A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!
January 21st 2023
Chapter 21
We Haunt Through Years
It was fully intended, as instructed by their daughters, that Maya and Lucas would leave the girls to see to one another in the morning and instead focus on one another. It would be their twentieth anniversary as a couple after all. The little Friars would be more than secure, seen to by their big sister, and their uncle... The path was clear.
Somewhere in the night, just about four thirty, as the clock told her, Maya woke up and found her way down the stairs. She wasn't sure what had awakened her, and she wasn't aiming to stay up outright. Either way, she ended up climbing down the stairs, in the dark and the quiet of very early morning... which was not as quiet or as dark as she might have expected. There was a lamp lit in the living room and she could hear a voice speaking quietly. Ella...
She sat on the couch, and from where she stood Maya could just make out that there was a small form curled up against her. Tori was asleep in her mother's arms, likely unaware that her hair and her back were being so delicately and lovingly brushed at. Ella maintained this soothing attention with one hand even as the other kept her phone pressed to her ear on the other side. It didn't take much for Maya to grasp who it was that would be on the other end of this call. Taylor, back in Indiana.
Though she didn't mean to listen in, Maya soon got to understand that not too long ago, even as the rest of them had not been pulled from their sleep at all, Tori had been sick from indulging in candy and other treats over the evening. She wouldn't be the first kid to have an experience of the kind, nor would she be the last. And rather than wake her parents or her sisters, who would have gladly stepped in to assist in what way they could, Ella had touched bases with her faraway fiancé. To hear her speak, Tori had taken comfort from her future stepfather, enough that he had helped her fall asleep again.
"I know..." Ella said now. "A few more months... just over half a year though." She listened to whatever Taylor said in reply and, whatever it was, it pulled a quiet laugh from her and made Tori move just a bit. Ella pressed a kiss to her head, that she might sink back into her dreams again, and it worked. "I love you, too..." Ella breathed, and as they got back to talking of their respective Halloweens, Maya decided that whatever she'd been going down to do could wait.
When she went back upstairs and into their room, she found Lucas had turned to face toward the door and now lay half awake, eyes blinking.
"Were you looking for me, Huckleberry?" Maya asked with a smirk.
"Little bit," Lucas mumbled, yawned. "The girls?" he asked.
"Six out of seven asleep in their beds… as far as I know," she reported before subconsciously twisting around to peek into the room across the hall and listen. Nothing to report as far as she could perceive. "Ella's on the phone with Taylor downstairs," she went on, deciding not to mention the part about Tori being ill from too much candy. Everything was under control, and it would only worry him for nothing. Maybe, just on this side of selfishly, she only had eyes for that soft sleepy look on his face. Closing the door up again, she went and sat at the edge of the bed. Lucas responded by slipping his arm around her waist and she responded by lightly brushing at his hair.
"Trying to put me back to sleep?" he mumbled, just barely kept from yawning.
"Well, clearly, it's working," she laughed.
"Yeah?" Lucas asked. He pulled her over to join him and she tipped forward, squeaking in surprise and laughing. "Well, I've got a counteroffer," he told her, clearing his throat to try and pull himself further into wakefulness.
"Sounds promising," Maya moved to embrace him with a kiss.
They could have gone back to sleep right then, melted back in spoons as they soon were, but they were awake now and, long night or none, they were now looking to morning, to their anniversary… and it settled a feeling in them like they wanted to sit in that moment together a little while longer before closing their eyes.
"I used to laugh when my parents would start at me about things that were year and years back like they were yesterday, not believing it had been so long…" But now… his eyes said, and Maya hummed, agreeing.
"You've got a very real image in your head right now, don't you?" she guessed, which had him chuckling, sending a tickling breath against her shoulder.
"I've got one of those wheels full of slides clicking through my head," he informed her. Now she was the one laughing.
"Slides? Really?"
"My grandparents had them. My grandmother especially, Susannah, not Marianne," he specified. "Had the projector and everything, and I spent I don't know how many afternoons with her, going through them." He paused here, and Maya turned herself around to look at him, guessing easily that his mind had gone thinking of the woman, his father's mother. But then he remembered the point he was trying to make, and he breathed out, smiled at his wife. Maya responded by reaching up a hand to hold his face, stroke his cheek with her thumb…
"So, lots of memories then," she told him, and he nodded. "Will you tell me about them? Not now, later," she added when he opened his mouth to reply. He smiled, nodded. He could definitely do that. "Do we actually have a plan for tomorrow?" she wondered now. This whole thing the way the girls had set them up had not been their idea, had it? So whatever Lucas had planned – because of course that was his bit of planning to do – it must have looked a bit different, right?
"I'm… sort of thinking it over," Lucas slowly admitted. "Unless you've got anything you'd like to suggest. I'd be more than happy to make this a collaborative effort."
"Now we're talking," Maya grinned. This expression was quickly matched on Lucas' face. When hers was broken by a yawn which echoed on to his, they laughed and he held her close, letting out a sigh. Things weren't what they used to be like for them, were they? Twenty years ago, they'd been just a couple of kids in high school. Now they were a mid-thirties couple with a load of small girls in need of care, a house to maintain, and very involved careers. Exhaustion had a way of finding them so much faster than it used to. Maybe this was as far as they were going to get for that night, and they needed to get some rest. "You're going to keep thinking about all of it, aren't you?"
"What do you think?"
"Tell me all about it in the morning?"
"Will do."
It was one thing for their older girls to say they had this plan of theirs all figured out, but it would be asking a lot for the little sisters to both understand and respect this plan. The triplets understood. Mackenzie… more or less had it, too. Aubrey had been told, surely, but then she was not quite a year and a half old, and explanations or none, when she woke up and felt compelled to see her parents, no one was about to stop her. She could get herself out of that room and walk herself up the hall, through the door… She could not climb up on to the bed without assistance though, not yet, and so Lucas woke up to the sound of tiny girl struggles and the feeling of pulling at the sheets as much underneath as over him, so he looked over, and there she was, staring up at him with those baby blues…
"Dada!" she squeaked, seeming to say, 'well it's about time you noticed I was here, what took you so long?' So, Lucas picked her up and set her down over him, earning himself a near choking bit of hugging from his youngest.
"I missed you, too, Lucky, now just let Dada breathe a bit, okay?" he asked her and was ultimately 'rescued' by Maya waking and, taking in the scene, reaching to touch their daughter's back. Aubrey looked, saw her, and moved, keeping one hand on Lucas at all times even as she reached her mother; it wasn't so hard, what with the two of them still lying close to one another.
"Good morning," Maya beamed, kissed the small girl's brow.
For a few quiet minutes, it was just the three of them, contented and quiet. Then, Marianne came speeding in and stopped once she spotted her baby sister. She looked so relieved, which suggested how she might have woken up and realized that Aubrey had 'breached the agreement.' Marianne was going to hold her to it though, and it was a wonder that no tantrum happened for her being taken away again, leaving their parents on their own. When the two of them left the room, there were the other four small ones pooled to spy from the hallway, and they all split as though they'd thought 'better run!' They all headed off down one of three ways available to them rather than pick out the same one.
"Our kids as so weird," Lucas chuckled, and Maya knew that he meant this in a good way, a 'makes things interesting' way.
"No idea where they got that from," she innocently played as she shook her head.
Though they claimed to want to leave the two of them be for the day, morning started in earnest with a note from Ella and her younger sisters slipped under the master bedroom door. This informed Maya and Lucas that they had all gone out, the seven sisters, Tori, and Wyatt, to breakfast at Ma Maggie's and that, while the choice was entirely up to them where they would have breakfast, if they chose that they wanted something from there, they should let Ella know, because she would make the order and have it sent out to them. There was also a P.S. at the bottom, letting them know that Marianne had wanted to pitch in some of her own funds, gained through allowance and birthday gifts, to pitch in. It also said that, in hearing about this, the triplets had wanted to do like her. They were still a bit small for chores and allowances and all of that, but Marianne had reportedly given them small tasks of her own (making her a drawing, telling her a story…) so she might then pay them out of her pocket and allow them to feel they had pitched in, too. Mackenzie and Aubrey were neither of them particularly concerned here, but they had 'pitched in,' too. The six of them 'together' had collectively put in about fifteen and a half dollars.
"Realistically speaking, would it make us bad parents not to put in an order?" Maya wondered after a laughing Lucas passed her the note.
"I don't know about that, but maybe we shouldn't tempt fate?" he smirked.
"Yeah, good call."
So, the order was put in, with many thanks. While they waited, Lucas and Maya got dressed, went to see to the dogs… The house was so profoundly quiet with none of the others there and at some point, almost like a synchronized decision, they decided they needed to put on some music. Finally, the food arrived, delivered by Paul, and they got settled at the kitchen table.
"You know, I'll give this to the morning of November 1st this time versus twenty years ago," Maya declared as she cut into her waffle. "I slept so much better, and I'm not nearly as… addled," she motioned to her head. Lucas snorted. He'd long heard the tale of how often she'd woken up through that night, watching the hours go by.
"Yeah, this one's definitely better. Although the 2017 version did take a really good turn," he pitched in, and she gave him the slightest squint, reaching across as though to check that he was wearing the invisible hat and, upon apparently finding it, giving a satisfied nod. "So, here's what I'm thinking for today. If you have other ideas, please tell me, I…"
"No, yes, go ahead," she insisted, sitting up to show she was listening.
"Right, well, we could do a whole lot of things, hit memory lane, run all over town and beyond…"
"We could, we could," she nodded, allowing him to carry on.
"Or we could take it easy, enjoy this bit of one-on-one time…" he spoke, and her eyebrow raised as she smirked. Realizing what it had sounded like, he laughed, tipped his head. "That, yes… definitely that," he replied, to her complete agreement, "But also, because it has been a while since we went and it did mean so much, that first 'disappointing' date," he air-quoted and she knew just what he was referring to. They may not have come away disappointed from the night as a whole, but then the incident with the museum…
"I think that's just where we need to be, I agree," Maya decided, smiling, spearing a bit of waffle, and eating it before she spoke again. "Now would this be before or after…" she trailed off, letting her silence speak with all its volume.
"Well, we didn't do that twenty years ago," he joked, making her laugh again. "We should probably eat our breakfast before it gets cold. The girls worked so hard to provide for us," he told her, fueling her giggles. "Maybe museum first, you know… for digestion…"
"Of course," she nodded and matched his tone.
By pure coincidence, though they ascribed it as something more intended, it started to rain shortly before they left the house. When they saw it, both Maya and Lucas had to look to each other and smile. They hadn't gone on that first date on November 1st, no, only a week later, but still...
"If we walk out there right now, do you think they'll still let us in?" Maya joked.
"We can get my mother involved again," Lucas suggested, making her laugh. "Maybe let's not tempt it?"
"Yeah, maybe. We can show we've grown," Maya told him, and Lucas responded with a wordless expression that seemed to ask, 'have we, really?' "In age, definitely," she added with a grin. Lucas nodded in agreement at this and, after leaning to kiss her, offered his hand to lead her out, grabbing an umbrella on the way.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
