A/N: Managed to very coincidentally have it be New Year's on the daily and here at the same time, ha!

Chapter 170
Merry Bright and New

The light snow that had been coming and going for the last couple of weeks had finally decided to fall in earnest one morning, much to the pleasure of the Friar brothers and probably any number of children across the city. Maya and Lucas had lost count of how many times they'd heard a giddy cry from one or more of their sons as they'd looked out the window and seen snow falling or dusting the ground a little, followed by the inevitable pouts and tiny tantrums when they saw that it was nowhere near enough to play in. But this morning…

Lucas had been the first one awake, by chance, and as his eyes had been drawn by movement in the window, he'd found that it was snowing again… snowing a lot more than they'd seen all month. So, he'd gotten up out of bed, careful not to wake Maya, and he'd gone to investigate… and found the ground below was blanketed, already enough that they knew it would definitely count. Now, he grinned. He tiptoed back to the bed, where he proceeded to very delicately but decisively go about waking his wife. It didn't take long for him to tell that she had woken up but was pretending like she hadn't, all the better for him to keep trying. He smiled to himself. Fine. If she wanted to test how far he'd go, he could do that. He knew where she was most ticklish, and he knew where a touch, whether from his hand or his lips, would make it impossible for her to keep pretending.

"I like where this is going…" she finally – quietly – announced herself, and he smiled, carrying on, moving forward… He wasn't about to ignore this offer; they'd long learned to take their moments where they presented themselves.

Emboldened by the start of their day, the next phase had been very easy to piece together and implement. Maya went and collected the still sleeping Jamie from his crib and followed Lucas down the hall to Elliott and Noah's room, where they found them still sound asleep in their beds. The three brothers didn't take long to come around, and when they found themselves all together, with their parents there, too, they all wondered what was going on… and then they were told to look outside.

Had it been up to them, the boys would have consumed their breakfast in the blink of an eye. Even little Jamie, who would often take his cue from his big brothers, received his food and tried to eat it very fast like they did until they were all told to slow it down. They did slow down, though all their legs could be seen dangling with their giddiness under the table. In due time, the great endeavor of getting them dressed for snow play time could start and, when they were good to go, they stepped out the kitchen door.

It was everything they could have wanted and so, so much more. Pappy Joe and Patty emerged from their home and, at Lucas and Maya's request, kept an eye on their great grandsons while they played. They would take them back to the little house afterward to warm up and wind down a bit, all the better to make it so that the two parents would have some much-needed private time to wrap some presents from Santa to the young brothers. Maya tackled her portion with determined, artistic eyes, while Lucas found himself distracted, enough so that, when Maya finished her pile and looked over to find he was still barely on the second present, she nudged his foot with her own until he looked at her.

"Need a hand?" she smiled. He looked down, saw how far ahead she was and how far back he remained. He sighed. "Hey…" Maya blinked. "It's okay, it's not a…"

"No, that's not it, I just…" Lucas shook his head, not sure what to say.

"Does it have anything to do with whatever it is that's been on your mind the last couple of weeks?" she asked, and he let out a breath. How could he even be surprised at this point?

While Maya took the initiative to just go ahead and help wrap his half of the presents, Lucas did his best to explain his conundrum. No one would understand better what it felt like. They had both needed to sort of reassess and realign their plans when they had become parents once and then twice in such quick succession. Neither of them had forgotten that night when it had all come to a head, with Maya thinking she'd have to just give up on this idea of being a teacher, with how her college education had been interrupted for a second time. That was the same night when he had made up his mind to set aside the veterinary track in favor of something else that would allow him to finish school and start working, as much to be able to support their family and to not rack up so much student debt as to ensure that he wouldn't miss out on their children's early years the way he might have.

He told her about how he'd wanted to step aside from the ranch for a while, out of some sense that he could never find something to satisfy him there if he couldn't be a vet. And he told her about how he'd sidestepped that notion, at least for now, after doing some research on his grandparents.

"I had no idea that they were so…" Maya started to say after he told her about the article he'd found on Simon's memorial, shook her head when she couldn't decide on a word. Lucas took this pause to share something more.

"After I found that, I tried to find out more, I talked to Juliet about it, and she showed me all these boxes she has, a lot of them that belonged to my grandparents, from all the way back when the ranch opened. She told me how she's been looking to get it all organized for a while but never got around to it. Anyway, I spent… hours… looking through a lot of it, and I found something."

He'd taken a picture of the clippings with his phone. He showed these to her now, went on wrapping as she read. Even without seeing her face, he could tell the article was having an effect; it'd done the same to him, too, when he'd found out exactly how his mother's father had been taken from her. He'd been a hero, saving stranded horses from a fire, but he'd paid the price. He'd gotten stuck, and the smoke had overwhelmed him…

"That's… The fence, that's where you…" she looked up at him and he nodded.

The fence he'd crashed through… It surrounded the space that had once held the stable where Simon Sullivan was killed. When he had read the article, when he'd pieced it all together, Lucas had been left feeling as though he had almost literally crashed into his family history. Sure, it had been an accident, but at the same time… For as long as he'd been at the ranch, from a small boy to now, there'd been this sense of foreboding about the fenced lot, and now he knew why. That night… It had completely changed his family's trajectory, from his grandmother to his mother… even him.

His trajectory had changed, too, his and Maya's, when they'd had Elliott, and Noah… It was easy to think that, by now, with where he was, and where she was, and how they Jamie now, too, the first one they'd actually actively tried for, that whole shift was behind them, but now this thing with him proved that it wasn't so. Still, when he'd started to learn more about his grandparents, about Simon Sullivan, it had put things into a new perspective. It reminded him that a lot of good could come from a great, life-changing shift like that. For his grandmother and mother, it had meant Jax coming into the picture, and then Michael. Today, it meant grandchildren, and great grandchildren, whether they'd lived to see it or not. And it meant Sullivan Stables, thriving far beyond what they could have imagined it to be, all those years ago when they'd bought the property and gotten started. It was easy to look at it today, with the benefit of decades of progress, but he had to wonder what it had felt like for his grandmother at the time, in those early years after the fire. Did she ever feel like she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do anymore?

"Is that how you feel?" Maya asked him, with supportive concern.

"No, it's not," he assured her, sitting back with a sigh.

"You could still do it," she told him. He looked at her, and she shrugged. "If it's what you need, then we can make it work somehow." She meant it, he knew, but…

"I can't, that's not what this is about anymore," he replied. They were in the thick of it now, but they were in it together and that felt to him like all he really needed, where he needed to be. "I just don't like this feeling right now, like I'm not where I'm supposed to be, or like there's something I should be doing but I just can't find it." Maya's hand came to rest over his, and he turned his palm over, that their fingers might link together. "And I never want you to think that any of this means that I'm unhappy. Our family, that's everything to me."

"I know," she promised. He brought her hand to his lips, kissed it lightly. It had never been in question for her, as it had never been for him. His issue had more to do with feeling like his tie to the past, through the ranch, had been twisted up in the present, and for that the links that extended toward the future felt impossible to lay down… and he couldn't leave it that way. "Whatever the answer is, I'm sure it exists. You're going to find it, we are going to find it," she vowed. "However long it takes."

"However long it takes," he repeated, confidence bolstered. "Let's just… We'll get through Christmas, and New Year's, the opening… We'll see what happens after that."

Christmas came, to the great anticipation of the young brothers, and if it was magic that they wanted, they got it beyond their wildest expectations. Maya and Lucas always did their best to make the occasion special for their sons while not overspending, but they couldn't pretend as though they hadn't redefined their limits this year, just enough for it to show. Between Lucas working with his father, and Maya's job at the school on top of the cake business, there had been this unspoken sense that their situation had evolved. It didn't change the fact that they were raising three small children and that cost plenty, nor did it mean that the holiday was suddenly about the presents more than anything else. But the boys were small, and excited, and… it felt good to see the way they reacted.

If having their trio so jumpy with holiday cheer wasn't enough to make this their favorite Christmas yet, they had their friends, and they had their family… of which there was so much more this year than there had been last year. The Clutterbuckets and the Youngs flew in again to join the Friars and Olsens, and it felt as though they were all going to make up for years and years of missed Decembers together. They would never forget those days they shared. And they were still going… Their guests were staying with them all through New Year, all the better to be there when the bakery had its grand midnight opening.

They were ready. They were actually ready, all of it, and ahead of schedule enough that when they started to bake everything for the opening day, it was really just as though they were having their first day at work, in their completed, fully stocked kitchen. There was a solid hour at the beginning where both Maya and Charlie had trouble keeping a straight face. They just kept bursting out laughing, like they couldn't believe it was all real. Their small full-time staff – bolstered by their part-time student staff, formerly Maya's junior bakers back home – looked as confused as they were just amused. They understood, strange as it was. For however long it had taken them to get here, it still felt impossible that they had made it to this, that they were actually making all these things that would soon sit in display cases and be sold, that they would have this whole event coming up, as December 31st spent its last hour and then, at the stroke of midnight… they would be open.

"Wow, there's a lot of people already," Ariel Su reported after taking a look around the curtain that kept the windows – and the bakery's interior – obscured from anyone outside. "Like, a lot," she added, while a few of the other young bakers crowded in to see for themselves.

"I couldn't even count them," Phoebe blinked. "I can't see where they stop."

"That's good, right?" Stella pointed out.

"Unless we don't have enough for all of them," Daphne suggested, and now they all looked back to Maya and Charlie, who were already having a final check of everything before they could open the doors. Now they looked over at the cluster of girls before exchanging a look. No, no, they were fine. They had plenty, and if they didn't, well… they'd figure something out.

The minutes were just speeding on. Most of the family had insisted that they would go and wait outside with everyone else, and so they did. The only ones inside were the staff, which included David, and then Lucas, the boys, Caitlin, and Harry. The children had all done very well for themselves as far as sleeping earlier, the better to be awake for the big countdown. Whether they'd stay awake very long after that, well… It didn't seem likely. Their grandparents would take care of getting them home, leaving their parents to enjoy the event for however long it lasted.

"Okay, we need to get outside, it's just under five minutes," Lucas called, and they all hurried to make their way to the door. The children were gathered and brought along with their parents to join the waiting guests.

If it had been any colder, they might have had trouble, but it was alright. The guests were in good spirits, which had been helped by Nando Garcia. Their new neighbor and eternal cheerleader had gone around with coffee, tea, hot chocolate… champagne… whatever they could want, and so the wait had been spent in a rumble of excited conversation. Once Maya and Charlie and the others emerged, that excitement turned toward them. They thanked everyone for coming, exchanged some small talk as they kept their eye on the time, and then it came. They were down to seconds, and Maya and her aunt stood together, arm in arm, as the countdown began, a burst of sound in the small crowd gathered around the bakery… Five, four, three, two one…

The curtains were pulled back. Friar & Olsen's was open for business and so were its doors. They couldn't fit all those people inside, but they didn't have to. Those who couldn't get inside right away would be served outside. Not all of them were looking to stay very long, so others got to walk in… By the end, as the doors were closed again until regular business hours – starting on the second day of January – it was nearly sunrise. It came down to just the two couples, cleaning up, closing up, and feeling the weight of this accomplishment. They were up and running, and people were already excited for them.

"This is going to be a great year," Maya told Lucas as he helped her back up before they left. He could read the look in her eyes, he knew what she was trying to tell him, and he agreed. They didn't know what this new year would bring, but it had started in this way, and they chose to trust that it would mean something in the long run, for her and her work, for their boys as they went on growing at the speed of light, and for him… for him and all that he would get to do, however long it took.TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners