Chapter 38
And So It Begins

As strange as it was to explain, in her dreams, she still felt like he was in her belly. She only knew this because, whenever she'd go to sleep and wake again, there would be this moment where she would he realize he wasn't in there anymore. And in that moment… there was just the smallest bit of panic, until she'd look around and she would find him, in the little bed next to hers, or in Lucas' arms, or someone else's… Once she'd see this, finally, she would feel herself calm again. She guessed it was normal for this to be a bit jarring. He'd been growing inside her, day by day, month to month, and now all of a sudden he was just gone. No, not gone. He's here.

And now, they were taking him home.

It had been two whole days now since they'd been there, between labor, delivery, and their short stay at the hospital, but to Maya it felt like… an eternity but also just a minute. She was in desperate need to feel fresh air on her face, and then at the same time it genuinely felt like just a moment ago she had been printing those pictures Lucas had taken of her. But she had the proof of time. She had Elliott. It had not been an eternity, or just a minute. Her son was a day old already, and she had brought him into the world, and he had been met with friends, and family… so many of them… And now…

"Ready to go?" Lucas asked, returning to the room after having gone down to the car and seen for himself that his father and hers had gotten the seat properly installed. Like he'd said, it wasn't that he didn't trust them, but he just had to make sure.

"Yeah, I think so," Maya told him, looking around the room. "Can you just double check we didn't leave anything?"

"I think it's more like a quintuple check by now," he pointed out, though he did it anyway. "Everything's been packed and taken down. All there is left is you, and this guy," he looked back to the baby, presently dozing carelessly. He smiled, seeing how Maya had gotten him dressed in one of onesies given to them by… he couldn't remember if it had been his parents or hers… Either way, it looked good on him, like he was ready for the world. "It's actually a bit cool out, if you want to get his blanket on him."

"Yeah, good, okay," she nodded, happy to do it. Almost as soon as she'd finished, there was an orderly, bringing them a wheelchair for Maya and the baby to ride in on their way out. The man looked at Lucas with his bandaged foot and his crutches.

"I'll be alright," he promised, but then Maya looked at him. "But, just to be sure, would you mind?"

So, he followed alongside the chair as their left their room and got on the elevator, headed down. Just outside the hospital, they found their 'driver' waiting. Much as they had wanted for this day to be theirs alone, neither of them was going to be driving on this day, so it came down to letting one person follow them, which would really have to be two in the end. Zay had volunteered at once, playing his godfather card with eagerness they couldn't turn away. So, while he'd drive the car with the three of them in it, Nadine would follow behind, the better to drive them back almost as soon as they reached the house on the lane.

"Is that right?" Maya looked to Lucas after she'd gotten Elliott in his car eat. He could see in her eyes how she really just wanted to make sure he'd be safe, but for knowing she'd buckled her siblings in seats identical to this one before, it all came down to her being overly attentive now. He wished he could make her see that everything was fine, that she was doing fine, but he knew it wouldn't happen just like that. He had his own load of concerns at being a parent now, sure. Hers just came from another place, and he just… He needed to let her try and work through them on her own first.

"Yeah, it's great," he told her, checking anyway.

"Good, okay," she nodded, taking her seat next to their son while he ended up in the front with Zay. He only had to give his best friend one look and he held his hand up in promise.

"Driving as carefully as I've ever driven in my life. Not letting my godson down, second day on the job." He yelped just a bit when he felt a hand clasp his shoulder from behind, only to find it was Maya's hand, as he caught her smile in the rear-view mirror.

Lucas found himself doing his fair share of looking in that mirror as they took off from the hospital. He could just see Maya back there, alternating between looking out the window and looking back at the baby in his seat. Even as she'd do this, it seemed like her thoughts were off somewhere else. He'd lost count of how many times over the last several months he had seen her with her hand to her belly. After a while, it almost became what he expected to see. But now, to see her back there, her hand absently held to what remained of that roundness without the baby inside, he couldn't even say what had to be going through her mind.

Though their desire to have this moment to themselves would be honored, it hadn't prevented their loved ones to ensure they had a worthy arrival. As the car had come up the lane, Lucas could swear he saw… Yes, those were definitely balloons, in shades of blue, hanging from the mailbox, and the porch rails, which were also lined with what looked like the flowers from the hospital and some new ones along with them.

"Oh, see, I knew your mother had to have bought out at least one florist," Maya chimed in from the back. "Grandma got really excited," she followed, in a cheerfully hushed voice now turned to Elliott. Lucas could just hear him back there, awake once again. He'd been pretty calm on the whole, though they knew it was only a matter of time before he challenged this and started expressing him as loudly as his small lungs would allow.

"You good?" Lucas asked. He'd come around and opened the car door for her.

"Yeah…" she assured him as she undid the fastenings and finally pulled Elliott and his blanket into her arms. Setting foot on the ground leading up to their house now, it felt like she was able to breathe in ways she hadn't done since they'd left here in a hurry with the Sandersons. She'd spent those last weeks leading up to this moment with all these concerns she could never put into words if she tried. It was like she'd been rehearsing all these months, and then, finally… the big show. She just had to get through it, and the baby… he had to get through it more than she did. And now he had, they both had. And they were home… "That's our house," she turned about so that Elliott might see it. "Nice, huh? Your grandfather grew up here, and your great grandfather he used to live here, then he went away, but he's going to come back soon."

"Here," Zay came and offered his hand to help Maya up to the door. The reflex was for her to tell him it was alright, but at this point it really felt like she needed to just say thanks and carry on with him.

The flowers and the balloons outside had more or less prepared them for more surprises once they walked through the door, and they were not disappointed. There were several gifts, and cards, and more flowers and balloons… Zay tipped them off to there being some food in the freezer and refrigerator, after which he looked to Lucas, and Maya, and announced he would be leaving them to settle in, rejoining Nadine, who was pulling up as they spoke, to go on home.

"Hey, thank you," Lucas hugged his best friend.

"Are you kidding? Happy to do it. I love you guys, and I hate to break it to you, but he's way cuter than you," he grinned, turning to the baby in Maya's arms. "You ever need anything, little man, you call your Uncle Zay, yeah? I got you," he held up one of Elliott's hands before giving it the lightest fist bump.

"You two come back and see us before you go back to Boston, yeah?" Maya smiled.

"That's gonna have to be tomorrow, we're flying out in two days."

"Then we'll see you tomorrow," Maya nodded, looking to Lucas, who did the same.

After 'the godfather extraordinaire' had gone on his way, Maya had been all too happy to go and sit down on the couch, breathing out as she resettled the bundle in her arms. The tour was going to have to wait. Lucas came and sat with her, setting a cushion on the coffee table and propping up his foot with his own amount of relief.

"Parent life got us wiped out on day two, should we be concerned?" Maya turned her head to look at him with a laugh.

"I think we're just coming down from the whole… non-stop…" Lucas slipped his arm around her shoulders until she set her head to his.

"Sounds fair," she relented. "But now we're home, so we'll totally get to relax and take it easy," she joked. "You're a totally chill baby, aren't you?" she looked down to Elliott, and Lucas did as well.

"How do you ever get anything done anymore when you have one of these?" he reached out to stroke the baby's cheek. "All I want to do anymore is sit here and look at him."

"Have you smelled him?"

"Why, did he…" Lucas sat up and looked around for the diaper bag.

"No, no," Maya laughed, pulling him back. "Here," she held out their son to him, and he took him. She pulled the hat from his head, carefully brushing at his hair. "Get a breathe of that new baby smell."

"Right out of the oven fresh?" he chuckled.

"Like bread…" she leaned to him once again, now looking at the boy from their new vantage point. "And I agree. I don't really want to do anything else than this right now either. It might be a sort of fifty/fifty thing between 'look at this human we made' and 'wow, my body feels weird right now,' but the scales are absolutely going to tip in his favor once that other stuff settles down."

"Good, that's what I figured," Lucas smiled. For a few minutes, they just sat there, looking at this boy in his arms, who had no idea how loved he was, unexpected little wonder that he was. It took until right about then for the hanging silence to make them wonder almost at once… "Where are the dogs?"

"I think… Missy said something about taking them to her house, didn't she?" Maya tried to remember. It had to have been in the car, when their young neighbor and her father had driven them to the hospital. After that point, where she was already somewhat preoccupied with other things, like contractions, and delivery, and feedings, and visitors, so it had all slipped her mind up to now, Lucas' as well.

"Right… Yeah… I should call to make sure…" he thought aloud, though Maya could see he was still concentrated on the baby, which made her smile.

"In a minute?" she kissed his arm.

"In a minute," he agreed, brushing his finger along their son's blond hair.

When he had finally relinquished the baby, who had to be fed anyway, Lucas had called up the Sanderson house, confirming that they had been looking after Trix and Lou in their absence. He thanked the man, who agreed to hold on to them another night and bring them back in the morning.

"Can you grab a few things for me?" Maya tipped her head back to look at him, standing behind the couch.

"Going by the look on your face, I'm getting the impression there might be more than 'a few?'" Lucas asked with a smirk.

"Well…" she responded, with that sort of voice extinguishing squeak to suggest a pointless attempt at playing it coy. "I mean, I don't want you to have to go up and down the stairs a bunch of times… but I also don't want you to hurt yourself… again…"

"Give me the list, come on."

The 'list' consisted of her baby sketchbook, a case of pencils, her camera, the pre-labor pictures, and some kind of snack.

"Is that all?" Lucas smiled.

"My guitar? Maybe?" the innocent eyes returned.

"Very hard to say no with you and your partner there," he nodded to the baby.

"So what you're saying is all I have to do is hold him up to you Simba-style and you'll do anything I ask?" she asked, and though he would have laughed regardless, to hear her like this, joking around… It made him glad, in ways he couldn't describe.

One trip up the stairs brought her the sketchbook and pencils. The pictures, the camera, and the food were even simpler. The guitar meant going down into the basement, which, after how his last trip down those stairs had gone, was one errand he wasn't looking forward to, but he went down with great caution, got the instrument slung over his back, and climbed back up without incident.

When he came back into the living room, he could just hear what sounded like an escalation of baby noises, making their way toward a full on outburst. Just over those noises though, and maybe acting like a wall to hold them at bay, was the sound of Maya's voice, singing softly what he recognized as the lullaby she'd been working on for Elliott. He hopped along to go and sit on the edge of the coffee table, pulled the guitar around until it could be grasped properly… and he started to play the melody.

Maya's voice stalled for a second, staring in surprise, but he nodded his head at their son, and so she continued to sing, her gaze moving from him to Elliott and back again a few times. It worked though. The 'crisis' was averted, and lay at peace once more.

"Since when do you know how to do that?" Maya asked, whispering.

"I might have been taking lessons the last couple months," he admitted with just a bit of nervousness in his smile. "I wanted it to be a surprise."

"Surprised," she gestured to her face, with a smile of her own that suggested this was only one of several emotions she was feeling right about now. "Who…"

"Willow," he revealed. "In person up until the move, on Skype after that."

"Daddy's been keeping secrets," Maya turned a whisper to the clueless baby. "This is giving me so many ideas right now, I just… wow…" she smiled, passing Elliott over to Lucas once he returned to the couch, setting the guitar aside.

They spent the majority of the day from that moment on just sitting here on the couch, Lucas holding the baby while Maya drew. She filled several pages of Elliott's sketchbook with scenes of the past two days. His little body laid over hers as he'd been pulled from her, first contact… Lucas holding him, that look of pure wonder and love in his eyes still very much on him now, enabling her to reproduce it… Riley holding him, pacing the room… Meeting upon meeting with grandparents, and great grandparents, and aunts and uncles whether by blood or friendship… Elliott and his blanket… An arrival at home… A family lullaby…

All the while, Lucas got to just hold the boy, look at him, talk to him… He couldn't have asked for more. If their son had her smile, and he really did, he also had his father's eyes. Lucas would have thought for sure his mother would have been the first one to spot it, but it had been Maya, in the midst of their parade of visitors the previous afternoon. And now, looking at him lying there… looking at him and seeing in him the developing resemblance… A little of him, a little of her…

Their first night at home, just the two of them and the baby, might not have happened for a few days if it had been up to their parents, but they had wanted it this way , and so they had done it. By the time morning rolled around, they felt relatively successful. They realized that they weren't too exhausted just yet, which could only help, that and the fact that they were still so focused on this new presence, like an extra push of adrenaline or something. The fact that they would get woken up a few times throughout the night wasn't so bad, going by the fact that neither of them had been so deeply asleep anyway. They had Elliott in their room, and at the slightest peep from him they would wake.

One of the things they had tried to prepare themselves for, in the weeks and months preceding the birth of their son, had been to not simply rush off to pick him up if they didn't really need to. It was one thing to consider it, but it proved to be a whole other situation once they had that child just a few feet away, crying. More than once, there had been a beat of hesitation, both of them sitting up in bed, looking over at the crib, turning to one another… Sooner or later, one of them would get up and get closer. Lucas would sometimes just lean in until hopefully Elliott could see him and maybe know that he was there. Maya, when she went forward, would hum the lullaby.

"I mean, he's too small to know crying means we show up, right?" she'd whispered at one time, turning back to Lucas as she walked across the room. "And… oh, he's flashing that red light on the diaper meter right now…"

Eventually, the sun had come up, and the night was through. They expected the day would be a lot of the same, but they had made it through their first night, and that was something. Now they had a new day to look forward to, with visitors, and the dogs…

"Shower helped?" Lucas asked, Elliott held against him, as he watched Maya coming back downstairs, hair still wet and twisted in light curls for it.

"So much…" she confirmed, breathing out. "Felt good to wash the hospital off… and to not go around all day thinking 'are people being nice and not telling me I stink just because I had a baby two days ago?'"

"Oh, did you stink? I didn't notice," Lucas shrugged.

"You're going to go full on dad jokes on me someday, aren't you?" she squinted at him.

"You know it."

When they got the call from Mitch Sanderson, asking if they were ready for him to bring the dogs back, they told him yes.

"How do you want to do this?" Maya asked. She could remember very well how it had been when the other dogs, at her parents' house, had met the twins, and MJ. It had all been very sweet, and funny, and everything had been good. They knew their Trix and Lou well enough not to believe they'd come on too strong here…

Mitch arrived with his daughter, Missy, each of them leading one of the dogs along on their leashes. They hadn't seen the baby yet. After they'd driven Lucas and Maya to the hospital, they had all decided it would be better to leave this time to their families, all their friends… They lived just up the lane after all, and there would be time enough to get to know the little one once he was home. When Lucas saw the four of them coming along toward the house, he could practically feel the giddiness coming off the girl. There was some of this in the dogs, too, and the closer they'd come to the house, the more excited they both got, barking when they saw him step out on to the porch. They were let loose from their leashes here, and the bolted for him.

"Hey, hey…" he laughed, crouching to receive the loving pups. "Yeah, I missed you, too," he told them, doing his best to stay balanced without putting weight on his injured foot.

"They knew you came back yesterday," Missy told him as he managed to get up again and her father stepped in to keep him from falling. "We were playing with Coraline in my room and then they just stopped and they ran to the window and started barking like that." Lucas looked at the dogs, staring up at him, and he smiled back at them. "Can I see the baby now?"

"Well, Maya's with him upstairs. You can go on ahead, but we're going to wait until Trix and Lou have had the chance to calm down a bit, get acclimated again, maybe catch his…" The ten-year-old didn't wait around for the rest, she was pretty much gone by the time he'd told her she could go.

Maya had taken Elliott into the nursery. He wasn't going to be in here at night just yet, as they kept him in their room, but it was still this space they had created for him, and it only felt right to have him in it. Already, she was trying to see if there was any part of the mural she could work on despite needing to recover some more through the weeks to come. Maybe she could sit on a stool…

"Maya?" she heard a girl's voice and smiled.

"In here, Missy," she called back, and a moment later their young neighbor appeared. She saw the baby and her eyes sparkled with happiness. "Good morning."

"Good morning," Missy whispered, coming to kneel and then sit on the floor next to where Maya sat. She had her hands sort of halfway up but close to herself, like many of the kids whenever they'd met the baby, like they didn't know if they were allowed to touch him.

"Can you hold your arms out like mine are?" Maya asked her, and the girl replicated the position at once. "Ballerina skills," Maya laughed before holding the baby out and depositing him in Missy's waiting arms. "You have to watch his head, okay?"

"I know, I looked it up."

"Doing your research, huh?" Maya smiled.

"He's heavier than I thought he would be."

"Well, if I can point out, you are still little yourself, so compared to me… You're doing great though," Maya assured her. "Missy, this is Elliott," she said the words, and even as she did she had to resist the urge to burst out laughing, catching the unplanned correlation between the names. It went entirely over Missy's head, going by the puzzled look on her face. "I'll explain later. How, uh, how are Trix and Lou doing?" Missy relayed the tale of their sensing their arrival the previous day, and how they were now downstairs with Lucas and her father.

It was an hour before they'd be allowed up into the nursery to meet the new member of their family. In that time, Missy had remained with Maya and the baby, which was more than fine by her, while Lucas and Mitch Sanderson eased the dogs into the new presence. Along the way, Mitch told Lucas about how their old dog had reacted to Missy's arrival into their home. Said dog had passed away the summer before last, which had led to the adoption of little Coraline, but through most of the girl's childhood he had been a constant companion. Lucas could only hope the same would be true for Trix, Lou, and Elliott.

Finally, they had led the dogs up the stairs, which had not demanded much effort. They knew Maya was up there, and their new friend Missy, and then someone else… Elliott was back in his mother's arms now, and Trix and Lou came along with curiosity in their steps.

They reacted more or less as both Maya and Lucas had predicted they would. Trix came forward first, while Lou hung back like she needed to see what Trix would do. She gingerly nudged her head at Maya's offered hand.

"Hey, you," she smiled. "He's not in my belly anymore, is he?" The dog sniffed at the baby boy, and it did almost feel like she was thinking 'hey, I know you,' although they couldn't really know, could they? What they did know was that they had always attributed a sort of maternal quality to the dog, grandmotherly even. And this little one may not have been a puppy, but he was as good as one, and greeted him with loving kisses. Elliott fussed just a bit, but overall didn't seem in any way disturbed by this. And once Trix had had her turn, Lou had finally come along, perching her front paws on Maya's knee as she looked to the baby, before coming back down, laying down in front of her as close as she could get and looking on. It was her way of showing trust.

Now with the baby at home, and the dogs, too, all they were missing was Pappy Joe. He was already head over heels for his great grandson, and he would be moving in the following week. In the meantime, the rest of them would have days to find their rhythm together. Sooner rather than later, they would also have to get back into wedding mode. With June upon them, they were only three months away from the day they'd finally say 'I do.' Later, when Zay and Nadine had been over to visit before they flew back to Boston, they had brought this notion up, and Zay had been quick to check one thing off their list.

"I think it's only fair that your best man escort the little man down the aisle."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners