Chapter 113
Around This Table

"You know, the first time I took one of these, I was hoping for a different result than the one I got, but the feeling was kind of similar…" Maya breathed as they sat in the bathroom, Lucas and her.

He knew exactly what she meant. He had been thinking about that day, Halloween three years back, same as her. Him and her, sat on the edge of the tub, waiting on a timer. It had been a different tub, different bathroom, in a house out in Houston, but the set up was very similar beyond that. Similar… Back then, they'd just been boyfriend and girlfriend, in college and not looking to have children yet. Now they were married, with two kids… still in college… though by the time this baby was born, they'd be done. If there was a baby…

It was Thanksgiving now, and they were due for a loaded day of family visits, family meals… And here they were, in the middle of trying to bring another child into the world, about to see all their families in a single day. So, wouldn't it stand to reason that it would be the perfect time to share big news like that, if there was any of it to share? Maya was pretty sure that she'd know on the inside when she was pregnant, as she'd done both times before, but then maybe it was just barely too early for her to feel any of it and not so early that a test wouldn't be able to recognize it for them. So… shouldn't they?

Both of them were at least on the same page in not feeling like it would go anywhere. More than that, this just felt like they were rushing in, peeking at the answers out of convenience. And once they looked, sure, there was the very possible chance that they'd make a wonderful discovery, but it was also just as likely that it would be negative, and how was that going to hit? They knew better than to presume that this whole thing would be a quick process, but it was new to them, after hitting two perfect scores without trying, so…

"Lucas? Maya?" Pappy Joe's voice reached them from out in the hall, and Lucas sprang to the closed door.

"Yeah, be right there," he told his grandfather, pressing his hand to the door.

"Everything alright?" Pappy Joe asked. Lucas turned his head back to look at Maya. They hadn't told him about any of this, not the trying, not the test. Maya shook her head.

"Fine, yes. Maya's just helping me with a thing on my back," Lucas explained, as casual as he could make himself sound.

"I see. Well, hurry it up, we're expected for breakfast and your offspring are rowdy when they're hungry."

"Be out in a minute," Lucas promised. When he heard his grandfather walk away, he turned back to see that Maya was now standing and peering at the stick on the countertop. "He might think we're doing something else in here…" Lucas breathed out. Now Maya was stuffing the stick back in the box and putting the whole thing in the trash. She pulled out the bag and closed it for disposal. That was all the answer they'd need. "Hey, you good?" Lucas approached her from behind, closed his arms around her.

"Could be a false negative, but I don't think it is. That's fine. It would have been fun, getting to tell them all today, but there's also the whole waiting thing, not telling people right away, so it's probably better off that way." And for all that, she was disappointed. He could see it in her eyes, and he understood it, felt it with her. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "I'm okay, really," she looked up at him. "By the time we get out there it'll be behind us."

So, off they went, on what was going to be a very full day of family, and friends, and food… so much food… The 'schedule' would take them to the Hunter Hart house for breakfast, then to the Harts for lunch, and to the elder Friars' for dinner, and if that wasn't enough, they were expected for an evening capper at the home of Zay and Nadine. This last part would be just Maya and Lucas, as Pappy Joe and the boys would spend the night at Thomas and Melinda's.

They couldn't even feel bad about passing the responsibility out, as the whole thing had been the grandparents' idea. Shawn and Katy had offered it as well, and so had Abigail, and this had in all likelihood been the root of their ending up in their bathroom, bright and early on Thanksgiving morning, taking a pregnancy test. No one had said a thing, no one would, but there was enough evidence to suggest their parents either knew there was this third grandchild on the near horizon, or they hoped there would be and they were subconsciously enabling its arrival. If that was the case, then it was only further reason for Maya and Lucas both to act like this was any old November day.

They couldn't have arrived fast enough at the Hunter Hart house. They'd done their best to hold the boys over until breakfast, but by now not even the promise of seeing their grandparents or Alex or MJ or the twins would take them out of their cranky pass. They wanted to eat, and they wanted to eat now. If nothing else, Elliott had gotten Noah saying 'cookie' by the time they arrived. Once they got there, the preamble to the meal was cut down to almost nothing, as Maya's parents had some hungry and vocal little ones of their own. Katy was sure the twins had been a hair's breadth away from mounting a mutiny, the better to get their little brothers to stop complaining.

"You know, I respect the method," Shawn gave a 'suspicious' look to his sons and grandsons, the four of them brightening right up when they were sat around the table and given their food. They hadn't eaten a bite yet, but they were here, and it was there, and that was good enough to disconnect the 'alarm bells.' "Not crazy about the attitude… and the volume," he stuck his fingers in his ears, the better to get MJ and the Friar boys laughing even as he leaned over to Alex at his side and whispered at his ear. Soon, the littlest Hunter was laughing with the rest of them.

The breakfast table that morning was surrounded by the Hunters, and the young Friars, and the Matthews family along with them. This included Cory, Topanga, Riley and Dylan, and August and Hunter. Maya and Lucas would be seeing their friends and former Houston roommates again, in the evening. In the meantime, they were bound for the elder Orlandos' home after this.

Thanksgiving was very much one of the top holidays in that house, for as long as they'd known Dylan. Actually, it had been pretty standard in the beginning, but then after his mother had left, his father had wanted so much to help his sons through the abandonment. He'd tried to accomplish this by taking those things Kyle and Dylan already cared about and feeing their enthusiasm. And he did it with building up family routines between the three of them. Thanksgiving had been the proof of concept for all that.

After breakfast was through, the little boys found themselves corralled by the shambling beast that was Dylan Orlando, much to their screeching merriment. If he ever 'accidentally' tripped and fell to the ground, they would quickly pile on to him until he succeeded in freeing himself and the chase would resume. Meanwhile, Nellie and Gracie convinced August to go outside with them throw the basketball at the hoop. They couldn't reach the big one, but they'd take turns and the sixteen-year-old would hoist one of them up as high as he safely could and then they would take their shot. Nellie liked this game more than her twin, but Gracie would try it anyway, and she would do pretty well for herself.

"You look like you want to bail out already," Lucas whispered to Maya as they stood momentarily apart from her parents and the other adults in attendance, the better to see how Elliott and Noah were doing, playing with Dylan and the rest of the little boys.

"Well, my parents are definitely passing 'subtle' messages, so I can just picture what it'll be like with your mother," she whispered back, fading to just mouthing the words on the end and getting him this close to laughing out loud.

"We're not there yet. I've got your back," he vowed.

Before they'd get to that corner of their joint family tree, they'd be packing up Pappy Joe and the boys back in the minivan as they drove on to their next stop: Lunch at the Hart house.

The boys had napped from before they'd left the Hunter house and they woke up again just as they were being carried through the door and surrounded by others of their aunts and uncles. They all had their own ways together. Elliott and Noah loved Sam because he was tall and he could lift them up high, would put them on his shoulders. Then both Cara and Eliza they saw loads of whenever they'd come over to work on cakes with Maya, and fittingly their young aunts would be as sweet as could be. As for Wyatt, well, being the youngest of his siblings, he would look to his little nephews like the little brothers he never had. He loved to show them new things most of all. And then there was Abigail, who was in every way their grandmother as much as Katy and Melinda were. Whenever they'd be around her and they got a chance to be held by her, they eagerly sought her out.

"Can I take them up to my room?" Wyatt asked his sister while Sam and Cara busied themselves at helping their nephews out of their jackets.

"Uh, sure, yeah," Maya smiled, just as she spotted some of the other guests in attendance today at her stepmother's house. Along with Abigail, the kids, and Elizabeth Hart, Maya and Lucas would find Luna Hart and her daughters visiting from Tucson. And they would find Charles Hart, up from Florida and looking at once uncertain of himself and quietly just glad to have been invited.

Somehow, the presence of the old man did not make as much of a wave as that of Stephen Brett and his daughters'. Though, the combination of all these parties, with the widow of the estranged son, the previously unknown grandchildren, the estranged and still bitter daughter, the divorced elders, and now the widow's new boyfriend and his children coming along to meet all of them…

"How's it looking?" Lucas covertly whispered to Sam when he got the chance. There was no need for him to specify what he meant. Sam looked like he had been doing his best to navigate everything and everyone since he got up that morning.

"Never saw Mom so nervous," Sam told him. "Grandma kicked her out of the kitchen because she didn't trust her around anything sharp right now," he recounted, imitating jittery hands.

"Right…" Lucas nodded. "She seems okay now."

"Yeah, she calmed down a lot after Mr. Brett came and they talked," Sam went on. He paused here like the next part was hard for him to speak… or admit. "He's good with her, he… he makes her happy, I can tell." It was still clearly weird for him, seeing his mother with another man than his father, but he was adjusting. Like he'd said, Stephen Brett was a good guy and he made Abigail happy. What more could he want? He might have also gotten to a point where he liked having him and the girls around, too. "Hey, you're going to your parents' house for dinner, right?"

"We are, yeah," Lucas confirmed. "Why?" he asked, even as he got the feeling he knew.

"Dora's going to be there, too," Sam stated. She would be, with her parents and her brothers. The Hillards would also be in attendance. "Can you give her something for me? I was going to go with you, but…" he gestured back to the mess of people in his house. He couldn't in good conscience bail out at a time like this.

"Of course," Lucas promised his brother-in-law. If anyone would understand, it would be Dora.

The lunch/afternoon portion of their Thanksgiving was just on this side of chaotic, though this was to be expected. On the whole, they wouldn't say it had been bad, but then so many of them would be sitting with an air about them like they were guarding a part of themselves out of nerves, out of remorse, out of anger… All they could do in this case was to focus on the good, and there was enough of it so that on the surface they'd had a happy, talkative gathering. The food helped, too.

Once it was over, it was just a bit exhausting to think that they had yet another meal ahead of them, but then they'd known they'd hit this point in the day, hadn't they? The best fix they had for this was to take a few minutes before carrying on to the elder Friars', to look to their sons and focus on them like they were on their own private island, and then they'd feel breath in them that allowed them to carry on.

"Gramma!" Elliott was a bolt on the ground as the door opened ahead of them and he spotted her. He ran up the path and was scooped up by his grandmother. Melinda Friar hugged the boy like he'd just caused her heart to burst open in the best way.

"Oh, hello, sweetheart, little bug," she stroked his cheek. He may have been born just early enough to no longer qualify as her Junebug, but she had not forgotten what he'd almost been. "And now you, there you are…" she watched Noah as he was led along by Pappy Joe's hand like she wouldn't be satisfied until she had a whole host of little grandchildren to welcome into her house. It was a good thing that she was too occupied to notice that very thought play over her son and daughter-in-law's faces.

Inside the house, as was to be expected, full activity was upon them. The Cassidy family had been on hand since mid-morning, the Hillards had come in from Houston just after lunch, and whatever they'd been up to they were still good to carry on. The new arrivals only helped refresh everyone's spirits.

"Come here a minute," Lucas signed to his cousin when he caught her eye. She'd just finished what was apparently the latest in a string of card games with Henry and Maggie Hillard. She excused herself and got up to join him. "I was asked to give you this," Lucas presented her with a large envelope. It felt as though it had some cardboard inside to ensure that the contents would not get bent or damaged unless the carrier was particularly careless, which Lucas was not. As soon as Dora saw it, she seemed to know what it was and her smile spoke volumes.

"Thank you," she told him.

"Do I get to know what it is?" Lucas asked with a smirk. Dora just laughed and shook her head before heading down into the basement, likely to open the envelope in private.

As sweet as they always found Elliott and Noah's interactions with their grandparents and great grandparents, Maya and Lucas both could be swept up just as easily in seeing people interact with their sons when they weren't grandparents themselves but wished to be. Some of those didn't even have children to begin with, or they had them, but they were still too young to even consider it for years to come. This was very much the case with Lucas' aunts and uncles here for Thanksgiving dinner. Dot and Emmett Cassidy, Hank and Tanya Hillard, they spent a lot of the evening either holding one of the little Friars or watching them like they were just the most precious small humans ever. By the time Maya and Lucas would continue on to the next stop in their 'Turkey Tour,' leaving them until morning, they would be with Dot and Hank, asleep but too cozy to be put down.

"Would we be really bad friends if we just went home now?" Maya asked as Lucas climbed into the driver's seat and joined her. He looked over.

"Tired?" he asked. She nodded. "Just tired, or…"

"Just tired," Maya confirmed before sighing. "I don't know, maybe we should go anyway. Otherwise, what's the point of leaving the boys with your parents?" she asked and almost immediately made herself bite back a laugh as she pointed a 'don't say it' finger at her husband. They could think of a couple of things they could use this free night for.

"If you want to go home now, we will go home now. If you still want to go see Zay and Nadine and the others, then we will do that. The after part is not an either/or situation. Unless you're falling asleep by then, in which case…"

"No, no, I think I'm finding my second wind," she declared.

"Are you?" he smirked. She raised her chin just an inch.

"Yes… Thanksgiving miracle… or something."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners