Chapter 67
Knowledge For the Future

It had been so easy to get lost in the day to day of being at home, with Maya, with Elliott, but now today it was back to the books, back to class. Lucas was looking forward to it, he was. But at the same time, he knew he would be leaving a lot of himself back here, and he would have to make himself focus on his professors instead of wondering how his wife and son were doing back home. This was made particularly tricky for the fact that he was starting back from zero today. He wasn't going back to his new classmates from last semester, carrying on with them. Instead, it was new classmates, new professors, and a brand new degree. Alright, maybe he was a bit nervous about that more than anything.

He could hear Elliott off in his crib, just peacefully awake and entertained by his surroundings. More and more they could see him staring up at the tree on the wall, and they would wonder what he thought when he saw it. It also made them hesitate about relocating him to the nursery, starting the transition so that he'd be okay with his new crib by the time his baby brother or sister came around. Maya wasn't exactly in any condition to climb on a ladder and get painting these days.

"I think I just need to get him acclimated," Maya had declared the night before, when they had considered putting Elliott in the nursery for the night. "I can take him in there during the day, show him the mural there until he knows it more…"

She was looking to Lucas' return to school, too, from her own side of it, of course. While the next few weeks and months would be about business school, and finding his way with all these new people and subjects, she had her baking, and her research for Professors Robinson and Patil, on top of the ever evolving care of their son and the growth of their Bee, and helping her mother with baby Alex, and looking after her father in these last months of his life…

"Feels like a lot…" Lucas had stated, unable to keep from sounding concerned, as they'd reflected on this, getting into bed.

"I learned my lesson, don't worry, I won't overdo it," she'd smiled at him, sitting there, and the way she'd looked up at him as she did, he had to smile back. She barely had to do a thing to make him think she was just so adorable, but sitting there, twenty weeks along and smiling as she did…

"I know," he breathed, sitting with her and leaning to kiss the side of her head. "I just…"

"Can't help it?" she guessed. "I'd be more worried if you didn't worry."

Stepping up to the crib this morning, with his seven-month-old boy staring up at him and kicking his legs about, Lucas knew it would be alright. Maya would keep him posted, feeding him the odd cute picture or video, and by the end of the day he would get to come back and see those excited faces again.

"So, what's today?" Lucas asked Maya, when she'd woken and sat up in bed looking back at him with Elliott in his arms.

"Today," Maya's eyes turned up as she recalled. "I'll be here all morning. Mom's bringing Alex over here instead of me going out there. I am going to be trying a few sculpting things for cake decoration and she's going to help me out. Hoping to get a bit of exercise in after lunch unless someone has any other ideas for better use of my time," she nodded over to the baby with a smirk. "And then I'm going to see my dad for a bit since I won't get to go tomorrow." Even if they had decided to be surprised about whether they were having a girl or another boy, it didn't stop them from looking forward to this appointment anyway, to see how much their Bee had grown and if everything was on track.

"No running late this time," Lucas shook his head, thinking back to how he'd missed most of the appointment last time, when they were finding out about Elliott being a boy, because one of his professors had held him back to talk. This time around they had been able to schedule their day at the doctor's so it would be on a non-class day. He was working at the bookstore, but he'd taken the afternoon off, the better to accompany his wife.

Driving up to the university that day, it felt like he'd gone and hit rewind and ended up back at the beginning of the previous semester. He'd been new then, too, under different circumstances. At the very least, he'd had someone there to prevent him from being a complete stranger. He'd had Ramona, back from high school, middle school, elementary… He didn't have any of that today, or at least not entirely. He'd barely gotten out of his car that he spotted a trio of familiar faces headed his way, as though they had been waiting there for him to show up. Ramona, Gabriela, and Ariana, his now former classmates but forevermore friends, and self-proclaimed aunties to Elliott… At this point, they were basically family, so what did it matter that they wouldn't be in class together anymore?

"Going to miss you in there," Gabriela greeted him with a quick hug.

"If it helps, I really wish you were all going to be out there with me, too," Lucas laughed.

"Any cute, single guys in any of your classes, you let me know, yeah?" Ariana tapped his arm. "I could do with a business oriented man."

"What's he going to do, walk in and say 'hello, I'm Lucas, I'm new, you seeing anyone?'" Ramona couldn't help but chuckle at the thought.

"There are better ways," Ariana protested. "Besides, the guy is good with words, isn't he?"

"Better yet, have him show your picture around," Gabriela chimed in, and whether or not this was sarcasm, Ariana was all smiles and nodding as though saying 'yeah, let's do that.'

"We could just walk him to class," Ramona spoke up, the voice of reason in the trio. "We don't start for a while." If he didn't already know he would miss being in class with them, this would have definitely done it.

There was hardly time for Ariana to go and poach herself a potential match, though the rest of them had gotten a kick out of watching her scope out the guys coming toward the room, being so very covert but also not covert at all.

"Okay, we have to get her out of here before she embarrasses you in front of all your new friends. Have a great morning, text us for lunch," Gabriela told Lucas before nudging for Ariana to get up and follow. Ramona stood and waved back with a grin before following the other two. Lucas watched them go, feeling about as ready as he could get, with a handful of minutes to spare.

"Friends of yours?" He looked up to find a guy looking back at him, the textbook under his arm pegging him for being part of his class.

"Yeah," Lucas chuckled. "They, uh… They wanted to come and see me to my first class," he explained, deciding against sharing anything along the line of 'one of them wanted to stare at the guys and find herself a boyfriend.' "I was in a different program last semester," he added instead.

"Figured you were new, guess I was half right. I'm Trey," he extended his hand, and Lucas stood from his bench to shake it.

"Lucas," he nodded.

"How come you changed programs?"

"Long and short of it? I'm married, got a seven-month-old son and another baby due in May, and it was better for everyone if I went and worked with my father instead of being in school another six years to be a veterinarian, so here I am."

"Wow," Trey blinked. "Okay, got it," he laughed before turning to signal some of the others to come over. A guy and girl, standing just inside the lecture hall, stepped back out and walked over to them.

"Made a new friend?" the girl asked, with a smirk belonging to a joke Lucas did not understand until Trey brushed this off with a smile.

"No, nothing like that," he told her before turning back to Lucas. "This is Kat, that's Wilson," he pointed to each of his friends. "If you need to get caught up with anything, you should talk to them. And they've got a kid, too, so you'll have that in common. Guys, this is Lucas, he's new," he turned the introduction toward his friends. Within seconds, all hands had been shaken along with vows that it was nice to meet one another.

"How old is yours?" Wilson asked. He looked to be a couple years older, as did Kat, possibly about twenty-three or twenty-four. He also looked like he could have been Sophie's brother, with that head of red hair and those freckles.

"Uh, well, our son is seven months old now, but we have another one on the way, due in May," Lucas revealed. "You?"

"Our daughter just turned two on Christmas Eve," Kat replied, with a smile Lucas knew very well, from his own face and Maya's, whenever they spoke of Elliott. He'd probably had a similar one a moment ago.

As they headed into the hall to go and find seats, Lucas gave the trio a brief rundown of how he'd ended up here, from transferring over from Houston when they were expecting Elliott, to be closer to their families, and then starting here last fall only to find himself having to reconsider his goals when they found out they were expecting again, dropping his plans to be a vet and instead working toward joining his father's business, which brought him here today.

Lucas had not expected to find himself making friends so fast, and who knew if that was what Trey, Kat, and Wilson would become, but he had a pretty good feeling about them so far. To think, it might not all have happened so fast if Ariana and the others departing when they did hadn't caught Trey's attention and got them talking.

When he mentioned this to the girls over lunch, a brief 'you're welcome' from Ariana had been followed by questions over these two guys Lucas had been getting to know. To no surprise, she was particularly interested in their character and also their relationship statuses.

"Well, Wilson and Kat are married," Lucas told her. "And then Trey I think is single, but there's also a chance he's gay… or bi, or… Didn't get a chance to say for sure." Ariana kept looking at him. "I'll find out," he promised, and she smiled.

By the end of the day, as he drove up the lane and toward home, Lucas had one thing on his mind and it was getting to see his wife and son. The day may have been hectic enough to keep him more focused than he'd anticipated, but now that it was all over, he missed his family.

The moment he opened the door, he could hear Elliott's high pitched crying from upstairs, along with the fainter sound of Maya's singing. Lucas made his way up at once, just as Maya was crossing from their room and into the nursery, rocking their crying babe. A moment later, she went out the other way again. Lucas didn't know how long she'd been pacing from one end of their room to the other wall in the nursery and back, but he'd guess by the look on her face, not even noticing him as she went, that it had been some time. He went after her into the room.

"Tag me in?" he asked. Maya startled, just barely, as she turned and found him there.

"Not yet, I'm alright," she promised, weaving the words into the lullaby before carrying on with her lyrics. Elliott looked like he'd been screeching his head off into her ear long enough to go all red in the face. Maya just about had to let the lullaby work on her before it would even work on their son, knowing that her losing her calm would only make it harder for Elliott to calm down.

"Want to sandwich him?" Lucas approached. Not waiting so much for an answer, he came up and embraced Maya, not so tight, just enough that Elliott was now between them. He joined his voice to hers, briefly kissing the boy's head.

They ran through the whole song about three times before Elliott either stopped crying or tired himself out so much that he couldn't do anything else but fall asleep, his little head resting at his mother's tired shoulder, her own head sitting at her husband's shoulder.

"Want me to put him down?" Lucas quietly asked.

"In a minute," Maya replied, turning her face up to him. "Hey," she smiled.

"Hi," he smiled back, kissing her. "I really missed you today."

"Me, too," she told him, looking back down to the now sleeping Elliott.

Eventually, Maya had let him take the baby from her. Lucas carried him to his crib, laying him down. He turned back to find his wife sitting on the edge of the bed, running a hand along her belly.

"How was school?" she asked as he came and sat next to her.

"It was good, you know," he shrugged, and he only had to catch the way she looked at him to know she'd seen right through his 'never mind my bit, what's up with you' tactic. "Felt a bit like jumping into a book about a third of the way through when everyone else has read the whole thing," he described. "Everything I tried to read up on since I got my switch over, that helped at least. By the end of the day it didn't feel so jarring anymore. I don't know what it'll be like tomorrow, and the day after that, but whatever it is, I'll get through it," he confidently declared. "Made some friends… a bit," he added. "One guy, and then a married couple. They have a little girl, just turned two a couple weeks ago," he told her, and Maya smiled. "Now you," he met her eye.

"Hey, don't let the welcome wagon fool you," she wagged her finger off toward the crib. "Today was good for me, too," she nodded. "Come see what I did."

They headed down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Maya indicated for Lucas to sit at the table while she went to the refrigerator. She brought over a plastic container, from which she pulled out a figure of a small man which looked an awful lot like Pappy Joe.

"That is so good," Lucas chuckled, carefully handling the figure.

"I was supposed to try a bunch of things, but then I just kept working at that one. I might need to practice getting quicker at doing these."

"Did you show him yet?"

"Oh, yeah," Maya laughed. "He couldn't stop looking at it, took a picture, front and back. He's up visiting the Sandersons right now, went out when I came back from my dad's with Elliott."

"Is that when he started…"

"Caterwauling? Oh, yeah," she sighed. "He was on the ground, crawling around, and he almost went under the bed. I barely managed to snatch him up," she gestured at herself and the part that had been getting in the way. "It was all so fast, he freaked out, and you know the rest." Now that he knew the whole story – now that it was over – they could both sort of laugh it off.

"How was it at your dad's?" Lucas asked.

"Good," Maya nodded. "I mean…" she trailed off, which he took to mean that Kermit had been more or less okay, enough that it would have been easy for someone to assume he was a healthy man of forty, instead of one with a death sentence hanging over his head. Those were almost just as hard as the ones where they could see that something was wrong with him, because sooner or later they would realize they had let themselves get fooled into thinking that everything was well… and then they'd remember that it was so, so far from 'well.'

"Why don't you see if he'd like to come with us tomorrow?" Lucas suggested even as the thought came to him. Maya looked back at him, and she quickly smiled before moving to grab her phone.

The next day, after Lucas went off to the bookstore for the morning, Maya brought Elliott over to Pappy Tom and Granny Mel's house, where he was to spend the better part of the day, until after the appointment. Maya would still joke with her in-laws, making sure that they intended to give the baby back. The way they'd greet his arrival, it really left one to wonder.

Going straight to the Hart house after this, she couldn't deny a part of her had worried that she'd arrive there and find that her father was having a bad day and wouldn't be able to follow. Thankfully this did not turning out to be the case. If anything, Maya didn't think that she'd seen him quite so energized in a while. He was beyond excited at the prospect of seeing his grandchild, hearing his or her heartbeat, and Maya would have given anything to keep giving him reasons to become so energized.

"You two still don't want to know if it's a boy or a girl this time?" Kermit asked as they sat in the waiting room at the clinic, waiting for Lucas.

"We decided to know last time because we didn't see any reason not to," Maya told him. "And there still isn't one not to know this time either, except that it'll be nice to be surprised. So, yeah, we're just going in to make sure everything's as it should be, but that's it."

"Won't you be able to tell? You did last time, didn't you?"

Maya smiled, recalling the day. Lucas had been in school, but he would have made it in time if not for his teacher holding him back to talk. She'd tried to make it so they would wait for him, but there just was no time, and she didn't want to have to reschedule, so she'd gone ahead and sat up there, let them start. As soon as the sound of Elliott's heart could be heard, as soon as she could see the image on the screen… It was all she could see and think about.

The doctor had asked her if she wanted to know what it was, boy or girl. Maya had told her how she wanted to wait for Lucas to get there, even as she did her best not to look too close at anything that might have confirmed one way or the other. The baby had been healthy, that much she had been told, and she was relieved to hear it. Then when the doctor had stepped out, it had been stronger than her, and Maya had looked at the image. She hadn't meant to see anything, but then she had, and as she'd tell Lucas, it had been impossible to unsee it. The realization had been immediate, and her eyes had welled up, knowing they had been having a baby boy. When Lucas had arrived, all out of breath and full of apologies, all she could think was 'now I get to tell him.' It had been even better.

Now, this time, she didn't know what would happen, but she had every intention not to find out. Lucas arrived while Maya and Kermit were still in the waiting room, barely had time to say hello that they were being called in.

"Dad, you don't have to stand in the corner like that, you're not in time-out," Maya laughed, holding out her hand for him to step up and stand nearby just as Lucas did.

Lucas had spent the whole morning just bordering on stressed, thinking of the many things that could have gone wrong to keep him from being on time at the appointment that day. It was dumb, he knew. He had been on plenty of appointments with Maya, in both pregnancies, and with Elliott, never been late or missed a single one he was supposed to show up at, but he'd missed that one specific one, and this being the one with the same purpose, even if they weren't planning to find out, he felt particularly intent on being on time. He hadn't relaxed until he'd made it into the clinic and they'd heard Maya's name get called.

Now he stood next to the big chair where she sat, as she pulled up her shirt and the doctor got the machine started. And as much as he looked at the screen when the image came up, Lucas found himself looking at Kermit several times as he witnessed all this. He had been to his fair share of sonograms in his life, by both Katy and Abigail's accounts he had never missed one, none of Maya's or Sam's, Cara's, Eliza's, or Wyatt's. This was different though, wasn't it? This was his grandchild, and though it was not the first, it was one he might never get to see with his own eyes except on a screen like this.

"Hey, you alright?" Maya had reached over to take her father's hand, seeing how he looked like he was about to cry. Kermit nodded, at a loss for words. He was just so thankful that they had invited him today.

"Do you want to know the sex of the baby?" the doctor asked, once she'd finished her examination. Maya and Lucas exchanged a look, one more confirmation.

"We don't," Maya told her.

"We want to wait," Lucas added.

"Alright, well, just in case you change your mind, I can write it down for you, put it in an envelope?" Another look. It didn't hurt to have the option to change their minds, right? So, the doctor wrote on a small card, folded it, stuck it inside an envelope, sealed this, and handed it over. It felt like they were being presented with something way more powerful than a piece of paper. And they had to laugh for how they both hesitated before Lucas finally took it and stuck it in his back pocket.

"So, this won't be a surprise, I have to pee," Maya announced as her father helped her back on her feet.

"I should probably go, too," he told her.

"Come on, I'll show you where the men's room is," Maya led the way.

Lucas moved to follow, only to stall when he saw that Maya had left her jacket on a nearby chair. He went and grabbed it, taking another quick look at the screen. They would get a print out of this latest scan, where they had been promised that anything potentially 'revealing' would not be visible. The same could not be said of what was up on that screen just then. All it took was one glimpse and it was done. Once he saw it, he stalled on the spot, looking in earnest this time. In his head, he could hear Maya's voice, not one year ago. So, you're a guy.

They were having another boy. Elliott would have a little brother, and he and Maya… they would have sons… sons…

His hand briefly pressed to his mouth, swallowing the surprise, even as he had to tell himself to pull it together before he got back to Maya and her father. They weren't going to find out this time, they'd decided. This had been an accident, but there was no going back, was there? He was going to have to pretend like he didn't know, for the next four months. If Maya knew that he knew, it would just bug her until she'd insist on being told, and then she wouldn't get that surprise she'd so wanted. No, for her sake, he was going to have to pretend. He could do it, he could… for their Bee, their boy.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners