A/N: One day behind

July 29th 2023

Chapter 220
All of Us Together and Forever

"How are you doing?"

That was the only thing people seemed to be able to say whenever they'd run into either one of them. And as much as they understood where it came from, as much as they knew that it all came from a place of caring, eventually it started to lose a lot of its meaning to them. They just never knew what to say anymore. They had gone through something horrible, something they would not wish on anyone, and in a lot of ways they were still going through it.

No one was getting it more than Maya was. No matter where she went, it was like everyone knew, and they all looked at her with pity in their eyes. The worst part was that she knew that it came from a place of kindness, of caring. But she would get overwhelmed with it all, and she only wished they'd realize that. She didn't know how they were supposed to show their support some other way that wouldn't manage to make her feel bad in any way, but at this point she'd rather they did nothing at all than have them keep going as they did now.

The truth of it went deeper, she supposed. The truth was that she didn't know what to say, because she didn't know how she was, or she didn't know how to explain how she was. Part of her felt like she was moving forward, setting aside what was to be this new chapter, and that it was a good thing, a healing thing. But the other part also felt like there had been pages, torn from the book of her life, and she was expected to simply carry on as her insides… the insides of her book… hadn't been left in tatters. Every day she got through, living her life the best way she knew how, she was tending to those ripped edges, working to make them feel less and less abrasive. It was easier said than done.

She knew herself too much to think that it wouldn't be so, so easy for her to sink into despair. Her fear in that, the biggest one of all, went toward what this would all do to her children, to her husband. Lucas was one thing. He was deep into this with her, but their children… Their ages didn't seem to matter as much in this. Whether they were a year old or twelve, they were caught up in the middle of something they didn't deserve any more than their parents did. Maya worked so hard to keep them from seeing any of the parts where she didn't manage so well in keeping it all in, but it didn't always work. Maybe worse yet, the feeling of failure would be the thing to send her spiraling further and further down.

With Lucas, the passing time, the weeks since they'd lost their Sara, had been no kinder. They were all just trying to keep going, weren't they? They had to keep going, to move past what could have been so they could still have what they already had. That was what everyone seemed to say, wasn't it? Whether or not they said it aloud or in those words, they were going to struggle, and that was normal, but after that… After that, they needed to just get on with it. So, who got to decide when they were done, when they could supposedly move on? Did they have a number in mind, because he sure didn't know what it would be.

Sure, they hadn't been that far into this pregnancy when it had been lost, but it had been long enough for them to live with this promise of a new child, with dreams and possibilities, and then suddenly it had all gone away. Their brains and their hearts were simply not made for pretending as though they could carry on. They knew, deep down, that the day would come where they would just be carrying on, and no one would know or even think about this thing that had happened to them, but they weren't there, not at all, and Lucas didn't know when they would be. He wasn't looking to figure it out either.

The worst for him came down to two things. One of them was when he'd see Maya and he'd know that she was hurting, and he'd feel incapable of helping her. Yes, he was there, and she appreciated it, probably was made to feel slightly better for it, but he was never going to get her fully out of that place in her heart. He wasn't trying to do that, he respected her grieving process. But then there'd also be the mornings, and he swore that he could feel his hand just… seize up from wanting to lay over a curve he knew too well held nothing, not anymore. The reflex was still there, but he just imagined what it would do to her if she woke up to feel his hand there, how it would twist around what was to be such a loving gesture to make it a reminder of how everything had come to a stop.

He never wanted to make any of it about him. He knew that even Maya, especially Maya, would tell him that it was okay for him open his hands and show his broken heart, but more than anything he just felt that every part of him was set on holding up the family, with all the strength he had in him. His wife, their children, they were everything to him, as they should be, and in time of crisis, there was nothing better for him to do than exactly what he was doing now. Everything else… there would be a time and a place, he was certain of it.

And in the meantime, there was the house, and there were his people. Maya was one thing, but then the kids… the kids… He'd look at Ava, his sweetpea, and his heart would seem to lurch, thinking about the one they'd lost, and how she'd chosen a name for her… Mostly, he would recall how excited she was, ever since she'd found out about the pregnancy. She had been so looking forward to having a new baby sibling, and it had felt as though, as excited as they already were themselves, she had made them both even more so.

In the weeks since they'd lost their Sara, she'd been just… stuck in her own head. She was so young, when it came down to it. She wasn't so young that she didn't know what had happened, overall, but even though she knew, it was like it couldn't make sense to her that something like that would happen, that it had happened to her Mama. She would get so protective of her, sticking by her side, cuddling with her, and there would be this concern between Lucas and Maya both that she might still hold to the belief that she had somehow caused the loss, that her prank had caused her mother to lose the baby. No matter how many times they promised her that this wasn't so, she would say that she knew, but they would still see the doubt, there in the back of her eyes.

They were not forgetting her in their healing journey. They would always do their best to include her, to allow her to take what steps she needed in order to be okay. She saw that, and she recognized that, and she appreciated it, they knew. They only had to keep going.

When it came down to the boys then, it all depended, didn't it? They'd have the twins, Simon and Jack barely a year old as they were, and obviously they wouldn't know what was going on, but at the same time… They'd get this look to them like they wanted to cry, for absolutely no reason, and it would strike their parents to think that the reason might have been them, that they could have been exuding so much sadness that it would then reverberate on their little Hug-a-bears.

Going up to Jamie, their recently turned three-year-old, the story was a different one. He wasn't so clueless as his baby brothers, but his experience of the situation was marked by an extra two years that translated into his trying to understand just what was going on. He could see as well as the twins did that something was wrong, but he didn't know what it was. They hadn't told him about Sara, not him, not his older brothers… They felt that it was the right way to go about it, that they'd be better off not dwelling on it until they could all really understand. Not everyone was in agreement with them about it, but they absolutely respected their decision, and they greatly appreciated that they did.

With Noah, at five and a half, the mood in the house resolved for him like frenzy and distress. Something wasn't right, and it made him uneasy, and he had to move. He had inadvertently broken a chair, two plates, and most spectacularly a jar of jam. They knew they had been accidents, and he had felt so bad each time, trying to help them pick it all up as soon as it happened. And they couldn't stand to see him like that.

And Elliott… Their firstborn, their Sprout… He was only six and a half, but he felt so grown to them, all the time, which they supposed would make sense, him of all their children. They hadn't told him either, but the way he'd look at them sometimes, they felt like he had to know. They didn't know how he would have put it together, but they wouldn't put it past him either. He had adopted the same response as Ava had, in that he would often be there for some good cuddles with his mother. He hung close to his father, too, as though there was any doubt that here was Lucas Friar's son. They had never realized how alike the two of them could be.

"Granny!" Noah hollered from the window, letting any living being in the house know that the elder Friars had arrived. The call sent all the kids hurrying from wherever they'd been in the house, the better to join him and be there when they got to welcome their grandparents.

Both Maya and Lucas were of a mind that they could not have gotten through the last few weeks as they had without a lot of people, and Thomas and Melinda were high up on that list, maybe even at the top. It was impossible to ignore the thought that their shared experience, their own loss in the past, would have made them respond to them in a manner apart from that of others.

As to the matter of not telling the boys about the baby, they tended to agree with their decision. They had done the same, back in the day, with Lucas. They had eventually told him, yes, but this only a few years after it had happened. There was no telling whether he would have come out on the other side and been just fine if they'd told him everything earlier, true, but they never regretted their choice. Possibly what influenced them now was what had influenced them back then, which was the thought of breaking through the innocence that still existed in their small boys' faces. There would be time enough when they were older, there had to be.

"Hello, hello, hello, sweethearts!" Melinda enveloped the pack of grandsons closing around her before standing back up, the better to cup her granddaughter's face in her hands, standing just beyond, and bowing to kiss the side of her head.

Not far behind in arriving, they were certain, would be the Hunters. The last thing Maya or Lucas would want their children to think would be that there were any issues between them and Nana Katy and Grandpa Shawn, because there weren't, not really… not exactly. Just as with the Friars, they had been indispensable over the last few weeks as support to the two of them, to the kids, but whereas Lucas' parents fell on one side of the secrecy debate, Maya's fell on the other. They'd try and keep it from becoming a thing, but in the end, it was just in those attempts at respecting boundaries that the tension was allowed to build.

It wasn't as though their argument had no validity, because naturally it did. They could see as anyone would that the dark cloud hanging overhead was making the boys uncomfortable, agitated, and as bad as it would feel to try and explain the truth to them, it really just felt like it would be less painful than the not knowing. Did Katy and Shawn understand their daughter and her husband wanting to spare their sons what they were going through when they had the chance to do so? Naturally, they did. But they still felt strongly enough about their side of it that they couldn't let go. And thus, the awkward silences had started to set in. It had become the accepted alternative after Maya and her parents had nearly blown up at each other. They cared about one another too much to let things get any worse, so not talking about it felt like the only way to go anymore. It didn't mean they didn't know exactly what the other was thinking, but what other choice did they have?

Somewhere in the middle, the Hart-Bretts had been impossible to place. They were as supportive as the rest, and it didn't matter whether they shared blood or not, if they had been specifically wed to a parent that did or not. They were right there, for Maya and for Lucas, and so far as the argument was concerned… well, they supposed they fell somewhere down the middle. They didn't agree fully with either side and would not pronounce themselves as such. This turned them into unwitting mediators at times, something that hadn't been specifically evident at first until after the near blow up with the Hunters. Lucas had overheard the two couples talking, much as they'd all tried to keep their voices down.

Later, in the evening, after the kids had all gone to sleep, Maya had impulsively called two of her former bandmates. In next to no time, Riley and Nadine had come along to the Friar house, with Dylan and Zay trailing along. For all that the parents and grandparents had done over the last few weeks, and as appreciated as it all was, there was this other side, the help that was given by their four friends here and many more beyond. It was impossible for the parents and the friends to react and act the same way.

"Do you think I'm being a bad mom for not telling them?" Maya quietly asked as she sat on the couch, Riley on one side, Nadine on the other, both of them leaning against her, three heads together.

"Of course not," Riley looped her arms around the one of Maya's that was closest to her.

"Yeah, don't even think that," Nadine begged her, doing the same with the intent of doing exactly what she achieved, which was to make Maya smile at their cuddling up.

"Yeah, you're right up there with the best moms I know," Riley affirmed.

"Being your mother's daughter, that means a lot," Maya told her, and Riley nodded, which made her look so much like her younger self. "I bet you'll be a lot like her, too." Riley blinked, looking up at her with the words escaping her to respond. If she found them, she might have said 'how did you know?' "You could have told me, you know?" Maya told her, eyes stinging with tears she knew for certain, for once, were happy ones. "It's the best news."

"I didn't want to just… well…" Riley tried to explain.

"I get it," Maya promised before looking over to Nadine. "You knew already, huh?"

"Oh, yeah, just a bit," she admitted, smiling back at them.

"When are you…" Maya turned back to Riley.

"May," Riley revealed with a blooming grin that made Maya clap a hand to her own mouth, preventing the escape of great laughter.

"You're kidding," she finally got to say, and Riley shook her head.

"Right around Lucas' birthday," she specified.

"One more cake to make, huh?" Nadine joked, just as there was a great burst of noise from out on the front porch. "Guess Dylan told him now," she tipped her head even as Maya sat up, listening for any sign that the kids would have been awakened upstairs. When she heard the first squeak of a twin – Simon, she was sure – she got up and started up the stairs, just ahead of Jack's joining in.

"I'll come help," Riley followed her.

"I'll go tell them to shut up," Nadine moved to the door.

Up in the master bedroom, the Friar twins were soon out of their cribs and rocked back to sleep by their mother and their aunt, at least until their father came along and took over for Riley. These days, when the brothers needed to be calmed down, helped to sleep… or sleep again… their parents would have one trick up their sleeves, fail proof as far as they were concerned. They would keep them near to where they could look at all the new leaves that were dangling from their perch, there over their cribs.

It had been a gift from Maya's students, one she was sure had been spearheaded by her young stepsister, Stevie, as she'd be one of the few in that school who would know about the trees, the leaves, and what they meant. The four groups had thus contributed to this gift to their art teacher, until they had the finished product. This tree almost stood by itself, fixed to the end of the neighboring cribs, so that they could still see the one on the wall. Now it really felt as though Simon and Jackson were sleeping under the cover of trees, in a forest of their own. It still made Maya's heart skip whenever she saw it and thought of the ones who'd made it for her.

"I want to get started on Christmas," she told Lucas as they held their sleeping boys. Lucas smiled.

"Yeah, okay, sure. We can get on it tomorrow."

"Yes," Maya nodded.

"You want to get started now, don't you?" Lucas guessed.

"I do," she admitted, "I want this to be… Christmas," she emphasized the word, and in its weight, Lucas saw visions of decorations over every inch of their house, inside and out. It probably wouldn't be to that point, but if that was how she wanted it, then he wouldn't get in the way.

"We can figure it out, all of us together," he told her, and smiled. Yes, that was just what they needed right now.

"All of us," she nodded as she reached out to brush at Jack's hair. "We'll make it the best one yet."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners