A/N: [July 2nd 2024]

September 18th 2023

Chapter 261
We Breathe Before Flying

It took no time for Maya to rally five of their six girls from around the house and start them on their way to the big packing push. As to the last of their girls at home, both she and their young guest were nowhere to be found, which soon led Lucas to check and confirm that her Hex key was not in its place. He walked out the kitchen door and made his way to the studio, where the light was on, requesting that the space not be disturbed. When he looked through the windows, he could see them both in there. Marianne was in one of the big chairs, sitting at the console and working some of the controls, while Haru sat in the other chair, his good arm holding up his camera and recording whatever Marianne was doing and explaining. They were both so invested that it felt as awkward to interrupt them as it did to just stand there and watch, waiting for his moment, so he simply went and rang the silent bell that would flash the light inside and alert them of his presence.

Rather than opening the door at first, Marianne poked her head in the window to see who it was. Once she saw him, she signed.

"Five more minutes? Please?"

"We need to pack for the trip."

"In five minutes?" She gave him a great big smile, and he pointed at the door. With an exasperated sigh – he guessed – she went and let him in. "I would have come like I said, you know?"

"It's not you I'm worried about here," he nodded back to the house, and that made her laugh enough that she quickly went inside to turn off everything like she was supposed to and lead Haru back to the house.

A lot of what they would bring had already been taken out, sorted, folded, but now it needed to be packed up, and they needed to make sure they would have everything they'd need for the time they'd be away. They had done their best to involve the girls in this task as much as they could, and while Maya and Lucas had focused on the triplets in particular, Marianne had insisted on doing so with the little sisters. Now both she and Haru were leading Mackenzie and Aubrey in getting their suitcases and flight things ready to go.

The five and four-year-old almost looked up to Haru since he'd shown up. They were both impressed by his cast, with the drawings that Marianne had made on it, and by the story of how he'd gotten it, enough that their parents had felt the need to impress on them that Haru had gotten hurt a lot in order to get it, and he himself had understood the potential trouble and told them how much it had hurt, and how much it itched now. That might have convinced the girls more than anything.

"They have pools on the inside, right?" Kacey asked as Maya was getting the bathing suits sorted into the three suitcases open on Lucy's bed.

"They do," Maya promised, making a mental note to 'thank' her father for putting the idea in her daughters' heads that they'd have to walk through the snow in nothing but swimsuits and sandals in order to go swimming on their trip. "Just like the other hotels we've been to, okay?"

"Barry says there's people that go in there and they don't have clothes on," Remy whispered at her mother's side, eyes wide to convey how strange that sounded to her. She did not want to go swim naked.

"It's a clothes on pool we're going to, don't worry. I mean… bathing suits, not shirts and pants and all that," she added before their minds could turn the other way. Lucy said nothing, just stood there and waited. Once her own swimsuit had been added to her suitcase, she went and put her swim class cap on top of it, like she'd wanted to make absolutely certain that it would be there. Maya gave her a smile and got one in return.

She was sure they remembered more and more of when they went on trips like this, but now as they neared their seventh birthdays, she liked the idea that this might be one of the first ones that they really, remembered in detail, from their own memories and not stories and pictures that they'd been told or shown. All their trips, she hoped, were memorable, but this one might be the very most, and she couldn't wait for them all to get started.

It made them both so happy to see how excited all of the kids were to go, from Ella on down. The fact that she and Taylor and the girls would be there might have been one of the most exciting parts for all of them. It couldn't be helped at this point that their oldest sister was of an age where she had her own home, that she had a husband, and they raised their kids together. But a lot of the time, it was plain to see that they wished their big sister lived with them, too, that it felt strange to them to have a sister that lived somewhere else. For Maya especially it brought up thoughts of her own younger siblings when they'd been little and she'd moved off to college, to this house with Lucas…

Now Ella was going to be there with them, on their 'snow trip,' and as excited as they were of course that Taylor, Tori, and Sunny would be there, too, which they were so much that they could barely keep it together, the levels were that much more when it came to knowing that their big sister would be out there with them, too. They even had matching hats, which had been made ahead of what had been their original December plans, before they'd gotten Ezra.

Max Farrell came to pick up his cousin shortly after dinner. This would be the last time Marianne and Haru would see one another until after she came from the trip, and the two of them spent the last few minutes ahead of Max's arrival running through all the things they each had to do while he'd be in Austin and she would not, and all the things they'd tell each other once she got back. Then she hugged him, careful with his arm, of course, and he was gone.

"Couldn't he come with us?" Marianne asked her father when he put his arms around her shoulders, standing behind her.

"If he could, he would, you know that," Lucas reminded her, and at her defeated little hum, he bowed to kiss the top of her head. "I know that you guys don't get to spend a lot of time together in person and you want to make the most of it when he's here, okay?" She knew he'd be telling the truth, but she couldn't help but be disappointed anyway, and he understood that, too.

With the girls sat to a movie until bedtime – which had been relaxed ahead of their vacation – Maya and Lucas set themselves to packing their own things as well as Ezra's. It was so strange to even think it, much less to say it, and so they didn't bring it up, but there was this feeling in the air, strong enough that they did sort of know where the other's head would be at, thinking about taking the baby out of the country. He was their son, in every way but blood, but there was this thought like didn't have the right for some reason. For her part, Maya was thinking it from a completely different point of view now that she'd had this possibility presented to her as to who at least one of her son's biological parents were.

When she sighed in frustration and Lucas looked at her, she just shrugged and said, "Socks," as she held up the pair she'd mangled while her thoughts had been elsewhere.

"They are really hard to put together," Lucas agreed with a slow nod, which managed to make her laugh.

"Yeah, well, I'll get the last laugh there," she matched his tone, pulling the socks apart and starting over. "Right now, I think packing for cold weather is really messing with my brain," she added, thinking of how humid it had been that day.

"We do keep turning over the whole pool question, don't we?" he reflected, and she smirked, thinking about the girls' concerns earlier about people going to swim with no clothes on… "Where'd your mind go?" Lucas asked, intrigued.

"Oh, wouldn't you like to know," she teased as she tossed him the pair of assembled socks and he caught them, adding them to the open suitcase.

A scramble of steps on the stairs sent them both looking into the hallway just as Mackenzie, then Lucy, then Kacey and Remy, then Marianne holding Aubrey's hand ran by, on their way to the green room at the end of the hall.

"Hey, what's the rush?" Lucas called after them and they stopped at once, turning to face him.

"There's some things we forgot to pack," Marianne spoke for the group, who all nodded and then spoke over one another, naming the items they had remembered before it was too late.

"You guys know we're not leaving until the day after tomorrow, right?" Maya reminded them.

That didn't seem to diminish a single degree of their urgency, so their parents went ahead and helped them track down the things that they'd thought of, packing them with their other belongings if they could, explaining why they couldn't otherwise. The refusals were harder to get through for some than others, but in the end, everyone was able to leave thoughts of packing aside. The triplets and little sisters would be off to bed before Marianne was, as was the norm, and she wanted to go back to the Hex for a little while, until it was also time for her to turn in, so Maya accompanied her. It would maybe be the last time she got to go until after they came home, and her mother understood what that could feel like. She was getting more and more into making her own music, and even though she still had a lot to learn, what she was making already showed the promise of a great talent on the rise, one not fallen far from that of her mother's, who was and would always be her greatest inspiration for music.

"Mom, do you think one day we can do something together?" Marianne asked as the two of them sat in the big chairs. She was slowly twisting this way and that to make the chair turn this way and that, and Maya was doing the same, matching her.

"You mean… a song? An album? Something more?" Maya asked, smiling.

"All the somethings," Marianne declared, which made Maya smile even more.

"I like the sound of that," she nodded. "We'll find which 'something' is right for us, just wait. It'll come to us sooner or later. Hart and Friar, if that's not a winning team, I don't know what is."

"Do I need a music name like you have?" Marianne wondered.

"You don't have to, but you can, of course, you can. What would you want it to be?" Maya asked, leaning her chin into the palm of her hand. Marianne shrugged. "No idea? Let's see… Are we going with a Pumpkin theme?"

"Not for that," she giggled.

"Are you sure? No? Alright… Oh, Sheriff Annie can make a comeback," Maya suggested, and Marianne shook her head, still laughing. "That's too bad," she hummed.

"Maybe it can be Annie though… Aunt Ree doesn't use her full name," Marianne pointed out.

"That's true," Maya agreed as she thought of the woman whose name now sat in the middle of her firstborn's first and last. "I think Annie's a great start…"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners