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

August 19th 2023

Chapter 231

We Bloom in the Sunlight

He called his parents as soon as he could. When his mother answered, Lucas felt as though somehow, deep down, she'd heard the phone and sensed at once that it was him, that he needed her help. Maybe that was it, because as soon as he heard her voice, it didn't matter that he was thirty-eight years old. Something very big and very important was happening, and having her there to speak to, it felt as though he had been grounded again, and he could walk forward.

So, he told her about had happened. He told her about the baby boy he'd found out on front porch, in a box. Even as she asked him for more details, about how the baby was doing, about the box, everything, he knew that she was getting his father and that the two of them would be heading out to see him in all of a minute. When they hung up, they were getting in the car, and in what felt like no time at all, they were arriving.

"Oh, would you look at this little guy…" she smiled when she saw him for the first time. When she'd come through the door, she'd still been fretful, as she would be, in the vast space of her heart that was devoted to her role as a mother and grandmother, but she put it all away for when she crossed paths with the abandoned boy. She picked him up, and he didn't fuss in the slightest.

"Ezra," Lucas told her, showing the note, and Melinda Friar's smile was brighter still.

"A beautiful name for a beautiful boy… Yes, yes, you are," she told him, brushing at his hair.

They wouldn't know, wouldn't be in a position to know for a while still that Ezra would not remain as 'the baby they found outside their door' for too long, that he would soon be seen and announced as their son, but to look back on that first night, as Melinda held the newborn, it really felt as though they should have known it and felt it. She held that baby boy in her arms and he was her grandson, no questions asked. Like his sisters before him, she would hold him and the joy he brought her would be endless. It made her that much more alive, always…

X

As he woke up, the first thing he sensed was someone holding his hand, stroking his arm reassuringly…Maya…Her back was still to him, his arm around her, but she'd been awake before him and, maybe… probably… she had sensed that he was tense in his sleep. Understanding now that he was awake, that he'd been dreaming, he relaxed, breathed… It had been a beautiful dream, nothing of a nightmare, and yet something in him had known that it was fake, that it had never happened and could not have happened, and that was why he had been so tensed up, like his waking self wanted so badly to protect his sleeping self from getting lulled by an illusion. His mother had never met Ezra and Ezra would never know his grandmother. She had been long gone by the time he'd entered the world. Long… so long… two years as of this day that was beginning.

"What was it?" Maya asked, and he let out a breath, held her nearer.

"The day Ezra came to us, telling her about him… her meeting him…" Lucas recounted. His face was near enough to his wife's now that he could feel her smile grow as she considered what that might have been like. She didn't have to say a word and he knew that she'd reached the same conclusion his dreams had done, that Melinda would have loved her future grandson to bits from the moment she'd met him, if not from the moment she'd heard of his presence, whether or not he'd been her grandson at the time.

"Just imagine… All the new outfits," she hummed, and the way it made him laugh… It was just what he needed.

She'd only gotten up to go see to the baby when Lucas spied a presence in the doorway out of the corner of his eye. There was his pumpkin, his partner in grief that morning, and all he had to do was acknowledge her before she came hurrying over and climbed on to the bed, the better to let him close his arms around her and give whatever comfort he could give her. He'd be willing to bet that she'd had a dream to do with her grandmother as well, but she didn't share it, and there was no telling whether this had been a good dream to leave her tense or sad, or if it had been a nightmare. Whatever it had been, it had sent her to him to be held, and that was all that mattered.

"Are you sure you want to go? It's okay if you want to stick around here today, with Ezra and me," Lucas quietly told his daughter, but she shook her head. She would be okay to go to school. "Okay, but if you change your mind, you tell Uncle Zay about it and I'll be there to get you in no time."

"I'll be okay, Dad. Uncle Zay said he'd look after me today," Marianne informed him, and he let out a breath, then a small laugh. He might have known what to expect with his oldest friend at the head of his daughter's class. It gave him a jolt, and it was a good one, but it still made him feel his emotions lodged in his throat, this close to making him cry, and in the next moment there was his baby girl, holding his face in her ten-year-old hands. "Maybe you and Ezra can stick withmetoday." Lucas chuckled.

"And Uncle Zay?" he asked, and Marianne grinned as she nodded. Wouldn't he just love that?

Not unlike with Maya's birthday the month before, they were expecting guests over breakfast that morning. The difference here at least was that none of it was a secret or a surprise to anyone. It had been an invitation. More than one of them could have elected themselves host in this, but it had been Lucas' idea, and that had settled it. They would all be on their way already, for sure, as several of the people who would be around the table that morning had to go to school after, or work. They had nothing to worry about as far as seeing to it that the meal would be ready when they arrived.

When Lucas and Maya had gone to see to their other daughters, they had been informed by Marianne that everyone else was already downstairs and getting breakfast ready. They went down and into the kitchen, and it was just as she said, with Lucy, Kacey, Remy, Mackenzie, and Aubrey all working alongside their aunts and uncle. Finneas was sitting by his father's legs, clamped on to one of them like he might go back to sleep at any second, which explained the way Wyatt moved as he worked, trying not to disrupt or startle him.

The rest of them, when they saw Lucas and the others come in, soon abandoned what they were working on in favor of coming over to hug him, and Marianne, and then Maya, too, just because. The girls in particular looked like they weren't sure what to do with themselves, knowing that their father and their big sister were both so sad at the moment. They were sad, too, of course, but they knew enough to understand that it was different with them.

The bell rang, and Kacey and Remy volunteered to go let their guests in. Lucy remained where she was, hugging her father, just as Aubrey did. Mackenzie was clamped on to Marianne, who smiled and hugged her back. It spoke to how close the two of them were that, when she spotted her uncles and her cousins, she did not spring away but instead stayed with her big sister. She was happy to see them, she was, but she felt that her sister needed her more.

They had four out of six of the Sullivan-Reyes family that day. Both Lea and Lara would have wanted to be there but couldn't make it, which left their fathers to be accompanied by Lydia and eight-year-old Leyton. The boy was feeling a similar need to protect his dad, to comfort him, as his cousin's daughters did for him. The same went for his big sister Lydia, and so now he found himself stood between the two and holding one each of their hands. Most days, he was as lively a boy as one would ever know, sometimes too lively, to hear it from his teachers, but then something like this would be going on, and his whole temperament would shift, becoming quietly attentive and caring, and that was really who he was beneath the energy and the time-outs, and his fathers recognized it.

Michael and Lydia were as kindred to Lucas and Marianne as they could get in their feelings that morning. Whether Melinda had been their sister, aunt, mother, or grandmother, she had meant something so, so special to them, and no one would understand so well as them what it felt like, the light they felt on her birthday, while on the day she'd died…

They had one more in their group, and when he came, he had the look of someone who hadn't slept well. This was not surprising for them. He was doing miles better than he'd done two years back, but this day would bring back so many memories, none of them good. Lucas had wanted him to come and stay the night at the house, hoping to at least look after him, give him whatever he needed so he'd get through this part, even if he had to stay up all night by his side. Thomas appreciated the offer, knew how well he meant, but he hadn't been able to accept it. He wouldn't say it aloud, but his son understood. He would not have been in a good headspace, and he wanted to keep his granddaughters as far from it as he could, and Lucas along with them.

Now he was here, and he wore his sleeplessness in his eyes, in his posture, but at the same time he'd be surrounded by his family, and they'd know how deeply he appreciated having them around him that morning. He would eat with them, and they would lift him in conversation, in memories… When breakfast would be over, he'd help them clean up, and he would end up in the living room, sitting on what had once been Granny Lizzie's favorite seat. Marianne would check on him, as she would, and she'd report that he'd finally fallen asleep. She'd put a blanket over him, and he would stay there through morning, after the others had left. Lucas would sit near him, with Ezra, and consider as he'd done many times in the past two years if he could ever convince his father to someday move in with him and Maya and the kids.

Maya thought of them as she did drop-offs that morning. The hardest thing to consider, each time her pack of girls diminished, was the way they all embraced her. It was the anniversary of when they had lost their grandmother, but it felt as though this year all of them were thinking much more about the fact that it was the anniversary of when their father had lost their mother. They thought about it, and they looked at her, at their own mother, like they'd started to understand that they could loseher, and they'd been terrified. She gave them all as many hugs as they wanted, but even when they let her go, she knew that they wanted to hold on some more.

How was she ever going to reassure them about this? They weren't wrong. Theywouldlose her someday, and she could tell them that it wouldn't happen any time soon, that it wouldn't happen until they were all grown up, but how could she know that? Anything could happen, at any second, and trying to explainthatto them, to explain it and not frighten them further… She couldn't get the tight squeeze of her littlest girl out of her head. She didn't even know how close she'd come to losing her mama, the day she'd been born, not yet, and she was still so small, but this thing had come and spooked her… And then on the other side, with Marianne… As much as she insisted that she'd be fine to go, it wasn't until Zay came and personally collected her that Maya felt secure in letting her go. She exchanged quiet thanks with her old friend, and he gave her a promising nod. Marianne would be alright.

For all that, when her phone rang as she pulled into the high school's lot, her immediate thought was 'I knew it,' and her hand was halfway to her key, ready to drive back to the elementary school before she saw the caller ID. The name wasn't listed, only the number, but she recognized it and froze a moment before finally reaching to answer.

"Hello?"

"Are you Maya? Maya Friar?" a woman asked.

"That's me, yes."

"My name is Caroline Renshaw, I… I received your husband's letter… It's been a while now, but I couldn't…" she drifted off, and Maya assured her that this wasn't a problem. They'd put all the contact information she could ever have in that letter, the house, cell phones, the ranch and the school… The fact that she'd picked to call her like this, maybe it went to show how she knew just what this was about and who she needed to talk to first and foremost.

"It's alright, it's alright, I'm just… I'm really glad to hear from you, I…" she spoke as she looked out and around. No one could hear her in here, but she fully expected to turn around and find their principal standing there like a specter, as though she knew that they might be talking about her. Maybe she really needed to drive away, not to be so close… Once she thought that, she rolled her eyes at herself.That woman is making me paranoid…

"I only wanted to let you know that you can call me whenever you're able, yes?"

"Didn't want to give yourself a reason to back out?" Maya guessed, with a smile. She wasn't sure why she said it aloud, and she was briefly afraid that she might have ruined this one chance of getting to the bottom of things, the first real one they'd had. But Caroline laughed.

"Yes, I guess you could put it that way."

"Then we'll be in touch."Not today, of all days. Let this one pass, and then it's time.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners