March 16th 2023

Chapter 75
We Elevate As We Grow

"Hi… Hi, guy, good morning…" Maya whispered, smiling, as she held her nephew. She'd finally convinced Wyatt to go shower and grab a nap before going off to class, which left her the very enviable duty – especially in this house – of looking after the very cute and squishable Finneas Hart-Lane.

It still felt like only yesterday that he'd been born, that Alicia had disappeared on them. Instead, two weeks had nearly gone by, and they were all settling into their new normal, with a new baby under the Friar roof. They'd never actually spent the night at Abigail and James' house. They'd spent the day there, after coming home from the hospital, and sometime before dinner, Marianne had finally gained an invitation for herself and her sisters to go and meet their new cousin. It had not been her intention to convince Wyatt to return to his sister's so soon, but something about seeing all the girls around Finn had convinced him that it was where they needed to be.

If he stayed at his parents' house, he believed he would let himself get comfortable in his refuge, and he didn't want that. He needed to carry on, needed to get back to work, to class, especially if he was going to be supporting his son on his own. He wouldn't have been without support going forward, no, but it was very important to him that he did all he could to be the father that Finn deserved, and they would do their best to respect that.

He did call in sick for a couple of days at work, and he missed as many days of class, but this only so that he could find his rhythm and figure out how to look after his son. The first step had been to get him settled with what he'd need, upstairs. His room wasn't the most… roomy… but he could make it work, him and the baby in there, he was sure of it. The nights and days that followed showed that he would definitely need time to get a handle on everything but, overall, he was doing a lot better than some might have given him credit for. He wasn't a stranger around babies, though he did find there was a difference when it was his baby, his responsibility. He was so determined to do well that he'd never want to tag anyone else in. His motto was 'it's alright, I can do this,' and they let him carry on the way he wanted.

When the time came for him to fold work and school back in, he found it harder to follow his plan. He'd never been very far from Finn since he was born. He had very willing sitters in many avenues if he needed them, and he would come to use them, his parents especially, as they were the very most eager, closely followed by his siblings, and he would check in with them whenever he could, some would say too often, but they answered him every time. When he'd finally be back, he'd look so happy to have his boy back, and as little as he still was, Finn looked very happy to have his father back, too.

The nights had not been forgiving so far as sleep, and here again Wyatt had struggled to accept the help offered to him, but he'd gotten there. Maya would get up for the baby, Lucas at other times… Marianne tried herself a few times but was always caught by one parent or another and told to turn heel and return to bed, because she had school in the morning, or soccer, or just being an eight-year-old child in need of sleep for growing, no matter how tall she was.

"You and I get to spend a lot more time together pretty soon," Maya told her nephew in a very happy voice that generally worked very well in holding tiny babes' attention. It was a success with the little guy, too, which she was glad to find. "Today is the last day of classes," she went on, moving around with him. "After that, we've got graduation, and then it's going to be summer! You don't know what that is yet, but I think you're going to love it, yeah? Yeah?" She kissed him on the cheek, held him close and sighed. What she wouldn't have given to spend the day with him… She'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a newborn in the house, and it was making that simmering baby fever feel as though it was gaining degrees on her.

It wasn't as though she wasn't looking forward to this day, to being at school. She would be saying goodbye for the summer to three of her groups until fall brought on a new year for them to start, one grade up from where they were now, and with a whole new batch of freshmen. But she would also be seeing out another class of seniors, and not just any class. That made it sound as though she was in the habit of putting one class above any other, which wasn't the case. But each group generally had its own vibe and this one had quickly been dubbed her gold stars for how they had been the one group she'd ever had that was motivated to create across the board, not a single one of them having chosen art as an easy out. They had allowed her to be different with them, to do things that might not have worked so easily with the other groups. She could imagine that it would happen again in the future, and maybe it would, but until then, these gold stars were on their last day with her before they set off on their own.

What might have made things harder, on a personal note, was that among that group were two of her sisters. It was a bit silly for her to lament their graduating especially when they were leaving home… to move in with her. They would be even closer to her now than they had been since… well, since they'd been toddling babes, the both of them. The only excuse she could give herself or anyone else was that this was the end of an era, and she never did well with those.

They closed out the year and their high school days with a round of what had been a staple among them for the past four years: speed portraits. For this last time, the theme was very much on the nose. Maya asked her seniors to go one of two ways: a memory of the school they were leaving, or a vision of where they were headed. Everyone needed to have a turn that day, they just had to, so they decided to go at it station by station, after they'd been given a minute to come up with an idea, and if they still had time in the end, they'd call up for individual models.

They wouldn't let her see the results of their portraits, not until the end, when she handed them their diaries back for the last time, complete with her drawings and her letters at the back. They'd treated their own work as something like that, too, taking the time to write on the back of one or more of their pieces that day. If not for the fact that she had to be up bright and early the next day for graduation, she could have been up well into the night, maybe tagging in for Finn Time, just looking at the great stack of drawings and notes. Instead, she decided to keep them aside until after graduation, when she could take her time… maybe have herself a mopey little cry.

"Damn it…" Maya breathed on the morning of graduation, drawing the attention of a barely awake Lucas.

"What?" he asked, pulling his little spoon nearer.

"Just thought about today," she told him and, off his confused noise, went on. "She's going to do a speech, isn't she?" she muttered. After a beat, he snorted. "Glad someone thinks it's funny. I was going for something more like horrifying. The things she might say… You've never seen her at assemblies."

Whether by some miracle coincidence or self preservation on her part, Sandra Davenport missed graduation. Vice-Principal Alistair Song took her place in seeing the seniors through the ceremony, sharing his superior's 'sincere apologies,' excusing her absence for reasons of a family emergency. Was it possible that this was true? Sure. But both Maya and Lucas' guts told them otherwise, and those were not in the habit of letting them down. They wouldn't worry over it for very long. At this point, the prospect of Alistair leading the day felt much more in line with seeing this class make its trek across the stage, and his speech when it came – clearly his own and not Davenport's – convinced them that their school would have been in much better hands with him at the head instead of her.

Graduation day always had Maya moving from one conversation to another in the run-up to the actual ceremony, talking to one family and another, and this year was no exception. She had her expected dose of talk about the musical, about the awards and about the one she and the show should definitely have won, but it was very easy to steer them back on topic that day when the topic was their children as they were about to get their diplomas.

Already she was about to see two more of the extended McNeil-Whitley-Sofer family exit, as Rolly McNeil and Tre Whitley were among the seniors that day. Rochelle's younger brother and stepbrother had been here to see her walk the stage, it felt, only a moment ago, when it had actually been a whole six years. Now she was the one there to support them, with boyfriend Bodhi Thompson at her side.

There was a similar feeling as she looked to Desi Russell, about to walk for her diploma. Her older brother, Khalil, had graduated the same year as Rochelle, so she'd been there for him as he was now there for her, with Phoebe and their boys. It wouldn't be long that he'd be gone again, but there was no more chance of his missing his baby boy's birth than there was of his not being there for his kid sister's big day.

There were so many families who were very close to hers, most of them through former students with younger siblings now in her classes, but then there were the Davises, who were close to her family because they were close to her siblings. It was really something, seeing the two sets of identical twins in their caps and gowns. There was no chance of mixing either pair up, but that was the last thing on Maya's mind that day as she thought of them, of her little sisters and their boyfriends. The last four years had not gone at all the way they would have imagined they would, for sure, but they'd made it out on to the other side, the four of them together, and she knew that they were so much stronger for it.

"I don't know about you, but I'm really curious about how the next four years are going to work out, with the four of them at the house," Maya told Lucas as she watched Nellie and Bobby and Gracie and Ethan fixing and messing each other's caps and laughing at one another's results.

"Are the guys moving in, too, and no one told me?" Lucas asked, eyebrow raised. Maya saw it and briefly paused to admire his borrowing of her expression, making him laugh. She finally looked back to the twins.

"You're telling me we're not going to be seeing way too much of them at the house the minute my sisters move in?" she asked. Lucas paused for a moment.

"Alright, now that you mention it… It'll be fine though, right?"

"Oh, sure, no problem at all, nope, not a one…"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners