Chapter 48
One Day With, One Day Without

"I don't know how I let you convince me to do this," Maya breathed, walking about the length of the room and back, holding Elliott close all the while. He wasn't crying, wasn't in any kind of distress, but in her heart it felt like deep down he would know, and soon he would react.

"You're making it sound so much worse than what it is, you realize that?" Lucas gave her a look, even as he tried not to appear in any way amused when she was clearly fretting over the prospect of what was to come. "It's one day out, one day to yourself. The only times you've been away from home, without the baby, in the two months he's been alive, it's only been for airport pick-ups and dropping off your siblings at camp, at friends' house, or at your parents'. This will be good for you."

"His feedings…" she shook her head, looking down to Elliott, who was in no way helping her point by just chilling in her arms.

"I've got the bottles you pumped," he reminded.

"He's never had one of those before, what if he won't take them?"

"He will." She was backpedaling so fast on the decision, and if it went on any further she would just not go anymore.

"How can it be good for me if I'm going to spend the whole time worrying about him?" she asked, like she'd finally discovered the great flaw in his plan.

"You don't have to worry. I'll be with him," Lucas went up to her, setting a hand to her back. "And as much as you need to have this day, to be out there for yourself… I've never really gotten to look after him all on my own for any real amount of time since he's been born."

She opened her mouth to reply, to disprove this claim, but the seconds drew on and she stopped… He was right. It had always been him and her, or him and Pappy Joe, or him and one or more of their parents, even him and her siblings. The longest, uninterrupted one-on-one time he would have had with Elliott, even with the technicality that she'd been in the room, asleep, was the night he was born.

"Fine…" she breathed out, bowing her head to kiss the top of their son's head. "You know, I'm starting to think the reason he smells so nice is so we won't want to let him go," she joked, though in that special way when she was only speaking the truth. It made him laugh anyway.

"You've uncovered his master plan."

Their four young guests across the hall were soon up and about, and so the day officially began. Pappy Joe was off in Houston, visiting his nephew and his family, so it was the seven of them without him. They had breakfast, and once they'd all gone and gotten dressed for the day, Maya was to go off on her day to herself, with the challenge to remain out and about until after dinner. Dot Cassidy was coming to pick up the four young Harts before long, bringing them back to her house for the day, which would leave father and son with the house all to themselves.

"Okay, I'm going to go," Maya told Lucas as they watched Dot's car drive away with her siblings. It sounded much more like she was telling herself, not telling him.

"And we'll be right here when you get back," Lucas nodded, holding out his arms to receive the baby, who was still held by his mother. Maya passed him over, absently checking to ensure his little socks were on all the way, because she just had to do something.

"You know I'm not being like this because I think he won't be okay with you or anything, right?" she looked up now, and Lucas kissed the top of her head, not unlike she'd done to Elliott not long ago, in much the same gesture of showing love.

"I do," he promised.

"Okay… okay," she went and got her bag, making one last pass to look in on the now sleeping Elliott before walking to the car, getting in, and driving off along the lane, away from the house. Lucas watched the car go, and if he was being honest, he'd say he remained there for a good few minutes with the expectation that Maya would have ended up turning the car around and driving back to the house after changing her mind.

"Five minutes," he looked down to his son. "Looks like your mom made it… Unless she's just parked up the road, trying not to come back already," Lucas frowned to himself at the prospect. "I shouldn't call to make sure, should I?" In response, Elliott made a noise which soon escalated into full out, screeching cries. "Hey, no, now, it's okay," Lucas carried him back into the house, carefully shutting the door as he tried to reassure the baby and to reassure himself that this wasn't exactly what Maya had predicted. "You just ate," he established, leaning in to get a whiff, "And your diaper is still good from last time… You're okay… we're okay…"

He had only spoken the truth when he had pointed out the importance of this day for his own interests as much as Maya's, but it took until right now, as he held his crying boy and felt a twinge of something like helplessness for Lucas to realize it was so much more than that. A moment like this, where it was just the two of them, entirely just the two of them, it just… it hadn't happened. He'd been home for a few weeks after Elliott was born, but then of course so was Maya, and so was his grandfather… And then he'd started work, so he would be away from the house for so much of most days. Now here they were, in the first days of August, one month off from his and Maya's wedding, and for the first time he was the one and only person around to look after his own son.

Part of him was feeling something very similar to what he could only identify as fear. What if he couldn't do it? What if he did something wrong and there was no one there to do anything about it? Maya… Maya was so good with him, it was like a superpower. And it made sense, didn't it? She had carried him all those months in her belly, and she had looked after him from the day he was born, so much so that the very idea of leaving him behind now had taken work. He knew that her case was special, that there were those issues she'd carried through her life from when her father had left her and her mother, but even so, she'd looked like she was being asked to leave a vital part of herself behind, and then Elliott, when her absence had had time to mature for a little while…

Lucas carried him up the stairs, Trix and Lou now hot on his trail. They weren't barking, like they knew it would only unsettle the baby even further, but they were not going about their days anymore, they were on Elliott Alert. They followed him all the way into the bedroom, where he sat down on the rocking chair, still attempting to calm the baby down. You need to calm down, too… You're stressing, and he'll sense that… Breathe… He had done this before, he had held his son, he had gotten him to stop crying. This was no different. He kept the baby close to himself, hummed his lullaby, rocking slowly along the curve of the chair's joined legs. He didn't stop, kept humming and humming. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine that Maya was there in the bed, pretending to be sleeping as she would do every morning when he'd get up and 'Elliott' would pick a leaf from his mural tree and his father would tell him a story about the person named on that leaf. This morning, he'd told his son about his faraway Aunt Isadora.

It was one of the best parts of his days, very high up there, and to put himself back in that scenario was one quick shortcut toward relaxing. It did just that, and as a result he wasn't the only one to regain peace. In time, he realized that Elliott wasn't crying anymore.

"Hey… Isn't that better?" he could only smile, watching his son now grasping at his shirt, as he so often would. "You remember that, huh? You're good here…"

They stayed in that chair for a while longer. It wasn't that Lucas was concerned that Elliott would go and start crying again the second he stood, but… Well, no point in testing the theory, right?

Eventually, when he saw that the baby was asleep, Lucas carefully stood and set him down in his crib. The dogs settled down right there, proper guards for their young human brother. Taking the baby monitor with him, Lucas made his way down the stairs.

The house was silent, still… There was something so specific about the sound of a room when you were the only one there, in the room but the rest of the house, too, like you could actually feel it. He wasn't completely alone, no, there were the dogs, and there was the baby, but with all of them resting upstairs he might as well have been. It made his surroundings feel so different, like day to day he would be in the house but not aware of the house. Now, he was seeing the house.

It was not messy, but it definitely had that sprinkling of messiness that became more or less accepted with there being an infant living in the house, an infant and several children at the moment, too. If Maya were here today, she would have set herself to picking up right about now, they both would, on those days when he wasn't working. It was part of her morning routine, and she'd grown attached to keeping that routine, another thing this outing would have taken her from. So, he went along and did the tidying up, all the while keeping his ear tuned to the monitor he carried along with him.

Before long, he would be done, and then… then he would get to do something he'd never done before. He would get to feed his son. Up to now, Maya had been solely responsible for this, for obvious reasons, and he knew that for some time still, if she wasn't away as she was now, she would maintain things as they had been. But in moments like these, when it would be just him and Elliott, there would be the bottles. He'd gotten one of them ready now, taking it upstairs to find a hungry guy waiting on his lunch.

"This is going to be different from what you're used to, but trust me, this is what you're after right now, yeah?" he picked up the fussing baby and brought him to sit on the bed, taking up the bottle.

It took a little while for him to reconcile the difference, and there was a small moment when Lucas considered he might actually have to call Maya back, if the baby wouldn't eat, but then, finally, Elliott had accepted the bottle, and they were good to go. Looking into that little face now, Lucas felt a new swell of happiness. They'd had a rocky start that morning, but now here they were, father and son, and they were alright.

It could have been that spending hours on end with no one for human company but an infant would have soon made him feel like time was crawling by, leaving him to wonder when Maya and the others would return, but it was far from that. If anything, the afternoon seemed to speed on by. After the adventure of lunch, Lucas had taken their morning stories into overtime. Instead of telling Elliott about someone whose name was on one of those leaves, he'd told him about someone who was absent from the tree, someone who had unfortunately not lived to press their hand to that wall, but oh… someone who would have loved nothing more than to press a bit bright, sky blue paint there on same branch as Pappy Joe's forest green hand. He told Elliott tales of who would have been his great grandmother, Susannah.

"One day, it started to snow…"

X

Maya had not stopped on the road in contemplation of a return. She had made it all the way to the point where the lane diverged toward town… Then, she'd stopped. She didn't want to do it, knew deep down in her heart that this would be a lot like admitting defeat, but really, if she didn't stop… She might have lost control while the car was still in motion, and that wouldn't have been good.

She didn't lose control… not entirely, just… Her mind was going so much faster than the car, too many thoughts, too many ideas conjuring up images in her mind's eyes, tossing in colors like a frenzied artist with many brushes and a great big blank canvas.

She wasn't going to cry. She wanted to, part of her wanted to, and not even because she'd left Elliott behind but because leaving him was affecting her this much. That was what was making her lose it just a bit, the idea that she couldn't even leave her son with his father, with Lucas, who she loved and trusted more than anyone in the world, without feeling like she was doing something wrong. In all the months since she'd learned of her being pregnant, of having this baby boy growing inside her, she had never predicted this feeling and how it would take hold of her, from deep in her guts until it could not be dislodged. Even after Elliott had been born, it had not manifested right away, not until… well, not until she'd had to go somewhere and leave him, and then she'd felt that chain, anchored in her.

She wasn't going to turn around and go home. If she did that, she'd never leave him again. Lucas had been right to talk her into it, one more reason for her to quit worrying so much. She had to keep going. She wasn't even sure what she was going to do, hadn't made a plan… Maybe she needed to make a plan… It would be so easy for her to go and see her parents, or Lucas' parents, or join her siblings at the Cassidy house, or go visit any of her local friends. She could even drive all the way to Houston and see her friends out there… But no, she couldn't, that wasn't the point of this day. If she went to visit anyone, she wouldn't be accepting this exercise of just taking time on her own.

"Alright, need to drive now before some cop sees me out here and comes to see if I'm fine. 'Don't mind me, Officer, I just missed my son so much I couldn't drive anymore. Two months old, never left him. That won't make him all clingy and weird when he's grown up, will it?'" she intoned to herself, then flinched when she thought she saw a cop car and imagined her scenario was about to come true. She drove on.

With no real plan for her to follow, Maya did… pretty much what she would have done years ago, when she couldn't be where she wanted to be because she had to be somewhere else. Back then, it had been school, back in New York, now it was her own home, with her baby boy. She went to the mall.

Walking around, looking into one store, walking on, looking in, walking on… her mind was met with two lines of thought that sort of caught her off guard. The first was the presence of a number of mothers with strollers or slings, mothers with newborn babies of their own. It pried a thought of her own baby right from her heart, so much that she could practically feel the familiar weight of him in her arms, latched on to her in peace… except of course he wasn't there, he was home. With Lucas, safe, happy…

The other thing she saw, the other thought, came at her when she'd see girls walking along, girls who were clearly her own age and in many ways similar to her for other reasons, but at the same time so, so different. It was hard for her to unravel the feeling it caused her. Yes, the difference came of the fact that they were all somewhere about twenty-one, like her, but they probably didn't have a kid, unlike her. But the part that caught her up wasn't the part where she had a baby and they didn't. It was that, for a while, she'd forgotten how young she was.

It wasn't as though she regretted any part of her life, not for a second. She loved every single part of it, being engaged and soon married to Lucas, living in their house on the lane, raising their son together. She wasn't in school at the moment, but eventually she would be again. They had started their future early, but it had always been their future. Seeing those girls though, it was actually… kind of a good thing. It was the kind of wakeup call this whole day had been meant to give her, in a way. It reminded her of who she'd been, not one year ago. Somehow… she was going to have to find a way to bring her past and her present together, so that she was every part of herself again. She was Lucas' fiancée, Elliott's mother… and she was an artist, a musician. She was going to be a teacher someday.

She went to the art store. She spent a couple of hours there, browsing, exploring, conjuring up a new project for herself. She might not get to put it into action until after her brothers and sisters moved into their new house, after Kermit and Abigail came out here from New York, but it would be there waiting for her in a few weeks' time, just a couple away from the day she and Lucas would be getting married.

It wasn't until lunch time rolled around and she was moving through the food court that her rollercoaster ride down into worries and up into discovery came to a stop and she started to think about home, about her guys… Her days had become so structured around looking after the baby, on feeding him when it was time for him to eat, that being here now, even as she knew Lucas would be taking care of it… It still felt like she wasn't doing what she was meant to be doing. Deep breath, stop going down that road…

She wasn't so hungry, even after she'd bought herself something to eat and sat at the nearest free table she found. She ate, but her thoughts were still on Elliott. Looking to her bags from the art store, occupying the rest of the table space next to her tray, she hesitated for no more than a minute before nudging the tray out of the way and fishing out a fresh sketchbook and the bag holding the individual pencils she'd picked out.

Blank page in front of her, a fresh pencil in one hand, half a sub in the other… She drew, and she ate her lunch. When her straw could pull nothing more from her cup, she looked to the page before her. She'd been so caught up in what she was drawing, she hadn't even paid much attention, given over to the idea stemming from her brain and flowing to her hand. She had drawn a girl running along a road, a dog running after her. Missy Sanderson, with her Coraline. Maya smiled, satisfied with the end result and also with the feeling it gave her. There'd been just this small hiccup there, as she'd come to the food court, but she felt better now. She was ready to go on.

Now she just needed to figure out what to do next.

Oh, there were plenty of errands she could have run, or she could have gone and looked for new clothes for Elliott, as though he lacked for anything in that department, when part of his corps of overactive grandparents included Melinda Friar. She wasn't going to go see a movie, that was just an opportunity to spend two hours sitting in the dark and stressing over the fact that she wasn't doing anything. If she was going to get back in touch with her old habits, well, the solution should have been easy, especially after she'd already gone to one of her two top spots. After dropping off her bags in the car trunk, she went back into the mall and over to the music store.

She missed the band some days. She would find herself singing Elliott to sleep and realize she was singing a TXNY song. Quitting the band had been easy only in the sense that she'd known it needed to be done, but it didn't mean she cared so little for that part of her life that she wouldn't miss it once it was gone. She still loved music, loved making it… Whether she'd ever find herself on a stage again, she couldn't say, though she'd be lying if she said she didn't hope the answer would be yes, but… Months ago, she had taken it upon herself to continue contributing to this world she loved so much, in one way if not in the other. She might not have been stage bound anymore, but she had been a songwriter as well as a performer in her band, and she could still do the writing, for her friends, for anyone else who might need it…

She hadn't been hearing much with regards to the new TXNY lineup following her departure, and she couldn't say whether it was because the others hadn't really done much of anything about it since she'd quit, or if they just didn't want to tell her, in case it affected her in any way… or if she was simply too busy with the baby to be aware of anything in that department. She had to remember to ask about that. Maybe she could write for them again.

By the time she started to be hungry again, she realized that it was nearly dinner time… And if it was nearly dinner time, then it meant… she'd done it. She had been out here for something like eight hours. Should she have been thinking about Elliott more? Was it bad if, for a little while, her thoughts had agreed to hold to the knowledge of his safety with his father as a valid reason not to focus on her son so intensely? It made her think about all those evenings, as Lucas returned home from work, so happy to be there again, with her, with the baby…

One quick dinner later (no drawing this time), Maya got back in the car and she started for home. She could feel her anticipation in her, and maybe it was a bit ridiculous, but she didn't care. This feeling in her heart, it was love, it was her bond to her family, and it was carrying her back to them. She wished she could be able to convey it in some physical form, that her boy would understand this was the thing that would always, always bring her back to him at the end of the day. Even if she couldn't, she was going to do her best, one day after another, to show him that it existed.

Dot had brought back her siblings by the time she pulled up to the house. Lucas' aunt stood on the front porch, the baby in her arms, while Lucas chased Sam, Cara, Eliza, Wyatt, Dora, and Alex along. The six pursued were a chaos of shouts and laughter, and Lucas was a rampaging bear, snatching them up when they weren't fast enough, as was the case for Wyatt Hart, hoisted off the ground in a mess of giggles before being 'rescued' by his big brother, who 'scared' the bear into releasing him, and thus the chase was on again. It only ceased when the bear noticed her standing there, observing the scene with a smirk, and then he was coming for her.

"You lift me, I'm making a rug," she warned with a laugh, so rather than lifting her he merely enfolded her in his arms. "Yes, bear hugs are more like it," she breathed. Just to be held by him, to catch the familiar scents of home and the baby on him, that tiny bit of stress which had stayed with her all through the day now finally released. She was back, her family was here, and all was well.

"How was your day?" Lucas asked.

"Good, better as it went, best right now," Maya hummed. "How was yours?"

"Full of discoveries, the good kind," he nodded. "But I'm so happy you're back now, and I think there's someone else who shares this feeling back on that porch."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners