Chapter 120
Now Here Is A Surprise

Lucas had left for school by the time Maya woke again, but she had gained new company. She now had three little boys pressed in together and sleeping at her side, with Noah and Alex tucked in at Elliott's side. With Alex sandwiched in between, it was hard to look at the trio and not think that they were all brothers themselves. The family resemblance was right there, and the age, so it could be very understandable why Elliott and Noah would have an easier time thinking that Alex was their brother when he was in fact their mother's. Maya smiled, brushing at her baby brother's hair, laying her arm across all three of the boys until her hand could rest at Noah's back.

She could just make out the time on the clock, and here she found she had been asleep for nearly three hours. She still didn't feel one hundred percent, but the sleep had helped. Now whether she would continue to feel this way for the rest of the day…

Turning her head, she did her best not to wake her nap buddies as she looked across the room. She thought maybe she'd find her father sitting there, keeping watch. He wasn't there, but she hadn't been completely wrong. There was someone. Pappy Joe sat there with his book of crossword puzzles, with that concentrated look on his face he had passed on to his son, and grandson, and very likely his great grandsons as well, the way they concentrated sometimes.

"Hungry?" he asked, without ever looking up. The man would tell her so many times that nothing could get by her, but then he had her beat most days.

"I know I'm going to have to eat something soon, I'm just not there yet," she admitted.

"It's alright, whenever you're ready, I'll make you something."

"Thanks. Is my dad back yet?"

"Not yet, no, but he's been busy," Pappy Joe declared, before giving a noise of discovery and scratching letters into his puzzle.

"Busy how?" Maya asked. For a moment there, she'd sort of forgotten why he'd left, what he was meant to do, but then she remembered. He'd taken it upon himself to 'spread the good word of baby number three.'

Pappy Joe set aside his book and pencil and stood from the rocking chair to walk up to her. From his pocket he produced her phone and handed it to her.

"Thing vibrated earlier, thought for sure the noise would wake you. When it happened again, I took it so it wouldn't shake that way against the top of the nightstand. It's been going off in my pocket ever since, so, like I said…"

"He's been busy," Maya repeated, looking at her screen. It was overrun with notifications. Some were from Shawn, e-mails with video attachments and numbers in the subject lines. And then the rest… Messages, from parents, and in-laws, and friends… She could only see the beginning of those, but what parts she saw made it clear that they all now knew she was pregnant, and they were beyond excited. Just seeing this, she couldn't stop smiling.

When she pulled up her e-mail and opened the one marked '1 of ?' she found instructions – possibly a suggestion… or a warning – to put on headphones if the boys were still asleep when she opened the file. There was nothing to tell her what the video would show, or who it would feature, but she could take a solid guess, couldn't she?

"Oh…" her hand was stuck between wanting to load the video and holding back. "No, I should wait until Lucas is here, too."

"As far as I can tell, Shawn's been sending everything to him, too, so…"

"Are you going to look me in the eye and suggest that your Huckleberry of a grandson will not wait until he's back here with me to watch these?" Maya gave him a look. She may have felt like crap, but she could still give him the old eyebrow.

"Now that… that I can't do," Pappy Joe conceded. Maya passed him back her phone. "Right, I'll hold on to that for you."

"Thanks… Really," she tipped her head to him.

"Anytime. Now, about that food…"

"Not yet," Maya set her head back down and found one pair of blue eyes staring back at her. "Hey, Sprout," she cupped her eldest's little face in her hands. "You're going to be the best big brother to this tadpole."

"What's that?" he whispered back.

"A tadpole is like… well, for you, let's say it's a tiny little baby frog. You like frogs, yeah?" He smiled and nodded at once. "Of course, you do," Maya chuckled. "See, when you were that small, in Mommy's belly, we called you our sprout, because you were just that, a tiny, small thing," she explained, pinching her fingers together. "And when Noah was in there, do you know what we called him?" He hardly had to think about the answer.

"Bee!" he whispered, and he pinched his own fingers together.

"You got it. Now your new little brother or sister is our tadpole." Elliott understood, and he liked what he heard. The temptation was right there to ask him whether he would prefer a little brother or a little sister. He would probably have an answer, too. But did she really want to put that idea in his head and risk his being disappointed? It could be silly, but right now she chose not to ask.

She would spend the rest of the day playing 'island' with the boys, which was to say that they all remained on the bed together. They had lunch there – with great precautions taken to prevent spills – and then they set up the laptop so that they could all watch movies together, Pappy Joe having moved the chair within view. It was a surprisingly peaceful stretch of time, and after a while, Maya could almost forget about the constant queasiness and nausea in the background. Almost. There were definitely a few times when she thought she'd be sick again. She wasn't, but the feeling wouldn't let her be.

Shawn had come back to get Alex by the time Lucas returned. He wasn't surprised that Maya hadn't looked at any of the videos yet, and neither was Lucas. He hadn't looked either. Still, Maya didn't need to have seen what he'd done to know that he had been very busy today. He had done it with all the gladness in his happy grandfather heart, but that didn't mean that he didn't deserve the praise.

"Daddy, look!" Elliott sat up on his knees and held up a sheet of paper when Lucas walked into the room. The boys were still there with Maya, who had busted out the crayons and some paper. Noah was watching her as she worked, though he turned when he heard his brother call to their father.

"What's that?" Lucas asked as he lifted up Elliott and was shown the paper. Paint, markers, pencils, crayons, Maya knew what she was doing, and here she had drawn for their son something that felt very on point. One little sprout with eyes, and a smile, and arms… A bee zipping overhead as the sprout-being stood bent forward to reach for a small frog on the ground.

"Me, and Noah, and Tadpole," Elliott pointed to each one.

"Yeah, I'm seeing it now," Lucas slowly nodded, stealing a look to Maya, who gave him a shrug. 'Small frog' didn't exactly equate to 'tadpole,' but for the toddlers, it would be close enough. "And what does it say here?" he pointed to the word in the corner. Elliott shrugged. "That says February, that's… well, you'll figure it out," Lucas told him. The kid was still learning to speak, so 'February' might have been too much to ask of him right now. At least, Lucas could understand what Maya was up to. "This is to cross off the days?"

"Yeah!" Noah replied from over on the bed. He pointed to more of these drawings. March, April…

"This one's my favorite, clearly," Maya showed him the page for the month of May. The sprout and the bee had little birthday hats on, while the little frog sat on a birthday cake decorated with cowboy hats.

They waited until after the boys had been put to bed before finally digging into the videos. Going by the way they'd been hearing more notifications come in throughout the day, they were guessing that their people out there were chomping at the bits, waiting to hear from the two of them. First things first, they had to look at Shawn's videos. There were many, an even dozen. With only the numbers in the headers to help them know what they were about to watch – which was to say that they had no idea – they opened the first one so they could find out. Lucas was sitting/lying next to his wife, the laptop on him, while Maya had her head to his shoulder as she looked on.

"What are you doing?" Katy appeared a few seconds after the video started, once Shawn and his camera made their way into her office. She looked moderately amused, but also had the face of someone who had a lot of work to do and knew better than to assume the interruption wouldn't cost her. "Aren't you supposed to be out with the boys and Pappy Joe?" Lucas smiled. Somehow, he liked the idea that Maya's mother called him that, too, even when he wasn't around.

"I was, yeah, but I was asked to do something for them, so now I'm here."

"Oh, yeah?" Katy gave her husband a look.

"Please, don't start flirting, please…" Maya mumbled. Lucas laughed and kissed the top of her head.

"Yeah, well, Valentine's Day is coming up, and Lucas wanted to collect some words, other people who love Maya besides him…" Shawn's voice explained.

"Awww…" Maya crooned.

"You know I didn't actually…" Lucas went to point out but was silenced by a hand reaching blindly to shut him up.

"… supposed to say exactly? Maybe I need to take a few minutes, figure out what I want to say. You know me, I'm no good with spontaneous," Katy insisted.

"She's right, she's not," Maya confirmed sympathetically.

"Sure, you are," Shawn insisted.

"Liar," Maya 'accused,' in the exact same moment her mother said the word. "See?"

"No, you are, I'll prove it to you. You're going to be a grandma again," Shawn told her. From the comfort of many hours later, in their room, Maya and Lucas almost caught their breaths, waiting for her reaction. It didn't come right away. Or, more to the point, her initial reaction was to laugh, as though she thought this was a joke, as he'd said, to prove a point.

They couldn't exactly see Shawn's side of this moment, but from the shifting expression on Katy's face, they had to guess he was giving her looks to promise that he wasn't joking, that this was real and their daughter was pregnant for the third time.

Katy's chair rolled back as though she'd accidentally kicked herself back, too stunned for words for a moment. Maya laughed into Lucas' sleeve while he laced his fingers with hers.

"You're serious?"

"Told me herself, I…"

Shawn didn't get to go on explaining, his words buried by Katy's outburst. Oh, she was happy, as well they'd known she would be. Still, if not for Shawn's idea, they might not have gotten to see it happen in this way. They liked the idea of getting to show this to the baby when he or she would be older, the moment where people had known there would be this new little child in their midst and had nothing but love to give from the word go.

The video ended after Katy's initial reaction spent itself, so they didn't see what Shawn had told her regarding Maya's current state or what Katy had said in response. There was a message from Katy in the lengthy string of messages waiting on Maya's phone, probably more than one. They'd get to those after the videos.

It wouldn't take long, as they'd continue making their way through the videos, for Maya and Lucas to figure out what Shawn had been doing all day. He must have spent most of several hours on the road, going from one place to the next, any place where he knew to find those people who needed to be informed, the way they needed to be informed. How he had gotten to some of them, they had no idea, but they didn't need to. Shawn Hunter had been on a mission, and for as long as they'd known him, they'd been able to trust he'd keep his word.

Video number two opened up outside the front door to the elder Friars' home. When said door opened and Melinda Friar stepped out, Maya turned a look up to her husband which Lucas understood and reciprocated. His mother looked like she had just stepped out of some 'at home with chef…' show on a cooking or lifestyle channel.

"Good morning," she greeted him, keeping up the smile while being naturally intrigued at finding her daughter-in-law's father on her doorstep and apparently recording. Shawn gave her the same pitch as he'd given Katy, and to see the immediate sense of maternal pride wash over her, it was very hard for Lucas or Maya to keep from laughing.

"Now I'm going to feel bad that I didn't actually do what he said I did," Lucas shook his head.

Luckily for all of them, Thomas Friar was also in the house, working in his office. Melinda called him out to join her, and they swore she was putting on a voice like she was auditioning to be on a scripted series.

"Hey, kids, you thought one dramatic grandmother wasn't enough, well…" Maya whispered. Lucas smirked.

If Katy didn't see herself as spontaneous, Melinda looked like she never left the house without at least fifteen good things to say about any one person she knew. She started going on about how much she loved Maya and why, and as they watched the video, Maya felt like she could almost sense the woman's arms around her, smell her perfume… For all the jokes, she could not have asked for a better mother-in-law. Then for her father-in-law, oh, now… Thomas Friar had treated her like family for about as long as she'd been a friend of his son's, something they always loved to think about like a foretelling of how the two of them would be bound together for life eventually.

"You know, I'm so sorry, I got caught up listening to you guys. Beautiful words, by the way," Shawn was heard saying. "Almost made me forget I was really here to tell you that you're about to be grandparents again."

The elder Friars needed much less time to believe what they were told, and they did not disappoint in showing how eager they were at the prospect of a third grandbaby after Elliott and Noah. Melinda, to no one's surprise, became very loud and almost knocked her husband over in her haste to embrace him. The happy tears were easily spilled, and they could almost say for certain that even now she had to be so utterly overjoyed. She would have been told about the nausea marathon, and it was a wonder she'd managed not to drive right over as soon as she heard. Possibly, Thomas would have had something to do with it, insisting that she leave them be for today. Whether that would stick as far as the next day, well… At this point, if she was still feeling this way in the morning, she wouldn't say no to a visit from the woman she called Mom.

She wouldn't be surprised if the one she called Dad also popped in. Thomas would have looked quiet no matter what he did, when compared to Melinda, but he didn't need the volume for his happiness to be felt. He was exuding exactly his wife's feelings, but he was doing it in his own, much quieter way. Lying next to him, Maya reached her hand to rest over Lucas' heart, knowing how glad he had to be, to see his parents discover the news in this way.

The third video took them to their very own university, where Shawn's roving camera went to find two people who had clearly been directed to go to the café and wait there for him. He dropped into a booth where Dylan and Rosa sat. They looked like they'd been going over some reading for their respective classes as they waited. They were curious to know a couple of things. Of course, they wanted to know why he was here, but they also wondered why Maya wasn't. The three of them usually ran into each other by now on this day, but she'd been a no show. When they were told the reason for her absence – and for his presence – they both looked like their jaws might physically drop for a moment. Then they shifted from shock to excitement. According to Lucas, Dylan looked like he'd just found a reason to talk Zay into joining the Little Friars Horse Races with him and Asher in a few years' time. Then Rosa, well… Last time, with Noah, she'd been so sure it was happening before they ever told her, and this time was no different. In this case, Maya could guess it had to do with them running into each other the day before and her looking like a zombie that wandered around a few months too late after Halloween.

After this encounter at the university, the next several videos came off as though belonging under the single heading of 'Work Place Crashing,' where they watched Shawn walk into the workdays of Riley, and Zay, and Nadine, and then – after a drive to Houston, apparently – into those of Asher, and Ray, and into Chiara's late lunch break, which she spent with her wife, as Sophie had come to join her in the middle of her day on patrol.

In each case, Shawn's arrival was – rightfully – perceived with instant surprise and confusion. Maya and Lucas agreed that it was probably a good idea that he had his camera out the way he did. Him showing up completely out of the blue like this would have easily suggested to their friends that something could have happened to one or both of them. Instead, they got to learn about the new baby in turn. This led to an array of happy outbursts from the variously located uncles and aunts. Each was as funny as it was touching.

Shawn's adventures had taken him back to Austin by the time the next video was recorded. It took him to the Hart house, evidently, as Abigail was coming home from picking up the kids from school. Maya's young siblings all rushed toward her father, at once curious about him and his camera, like everyone else, but also responding to the camera's presence by waving, and saying hello, and – in Wyatt's case – doing a little dance.

Into the house they went, where they found Granny Lizzie in the kitchen. She'd had no idea Shawn was outside all this time as he never rang the bell. Now that he had them all before him, Shawn started off with the regular explanation, which brought out a lot of goofy but very earnest expressions of love for their big sister out of the kids, all before he went and gave them the big news. They all stopped and stared at him for a moment, and then they were all over the place, with high pitched squealing here, and bouncing there, and happy crying from the grandmother and great grandmother among them.

The second to last video brought Shawn back home, to where Nellie, Gracie, and MJ Hunter were all recently home again from school and pre-school. This was after he'd come back to the house on the lane and retrieved Alex, as there he was along with the others, presently taken in the care of his older brother. Before they could wander off too far, Shawn and Katy both called them back and sat them down, and they told them that their big sister was going to have another baby. This caused great and many gasps and cheers from the trio, who loved their nephews so much already. The idea of getting another one – or a niece – was only ever going to be received with excitement. They all had so many questions, and the answers were only going to be what they could be for the time being, but they were all assured that they would get to go and see Maya as soon as possible.

"If I could just stop feeling like this all day, I'd have them here in a second," Maya grumbled.

"I know you would," Lucas comforted her.

"Who's left?" she asked, indicating the final video. They tried to think, but for seeing his itinerary in the sequence of videos, they really couldn't see who would be left after all this.

The answer came to them by way of the baby's cries they heard, the very first sound out of the video. This one was different, not a camera moving along but rather what had to be a capture of a computer screen with someone on a video chat. For once, they got to see Shawn's face, in the small square that showed his own camera, along with those of Farkle Minkus, sitting with his wife Isadora and their baby girl Ada Marie. She was all of two months old herself and oh how they wished they got to see her in person more often. The fact that their friends now had a baby of their own was still amazing somehow, but more than anything they couldn't forget how they were now parents like the two of them, and it was a connection they all cherished.

For them, hearing about the new baby as much about surprise as it was about being right in that pocket where they were adjusting to parenthood, in the midst of sleepless nights, with only the one baby, and there they were, about to have their third. From that perspective, it was hard to see how they'd make it through, but they were genuinely just so thrilled for them, too.

"That's most of them, yeah?" Lucas asked Maya, kissing her forehead and trying not to make it look like he was checking her temperature.

She was falling asleep now that there were no more videos. The messages were going to have to wait until morning. For her sake, he hoped it would be smoother than what she had felt for the last two days. He carefully settled her in for the night, went to check on the boys, and then he joined her and drifted off in no time.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners