Chapter 166
Past, Present, Legacy

He may not remember the first time he had ever been on horseback, but he had one vivid memory, the earliest one he could remember enough to tell it. He was four years old, and his grandfather took him out there, one day at the ranch, presented him with a horse he was sure would be a perfect fit for him as he grew up. He had long expressed a love and a desire to ride, which was easy to expect, with where he'd grown up, how often he found himself at Sullivan Stables, nestled in that world.

He'd spent time with his grandfather there, tending to the horse that was to be his, and he remembered feeling like he was suddenly on top of the world. He was just a kid, but here was his horse, and he could already imagine himself older, taller, speeding along with his best friend and companion. Jax Murphy had gone ahead and put him up there, made sure he would be safe. A good portion of that came from Lucas himself, who had been raised knowing what he should or shouldn't do, until it was as good as stamped into him, reflex.

It hadn't been a very long ride, but it had been long enough for that small boy to feel a call to the person he would become, the one he could picture himself being, from up on that horse. It was a whole new vantage point on to the world and he loved it.

Looking back on it now, it could be hard to ignore how his trajectory had deviated so much, but it actually wasn't. True, Lucas had stepped away from the ranch for several years after both of his grandparents had passed away, but maybe it could be said that he'd only hit pause, that all along, someone, somewhere, had known that he would be back. He might not have been doing exactly what he had long set out to do, but he was still there, and that was really all that mattered, wasn't it? He was involved with the ranch in whatever way he could be, which for now was primarily about riding again but would in the future lead to him teaching young riders, helping them realize their dreams. He really liked that idea.

But always he felt like he could do more, like he needed to do more, for his grandmother and grandfather, for his mother, his uncle, for his sons… Sometimes he would ride around the property, wondering, trying to figure something out. He'd been thinking about it for over a year, and much as he could have been frustrated by this, he genuinely felt that something like this had to take the time that it would take.

He remembered that first ride, he remembered…

He woke with a start and immediately felt lost, confused, overwhelmed… There was light in his eyes, and he blinked against it, tried to move away… Pain… He cried out.

"Easy, now, go slow, alright?" It took him a moment to nudge aside everything else and recognize the voice. Doctor Alvarez? What was going on, what… Where was he, how…

As his vision finally focused, he was able to answer a few questions for himself. He was at Sullivan Stables, for one, specifically on the ground though not flat, exactly… He was lying on something… Wood? Looking past the small cluster of people around him, he could just see the two fractured ends that now comprised the hole in a fence. Some of those missing pieces, he could venture, were presently under him. He could also see, not far beyond the broken fence, his horse, Jet. He looked shaken up, and there were a couple of the trainers there, trying to calm him down. It all started to come back to him now, the moment when he'd realized something was about to go wrong, how he'd tried to prevent it… Whatever he'd down, he must have been thrown off, with enough force to send him crashing into this fence. The only part he still hadn't figured out again was why he'd been unable to stop.

When the paramedics showed up, he learned that he'd been unconscious for about a minute before he'd come around. He didn't look so bad by the time they'd checked him out, but they would still be taking him to the hospital. Much as he did feel some concern for his condition, the thing he worried about the most had nothing to do with him and more with those who'd worry about him. His parents, grandparents, Juliet… Maya, the boys… They'd be called, if it hadn't been done already, and what would that do to them?

It was Friday, the first week of October. By now, he and his father had a deal that, if they had nothing pressing, no appointments, he would be free to go off and ride with Jet, so that was what he'd done. He imagined that Juliet would go and call his mother, and she would call to the office… He could easily imagine how that would go, and he hated it. And then Maya… She'd be at school right now, maybe in class with her eighth graders; he didn't know what time it was anymore. Elliott and Noah would be at preschool, and Jamie… Oh, he'd be with his mother today…

The departure from Sullivan Stables, the ride to the hospital, they were mostly a blur, him stuck in his head more than anything. Once they arrived, it was another examination here, and then this test and that one… As he might have expected, it took him back to that night, years past, when he and Maya had been in a car accident, ending up right here in this hospital, in this ER…

When he saw her for the first time, he had a feeling she'd been thinking about that night, too, though more than anything she was thinking about today, and him, and finding him, making sure that he was okay. As soon as her eyes located him, it was like one weight had shot right away from her shoulders. There he was, awake, alive… Oh, she was beside herself, so much that she couldn't speak at first, only come up to him, locate somewhere that she might touch him and know for sure that she wouldn't hurt him even as she'd confirm with contact that all was well. Once she'd done this, it was like breaking a trance, which turned into her letting emotions in but also trying not to cry.

"Would a joke reassure you right now?" Lucas asked her, feeling like all he wanted right now was to comfort her. The rest didn't matter to him.

"Not really, no," she admitted, so he respected that. "What happened? All she said was that you'd had an accident with your horse, and you were knocked out, and they brought you here…" Oh, those tears were so very near the surface just now, but she held them down, even as he could feel her hand shaking where it rested on his arm.

"Hey," he spoke quietly, signaling with his hand for her to clasp it, which she did. "I'm okay. They already said that everything looked alright. The biggest thing I'll have to worry about will be a few scrapes and bruises. Knees and back are kind of the worst of it, but they'll be fine once I recover."

"Right… right…" Maya mumbled to herself. Lucas guessed it was hard for her to come down from the worries she'd carried over, especially in this setting, so he just kept holding his hand. In a way, they got to help one another out at the same time, and that was really the best they could have asked for.

By the time his parents came along – his father had gone and picked up his mother and Jamie and brought them both – he was nearly ready to head out. It was a small mercy that they got to see him sitting up, legs dangling over the edge of the bed instead of lying down, as it already telegraphed that he was doing okay. Maya swept in and collected Jamie from her father-in-law, allowing him and his wife to approach their son and talk to him. Melinda was as shaken up as they would have expected her to be, and it took both Lucas and Thomas to convince her not to track down his doctor and have her run through everything over again, double checking, triple checking that he could actually be allowed to leave.

"Dada!" Jamie reached his hands out for his father, and Lucas nodded for Maya to bring him over. Yes, he was sure. He'd have to be a lot worse off not to take hold of his son and, if anything, the sight of him holding the one-year-old was more or less all they needed as proof that he was just as he'd told them he was. From there, Melinda shifted immediately into caretaking mode. They were going to get him home, and they were going to make sure that he did all he had to do to get better in due time.

Sitting on the bed, even holding the small boy, his pain levels were manageable enough. Getting up and walking around was another story, and he didn't get very far before they insisted that he get in a wheelchair. He wasn't about to argue with that. He sat and kept Jamie in his lap as they went. He enjoyed the trip tremendously. It made Lucas think of that memory again, the first ride he remembered. Jamie may not have been old enough to get on a horse but rolling with his father looked good enough for him. His giddy attitude had the added benefit of cheering his mother and grandparents, helping to leech away any remaining worries.

"We'll set you up on the couch for now," Maya told Lucas as his father helped him up from the car. The way he was feeling right now, he was not planning to try his hand at climbing all those stairs. Just getting up to the porch was enough, but it was that or convincing his parents not to try and lift him.

Once they had him settled on the couch, with Jamie to keep him company, Maya managed to convince the elder Friars to head on home. There would have been little else for them to do, as the best thing for Lucas now was to get some rest.

"Thanks," he told his wife after they'd heard the car driving off.

"Figured you wouldn't want them hovering," she sighed. That was true, respectfully. Now that it was just the three of them, she looked a bit stuck, but he understood that, too. She'd been rattled by the event, and she needed to do something now.

"What time is it?" he asked, and she looked, gasped.

"I need to get to the preschool for pick-up. Are you going to be okay? Pappy Joe and Patty should be back before I am…"

"I'm not going anywhere. Got a drink, got some snacks, the remote, and the tadpole," he turned a smile to the boy, crouched in the space between his father and the couch cushions.

"Fine," Maya breathed, coming up to them. She leaned forward and kissed him. "Try and relax, yeah?"

"Swear," he nodded. She turned to Jamie, cradled his head and kissed his blond hair.

"Keep an eye on him for me, yeah?" she asked him.

"Yeah?" Jamie repeated.

"That's it," Maya smiled and kissed him again before making her way out to go get Elliott and Noah.

Now it was just the two of them, father and son on the couch. Lucas turned on the television, finding something that would catch Jamie's interest. Lately, he'd been drawn most of all to the Food Network, which Lucas suspected had been inspired by how often he watched his mother bake. It made sense to him. So, he sat there with his father and watched as contestants on a competition worked against a clock. In the meantime, Lucas thought back to what had happened earlier, at the ranch…

He knew now where the accident had happened. He'd let himself get distracted, just barely, when he'd seen the fence, the empty space that had left him spooked for the better part of his life. For as long as he could remember, he'd had this feeling of dread in him whenever he'd get close to it, like he knew something terrible had happened there. He'd heard stories, but only in passing and never clearly enough for him to understand what it was really about. The one thing he knew with certainty was that those stories had left that feeling in him. He didn't like it there. And today, he'd been riding, hadn't realized he was coming up on it… He'd tried to move away but had acted incorrectly somehow, enough that Jet and he did not communicate, and then… he flew.

He didn't know what it was about that place, but he didn't care to know. Then again… shouldn't he? It was part of Sullivan Stables, as much as anything else, and he had no idea where it had come from, why it was left this way. It wasn't the only thing, too. There were some parts of the property left in disuse, like the old dance studio, from before Donna Devereaux had relocated to her new location. It had been sitting there, abandoned, turned to storage, as far as he'd seen. He remembered sitting up on the balcony with his friends, looking all the way out, sometimes being 'forced' into lessons by the dance teacher/event coordinator… It wasn't as though he believed that Juliet and the others were leaving the ranch to fall apart, far from it, but there were still all these parts that could use some freshening up. Maybe he'd see if Juliet would let him work on that. Definitely not for a while, the way I'm moving after today.

"Daddy!"

"Daddy, you're hurt!"

He'd been this close to dozing off when Maya returned from picking up the boys from preschool. They came hurrying up to the couch now and looked at him. They didn't look too concerned, more curious than anything, so Maya must have talked to them about what had happened to some degree.

"Yeah, little bit. But I'll be alright, just need to rest and take things easy for a while," Lucas promised them.

"We're going to make cookies now," Elliott told him.

"You are?" Lucas asked, and they nodded.

"Here, why don't you come with us, tadpole," Maya came and scooped up Jamie. "Cookie time," she crooned at him, and he squealed. This would be much better than on the television. Here, he got to have samples…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners