. "Look, if I knew that getting on a plane and meeting you there would do anything to help, I would, but I'm too far away."

"I know," Maya assured him.

"Look, I'll stay next to the phone, if you need anything, you call me back. I really wish I could do more, but I haven't seen them in two decades…"

"It's alright, I get it. Thanks." Almost in the same moment as she hung up with him, she put in a second call.

"Maya, hi, how…" Luna answered, but Maya just as quickly cut her off.

"Do you have any idea why your parents would go to Austin right now?" Another silence.

"Oh, no…" Luna spoke quietly. "Maya, this is my fault, I…"

"How?" Maya asked.

"It's just that… ever since you and I met up again, I've been thinking a lot about them, and how things ended between us, and everything that happened with Kermit. And after a while, I just… I needed to get some things off my chest. So, I pulled a move from my father's playbook, and I wrote them a letter."

"What did you tell them?" Maya asked, not so much upset but just needing to know what they were dealing with.

"A lot of things about how upset I was for what was said after my divorce, and how they abandoned their son, and their granddaughter, and how we were all doing fine without them, me in Tucson, Kermit in New York, and you… in Austin."

And they'd come here…

"Look, I'm on my way, I'll find a sitter for the girls, I'll figure something out…"

"Luna, just wait before you go and do anything," Maya told her aunt. "Not until we know if they'll even stick around." Doubt it. If they don't leave on their own, I'll make them leave if I have to.

"Are you sure?" Luna asked, sounding like she could start crying at any second.

"I am," Maya told her, letting out a breath, even as she felt her nerves start to twist, seeing how they were arriving at her parents' house now.

"I'm really sorry…"

"You have nothing to apologize for, okay?" she insisted, taking her aunt's anguish as more fire, more strength for what was about to happen. "I'll call you later."

After hanging up, Maya turned to look at Lucas. He was staring over at the house, like he'll see something. He turned to her now, his eyes asking without words if she was sure about this.

"Whatever happens in there, please, just…" she started to say, finally just closing her eyes. She knew how protective he was of her, of their unborn son, and she loved him for it, but she also didn't want him getting carried away and getting in trouble.

"I've got you, okay?" he reached over, touching her cheek. She leaned to it, gave him a nod.

They got out of the car and started for the house. Had they ever been so nervous to walk up this path? Lucas had been, in that dreaded period where he hadn't been welcome, after the accident. Maya had been, the first time she and her mother had arrived, after two days driving cross-country. This might have been worse. Maya used her key to let them in, feeling like she was opening the door into a black hole that was about to suck them in.

Everything was way too quiet. Had they le… It only took two steps through the door to start and see into the living room, and on that second step Maya spotted Shawn sitting there, with that very serious look on his face that said 'If I open my mouth, you won't like what I have to say.' But then he looked over and saw her, and he got up at once to come and meet her and Lucas. There was no sign of her mother, her siblings, the dogs… but one more step had just started to show a man and woman sitting opposite from where Shawn had been.

"Hey," he hugged her, for a moment just leaving every uncomfortable thing behind and becoming her father again. "So sorry to have to pull you into this," he spoke quietly.

"Where…" she whispered.

"Upstairs," he tipped his head up. "She won't come down, and as far as I'm concerned it's for the best. The girls and MJ are sticking with her."

"What about…" Lucas asked, turning his eyes toward the living room.

"Well, he hasn't said much. If you ask me, it wasn't his idea to show up here today." This was at least some information. So, her grandmother had been the one to decide to come here. But she'd actually convinced her grandfather to come, too, so what did that mean?

"And her?" she asked.

"When I opened the door, before they even said a word, I knew who they had to be. You kind of look like her, the… family resemblance is there. I don't know, I should have closed the door in their faces, but I couldn't do it." Because we look alike. "Your grandmother asked after Katy, after you. I went and told Katy they were here, and she just looked like…" he shook his head, the concern clear in his face. Maya could understand, of course. Charles and Elizabeth Hart had been the start of so much strife in her life.

"I should go see her," she breathed. She knew she wouldn't be able to though, not until she dealt with… those two… "What happened after that?" she asked her father with a sigh.

"I came back down, and he was sitting on the couch, same as he is now. She was looking at pictures on the walls," he pointed to the one in particular, which showed him and her and her mother on the day Katy and Shawn had gotten married. For all the features she'd inherited from her mother, she had to say, this was on picture in particular where she'd always thought the Hart side of her showed so much. She didn't know why, but it was there. "I called you when I was going up to tell your mother. After I came down, we all sat down. Your grandmother's been asking about me, how long I've been around, and about the kids…"

"So it's been awkward," Lucas surmised. Shawn breathed out, running a hand over the back of his neck.

"Do they know?" Maya asked, turning her eyes down to herself.

"If they do, I didn't tell them," her father promised. She looked back to Lucas. I hate this her eyes said. He shook his head. You don't have to. The baby kicked, and her hand went to her belly. She wasn't going to let them make her run.

"I want to know what kind of people they are, don't I?" she looked from Lucas to her father. "That's about as good of a way to find out as I could ask for, isn't it?"

"If it's too much," Shawn shook his head. She knew what he meant. She couldn't let herself get worked up enough that she might go into labor. Much as the baby was at a point where he had chances on his side to be okay, she'd rather he stayed right where he was for as long as he needed.

Stepping away from her father and her fiancé, Maya could feel the anxiety inside her, much as she tried not to. Whatever those two people sitting on her parents' couch may have had in mind, they'd probably look at her face for all of two seconds before they'd notice that not so little surprise growing inside her, and after that… They would know she had arrived, no matter how quietly she and Shawn had been speaking. They'd stayed on the couch all this time, but they knew she'd be there, so she couldn't even get a moment to see them without them seeing her, especially as the creak of the floor betrayed her approach.

As she moved into view, they were both looking toward her, and she had to take a good, deep breath. It was a lot to take in and she had to do it fast. On the left, Elizabeth Hart. Her grandmother. Her father was right, the resemblance was absolutely there. She looked most of all like Luna, like Cara… but she was in that face, too, she could see it. And that face… It found hers, and it felt like the woman as a whole was just overwhelmed, seeing her granddaughter for the first time. It actually took several more seconds than two before her eyes ever went traveling anywhere beyond her face, before she discovered she was weeks away from becoming a great-grandmother, and when she did, her hand went to her mouth with a gasp.

On the right, Charles Hart. Her grandfather. There had been a brief period, when she'd been taking that deep dive in baby name books and sites, where she'd thought that would be a nice name for her son. Charles… Charlie… But then she'd remembered this was his name, and then she just couldn't look at it the same way. He looked like an older version of his son, absolutely, but it was like… the Garcia twins, like her twin sisters… They had the same face, but used it so differently as to look very distinct, separate. Her grandfather and her birth father may have shared familiar traits, but where her father's face had a softness to it, his father's was so tightly locked as to release not the slightest emotion. He was looking at her, and she had no idea what he was thinking. He'd looked at her, the moment she'd appeared, and it hadn't been two seconds at all, more like a single one. She'd walked in, and his eyes had traveled over her from her head to her feet in one motion before coming back up, making one stop at her belly and then returning to her face.

You've already made up your mind about me, haven't you? What are you thinking, that I'm making the same 'mistake' he did?

Right then, her resolve had been found. It told her that if there was one person she needed to stand up to, it was that man with the stone face. She could give him some stone, too, and she hated to think she might have gotten it from him, but there was no way around it, not now. She slowly walked further into the living room, until she stood in front of them. Her hands were folded over her belly, and she stared back at her grandfather, giving as good as she got.

"Hi," she spoke, her voice even and unwavering. "My name is Maya, I'm your son's daughter," she declared, refusing to call herself their granddaughter, not when they hadn't earned it by anything but blood. "I spoke to Aunt Luna," she told them. "She told me she wrote you a letter. Is that why you're here?" Charles looked to his wife, who was looking at her. "I'm getting the feeling you don't want to be here, Mr. Hart," she told her grandfather. He looked back at her.

"You can say that," he spoke, and for all her intent to hold steady, the sound of his voice, so much like her father's, broke through her defenses for all of a second.

"But you are here, and I'm guessing that no matter how much she tried to convince you, you wouldn't even be here if you hadn't decided it yourself. So, what convinced you?"

"Please…" Elizabeth turned to her husband.

"Lizzie did not tell me where we were really going," he told Maya. "So, you're right on that, little girl. I wouldn't have come if I'd known what she was getting me into."

There was a beat of silence here, as his words settled on to them. Maya looked to her grandmother sitting there, and if she'd felt in any way resentful toward her coming into this, those feelings were now receding to levels so low as to be insignificant. But him… A few paces away, much as they'd stayed back and let her take this on all on her own, Maya could just feel Lucas and her father get closer and closer to having had enough. The 'little girl' part was like throwing accelerant on the flame.

"If you think you can throw me off by belittling me, you're barking up the wrong tree there, Charles. You come into my world, I don't care if you knew or not, you're here now, and you won't speak to me that way." She took a breath to steady herself. "We clearly have nothing to say to each other, so, by all means, there's the door," she pointed. He stood up, boiling under the surface. She matched him, fury for fury. He wasn't going to get to her.

"Lizzie," he turned to his wife, still sitting on the couch, and Maya hated to think he expected her to follow after him like an obedient dog.

"She and I might have a lot to talk about on the other hand," Maya looked at her, showing a softer expression here. Elizabeth Hart looked up at her for a moment, then to her husband. When she stood, Maya felt her courage start to deflate.

"You go on ahead, Chuck. I'll see you at the hotel," she declared, and Maya straightened up again.

This was too much for him. Without another word, Charles Hart stormed off. Shawn gladly held the door open for him, then let it swing back shut when he was gone.

When she heard the door click shut, Maya released that façade she'd been willing into existence from the moment she'd stepped out to address her grandfather. It made the ground feel just a bit unsteady under her feet, and by some chance, the first hand that managed to get to her, to offer support, came to edge out Lucas and her father both before they could get to her.

"I'm fine," she said, before she could even realize the hand she was holding was her grandmother's. "It was just… it was a lot," she slowly looked back up, looking into that face that looked like her own in some places. "Hi…"

"Maybe it wouldn't hurt to sit," Elizabeth Hart told her, with a small smile tinged in concern.

"Probably, yeah," Maya agreed, following her to go and sit. Lucas was just behind her, while Shawn had gone – she rightly suspected – to go and fill her a glass of water. "You can stand down now," she looked to Lucas with a reassuring smile as he leaned in to briefly embrace her, kissing the top of her head before rising again. "This is Lucas," she told the woman sat at her side. "He's my fiancé… among other things," she set her hand back to her belly, as close to reaching for her son and promising him that all was well. Lucas reached his hand out, and Kermit's mother shook it.

"It's nice to meet you," she told him.

"I… yeah… I mean…" Lucas replied, clearly unsure what to say. Was it nice to meet her, too.

"I truly apologize for putting you in this position," she told him, understanding, looking to Maya, too, and then to Shawn, as he returned with a glass he passed to his daughter. "I guess… I wanted to take a chance. I should have known it wouldn't go any other way, I…" she shook her head, bowing her head for a moment before raising it again, like she was telling herself 'no, you won't do that.' "Charles made his choice a long time ago. I wanted to try and make my own. I shouldn't have involved him."

"Well, I had him," Maya raised her glass in cheers.

"You most certainly did," Elizabeth gave a small, impressed laugh, which made Maya laugh along. "You… you remind me of my Luna so much," her grandmother reached a tentative hand to touch her face but seemed to think it wouldn't be a good idea, and right about then, with all she'd seen and heard, Maya felt she understood and knew her enough to get who she was and why she had or hadn't done what she had or hadn't done. In that instant, the choice was easy, and she made it by stalling the woman's hand in its retreat and allowing it to continue its journey to cup the side of her face. "That smile…"

"Yeah, Cara has it, too," Maya told her. There was no recognition in her when she said the name, and maybe it was her growing maternal side reaching out, but she pulled out her phone, quickly tracking down a picture taken the last time her siblings had been with her. It was only her and the four of them, not her father yet, but it was still her, and Sam, and Cara, and Eliza, and Wyatt, five grandchildren that Elizabeth Hart had never seen or known. Maya told her a little about each of them, and it was like each of them was bringing a bit more light to the woman's face.

"All these years, I thought he was with you and your mother, in New York. But in Luna's letter, it said you and your mother were here, in Texas. I had to know…" Up until not too long ago, she might have told a different story to her grandmother. But this was the time when she'd come along, and for that she could genuinely say…

"We all ended up where we belonged. With the people who belonged with us." She looked to Lucas, to Shawn, smiling at the both of them. "Wouldn't trade any of them. Especially this guy," she looked back down to herself.

"You're having a boy," Elizabeth smiled, and Maya smiled back, nodding. If she was ever one to put credence to signs, right in that moment her sprout started to move within her, like he was telling her to go ahead and take a chance.

"Give me your hand," she told her grandmother. When she did, Maya led it to where she might feel her great-grandson. She had missed so much over the years, for reasons they would have plenty of time to discuss. All Maya could say was that, right here and now, she had only known the woman for a handful of minutes and she felt no animosity toward her, only an invisible thread, binding them closer and closer as time ticked along. She had always belonged in her life, and now here she was.

"Restless little fella…" Elizabeth laughed through a rush of happy tears, as Maya wiped away a few of her own.

"He is that, yes." Right then, she was briefly taken out of the moment, remembering… "I should check on Mom… I'll be right back?"

"I'll be here," her grandmother promised. Maya breathed out, nodding. She could believe that.

As she'd made her way up the stairs, taking her time, she was left time to ponder, and the thing that came from these thoughts was an idea, and it felt as right as anything else she'd chosen to do today. She stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs, sending out a text before continuing on toward her parents' room. After giving a small rap at the door, she pushed it open to find her sisters curled up together on the bed, sleeping. MJ slept, too, in their mother's arms. She was very much awake, though her thoughts were as far away as the children's were.

"Mom…" Maya quietly spoke as she walked in. Katy looked at, closed her eyes.

"Are they gone?" she asked.

"He is," Maya reported. "He didn't want to be here, and I didn't want him to be here either, so that all worked out for both of us. "She's still here though, on my invitation." Her mother looked at her. "I probably have… no idea here, not the same as you do, but I took one look at her and I knew… she didn't want what he wanted. She probably never did, but she never knew how to say it. I think she's figuring it out now."

"Maya…" her mother didn't look entirely convinced.

"Do you trust me?" Maya asked.

Katy sighed, brushing her fingers through MJ's hair as he slept against her chest. She had grown so much, lived so much, in the years since she'd been that eighteen-year-old expecting her first child, but in that moment, that young girl was rising from the depths, like she'd never left. Seeing Maya there, herself seven months along, maybe she'd found a way to put things into perspective again. Slowly, she'd moved to set MJ down next to the girls before rising out of bed. She followed Maya out of the room and back down the stairs and into the living room, where it appeared that Lucas was in the middle of telling Elizabeth Hart how he'd proposed to her granddaughter. When she looked over, in the middle of a laugh, and spotted Katy, she paused almost all at once.

"Morning, Mrs. Hart," Katy tipped her head in greeting. Elizabeth stood from the couch, approaching her son's ex-wife.

"I… I should have said no…" she spoke, in a tremulous voice, like her past self was reaching through, too, saying something it had wanted to say for over twenty years. "I should have been there, for you, for her," she looked to Maya, standing behind her mother. "For my son…"

"Yes, you should have," Katy told her, slowly nodding. She couldn't brush that off, and the way the woman nodded, she wouldn't have wanted it brushed off either. "Are you hungry?" And that was Katy, shutting the door on the past and opening one into the future. Whatever happened from that point on was entirely dependent on Elizabeth.

They went into the kitchen now, sitting around the table, where Shawn brought over the leftover cake from Melinda Friar, from Friday's dinner. Tea was made for some, glasses of milk for others, and before they knew it, a conversation was underway, which stretched on and on, taking detours left and right into anything from old memories, to school, to talents… About an hour into it, the sound of small voices and steps on the stairs brought Nellie, Gracie, and MJ into the mix. They were introduced to Elizabeth and, upon learning that she was Maya's grandmother, somewhere in their young minds it was as good as someone telling them this was their grandmother as well. They adopted her right then and there, and it made the older woman very happy to oblige.

It was somewhere about seven hours after Charles Hart had gone off in a huff when the sound of the doorbell brought a pause to the conversation in the kitchen. Had he returned?

"I'll go," Maya got up, to both her father and Lucas telling her they would go instead. "Hey, hey," she waved them off. "I'm just growing a human here," she told them before marching off toward the door. She wasn't thinking it was her grandfather again, but then she also knew who it should have been.

When she opened the door and found her father and her aunt, stood there side by side, it struck her in a way she hadn't expected it would. She'd never seen them together, not in person at least. Her only awareness of the two of them existing in the same world came from videos from fifteen years ago and longer. But now they were here, a couple of nervous wrecks, one more than the other.

"Just so I don't murder someone today, to your knowledge, does your mother have a heart condition?" she whispered, looking from one to the other. Luna shook her head, while at her side Kermit looked upon his daughter, in all her pregnant glory. "Hey, glad you could make it," she smiled, as he moved in to embrace her.

Her text had been as brief as she could make it while also holding all the necessary information. Your dad lost, he's off to pout in a corner. Your mom's here, she's lovely and sorry. Call your sister, how fast can the two of you get here? It would have been even better if everyone could have been here, Kermit and Luna, but also Abigail and her kids, and Ginny and Sadie, too, but already this… This was a long time coming, for all three estranged Harts.

As she'd walked them toward the kitchen, the first to see them coming was Lucas, who'd expectedly been trying to keep an eye on her. He saw the man and woman walking just behind her and his eyes went wide. After this, Shawn had seen them, and he'd had about the same reaction. Katy saw them, and she just barely reined in a gasp. Elizabeth was sitting there, oblivious to what was going on as she was listening to the twins. They were showing her one of their favorite story books, telling her how their father did voices and attempting to replicate them, to very adorably comical results. After a few seconds though, maybe noticing how silent the room had gotten, she'd looked up.

For a couple seconds, Maya thought she might actually have caused her grandmother to stop breathing. Any moment now, she would probably keel over in her chair and it would be a nightmare. Even when she moved to rise, it took a second for Maya to realize she was standing and not falling. She was up, and she was slowly making her way around the table. Maya stepped aside, and so did Luna. She hadn't seen her mother in over two years, true. But her mother and her brother hadn't seen one another in over twenty-one years. He'd been no more than a boy, eighteen years old, the last time they'd been in the same room. He was a grown man now, taller still than she remembered.

Elizabeth mumbled something as she came to stand before her son. Maya didn't catch the words, but her father must have. He gave a nod, and then he wrapped his arms around his mother, who held on to him like he could still have been as small as the boy he had once been. Maya turned to Lucas, who'd come to join her, and she couldn't even blame her tears on their sprout right then, because she probably would have cried anyway. But she did have that sprout of a boy growing in her belly, her little son. And as she watched mother and son back together again, she felt it deep. She never wanted to feel what it was like to be separated from her child, not for even a single year, much less twenty more.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners