August 4th 2023

Chapter 216
We Wish They'd Know

Before they knew it, a week had gone by. One week since Ezra had been found on their doorstep. Each day that came and went, it felt more and more as though he'd been with them all along. Being thrown back into newborn mode with no preamble was strange at first, yes, but they'd done it enough that, given a day or two, they were back in it. It meant a loss of sleep setting in before long, but they were all for it in taking care of their fairy boy. Kacey was now saying that he had to be like Peter Pan, and that worked for them.

The girls were still as enamored as ever. There was no way that they wouldn't go and talk about him once they went back to school on Monday, so Maya had spoken to the teachers, clearing the air before the girls went and spun their own version of the story. Zay already knew the whole thing of course, as did the rest of the turtles, and they were all of them as taken and shocked by the tale. They all wanted to know everything, but more than anything they just tried to help where they could.

Lucas had been at home all week with Ezra, and he looked so happy to do it that Maya couldn't stop smiling whenever she saw him with the baby. She could have teased him about his sudden leap into 'paternity' leave, but it was really just that sweet and so she let him be.

It was really that for him though, wasn't it? Sure, he'd always been very present and involved when their girls had been babies, but he was also working a lot, while Maya had been home with them. Now suddenly he was getting to take on that role, and he was giving it all he had. He kept seeing that little hand, the night he'd found him, and all he wanted was to continue proving to Ezra what he'd told him that night, that he was okay, that he had him.

When she had gone back to school herself, Maya had known what she needed to do, for Ezra's sake, and for his mother, maybe his father, too. It was very important to her that she have at least one day before the news inevitably trickled down to Principal Davenport. She wasn't going to go and say 'a baby was left on our doorstep in a box,' no. Instead, she told her students that some dear friends of the family had found themselves in a bind and left their baby boy in her care. She told them about how he was, how the girls and Lucas were doing with him...

She did so all through the day, as casual as ever, all the while keeping an eye on her students, looking for any kind of reaction out of them. Failing that, she looked at the girls for any sign that they might have given birth all of four days before. She got nothing, not that day, not all week. The trail grew cold.

And as they all continued to carry on without gaining any kind of progress, the world kept moving. This led to the weekend after Ezra had been 'delivered' onto them, where Maya got a call to let her know that Max McAllister had gone into labor and was about to have her twins.

They would all have gone together if the girls had gotten their way, but eventually it came down to just Maya and Marianne. Once they got to the hospital however, they found the other two Mamas were already on hand, currently keeping Max Farrell company while he stressed over his best friend's wellbeing. Her mothers were in the delivery room with her, and he didn't know what to make of himself while his own parents looked after the younger McAllister kids.

"Miss Ingrid!" Marianne perked up when she saw her third grade teacher walking over to where they were all gathered. The McAllister kids perked up at this, scrambling over to their mother and asking how 'Maxy' was doing. Their other Max stood, too, as curious about the answer as the rest of them if not more.

"Good now," Ingrid nodded. "We'll give her some time to rest before going over, okay?" she told her children before looking to Max. "She's asking for you."

He didn't wait, just went ahead and jogged up the hall toward his best friend's room. The kids complained, but there was nothing to be done for it. The Farrells called them over and they went and played with them and Marianne some more, leaving Maya and the Mamas to turn to Ingrid. Here, the new grandmother revealed that her Max had delivered her twins, a boy and a girl, and they were doing well, and they were adorable… She also shared that the delivery had been a difficult one, leaving her and her wife as concerned for their daughter and their grandchildren as Max was for son and daughter. Maya looked to the two girls at her side, Madelyn so worried for this friend who'd been so crucial to her in the time of her own pregnancy and Marie feeling the same, yes, but also an unavoidable concern for her own delivery, drawing closer every day. Later, she would cite this as the moment where she'd decided for good to keep her baby.

When another weekend rolled in, the Friars were left to realize that they'd now had Ezra in their midst for a whole two weeks. There was little happening so far as figuring out where he'd come from and, at this point, it was getting to look more and more like they knew exactly how it would end up but they didn't dare say it out loud for fear that it wouldn't actually come to pass, that their precious fairy boy, their Pan, would be taken from them. They were very much in the clear for actually going and affirming that they'd want this, but there was always the question of his actual parents, whether they'd come out of the woodworks one day and seek to take him back. Sure, they had essentially abandoned him, surrendered him on to them, which tipped the scales in their favor, but just now they still felt a fragile hope at the idea that he could be theirs to care for and love for always, to make him Ezra Friar, their son…

They could try and tell themselves that their biggest concerns went to how it would affect their daughters, potentially losing the baby brother they had been doting over for all this time. It was part of it, naturally, but it was about what they were feeling, too. Sleepless nights with him, sunlit mornings and days just him and Lucas at home, or nap times where nothing put him to sleep quite so well as hearing Maya's voice singing to him, either live, on the phone, or through one recording or another… Lucas had started to take him into the Hex, stating that it was the best acoustic for Naptime Ezra, or 'Zs with EZ' as Wyatt had been calling it.

As December was advancing, Maya found herself preparing for one of the newer traditions at the high school, being the face off between their two quiz teams before the holiday break. It wasn't going to be exactly as they might have expected it to go last year, when they'd looked forward to this rematch, but it would still be great, they'd make sure of it. Born Curious was one member short, as Max was home with her twins, still recovering from Callum and Daisy McAllister's birth as she was learning the ropes of motherhood. It wasn't the same as looking after her younger siblings when they'd been born, for sure, but she was powering through, grateful for the help she got but also thriving as best she could on her own.

She would be sitting as an observer on the match from the comfort of her home, attending via a computer screen. The teams were evened out once Marie Nilsson decided to sit out the match, claiming that it would only make sense, and also that she wasn't as quick on the draw as she usually was lately. So, it would be Lydia, Agnes, and Haley on one side, and Kip, Kinsey, and Susan on the other.

The further into the month they had been getting, the closer to the break, Maya had not stopped watching her students, hoping to suss out some clue that any of them might have been Ezra's parents. The longer it had gone on, she'd had to consider the options, the possibilities that his mother wasn't the one to sit in the art room with her. She might have gone to another school, while Ezra's father could have been sitting on one of these stools every day. Or what if neither one of them went to this school? Was it possible? It had been pointed out to her and Lucas more than once that plenty of people would know where they lived, in great part thanks to their Halloween games, but… no… No, one or both of them attended her classes or were at this school, she was sure of it. They didn't know who, but her gut said that both of Ezra's parents had sketchbooks with their names on the spines.

And in the meantime… Ezra was now three weeks old. Christmas was right around the corner, and one morning, as he went along doing a bit of pre-holiday cleaning with the baby sleeping and secured against his front, was already thinking of his mother, how she'd be doing the very same thing just now, when he was visited by his father. He had been thinking about Melinda, too, about what she'd be doing if she were here just now, and so he presented a gift to his son, asking only that he open it once Maya was back, too.

When she did come back, after her last day of school until the new year, he showed her the gift bag and went ahead to open it while she held Ezra, the little guy coming off so relieved to be held by her again that she swayed with him, pressed a kiss to the side of his head. From the bag, Lucas would pull some new clothes for the baby boy, in particular some PJs that matched the ones that Thomas had previously delivered for his granddaughters, right down to his name being stitched into the fabric. He'd had time to get the girls' a while ago, of course, but then there had been the surprise of Ezra, and clearly he'd known something they had taken longer to admit to themselves, taken until more or less the moment when Lucas held the tiny PJs with those four letters on the front.

None of them would gain a thing for putting it off much longer. They didn't expect it all to go just as it had done with Ella, who had been older the day she had become their daughter, old enough to speak for her own desires and needs, but no matter how long it took before it was all put on paper, they wouldn't be looking to Ezra's presence in this house as a temporary thing. This would be his home, and he would be part of their family from here on out.

"When do you want to tell them?" Lucas asked. Neither of them had said it out, but they knew, and they were taken at once with a rush of emotions, looking to their baby boy with eyes that felt new again.

"Not yet," Maya sniffed, brushing at Ezra's hair. He yawned, and she chuckled. "Christmas?" she looked at him, not so much checking for doubts, but still… What if they went through with this and they ran into problems? Would they look back on Christmas with regret?

"Sounds good to me," Lucas told her, with reasserted confidence, which she pulled within herself, too. "You're going to look so good in this, huh, bud?" he smiled down to Ezra, holding up the PJs as though he could see them or even understand what they were about. Maya smiled along, looking at the baby.

"Yeah, you won't be a fairy that day, you'll be an elf like your sisters."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners