March 19th 2023

Chapter 78
We Shine When We're Together

As they had come closer to summer, the big question had been what they would do that year over the holidays. There was plenty for them to do right there in Austin, so they could just stay there, or they could go somewhere, near or far or very far...

Several ideas had been thrown around, some far wilder than others, and the question was left to hang in the air like that until one morning, at breakfast, when Lucy had gotten up and gone to look at the calendar. She'd stood there craning her neck up at it until her father had come along and lifted her up, at which point she'd immediately reached out so she could lift up the pages and look at the ones underneath. She knew which ones were the summer months because of the colors they used, and in those she would look particularly interested in the squares that already had something in them. Birthdays, anniversaries, all of it... Finally, she stopped on the page for July and pointed to the second square before looking back at her father.

That was her parents' wedding anniversary, the eleventh one that year, and the implication was clear... and interesting. They could go somewhere and have it coincide, the better to celebrate the day. Everyone else had been on board with the idea, and Lucy had been so excited that she'd helped.

With that decided, of course, they still had a lot to figure out, and right up there was the Wyatt part. They would want him to come along, too, but there was also Finn to think about. When all the planning had started, he hadn't been Finneas Hart-Lane yet, he'd just been 'the baby,' as yet unborn, but reasonably not yet a month old when they'd be going on this trip. They hadn't even known if he'd be in their lives at all by then. Either way, Wyatt had told them to go ahead and plan for their vacation without counting him in and, much as they hadn't wanted to, they'd done as he asked. Now, as they grew nearer to departure and the father and his baby boy were part of their world, they kind of felt bad for leaving them behind, but Wyatt didn't mind. He saw it as an opportunity to see how he would do on his own, just him and son.

"I hope they'll be okay," Maya sighed as she and Lucas moved into their seats, the girls good and settled in behind them, talking over one another about how excited they were to get going.

"I think they will," Lucas replied, and she smiled at his encouraging face. She supposed that if he could look at the situation, without the added big sister uncertainties she had, and see a good outcome, then she could take a deep breath, trust him, and turn her attention over to what was to come. They were going on vacation.

Were it up to the kids, they would end up in France every July because they knew that this was where their parents had their honeymoon, and they associated the place with the event. They didn't go to France that year. Actually, they didn't leave the country at all, but they did leave the mainland.

The journey had not been the most smooth-sailing kind of situation. Some turbulence early on had upset both Lucy and Aubrey, setting them crying a while and making their sisters feel the distress in them. They had gotten through it, no thanks to the more vocally annoyed passengers on board, so that all was well for a while... and then not long before landing, Mackenzie had been sick, and Kacey, too, almost at the same time. The rest of their flight had thus become about tending to the two of them even as they did their best to not make a mess when they had already managed to... contain... the incident.

Fair to say, by the time they made it to their hotel, everyone was spent, and they had a collective family nap, the eight of them piled on to the bed.

"Daddy, wake up," Remy's whispered voice reached him, and Lucas opened his eyes just in time to be spared from getting poked in the face.

"What is it, what's the matter?" he asked her, needing a moment to remember where he was and why.

"Look at the sky, Daddy. It's so pretty."

Lucas lifted his head, gently disturbing those tucked nearest to him until they started to wake and caused the same to happen at their sides, too. One by one, the Friars woke and looked over to see what Remy had seen and, frankly, none of them remembered the flight in that moment. There was no way this could be the same sky as the one they had back home. It was, as Remy had claimed it, so very pretty.

It might have been the first time in a long time where Maya and Lucas went on a trip with their children and had no one along with them that could be counted as a sitter on some occasion or another. They might have had their big girl with them, but Ella was back in Austin now, with her new husband, the two of them and Tori settling into their new home and new rhythm of life after all the time they had spent apart. Soon, the newlyweds would be off on their honeymoon, too, so as far as this trip was concerned, their parents and in-laws would have to do without them.

"I can watch them," Marianne told her parents, the night before their anniversary, which would be their third day there. "We won't leave the room and we won't open the door for anyone, I swear. We won't even go on the balcony. Please, please, let me do it?"

They'd left her with 'we'll think about it' and gone to bed. When they woke up the next morning and had no small visitors, both of them had a feeling like Big Sister Annie, the Hopeful Babysitter, had intervened, making sure they would leave their parents be and showing them in the process that she could have everything under control.

"Good morning," Lucas hummed, pressing a kiss to the flowers at his wife's shoulder, nudging her hair aside so he might follow them all the way up to where they ended, at the back of her neck.

"It is definitely one of those," Maya agreed as she moved to turn and face him, the better to reclaim that trail of kisses for her own lips, which he gladly provided. If it were only them, they could have so easily spent the entire day just like this, just the two of them, but they knew better. "So, big question."

"Hit me," Lucas nodded. "Guessing this has to do with Marianne and her..."

"Adventures in babysitting?" Maya filled in with a smirk. "It does, in part."

"It's not that we don't trust her or think that she's not mature enough to look after them," Lucas started, and Maya nodded in agreement, allowing him to carry on. "But there's five of them, and one of her, and what are the odds that nothing will go wrong... in a hotel room... in an unfamiliar city..." he wondered, and she had to carry on nodding there. "Maybe once we're back home, over the summer, we can try and test the waters, but here..."

"Yeah..." Maya breathed out. "But how do we sell it? And while we're at it... how do we meet in the middle? It is our anniversary," she pulled herself nearer to him, which he highly approved.

Instead of looking for a solution that would keep them and their daughters apart, they decided instead to go all in on having them there. It would be a Capital D Date... family edition. Everyone got to be at their very best, all dressed up, hair and all, for a great big dinner. There was some concern that this could just as easily go off the rails if any of the girls got bored, or uncomfortable, or didn't like the food... But Lucas and Maya had nothing to worry about, not when they had their would-be sister-sitter on hand, fancy dress and all. Her mass of blond hair had her looking like nothing short of a mermaid that night – or so her little sisters claimed – and that was already half the battle won as far as she was concerned.

The dinner went very well, all things considered, and they finished out the night by heading to the beach. Both the little sisters were down for the count by then, so Lucas and Maya took one each and sat with them while Marianne and the triplets entrusted them with their footwear and went running after one another, getting their toes in the sand. They looked like they were having the time of their lives, and their parents were more than happy to let them be for a while longer before heading to the hotel again.

"Hey, we did end up with a bit of one-on-one time," Lucas pointed out, just before Mackenzie shifted and resettled in his arms while she slept. "For the most part," he added, and Maya quietly chuckled, arms around their baby girl as she was curled up there, thumb stuck to dangle from her teeth.

"And with entertainment," she nodded ahead to their giggling and squealing quartet. Marianne had Lucy perched on her back now, and she allowed her little sister to guide her advance as they chased the twins. Remy and Kacey dodged them at every turn. "We didn't have all of that eleven years ago."

"We sure did not," he agreed, which had them both firmly of a mind that they had traded up in all that time. They didn't have any of what they had now, but they sure wanted it.

The beach time finally came to an end once they could see the triplets start to lose their steam. They started for the hotel with six of them on their feet but only had four and nearly three by the time they got there, with Lucas, Maya, and Marianne trading off charges as both Kacey and Remy ended up dozing off. They ended up in Lucas' arms, once Mackenzie had been passed over to Maya, who gave Aubrey to Marianne. Maybe for having gotten to play horseback earlier, Lucy lasted longer on her feet, though even as they reached the hotel lobby, she started grappling at her father's shirt and he got the message, managing to lift her up right along with her fellow triplets.

"Can I stay up a bit more?" Marianne whispered after they had gotten the five sleeping girls changed and into bed. They had two of those aside from the one Maya and Lucas shared, in the same room, where the triplets shared one and the green room trio shared the other. They had loved all being in the same room together so much that they would miss it when they went back home.

"Not too late, okay?" Lucas told her, in what Maya would lovingly tease him and call his 'vacation dad' voice. "Otherwise, you'll sleep right through breakfast."

"I won't, I won't," Marianne immediately promised; breakfasts had been her favorite.

All she wanted to do was get to stare out at the view from their room, and on that they could understand well enough that they joined her in the end. They sat with her, enjoying this moment of stillness with her, their firstborn... Eventually, she was lulled right to sleep, leaning against her mother. Maya kept her there a while longer. As anniversaries went, this one was just quiet, and personal, and they had loved it, all of them, parents, and daughters alike. It might not be that they would make this the standard, but they wouldn't rule out a repeat either.

"Hey..." Maya whispered after Lucas had gone to carry Marianne off to bed with her sisters. "Want to hear this year's song?" He smiled. She knew he did; he'd been waiting on it all day.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners