Chapter 127
Everywhere We Grow

"You know what this is going to get me for the next few months if this keeps up? Everyone's going to be convinced it's twins, and I'm going to have to keep telling them it's not…" Maya breathed as she sat up in bed and looked down at herself. Here she was, only twelve weeks in, and if she looked back at pictures of herself when she'd been expecting Elliott, it felt like she was a good month and some ahead and definitely showing. Which was more than fine by her… especially because Lucas' affections toward their unborn children was always one of the sweetest things… but it was still kind of startling.

"What happens if it actually is? Maybe they just haven't been able to tell yet," Lucas suggested. His smirk said enough to assure her that he was joking… mostly. He moved around until he was able to address her small-but-not-so-small bump and gave it a light tap with his finger. "Hello in there, is there just one of you? Two?"

"What do you think's going to happen, kick once for one, twice for two?" Maya laughed.

"Definitely too early for that, but it doesn't hurt to check anyway," he shrugged.

"Guess not," she agreed as she watched him press a kiss where he'd tapped his finger. She matched this by leaning to kiss the top of his head.

"Maybe it's because it's all we've had before, but I can't help thinking it'll be another boy," Lucas revealed. Maya considered this, smoothing her shirt over the curve of her growing belly.

"I kind of do, too," she admitted. "Not that I wouldn't be so happy if it was a girl…"

"I would love that…" Lucas replied, his mind instantly running with images of a little girl looking so like her mother, running around with big brothers Elliott and Noah… "No pressure, alright, tadpole?" he spoke toward the little belly. "You come however you are, and we will love you, okay?"

"And now we really need to get moving," Maya smiled after getting a look at the time. The boys would be awake soon if they weren't already, and the two of them had to get to class, whether that was at their university or their old middle school.

"Okay, just one more," Lucas pressed another kiss over her belly button before springing off across the hall. Maya watched him go with a laugh. He really became something else when their children were involved, whether they were out here in the world or growing inside her. It only made her love him harder.

After the morning routine of seeing the boys out of bed, and down through breakfast, and getting dressed for the day, Lucas and Maya took off together. He dropped her off at the middle school, watched her go until she had made it to the top of the stairs, and then continued on to the university. With all the detours they had been left to take over the last few years, it was still only now hitting him that they were nearly done. In a couple of months, they would be through with college, through with their student life. He would go and start working with his father already over the summer, just two weeks after graduation. As far as he was concerned, he could have started the very next day after getting his diploma, but his father insisted he should take the time and enjoy this milestone before leaping into this next phase in his life. It would give them time to work out his schedule with his father, and with the bookstore.

Right about now there just wasn't any logic in his giving that up. They had two and would soon have three children to look after and more importantly to provide for. It just didn't feel as though he could set aside that piece of his family's income until he really felt as though he could go by on what he'd get on the other side alone. Right now, Maya was working at the art store, yes, and she'd probably get to put in more hours in the weeks after she graduated, but then that would only go so long before she had to stop and go on leave. After the baby was born, when she felt the time was right, she'd be able to go and seek out a teaching job, but who knew how long it would be before she got there? So, he wasn't quitting the bookstore anytime soon.

This last year of studies felt like it was going by so fast. There was plenty for him to get caught up in, especially as he and Maya had first been trying and then succeeded to conceive another child, so every once in a while, he would start to think about other things, other possibilities he'd seen float around his head… As he looked to the future, to his family's future as much as his own, the thing which kept running through his head was his grandmother's ranch. It was little more than a tumbleweed through his mind at this point, because… well, it wasn't like the kids, and school, and work, it was just that part of him who couldn't forget.

That place had meant so much to him when he was younger. He would go and visit his grandparents there, oh… several times a week sometimes. He had wanted to become a veterinarian, all with this outlook of caring for animals which he'd gained from being out among the horses and the people who looked after them at Sullivan Stables. And then his grandfather had died, and then his grandmother, too, and after they were gone, he just couldn't bring himself to go back, not for years. Then he'd given up that dream of being a vet, and he was moving on, perfectly content with his new dream. And then he'd run into Juliet, and he'd gone back there… Since then, he couldn't get the place out of his head. There was nothing immediate about it though, so it became the passing tumbleweed, never caught, just sighted from time to time. Except sometimes it felt as though the more often he thought about it, and the closer he got to being out of school, it felt like the thoughts were accumulating, and the tumbleweed was slowing, practically begging for him to reach down and take it… and do something with it.

He could do something there, couldn't he? Even if he wasn't tending to the horses, the place was more than that, it was a business, and he had all this new knowledge in his head, knowledge he could use. But he resisted, or he felt like something in him wanted him to resist. On the one hand, the place was running very well, and he didn't want to walk in there like he thought it needed to change. And on the other, maybe there was a part of him that worried about what it might do to him, to be out there but not in the capacity he'd always intended. The way Juliet had been around him, when he and Maya had seen her, there had been this look in her and it had taken him a while to pull it apart, but he just knew deep down. At some time or another, his grandmother might have told her about his old dream. Maybe she had been ready and willing to take him on, to follow through on the old promise he'd made to Marianne Sullivan.

Maybe this was why he couldn't pick up that thought, not yet, not until he was through with university and he could face the future head on. Right now, he just needed to get himself to that point, for Maya, for their boys, for the baby.

X

Maya may not have found a great friend in Sue Cartwright – or any friend at all, clearly – but she was not without connections at that school. For one thing, while the woman had not been her art teacher – thank goodness – there were still a number of teachers who had been there when she'd been a student here, and they remembered her well. Miss Alcott wasn't here anymore, she taught at the high school now, as she discovered, and of course Mr. Matthews was out there, too. The biggest surprise was how old Mrs. Brown was still teaching science, although now as she looked at her from an adult's point of view, she figured she hadn't been nearly as old as they'd all thought her to be back in the day. By now, she had the look of someone who still had somewhere like five years left in her before retirement came calling, and even if it did, well, she might ignore that call. She loved science and loved sharing it with kids even more, something Maya had both been able to receive as a student and today could appreciate as a future teacher.

The first time she'd seen her again, a few days into her first week, they'd both had this moment where they paused and looked at each other like a face had been yanked out of the past and they couldn't quite believe it. Maya might have found it very easy for the woman to have forgotten her. How many students could she have had in the last ten plus years? But she saw her, and she pointed at her, and she said her name. When Maya smiled, 'Doc Brown,' as she'd been nicknamed, approached her with joyful haste and embraced her. Possibly for how her experience with the art teacher had been so unpleasant, the encounter had renewed something in her heart and made her even happier to have been brought to do her field work here.

Mrs. Brown had been able to tell, about the baby, just by looking at her even then, and upon finding out that this was to be the third of her children with fellow former student Lucas Friar, now… From that day on, she'd stolen away to hang out in the science class with her whenever she could, which was mostly over lunch. It did not take long for Maya to find that Mrs. Brown did not care for Mrs. Cartwright. Actually, from what the science teacher told her – indirectly or not – Maya had been left to understand that just about the entire faculty did not care for Mrs. Cartwright, but Mrs. Brown did more than just 'not care.' Oh, she'd tried, when the woman had been hired on to replace the former art teacher, Maya's teacher, who had left for a position offered elsewhere.

"I'm as friendly as they come, you know that," she'd told Maya, who had nothing but agreement there. "But now you've seen how she mistreats that young man, and I don't need to tell you how she felt once she learned that old Mrs. Brown had a Mrs. of her own," she tipped a look to her and Maya smiled.

"How is Marlene doing?" she asked, recalling so many stories the science teacher had used to illustrate her lessons, using her wife as one of the examples.

"Oh, as beautiful as the day we met, even if she has more trouble believing it nowadays. I don't mind reminding her any chance I get. She has fully settled into the kindly grandmother role." Mrs. Felicia and Mrs. Marlene Brown had two sons, and they had featured in the teacher's stories, too. Now Maya could just imagine how her daughters-in-law and her three grandchildren had been integrated into the scientific narrative as well.

Maya's time in the middle school wouldn't last nearly as long as she would have liked, she knew, but at the same time… It wasn't just that she was ready in her heart to be a teacher, to take her place in a classroom, she just… She'd been here just a little over two weeks now, and she was nearly done, but she was just… invested. She couldn't see herself just disconnecting again from these kids' lives the moment she did her last day in Sue's class. Whether this had to do with Sue herself and wanting to counteract the negative spirit she spread throughout the place, well… she'd be lying if she said no.

She was thinking about it that day, having lunch with Mrs. Brown again, when Ariel Su poked her head through the door. She wanted to ask the science teacher a question and was surprised to find Maya there as well. As it turned out, her question also related to Maya, but she'd wanted it to be a surprise. She had been reading about molecular gastronomy and wondered if there might be something they could incorporate into their cakes. Mrs. Brown was familiar with Maya's small cake business, and the fact that a couple of her students were involved, and she wasted no time answering Ariel's question with all the enthusiasm she always brought to class. Maya ended up feeling as though she was back in attendance in the woman's class, and she loved every second of it.

After Ariel had gone on her way, Maya and the science teacher continued to talk about cakes – from a purely 'we like to eat them' point of view. Out of nowhere, Maya happened to mention Lucas' idea, about her starting a baking club at the school. Felicia Brown thought it was a wonderful idea and declared right then and there that she would back Maya up if she ever decided to bring it to the principal. To hear her speak, they could have gone right now.

"I'm only here for another week or so, and then the year's almost over," Maya pointed out. "And by the time the next one starts, I'll be out to here and about to have a newborn on my hands. At best, I wouldn't be able to much of anything until almost a year from now, and even then, shouldn't I wait until I get a teaching post somewhere to do any of this?"

"You'll do it right here," Mrs. Brown gave her the good crazy eye which had earned her the Doc Brown nickname. "You never know, positions open all the time. The old crone won't be here forever, and that is one of the greater joys in my life. You, taking her place, would be the greatest."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners