January 6th 2023

Chapter 6
We Discover A New Tale

"Mama, Ella! Mama, Ella!" Mackenzie came bursting into the kitchen, eyes bright and grin wide.

At once, Marianne bolted from her chair and ran to go see for herself, leaving Maya to collect the homework she'd thankfully just finished. She knew better than to assume she'd remember what she'd just been up to, not when her big sister had just arrived from Houston for Friday night dinner preceded by Friday night sister piano time. Were it up to Marianne, Ella wouldn't have been through the door for more than ten seconds that there would already be music floating through the house, their four hands at the keys. Instead, she had to... allow... a few minutes so that everyone got to have their hellos.

"From Chiara," Ella smiled as Tori held a loaded bag up to her grandmother. It didn't matter that she had not brought it out from Houston herself and had only first seen it after her mother had picked her up from her father's. She wanted to be the one to give it to her Nana, and her mother wasn't about to take that from her.

"Thank you very much," Maya chuckled. The moment she'd been relieved of the bag, Tori threw her arms around her waist, and Maya hugged her back.

"Where's Pappy Luke?" Tori demanded when she pulled back.

"Upstairs with Aubrey," Maya pointed, and off she went.

"Where are the others?" Ella asked, looking like she'd just had this thought of 'it's way too quiet in here.'

"Wyatt took them across the road," Maya revealed. It felt like as good of a way as any for her two eldest to have their piano time without some discordant background vocals while everyone else got to be happy, too. And giving the Hart-Lanes some fun time with the triplets was something that still felt kind of incredible when not too long ago they'd lived too far from one another.

Finally, Ella and Marianne sat at the piano bench. They had been working together like this over the last few years, even as Ella had been living in Houston. It had been a staple nearly anytime she'd drive in for a visit, and even when she wasn't there, Marianne could be heard practicing. She would go and borrow one or the other of her parents' phones so she could record herself and then send the video on to Ella. Thanks to all those videos, which they kept and reviewed every now and then, they could see easily how much the soon-to-be eight-year-old had developed her skills. Nowadays, she and Ella would alternate picking new songs to play together, and this week was one of the eldest Friar's, which were secretly Marianne's favorites. She loved discovering what her big sister had for her.

Maya could hear them as she sat at the kitchen table still, now doing her own 'homework.' One week down, and she had diary covers to explore. But she could hear Marianne laugh and ask questions, and Ella speak and hum as she guided her little sister, which made her smile. Every so often she could hear Mackenzie, too, and even without seeing her Maya could picture her exactly as she would be, the two and a half-year-old standing next to the bench and looking at her sisters' hands while her own would be pressed together, or against the bench, pitter pattering like she was playing, too. They would offer for her to come and sit with them, too, but she would shake her head. She liked to stand just as she was. Plus, it was a lot easier to dance around to the music if she was on her feet.

Diaries... Yes, she needed to focus on the diaries. She knew she'd been telling herself she'd find a way to do these across Friday and Monday, between classes, the better to keep her weekends open for her family, but... Either because this had been the first week or because she'd been mildly (ha!) distracted by the introduction of the new administration, she hadn't touched any of the sketchbooks earlier, so she wanted to get at them now, if for a little while.

And judging by the fact that she'd broken the sequence and gone straight for the freshman box, it was likely she'd have to do some more over the weekend... Ah, well...

Oh, it wasn't as though the new principal had been complicating things... much... But Maya would see her every so often every day, walking the halls, peering inside classrooms, and while that could have seemed appropriate, encouraging even, to her it just felt... invasive. They were being examined, and she couldn't shake the feeling that it would be very, very important not to displease her in what she saw. Even the students had looked as though they'd understood this, and it had left them tense. The seniors, the juniors, they dealt with it best on the whole, the sophomores maybe less so, but the freshmen... How were they supposed to settle in comfortably if they were having to walk around on pins and needles all the time?

Well, some of them were doing better than others. Noor Kaur saw that interference, felt it as much as the others, but for what Maya had seen of her all week, it was plain to see that her response would only ever be 'try me.' Maya was very proud of her for it, even as she recognized some element of the girl that she herself had been when she'd been her age and younger. It left her wanting to look out for Noor, to guide her path where she could, so she wouldn't miss the rails. As to her diary, her cover showed what Maya had been seeing all week, which was that she fell in the category of those young artists with an unconventional style and indefinite skill with room to grow. She had covered that black expanse, bisected with her name across the spine, with what looked like the view of her backyard from her bedroom window. The front gave a view into a tree with a house perched in its branches. There was no explanation, but Maya felt for certain that there would have to be a story connected to it, and she hoped to hear it.

Now as far as Noor's friend and former foster brother, Maya had been seeing Freddie Jacek look like he dreaded opening his mouth every time someone would call on him. He would tense up the most whenever Principal Davenport would be around, to the point where they were almost sure that he could sense her before they ever saw her. Oh, but he could draw though. He was an unexpected and lovely discovery, day to day, and it showed right there on his cover. He'd looked so shy when he had handed it in, like he wasn't sure if he could or should share it, but finally he'd stuck the book in the box and walked away, running a hand through his unruly mane of chocolate brown hair.

Maya knew Marianne would be mesmerized when she'd see the cover, the portraits Freddie had created with his gold pen. The front showed a young couple posing together, sitting on a bench it took Maya very little time to recognize, same as the couple itself. She didn't know them, but the features identified them plainly as Freddie's parents, long before she flipped the diary over, to see the portrait now of the young woman playing with a laughing boy about Aubrey's age. Maya would be willing to bet that the originals sat on Freddie's person whenever they could.

Where Freddie's cover spoke volumes, Austin Abbott's said very little, which fell in line with the young man himself. He'd been keeping to himself so much that the others would just leave him be, like they wouldn't even know what to tell him, so they didn't try. He was a decent enough artist, skill wise, though he had ways to go in self expression. They had time to work on that. For now, he had done his cover up in what might have been a series of random doodles that likely came to be in his efforts to shut out the rest of the world while he was at school. Maya was satisfied at the very least that he had this outlet at his disposal, enough that she nearly felt bad for taking it away from him over the weekend.

She would be willing to bet that the first person who'd finally go ahead and breach that bubble of isolation would be Agnes Killian. She'd been keeping her distance, too, but not her attention. She could see as well as anyone that Austin was struggling, and she had that heart in her enough to want to help... and right now 'help' meant staying away, so she did. But she was looking out for him, like maybe she could figure out who was after him and keep them from messing with him some more. As to her art, well... She drew like she felt: She drew with her whole heart. Maya only had to look at her work to feel those emotions radiating out. On her covers, she had drawn her pets, her birds - four of them - on the front, and her dog on the back, and they were a very clearly beloved bunch of lively ones.

Marianne would get to see these covers and all of those of the freshmen's Maya had gotten through that day later on, after dinner, after bath time and bedtime for the younger girls, and right before her 'appointment' with her father before she, too, turned in for the night. They were late on this one, by about a week, but this only because, with the end of summer and the start of school, they had been so busy at the end of August. She and Lucas had set this new date together before all that.

"Which one's it going to be this time?" Lucas asked her. She'd told him he wouldn't know until this night, and her smirk showed just how she'd loved keeping him in suspense. She had the album sitting by her bed and she pulled it open now, found the page, and pointed to the picture she had selected. He chuckled. "That one?" he asked. Marianne nodded, still grinning. "Alright, scoot over, come on," he motioned, already moving to sit next to her on the bed. She barely kept herself from letting out a squeaking laugh as she sprang not to get squooshed.

They had been keeping up these monthly stories, as they'd meant to do, though they had strayed every so often from the honeymoon album, the better to make it last longer. This month's picture did come from their time in France just over a decade prior though, and for having been late with it, Lucas could see why she'd choose to go dipping into that limited well.

"Okay, so," Lucas propped up the book in his arms even as Marianne came stuck at his side, resting her head to his shoulder like he had a whole text before him and not a handful of images, one alone his focus. "Your mom was so mad, not real mad, just that pretend mad she gets, you know?" Yes, Marianne knew, and she was resisting the urge to giggle. "She said I wasted one of our pictures for the day, but I didn't see it that way. You know how she gets when she's in a museum, and I happened to think she looked so cute about it that day, so I had to get that memory to hold on to it, you know?"

"You did," Marianne firmly agreed.

"Knew you'd understand, pumpkin," he leaned to kiss the top of her head.

"She's so pretty there..." Marianne reflected, and Lucas quietly agreed. There was no better way to put it. No, there were so many more ways, and he knew them all, but for now he focused on filling in the memory of that day as he shared it with his firstborn. She had chosen very well that day and was rewarded for it with a vivid tale her father never forgot.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners