February 11th 2023

Chapter 196
Family Portraits

They'd put a hold on the ranch segments shortly before the twins' birth and in the weeks since, reasonably, because Lucas was as needed by his wife and their children as he was left to balance everything with his exhaustion, caring for two infants. But as they'd gone into the month of December and started preparing for Christmas, as they had made it through to Simon and Jackson's one-month milestone, he'd been thinking about starting the segments again. Specifically, knowing that the school break was approaching, he'd thought of his favorite young co-host and how this could be the perfect time for them to kick off a new series together, which they could prepare before and film throughout the break, so they could air in the new year. He ran the idea by Ava and, as he'd figured... and hoped... she'd shown instant excitement.

He'd told her about all this on the ride home after picking her and the boys up from school, and he was sure that she'd want to get started as soon as they got there. He wasn't wrong, no, but it wasn't the FIRST thing she wanted to do upon arriving, no. That honor instead went to finding the twins to see how they were, to hold them, to kiss their little baby cheeks... Her brothers...

It was wholly understandable that she still struggled to look to Lucas as her father, and he would in no way hasten her to get there. Deep down, he knew that she WAS there, as he'd been, but on her side there was still something to stop her fully committing, and that was the thought of her birth father out there. She still loved him, faults and all, and as Lucas and Maya suspected, she would see it as giving up on him if she assigned his title to another. She didn't have that issue with her new mother or her new brothers...

"Hey, you're back!" Maya beamed as Ava beelined over to hug her. "Did you have a good day?"

"Nothing monumental," Ava reported, which had both Maya and her visitor, the next recipient of a hug, laughing.

"That's alright, yes?" Melinda Friar asked before letting the girl go to crouch and observe the sleeping babes in their bassinet.

"Definitely. Too many big days makes them feel not so big anymore," Ava reasoned.

Maya didn't know what made her smile more as she watched the whole scene. She had so many memories already of how each of her children bonded to their new little brothers, and each was as true to who they were as the next. Elliott, even though he was no longer the oldest in the house, had always been the big brother, the eldest of her boys, and it made up such a big part of his personality. He always wanted to help the most, and at five and a half he did very well. He would be very careful when he was allowed to hold one or the other of the babies, so very confident in what he did.

Noah was the one you wanted to be around to cheer up a crying twin or two. His energy seemed to spike when he was needed, and his parents would swear that soon Simon and Jackson would only need to see his face and they would be halfway out of their fits already. Then Jamie, oh... He was at once so glad to be a big brother but also not as ready to give up his status as the baby, like he hadn't realized that the two things came hand in hand. It wasn't as though they suddenly ignored him, but it also couldn't be helped that they needed to devote a lot of their time to the babies, and Jamie would struggle to understand that, instead trying to find a way back to where he wanted to be and crying when it couldn't happen. There again, Noah would

roll in like the cheer up patrol, and Elliott would shine as eldest brother in the house.

With Ava, it was new for her to be the big sister when she had been the little sister by a mile for as long as she could remember. But she was also a carer, had been in recent times especially, helping her father as best she could before he'd gone to rehab and eventually taken off, and it made transitioning into this new role a lot easier. Simon and Jackson were very easy babies to love, overall very easy to care for. They did everything that newborn babies did, in quantities that could feel overwhelming to some, but then they were fortunate for the sheer number of people there, ready and willing to look after them.

The babies loved their siblings, were at ease with them all. With their one and only big sister, oh... She stood out to them, and not just for being the only one who wasn't blond. Maya saw it here, as the boys woke up and Ava was there before them: aside from their mother and father, she was their favorite person. And Ava reciprocated the feeling. Her face brightened and she took up one each of their little hands in hers, talking to them about some of what she'd done that day. To hear her tell it, the day just might have been monumental after all.

Soon, they were joined by the trio of big brothers, who could hardly know where to go first, between their mother, their little brothers, and their Granny Mel. In the end, each one chose as they generally would. Noah dashed to his grandmother, Elliott went and picked up Jackson as Ava had Simon, and Jamie scrambled to climb into his mother's lap.

They all moved around, from one person to the other, talking and talking about their own days, until there was a call for assistance in the kitchen and the boys bolted. Melinda reached out to Ava so she'd hand her the baby she currently held, Jackson, as Simon was now with their mother.

"Oh, you love your big sister, don't you, Jack?" Melinda smiled her great big smile, looking from the baby to the girl standing before her, putting an arm around her. Ava leaned to her at once, hugging her arms around her neck.

It was no secret that, long before Ava had come into their lives, Melinda had a deep, mostly unspoken wish for a granddaughter. She loved her band of grandsons with her whole heart and then some, and this in no way took away from them. It went back to her own children. Lucas was her pride and joy, always had been and would be. Oh, but she would have LOVED a daughter along with him. She'd gotten that, in marriage, through Maya, and their relationship to this day spoke for itself. Once grandchildren became a thing, earlier than expected though it was, and they were boys, one after the other, all of them, the wish started to make itself felt, especially as they learned the twins would not break the chain.

There'd been no reason for them to think that Ava would become a permanent fixture, not at first, but to look at Melinda once she'd met the girl and started interacting with her, she as good as knew, not unlike how she'd known when her son had started to bring his new friend and recent Texas transplant over to the house. She knew the girl belonged in her world, in her family. Here was her granddaughter, and she would be her grandmother, her Granny Mel. Looking at them now, Ava had adopted her right back, loved her so, so very much.

"You know, before you all arrived, Maya and I were talking about something," Melinda told Ava.

"Oh, that can wait," Maya tried to gently cut in, to discourage her mother-in-law from going further. Much as she knew that it came from a good place, she was concerned that it would not land the way she hoped it would.

"What is it?" Ava asked, looking from one to the other, and Maya let out a breath. There was no chance, once her curiosity had been piqued, to walk it back. "I want to know." Melinda was understanding her potential misstep now, too, so she hesitated for a moment, then brought her smile back. She would be careful, mindful, as best she could.

"Maya and I were talking about getting some pictures done, you know, family portraits. The boys are always growing, and now there's two little fellas… and there's you, too," Melinda gave her a light squeeze as she still held her. "Now, it's entirely up to you whether you want to do it or not, what with your father out there. I know how much he's on your mind, and now being here with all of us, a mother, and brothers, grandparents," she smiled, took a pause. "And then Lucas…" She wouldn't have missed that part, naturally, and as Ava quietly listened, she looked a bit uneasy at the realization that she would have picked up on any of this. "I understand, Ava, I do. Our circumstances weren't exactly the same, no, but it took me a while to look to my stepfather as just… my father, who I loved very much, even when I couldn't bring myself to call him that."

"Jax…" Ava nodded, looking to the baby who had been named in his memory.

"Yes," Melinda nodded back. "Truth is, no one really called him that, not until after he and my mother started seeing one another. He was a great man, and he could see that I still carried the memory of my father, even if I was so small when he died that I had no recollection of him." Ava looked to baby Simon now, named for that man. "So, he told me one day 'why don't we meet halfway? Call me Jax.' That was supposed to be just our thing, but eventually everyone would call him that… and he became Dad to me. He never rushed it, or me. I could have kept calling him Jax and he would have been fine with it, because he knew I did love him as a father, even if I couldn't call him that. And that goes for you here, now, whether that's a title… or stepping all the way into your family here, the portraits…"

Maya hadn't often heard her mother-in-law discussing this part of her life, though this story at least she was familiar with, from shortly after Melinda had learned what she and Lucas planned to name the twins. Now Ava received the story, and she knew enough to recognize the importance of her receiving it. She considered it, and the matter of the portraits, and as she looked to Maya, she might have finally understood why her mother had not initially wanted to put this to her yet. Yes, they left the choice up to her, and if she said she wasn't ready for this, then they wouldn't make her do it… but if she didn't do it, then there was no way that the rest of them could skip it, too, was there? This would be the twins' first Christmas, small as they were. If she didn't join them, there was a very good chance that she'd regret in time, but that'd be that…

"I want to do it," she finally said, looking at them both. They looked back at her, and their eyes asked whether she was sure about it. "Can I pick out how I look?"

"All of it," Maya nodded at once, even as Melinda looked briefly confused before understanding. They could guess without Ava spelling it out that, back in the day, her mother would have been very interested in getting portraits done, and there was no way that her husband or any of their children would look any other way than exactly how she'd decided, right down to how they'd sit or smile, capturing an image more than a reality.

"How would you feel about me taking you shopping?" Melinda spoke her idea even as it came to her, and at Ava's smile she got excited enough that she startled baby Jackson and he started to cry, even as his twin started, like he'd felt his brother's distress right when it happened.

"I'll go get Noah," Ava ran off.

They didn't bring up the subject again all through dinner, where they were joined by Thomas Friar and the great grandparents, or through the whole evening routine. The boys were off to bed, and then it was Maya and Lucas, Pappy Joe and Patty, and Ava and her notebook in the living room. In time, the great grandparents retreated back to their house, and Ava had to get ready and head to bed. Maya headed up to check on the babies, and Lucas was seeing to the dogs until he heard the creak of the basement door and spotted an auburn braid and a pair of pale eyes looking around. Ava spotted him, waved for him to come down before disappearing back down the stairs, leaving the door open. By the time he got down to join her, she was crouched in her desk chair, scribbling something quickly in her notebook before flipping back pages and turning to look at him.

"I have a plan, for our next series," she told him.

"Yeah, I figured you might," Lucas chuckled. "Can I see?" Ava presented him with the notebook, and he looked through what she'd written. It was neat and organized, colorful and detailed, just as she was. "I didn't think you'd have this much so fast, wow…"

"I got inspired before," she explained. "When Granny was here. We're going to go shopping, you know? For the portraits."

He'd only briefly been caught up about all of that, thanks to Maya, and now that she brought it up, he wasn't sure whether to acknowledge it or keep the focus on her plans for the segment series. But there was a beat of silence between them, and the way she looked back at him… She wanted to see what he'd say. He considered his options for a moment before moving to sit on the armchair they'd bought her, knowing how she liked to settle in to read or work on things without having to be at her desk. Ava responded by sitting properly in her desk chair, the better to roll and stop across from him.

"Are you ready for this?" he asked her. He wasn't going to ask her if she was sure. He knew her enough by now to rightly assume that she wouldn't have consented just to make them feel good. She wanted to do this; it didn't mean she wouldn't have any kind of misgivings about some part of it. "Not the clothes part, that's… you and my mom will have a great time, I'm sure." She smiled, nodded. "The rest though, the…" he gestured slowly, letting her fill in the blanks.

"I thought about it a lot, earlier," Ava admitted. "You know what I thought about the most?"

"No, what was it?" he asked.

"The portraits my first mom had us all take. My dad hated those days just like I did. Okay, I'm pretty sure none of us liked those days, not even her," she went on, and he nodded. "But it wasn't the same as with me and my father. When the day would come, me and him, we'd make a deal with each other, like what are we going to get for getting through it? And we'd do that, but that was the only good part and everything else before was so bad." She paused. "We hated those pictures, too. It was so fake. I want a real one, and that's not going to happen with them… not even him." It was just a fact that she'd accepted, and he understood how much it mattered to her that she could tell him all of that. "The first few weeks that I slept down here, in my room, I used to think that if I went to sleep, I'd wake up back there, in my old house…"

"You wanted to be there, that's normal…"

"No, that's not it," Ava shook her head. "I didn't… I didn't want to be there, and I felt bad about it. I felt bad about being happy here." It pained him to hear her say this, but he let her carry on. "Then, I remembered… how I used to feel back there. I thought I'd wake up and my room would be nothing like I'd made it, or I'd come back from school and it would be gone." Lucas reached out a hand to her and she stood and came to stand just before him, taking the offered hand and offering her second as well, which he accepted with his own. "When I realized that, I don't think I thought I'd wake up back there again for more than a few nights. It hasn't happened again. Know why?"

"Why?" he asked, smiling. He could guess, but he wanted to let her say it.

"Because I know I'm safe here. I know everything's real, I know you won't let me down. I have this room, and it's mine, and it's not a… a refuge. I'm so ready for family portraits," she smiled at him, and it made him so happy that he just had to hug her.

She hugged him back, and in that embrace, he knew that his Sweetpea knew exactly where she felt in that picture, with her mother, with her brothers, and with him. He wasn't 'Dad' yet, but he was a father to her, wholly claimed in heart and soul.

"Can my uncle come and watch when we do the segments?" Ava asked when she pulled back, and seeing some happy tears on her cheeks, Lucas chuckled, carefully clearing them away.

"He can be in the segments if he wants to," he replied, and he knew he'd sent her thoughts spinning all over again. "Notebook?" he asked, and she backstepped her way into dropping into her desk chair, momentum carrying her back to the surface and the nearest pen. Lucas laughed. "I'll leave you to it. Just don't stay up too late, alright?"

"I promise!"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners