January 20th 2023
Chapter 20
We Haunt the Night
"Hey, you're back! How did it go?" Maya asked with a smile that felt bigger and brighter at every stride that brought the running girls nearer to her. Even Mackenzie, who would get upset at the thought that she had to take parts of her costume off while she was in a car, had found it more important to run to her mother than to wait and get the thing back on, so she was dashing up, the yellow bodysuit covered in part by her regular jacket. Nellie and Gracie were trailing after their nieces at a walking pace, the former carrying the rest of the small girl's bee costume.
They had eagerly volunteered to take the pack trick or treating along with Ella, who'd thought it better to have others there to help keep an eye on the group that would naturally include Marianne's best friends. It had been unclear at first what they would do, whether Maya and/or Lucas would go with them or not. They wanted to, naturally, and if they had chosen to go, there would have been plenty of people who would have been more than capable to look after things back at the house while they were gone. But then it had meant a lot to Ella that she got to take her sisters out, so it had been decided that she'd go with them, while the parents stayed back. Lucas and Maya got to see to the final setting up for the activities and the opening of the games for another spooky year. All the while, whether they vocalized it or not, they were looking forward to the girls' return.
"It was great!" Marianne told her mother with a smile that felt like such a full-body experience that she had to reach up and make sure her hat wouldn't slip off her head after she'd stuck it back on, coming out of the minivan. "You should have seen some of the houses we went to! I took pictures," she held up her camera, which was so often brought along wherever she went these days.
"Mommy, I saw Felicity!" Lucy chirped. She still struggled to say the girl's name, but by now she only sort of took a pause in the middle so that it felt like the peak on a roller coaster, between the rise and the fall. It made the bearer of that name giggle whenever she said it, so clearly, she didn't mind.
"You did?" Maya asked, matching her enthusiasm at having met the girl on her candy excursion. They had vaguely known one another from preschool already, but then when Lucy had started her class at the pool, she'd found a familiar face there and taken comfort from it. She'd looked so unsure when they'd first approached the subject of these separate activities, and she still was, two weeks into it, but then there was her classmate, who was a little bolder and possibly reminded her of her fellow triplets, and so Lucy was happy to be near her. Little Felicity seemed to feel the same way.
"She came back with us," Lucy pointed, and there in fact was the four-year-old, walking hand in hand with her mother.
"Oh, that's great," Maya smiled. Already she was thinking that she had best exchange contact information with Felicity's mother, the better to see about getting the girls together if she was up to it. Looking at the twins though, she could guess that they wished they'd run into people, too. They'd only started their new activities, too, but it was early still to be able to tell if they had made any particular friends or how she might reach them on such short notice and invite them. But they would look into it as soon as possible.
The games were in full swing, the maze had to be checked to ensure that not too many people entered at once, and the entries for the costume contest was now closed, so their selected judges were making the rounds. Maya and Lucas had worked out something of a scheme so that they could go around and rotate when they'd be with which of the girls as they dashed from one thing to another. It was like a dance, and whenever they crossed it'd be a cross between trying not to laugh and wanting to kiss.
"Oh, I think you are done for the night, ladies," Lucas looked to the two small ones squeezed into his arms, heads at his shoulders and eyes losing the battle against sleep. Aubrey was down for the count and Mackenzie was trying to rally, but it was no use. "Let's get you to Auntie Rosa, yeah?" he whispered, kissed one blond head and another before moving to bring them inside. Rosa had found it hilarious, as she would, that she should suddenly find herself in the position of 'the pregnant Halloween babysitter.' There usually seemed to be one of those, satisfied to sit out the night to watch the sleeping children while everyone was still outside for the games.
When Lucas came back out again, even as he could see the likes of Ava Nash, Kelsey Farrell, Olivia Zhu, and Britt O'Connell having just arrived, he saw and was seen by another of Maya's graduates. Jenny Marshall had come along and was just emerging from the maze, arm in arm with her boyfriend, Jack, and laughing along with him. When she spotted her former teacher's husband, she waved her arm in greeting, managing to telegraph the fact that she loved the upgrades from this year. Lucas thanked her in kind and watched her and her boyfriend wander over to explore the new offerings on the Hart-Lane side of the road. It was still amazing to stand up on the porch and look all around, to the games spreading along this side of the road and now the other, with the maze roughly in between… The number of people going around and having fun said it all. They could have managed with the way things used to be, but they were so glad that their various set-ups had become as they were now.
So focused as he was on this reflection, Lucas came very near to crashing into someone as he was moving forward. He just stopped himself, while the other never seemed to notice him there and just kept going, so it took a moment before Lucas was able to identify him as Lamar Whitley. He was storming off and not looking to stop as he reached the road and kept going. Lucas blinked, looked back around for what he was sure would be…
"Hey, MJ, what just happened?" Lucas asked his brother-in-law as he came to find him, standing at one of the candy tables and quietly rearranging everything, not running after his boyfriend. "Everything alright?" Lucas tried again when he got no response. "MJ?"
"Don't want to talk about it," he finally said, in a tone to suggest he only replied in an effort to be left alone. Lucas told himself that maybe he should, but then again… I'm married to your sister, what did you expect?
"MJ… Hey…" he tried again, and the boy turned around with a sigh that showed he'd gone to the same conclusion.
"Just got dumped," MJ informed him matter-of-factly, tacking on a blank smile as though to add 'you wanted to know.' Lucas let out a breath. Maya had told him about the incident with the delivery boy the night before, had predicted some of their Halloween-staple teenage drama, but still… This couldn't possibly be the start and end of it; there had to have been issues already.
"MJ, I'm so sorry," Lucas told him, pressing a hand to his shoulder. "Maybe you guys can work this out, or…"
"No," MJ shook his head decisively. He wanted to look like he was okay, like this didn't affect him, but it only worked so well in the end. "This was supposed to be our anniversary, you know?"
"Yeah…" Lucas sighed. A year ago, the two of them had gone from pretend boyfriends to real ones, no longer messing with school idiots. And now… "Is there anything I can do?"
"Can you not tell Maya until I'm gone? I don't want her to get all big sister teacher right now."
"You got it," Lucas nodded, trying not to laugh. "Can you go and grab some things from the house? Might take a few minutes to get it all and get back out here with everyone else…" The sophomore understood the unspoken offer and he nodded graciously before moving past him. Lucas watched him go. Was there any chance, even if he didn't speak a word of it, that Maya wouldn't catch on to anything? If there was, it was slim, but they'd do what they could.
The younger children starting to clear out was usually the sign that the outdoor portion of the night was coming to an end, and this year was no exception. The triplets were next in being brought back inside the house and off to bed, but the birthday girl – aided by this being a Saturday night – got to stay up for the first time all the way through the end of the games, the maze, and the contest and then to join her parents at the party they had back in the house.
"Where'd MJ get off to?" Maya asked Lucas, coming up to him as he danced to the music with Marianne. She had such a smile as she moved around with him that it had her mother grinning, too.
"Oh, uh, Haley had to go, something early in the morning, and he volunteered to bring her back. He said he wanted to go anyway, didn't sleep much last night, at school," Lucas told her, breaking momentarily from his focus on Marianne and being the best wackily dancing dad he could be, to amuse her. It made it so that the memory of their earlier interaction jumped right back to the forefront of his mind and his face, too, and he was sure that if Maya hadn't figured out about him and Lamar yet, she knew now.
"Great, that's… that's great," she sighed, then just as quickly tried to pull it in, for Marianne. She was just like them, wasn't she? Their little empath… She'd look at them, and she'd know something was wrong with her uncle MJ, and she'd be upset for him. She deserved to be kept blissfully ignorant today of all days. Lucas exchanged a quiet look with his wife, discreetly confirming matters. They could talk about it later.
"Hey, hey," Marianne stopped dancing all of a sudden, looking from one parent to the other, and they thought for sure she'd seen through them. Instead, she came on with a new grin. "Ella is going to stay here tonight," she told them.
"Yes, she is," Maya smiled; they'd known this already.
"Yeah, but she's going to be here, and Wyatt, too, and me, too, and we're going to look after Kacey, Remy, Lucy, Mackenzie, and Aubrey, so you," she pointed to the both of them emphatically, "You don't have to. You do whatever you want, just you," she instructed them. They looked at her, wearing matching Parent Eyes, then at each other, before curiosity turned to understanding.
Twenty years ago, that night, they'd been at a different Halloween party, and they had hunted for candy wrappers, and twenty years ago the morning after that…
"What if what we want is to be with you and your sisters?" Lucas countered with a squint. Marianne shook her head.
"You can do that all the time, all the other days."
"She's got a point there," Maya tipped her head, and Marianne nodded. There, see. "Alright, well, as long as you've got things under control…" Maya turned back to her, and she was given another firm nod that seemed to say 'of course, Mother, I am eight years old now, so I'm grown and very mature.' Maya wasn't about to argue with that, and neither was Lucas.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
