July 26th 2023

Chapter 207
We Open For The Evening

It was so very different for Maya the next day to head into work, thinking of parent teacher night and knowing that the girls' side had already been handled and she'd gotten to be a part of it for once. It made her realize how much it would stay on her mind while she'd be trying to focus on her students and their family members. It never exactly stopped her from doing her job right in the end, but it would be taxing on her, energy wise. Now, she was heading into this night feeling as light as ever… which could not be said of all of her students.

They were all infinitely aware that she would be meeting with their family members that evening, and that was not so easy for all of them, whether because of their performance at school or because of what their parents or guardian might go and tell her. She sympathized enough with them, on both of those fronts, that she did her best to reassure them… or keep away… whichever helped best.

While it was by no means done in order to distract their guests from whatever they might have had to say about their given students, the night's visits would feature an audience of sorts. That morning, after hearing about their parents' night at their school, and how their mother would be away for the same thing at her school, it had been Kacey, Remy, and Lucy's wish that they got to sit in and see what parent night was about. Maya had hesitated a while, telling them she would think about it, but in the end she'd decided that it would be fine, and that it would be fun. The three of them would only have found out once their father picked them up from school… and now they were here, in the art room, sitting around a station with supplies to keep them busy. They didn't touch any of them, not yet. They wanted to see what would happen first.

It was just as well that Maya tended to keep her father for the end whenever she could, whenever he had to come, or else the triplets would have found it that much harder to carry on with whoever came next. The first person to come along turned out to be Ash Bell's father, so they watched as he came and sat with their mother to talk about his eldest child. They were well on their way to finally graduating this year, and as proud as their father was of them, he knew as well as Maya did that Ash was easily the proudest of their accomplishments, as well they should be. Freshman year's repeat felt like little more than a hiccup to most people at this point, but Ash had not forgotten it, never could, and they had carried on these last few years to make sure they would always remember.

The girls had finally started playing with the supplies after five or six appointments had gone by. They were still paying attention, but they would draw at the same time, too. When their Uncle Mike walked into the room though, it was paint brushes down, eyes up. To look at them, when the subject came up, they had little recollection of their cousin Lydia's brush with scandal, and Maya was sure she'd have loads to explain to them later. For now, she wouldn't say no to a bit of grandfatherly distraction, and it did not disappoint.

Shawn spent his entire time in the room as he heard about MJ standing at the station, leaning over the surface to see what his granddaughters had been up to, which the three of them were more than happy to share with him. They laughed when he nodded along to what their mother said about her brother. He was genuinely paying attention, but it didn't mean he couldn't entertain them all at the same time, did it? There wasn't really anything for Maya to tell her father about his one and only son that he didn't already know about, so this was really just a perk of a technicality.

They were disappointed to see their grandfather go, but he had gone and hyped them up for the next groups, so they were all good to go for the sophomore families to start rolling in. They had already clued in to the fact that they would see several people that evening that they knew to some degree or another from outside, because of connections between their families. That was the case for the likes of Amy Dixon for sure, and Jake Bennett, too, and Rafa Cruz, their almost cousin…

The same went for Haruna Farrell, as she came along for her son, Max. They loved the woman as much as she loved them, which nearly derailed the steady pace of Maya's appointments before Max and Kelsey's mother finally came to sit with her. Understandably, her son's year had not been what it might have been without his… circumstances. He wasn't the one having a baby, in no way at all, but his best friend was having two of them and planning on keeping them, and he had as good as taken on the vow to help her raise them. Honorable as that was, it would worry his mother to think of what it could and would cost him, and accepting the fact that this might just be a cost that he was willing to pay would be difficult for her to work through.

That went for Max McAllister's mothers doubly so, triply so… As though it wasn't enough to be raising their children, now they would be all of weeks away from their eldest adding two new little members to their household. As much as she would insist that she could tend to them and provide for them, they knew that it wouldn't be that easy, not for her, not for them, and not for those babies. They weren't about to try and convince her to give them up, far from that, but they knew that a major reality check would be in store for their daughter, and they were afraid of what it would be like for her once she went through it.

Someone who would know for sure what they were going through, if with a different outcome on the horizon, was Madelyn Carter's mother. The freshman was coming close enough to her due date now that her parents had put their foot down in having her stay at home rather than continue attending class. They didn't want her going into labor at school, and the outlook of it had been bad enough to convince Madelyn to listen to them. She was carrying on with her studies from home, as she would until after the holiday break. This had been decided between her and her parents, and there was no arguing around it. She had by now made it very clear that she and her baby would part ways once they were no longer attached to one another, and she'd need time to cope with what it would mean for both of them.

By comparison, someone like Martin McNeil, or Jonah Killian, had absolutely nothing to worry about. Both boys were adjusting to freshman year and high school about as well as anyone would ever hope to adjust. They had a solid friend base, the two of them together with Hunter Matthews, they all had activities to keep them thriving, they did well enough in class… They'd all somehow gotten involved with the 'cheerstery' lately, and to look at them, Maya wouldn't be surprised if they got answers before she ever did.

She'd been hearing all about it from the three of them, and when Topanga Matthews came along to talk to her youngest's teacher, it was clear that she'd been hearing all about it from him, too. Maya didn't know what she had expected, but for sure the last thing she had seen coming was her best friend's mother getting caught up in the curiosity and the research. If it wasn't that they all had so much to do that night, she could have told her all she knew and put her on the trail with Melinda's journals.

The same nearly went for her father, when he came around for the second time that night, as he and Topanga found it all too easy to start chatting about it when they ran into one another. Maya watched them and couldn't help but see a lot of Hunter and Haley together, and even Hunter and MJ, too, as the three of them had grown up together as friends despite the age gap between MJ and the other two. She had to remind her father that he was there to talk about his youngest, even if there was again very little for her to tell him that he didn't already know.

"You three look like you've had your fill for tonight, huh?" Shawn reflected as he got a look of his granddaughters, who had definitely abandoned their paintings in favor of huddling together, almost asleep. At his question, they nodded without hesitation. "Do you want me to take you home?" he asked them, and they nodded again before looking to their mother with a hint of apology.

"You guys go with Grandpa, it's alright," Maya chuckled, moving to see them out. "I'll come and see you when I get home, too, okay?" They would hold her to that.

Once they'd gone, all she had left were the juniors, and she didn't blame them for bowing out this close to the end. She was good to go, sure, but she couldn't pretend as though the evening wasn't drawing on for her. When Austin Abbott's father came along, he had that sympathetic parent look to him that made him look like a grown up version of his son, and their conversation wove in and out of school talk and just parent talk, which Maya appreciated.

Noor's mother may not have shared any of her DNA, but she had a lot to her that Maya could see the junior girl had come to take on over the years since they'd become family. It was kind of wonderful to see it, even as it made her think of Lucas and her and their big girl. Almost in the same vein, when she met with Freddie Jacek's social worker, she kind of felt it, too. As much as she'd tried to put him in good homes over the years, to find him one that would not be a temporary fix, Freddie had always struggled, until he found himself here, so close to aging out, with no one willing to step up for him except her. Maya had seen and heard enough of her in the two years and some that she'd known Freddie to understand this was the closest thing he'd had to a mother, and the constant reminder that she could never be was almost worst than not having her at all.

As the evening drew toward a close, she was once again visited by Mrs. Killian, to speak of Agnes this time. She had always been a dependable figure in Maya's class and in the school, a highlight of the quiz team who could probably have been a very effective captain all the way back in freshman year. It surprised Maya to hear that Agnes had hit a bit of a rough patch near the end of sophomore year, just as she was glad to hear that it had resolved itself. She reminded her a lot of Kacey in that respect, even of Marianne now and then, of Lucas, too. They were very familiar to her in that way, with how their priorities would shift so easily toward keeping up appearances. For that, she knew that she would be keeping a closer eye on the Killian girl from now on. She felt like she owed it to her.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners