A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

February 11th 2023

Chapter 42
We Greet the Long-Awaited

For the past three weeks, coming up on a month, August and Milena Matthews had been fostering a three-year-old girl named Lilah alongside their now equally three-year-old foster son of nearly a year, Toby. This came on the heels of their having hosted another girl, a one-year-old called Jane, for a matter of days before she'd been united to family again. To hear them tell it, Toby had been so happy at the prospect of a little sister that he'd been deeply upset at Jane's departure. And when Lilah had come along, he'd struggled to bond with her, like, surely, she'd go away, too. They all remembered the quietly clinging boy he'd been in the very beginning of living with his foster parents, and he'd calmed down since, had opened up as much as they could hope him to after all this time, but then they'd be reminded, in situations like these, that he still carried some weight of separation anxieties.

Toby had finally allowed himself to start and connect with Lilah, though this could be said to have been because bright and cheerful as she was, Lilah didn't leave him a chance to keep away. Nowadays, as they did while at the Friar house with August and Milena for lunch, the two of them would go everywhere together like they might have been twins, or best friends, or both.

"I try not to think about what would happen if they got separated, for what it would do to them... and to us... but I know I can't go around as though it'd never happen," Milena sighed, looking on to where the pair was playing 'kitchen' with Mackenzie and Aubrey Friar.

They didn't want to press on the subject, and they wouldn't, not when it would only serve to fill up the banks of the couple's concerns. Whether for a few weeks or a year, even days, they knew that saying goodbye to any child they had taken into their home would be difficult. Maya could have brought up the story of Noor Kaur and Freddie Jacek, former foster siblings separated for years and brought back together in school, but she wasn't so sure that it would help the matter so much as crowd it with new concerns.

"My dad told us what's been going on with Wyatt," August turned to his former teacher hesitantly. He hoped this hadn't been stepping over any bounds, and Maya assured him that it was alright. "We had no idea, I mean, he looked kind of... preoccupied, but..."

"Yeah, I remember when you walked around with a look like that, too. Weight of the world, just a different one..." Maya told him, and it was something to see the man, on the tail end of his twenties, a decade off from the troubles he'd had near the end of his high school days, the very ones that had contributed to bringing him together with his wife. It would make him sensitive to recognizing the weight in others.

"What do you think will happen with the two of them and... and the baby?" Milena asked, voice kept low, with the children so nearby. Both Maya and Lucas seemed to sit back with a sigh at the same time when put to this question. They had already been asking themselves the very one, time and again but with little to no way of coming up with a valid answer. They wouldn't be the ones to answer it, would they? It was up to them, to Alicia and Wyatt, and they told as much to August and Milena, who understood and left the matter there.

Had they expanded on it, Maya and Lucas would have been caught in the same impasse. It all came down to what each of the expecting parents wanted, didn't it, but in many ways, Alicia had a different position than Wyatt did in that she was the one having this baby, carrying it, and choosing to give birth to it. They wanted to say they knew where her head was at on the whole situation, but they really didn't. They knew where Wyatt was at, as much as they could. They knew that although he wouldn't have chosen this to happen now before it actually happened, now that it had... Now that it had, he couldn't remove himself from the knowledge that he was feeling a growing attachment to his unborn child. He would want what was best for them, and if that meant that he wouldn't get to be their father... He wouldn't say it, maybe for fear of what it would mean if it turned out that his child wouldn't know him as their father, but it might break him, not completely, but it would leave a crack he wouldn't know how to patch.

Now, Alicia on the other hand... They were doing their best to take her lead as they got to know her, but she wasn't making it easy. She was so hard to read, which they could sympathize with, thinking of what it would be like to find themselves in this situation, and they wanted to help her where they could, but she had to want that help, didn't she? It was one thing that she had made this one decision, to carry the baby and have it, but that was only the one decision and everything else after it was still up in the air. Most of what they knew had to do with the state of the pregnancy and the baby. Lately, though they hadn't asked her, they had been left with the inexplicable realization... belief... that Alicia had yet to tell her parents that she was pregnant at all. They lived far enough from Texas that it didn't have to be so out of the ordinary that she wouldn't see them for months on end. In theory, she could be pregnant and give birth without their ever finding out, and if that was what she was trying to do, then what would it mean for the child? And for Wyatt?

The thoughts were still with them after the younger Matthews left the Friar house and their hosts went about pivoting toward cleaning up ahead of the evening, where they would be the guests this time, over at the Hunter Hart house. Without either of them bringing it up, they knew they'd be thinking about it all, about the question as yet unanswered. The only way it would be vocalized would be if either one of them needed it enough. And maybe they would have gotten there if the phone hadn't started to ring.

Jenna was calling, and it was clear before she gave it just what the reason was for her call: Rosa was in labor, no falsities to it, and they were about to leave for the hospital. The newest member of the Zvolensky-Mantovani and Garcia-Choi families was on their way.

"Alright, we'll meet you there as soon as we can," Maya told Jenna. "How's she doing?"

"For knowing her as long as I have, I don't think I've ever seen her this calm, which is really unsettling right now," Jenna reported, and Maya pinched her lips together so not to laugh. "I don't buy it for a second."

Maya told Lucas what Jenna had said once they left the house. He'd gone to let Wyatt know that they were leaving, so he would come down and stay with the girls, as soon as he'd known that they'd be hospital bound. He had roughly the same reaction she had, except that now that it was only the two of them, they allowed themselves a laugh. There was no way this calm wave would hold as the labor progressed. There would be a turn, and the waves would get choppy and massively unbound, and Rosa would wash them all away.

As Lucas drove, Maya got to writing back and forth with her fellow passengers in several vehicles. Riley, Zay, Morgan, Isadora, Chiara, Asher… Everyone was converging on the hospital, some with a much longer trek ahead of them than others, the future parents among those unfortunately. There had been some talk of Rosa and Jenna relocating to Houston the closer the due date came, going to stay with Rosa's mother, so she would give birth out there, in the same hospital where Chiara had previously delivered the family's five children. But then the baby had had other plans, and there was no way Rosa would be put through a two-hour drive to follow through on the plan. The baby would be born in Austin, and that would have to be it. They'd known it could happen, and just now they all cared much more about baby and surrogate mother getting through this parting from one another.

Normally, when any of them would have a baby, it would be all hands on deck, the friends, all their children… But this was not a normal time. This was the quartet's child, but Rosa was the one going through labor and delivery and, in deference to her, it had been decided that the only children they would bring to the hospital would be Giulia, Connor, Jae, Allie, and Santi, so they might meet their new baby brother or sister. The Friar, Babineaux, Orlando, and Minkus children would stay behind for now and meet the new turtle in due time. They had been told all of this ahead of time, so there wouldn't be surprises and tantrums on the day, and they had taken it very well, especially when it had been decided that they would all make cards for the baby and their parents. When they'd gone and left for the hospital, they'd been entrusted with those cards to deliver, and they had sworn to do so. Maya had her girls' offering right there in her lap as they headed to meet everyone.

When they did arrive, they found no one in the waiting area, so they went to find Rosa's room, having been given the number via a text from Jenna even as they were pulling up into the parking lot. They'd barely arrived themselves, so they found her still in the process of assisting Rosa and getting her settled. Maya and Lucas very quickly saw for themselves what Jenna had meant about how very calm she was for someone who was in active labor, someone who'd never been through this before, and, well, someone who was Rosa.

"Hi!" she greeted them with a beaming smile, which caught them off-guard enough that she noticed. She laughed. "I'm alright, guys, really. It hasn't been so bad so far."

"Well, good, that's…" Lucas slowly nodded, looking to Maya.

"I'm lying, of course, this is hell, and I could scream… such obscenities right now, but I'm not going to, no, no, I've got this…" Rosa went on, in that same sweet, so un-Rosa tone, and at once the 'calm' made a lot more sense. She had it in her head that she was going to give this child a peaceful entry into the world, and this was the way to do it. Maya really did not want to burst her bubble, not if it helped her in that moment, but having gone through this four times previously… Yes, one had been scheduled and another had ended with her unconscious and feared for, but still…

"Hey, hey, one Shorty to another?" she approached the bed once Rosa had gotten up on it. Her bandmate chuckled, recalling one of their earliest 'bonding' moments. "The kid will be fine. If this works for you, great, but the moment it doesn't, you let us have it, alright?" Rosa took a deep breath, let it out. Maya was confused as to why she started to look down and around, first at her, then at Jenna, then to…

"Lucas, can you come up here for a minute?" she asked, still in her frighteningly sweet tone. It was enough that Maya almost shook her head at her husband so he wouldn't do as Rosa asked, but he went and, as soon as he was within reach, Rosa snatched hold of his hand and squeezed with enough force that Lucas nearly lost his footing. "You're staying right here until the dads get here, aren't you?" Rosa asked, the sweetness turning now.

"Yeah, you got it," he promised, trying not to show strain in his voice and failing enough that Maya had to hide the smirk from her face.

Lucas' 'replacements' wouldn't arrive for nearly two hours, which felt a lot longer and like no time at all, but finally they did arrive, the dads and the moms and the siblings. As they knew that things hadn't progressed beyond where they could be allowed, Giulia and the others got to come in briefly and confer with Rosa and their unborn sibling before being guided out by their aunt and uncle. It had been a lot more difficult this time around for them to figure out who would get to be in the room or not. Rosa wanted Jenna there with her, which was only fair, but then what about the baby's actual parents? It had been easier when it had been Chiara in that bed, but now that made four of them with all the reasons to want to be there but also a medical team to contend with, not to mention a very reasonable limit as to how many people they'd allow. Thankfully, they'd managed to get Nadine in for the delivery, and between her and Ray to see to Rosa, they were able to make it work so that the two mothers and two fathers would be there in the room when their sixth (and definitely final) child was born.

They had gone in and taken great care not to discover what they were having this time around before the moment when the baby would come crying into the world, though there had been a strong bit of consensus that, seeing as they were presently two girls and three boys among them, they really wanted it to be another girl, that way they would be three and three, like their parents were two and two. Their parents were more than on board with this reasoning, though they would add to it that they had an extra reason for wanting this to be another daughter: they'd had their hearts set on just the name for her, the better to make note of the great and immeasurable gift they'd been given by their friend.

And to everyone's great joy, on that early February morning, Rosa Del Vecchio brought Violet Choi screaming into life, one flower for another. And though the two of them would share not a bit of DNA between them, her parents would say that she had definitely retained something of the woman who'd carried her in her belly in her character, and she was the better for it.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners