A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!
May 20th 2023
Chapter 140
We Love Our Families
As much as she mistrusted the principal, Maya didn't believe the scheduling had been done on purpose. Regardless, she was left disturbed at the idea that Family Day landed on the day where, one year prior, her family had lost one of its greatest pillars. Would it affect the event at large? Not even a little bit. Family members would roam the halls, sit in on classes, while their students would present their projects. They would mingle with other families, with teachers, and they would have a wonderful time. The only ones who would in any way be affected by the date would be those who had direct reasons to, like Maya, like Lydia and her fathers, or MJ and his chosen visitors.
That wasn't going to be what she thought about on the morning of Family Day as she woke up, no. At that time, the date would feel so much more personal… home bound…
They had done their best to make this day feel as okay as it was going to feel for their daughters, and they had predicted just how that would go in the end. The little sisters, easy. The triplets, touch and go but fine in the end. Marianne... Well, that was never going to be an easy day for her, no matter what they did. It wasn't so bad that she wouldn't be able to go on with her day, or go to school, but they would worry about her so long as she wasn't back with them at the end of it. Thank goodness she had the friends she did, the classmates, and the teacher most of all. Maya and Lucas had Ingrid McAllister looking after their girl, and she would look after her as though she were her own.
Children aside, Maya's most noted concerns would come with regards to her husband, as they would. It was bad enough that he should have to recall losing his mother, or that she had already been gone a year, but going through all this in the midst of ongoing recovery... If it wasn't Family Day, she would have found a way to stay home with him, and he knew it. He knew it so well that he brought it up with her, assuring her that she didn't have to babysit him.
"I wouldn't have used that word..." she innocently told him, which made him smile before matching her tone and expression. No, of course not. "But I am thinking... I mean... It is Family Day, so... Where does it say that I can't have someone from my family out there with me, too?" she pointed out.
"Are you going to do the project and everything?" he asked, grinning like someone who knew very well that he was going to be amused by whatever she said next.
"Oh, sure, I could do one of those... But which class would it be for? Not mine, that would be cheating..." she thought aloud, piling on more 'concentration face' than might have been specifically required but definitely enough to get her husband grinning.
"Gym class? Bet Dylan would love that," he offered, and her gasp was so genuine that he had a good feeling he had given her just the kind of idea she would eagerly follow in earnest.
"I can definitely do that. Going on and on about your days on the basketball team? It'll be great, even before I pull out pictures of you back in that uniform," she added with mischief sparking in her eyes. He cleared his throat, and her face scrunched like he had just disturbed a very pleasant train of thought.
"What did I just commit to?" he sighed, though his face was wholly set on smiling.
"Something good, I promise," she told him, sealed it with a kiss.
And on those last days ahead of Family Day, she had been working on this new project, had made sure he was aware of this, guaranteeing his smiles would be in constant supply, which was just as well. The nearer they got to Family Day, they were also getting so, so near to the anniversary in all its dread. The night before, Marianne made a good showing of claiming an upset stomach, a fever, and an ache that only seemed to spread further and further across her body, to hear her tell it. All this added together, surely, surely had to add up to her being unfit for going to school in the morning, didn't it?
"She almost had me for a bit there," Lucas told Maya after his latest visit to 'the sick room' and their failing patient.
"Sure, she did," Maya rolled her eyes. "She knows just how to push her daddy's buttons," she mimed, tacking on a look that promised how she had absolutely no idea where she'd gotten that from. "So, what's the verdict? School or no school?"
"Oh, she's going," Lucas nodded as he moved to start and get changed for bed.
"What did it cost?"
"It was affordable," he promised. "Nothing dramatic."
"No, she took all the drama by herself," Maya snorted as she turned and approached him. He didn't have to say a thing and she knew that while their daughter's mind that night had been about redirecting her trajectory for the next day, her husband had been doing everything he could in order to somehow delay the inevitable. But now it had arrived, hadn't it? And subject as he had been to nightmares in the past year, for one reason and then another, he didn't know what to expect from the night to come, which was only ever going to make things worse. "Can I help?" she asked, coming to stand before him before putting her arms around his neck. His arms went up and locked around her waist as they would usually do. He let out a breath.
"You always can," he assured her, which might have been met with a smile and a kiss and little more, but he knew as well as she did that there needed to be more to the answer this time. "It's always going to be like this, isn't it? The moments when I need her the most, she can't be there to make it better."
"I know," she quietly told him, and he hugged her nearer, let himself be soothed by her fingers twining in his hair. "Me and my father, we never got to have anything like what you and your mother had, but…"
"But what you got was pretty important, too, especially after all those years when you didn't…" he mumbled, eyes growing heavy with sleep despite himself.
"Yeah…" Maya spoke quietly, hands working at his hair and back to continue slowing him down. In time, she achieved what she'd set out to do and she managed to get her husband, fully grown and several inches taller than her, to fall asleep as they held to one another, one sitting and the other standing. She got him to lie back, all settled in, and joined him. Maybe she would only have cleared part of his night of bad dreams, but if she gave him at least that, then it would already be something.
There were no nightmares. Lucas woke up the following morning and, though he had a sense of his mother in his subconscious somewhere, none of it felt to him in any way troubling. He sensed some peace in himself, and maybe it was all wishful thinking, but he imagined it to be his mother, showing him that she was at peace, and he could be there, too. He let out a breath and it felt… complete.
Maya was already up, likely downstairs, seeing to the lunches and breakfast. Lucas got up and stepped out of the room, briefly noting the quiet whispers from the triplets' room, and spotting them all squeezed in together in Kacey's bed. He let them be and continued down the hall. There he found that Mackenzie and Aubrey had joined their big sister in her bed, too, only to go and fall asleep again, huddled against her side. Meanwhile, Marianne was awake, sitting up with her back against the wall, her blanket tugged over her legs and her little sisters, one arm around them and the other flipping through the pages of a book in her lap. From the doorway, he could still identify it as her sketchbook.
"You're looking… better, this morning," Lucas quietly spoke, and Marianne looked up at him, not even trying to redirect her appearance to come off as sickly as she'd appeared the night before. She knew, as well as he and Maya did, that she'd never been sick at all and there was no point pretending.
"I just… I…"
"You miss her," he found the words for her, and she nodded, reaching up to touch her eyes, brushing at the tears she would have felt there. "We're never going to stop missing her," he stated plainly, and she nodded again, closing the sketchbook, and putting it aside. "She was in my dreams last night. Was she in yours?"
"Yeah," Marianne replied, sniffling.
"Was it a good dream?" Lucas asked.
"I was on stage, doing Annie, and she was there, in the audience, watching. She was really happy, and she was singing along with me, like she could have been in the musical, too," she laughed lightly, and Lucas had to laugh, too.
"Yeah, she would do that," he recalled, thinking of when Marianne had done her first musical.
"Dad… I'm going to forget, won't I?" she asked him, turning serious, afraid. "Not everything, not my memories, but… It's like I know, in my head, what she looked like, what she sounded like, but it's not the same anymore. When I see her picture, it's not the same, and… even videos, it doesn't feel the way it used to feel, when she was… when she was alive." He couldn't argue with this. He'd had his mother for nearly forty years, vastly longer than his firstborn or any of her sisters had done, and he knew just what she was talking about.
"I wish I knew how to make it better for you, pumpkin, I really do. I wish I could do the same for myself," he admitted, which seemed to make Marianne realize that he'd be feeling this as well. She carefully untangled herself from her little sisters and stood up on her mattress, the better to hug him, and Lucas gladly reciprocated the gesture. "I love you so much, just like she loved you. And there's no forgetting any of that, is there?"
"Never," Marianne agreed, squeezing him – he knew – as tightly as she would allow herself, so not to hurt him. She could have hugged him tighter, as far as he was concerned, but he simply carried on. "I love you so much, too, Daddy," she told him, and he smiled at hearing her call him that, not the 'Dad' he'd been promoted to since she'd gone and grown out of the other name. He kissed the side of her head.
"You know, the school might take issue with any kind of hair coloring for anything other than a musical, but if you wanted to do it over the summer, I'm pretty sure your mom would be okay with it, too. You could get different colors, whichever ones you'd like."
"I could?" she asked, surprised.
"And I bet you'll look great," he told her, and she pulled back to look at him, smiling. "But first you have to finish your school year." She'd get right on that. She hopped off the bed, stood there for a moment, thinking, before looking at him.
"Can it be green? Not all of it, only a little."
"I would have been very surprised if that didn't come up."
After the girls were dropped off for the day, Maya and Lucas made their way to the high school for Family Day. The decoration committee had really been busy, which was good, because there were already many more people than they would normally expect at this time of day. They parked in Maya's spot, where they soon ran into Dylan. He had that big, excited grin going, showing how much he was looking forward to hosting them in the gym for Maya's 'presentation.' Did she actually have to do it? Not really. But was there ever any doubt that she'd go through with it? Not for a second. The bigger concern was whether it would be safe for teenage consumption.
"So, what's your project?" a voice interrupted Maya's work – along with her very special class assistant of the day – in setting up ahead of the students and senior class family members for first period. They looked up to find Shawn Hunter, a moment before his youngest daughter squeezed past him, all smiles, to go and hug her big sister.
"I'd tell you, but you'd be traumatized. Hi!" Maya turned her attention to Haley, laughing as she hugged her and nearly had her off her feet in the process. "Happy to be here?"
"School's school," Haley shrugged. "But here I don't have to take notes… and I get to see you."
"Notes might not be a bad idea, you'll have a leg up for next year," Shawn told his daughter and got an all too similar look from the two that stood across from him.
"That's not how that works, Dad," Haley told him.
"Yeah, Dad," Maya matched her, which made her laugh.
"I'm starting to see why your brother chose to have the three of us out here today," Shawn told Lucas, who nodded and smirked.
"Speaking of three, where's Mom?" Maya asked.
"She and MJ went off to find Ash and their sister," Haley replied. "Kennedy's really excited to be here, too. Hey, where's the principal, can I see her?" she added, whispering.
"Careful, the walls have ears," Maya held a finger to her lips.
Soon, everyone needed to go where they had to be for first period. The seniors arrived for art class, and it took several more minutes than usual to get started, with a lot of introductions to be made, especially with Lucas sitting in and everyone knowing who he was and what had happened to him just a few months prior. But in time they got to begin, and Lucas had to admit that he was very glad to have accepted Maya's invitation. Whatever this day would have been for him if he hadn't been at the school, now that he was, he got to spend it with his wife, watching her do the work that she did so well. He might not have minded being in that room every day with her, and he only had to look at those students' faces to know that they felt the same. It was a hectic day, not at all the day-to-day, but for all the ups and downs behind the scenes, what came of it was a day as memorable as could be.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
