May 6th 2023

Chapter 208
Toward Brighter Days

It was summer in the Friar house. Of all of them, only Lucas could really say that his day to day didn't change all that much for it. Some of the kids had school and were now on break, while the others didn't and now got to spend more time with them… and their mother. That was easily their favorite part, in so many ways. She'd be home with them, she'd take them places, family and friends, the park, the mall, a museum… They all had their favorites, but whether or not it sat at the top of their list, Friar & Olsen's Bakery was always a destination that needed no convincing for them to want to visit. With Jamie especially, they almost couldn't tell him ahead of time, but if he would find out, at least they had a safeguard.

"Good morning," Ava waved as she walked by her parents' bedroom door, hair still in sleep mode, the better to guard her curls.

"How many chapters do you think she's read already?" Maya wondered as she sat holding Jackson to herself. Lucas smirked down to Simon as the baby boy stared back at him in quiet wakefulness.

"I don't know, depends on the chapters. Long ones, maybe three. Short ones… who even knows? Your sister's a fast reader, did you know that?" he asked his son. "Bet she could teach you a thing or two about that… few years from now. That'll be fun, yeah?"

Down the hall, they could just hear enough of the kids' voices to guess that Ava had indeed stalled her little brother's plans to scramble into their room and demand that they head to the bakery right away. At least now they could have breakfast first.

They wouldn't spend all day out there, no, but it was important to Maya that she spend more time there over the summer. While she'd be teaching, she'd have to work that much harder to fit in bakery time into her schedule alongside work and being a wife and mother of six. Right now, she got to make the very most of her time on everything that didn't involve school, and she was really doing her best to hold to that mandate. Her eldest three had friends they would go and play with sooner or later, but they spent most mornings at the bakery, with their mother, with their aunt, and sometimes with their father, too.

"So, what are we doing this morning?" Lucas asked Jamie as he'd immediately come up and grabbed his father's hand once they'd gotten out of the minivan and started toward the bakery. Clearly, he was very eager to involve him.

"Lotta boxes to open," Jamie informed him. "Put the things where they go."

"Right, that's today, huh?" Lucas nodded, and the two and a half-year-old nodded back. "Alright, we can do that," he gave a slightly exaggerated arm flex, getting a snort from both his wife and daughter even before Jamie went and imitated his father, flexing his tiny boy arm. "Wow, good thing I've got you to help me out," Lucas told him.

"No, you do that," Jamie informed him.

"Oh, I do that? What are you going to do?"

"I make cupcakes," he nodded, and they could practically see the image that Jamie would have going through his mind, of himself in his apron, standing on a stool and doing his part.

"Man with the scoop," Maya smiled, pushing the twins' stroller along. "You're very good with that thing. You can show him. You know, when he's not busy unpacking supplies," she looked back to Lucas, flashing him the most discreet of looks, a solid promise that she would be very interested in his work, and she'd be keeping an eye on him through it all.

Mornings at the bakery were not boring, not even a little bit. Ava loved being there before opening the most out of the kids. She loved getting to be there before most people got to go, helping get everything ready ahead of opening both in the front of the bakery and back in the kitchen, getting the morning tasks accomplished along with her mother and the rest of the morning crew. Jamie was 'man with the scoop,' as Maya had called him, because that was his favorite thing to do. Elliott's thing tended to change, but lately it was folding boxes to be stacked at the ready, while Noah… Well, he loved being there before opening, too, but mostly because it felt special to be there, the doors closed up, no customers, only the rest of them… He loved to stand behind the counter and pretend to work at the register, holding whole conversations with pretend customers.

If ever any of them were free to do so briefly, someone from the morning crew would go and play the role for him. If they had money in their pockets, they might slip some of it to him in 'payment.' He'd never know what to do with it except to excitedly hold it up and show it to his mother, his father, his sister, whoever was closest. They'd tell him to put it in his pockets, that it was his, so he would. He had a bank back in his room – shaped like a stormtrooper helmet – that was slowly filling up with these earnings. When they asked him what he would do with it, he'd say he didn't know. Elliott's theory was that he mostly liked to lift it and shake it, hear the coins rattle inside.

"Did I see you slip him five dollars back there?" Maya asked Lambert Day as he came back into the kitchen.

"And a dime… It was all I had on me," the fourteen-year-old shrugged.

"You could probably have just given him the dime and he would have been satisfied," Lucas turned to look at him with a chuckle. Lambert looked at him, still in the process of putting away the week's big delivery, and moved to help.

Before long, they'd be moving into the next part of their day, no longer awaiting opening. As much as there was to love in the closed bakery, this was others' favorite part, it certainly was Maya's. She loved to see the people coming in, the morning regulars. Noah no longer wanted to be at the counter now that there were real customers. He'd go back in the kitchen and watch, sometimes help. It was Jamie's turn, up at the counter, something he'd done about as long as he could stand his little self on his feet, up on the step they'd stationed there.

Elliott had taken to tailing Lambert in his activities since the start of summer, whenever they would both be at the bakery. There was nothing more to it except that they got along well. Lambert had a way with words, which they saw whenever he'd have one of the boys at his side and they'd join him in whatever he was in the process of making. He had one younger brother, Anton, but he wasn't little, and he would have liked to have little brothers like that, they could see it.

They had all been taught what to do in the kitchen, but most importantly, they had been taught what not to do, not if they didn't want to get hurt. They'd gotten some near misses, not often, but sometimes, but they took it in stride, they knew these things couldn't be helped even with fully grown people, so the children would be just as susceptible, if not more. That day, valiant little assistant that he was, Elliott came very close to hurting himself badly. He was saved from this because Lambert realized what was about to happen and jumped in to pull the six-year-old boy away. He succeeded, but hurt himself in the process, falling with a great crash that startled Elliott even more than when he'd been yanked away.

The moment did not go unnoticed, and all activity in the kitchen came to a standstill for a moment before redirecting toward Lambert and Elliott. Maya knelt by her student even as her son was telling her what had happened and sounded so scared, like he was realizing that he'd been about to do something bad and Lambert was hurt because of it. True as it was, to some extent, Maya didn't want him to beat himself up over it, so she and Lucas both did their best to reassure him even as they saw to Lambert.

Paramedics were called to see to him, and soon he was packed off in an ambulance, on his way to the hospital. Maya volunteered to accompany him until his parents could be reached and directed to meet them, while Lucas would stay back with the children. He might have gone with her and known that Ava and the boys would have been seen to, but after what had happened, it didn't seem right to leave them on their own, and they didn't want to bring them all to the hospital either, much as several of them begged to. They were convinced on the reasoning that the bakery needed them, and that it was what Lambert would want, which was on the whole correct.

He was not one of her children, but he was a student, and now a part of the bakery team, and he was barely older than her eldest, so on the whole, Maya spent the entire ride to the hospital feeling like her heart was lodged in her throat. She'd alerted Lambert's family and they were already on their way, and beyond that, all she could do was be there for him as he was immobilized and left to stare straight up. He was freaked out by this more than anything, and Maya had nothing to offer to calm him down except what she usually pulled out for her kids. She sang for him, a song she knew he liked. It worked, even got him to sing along with her.

"Your voice is pretty good, you know?" she told him as they reached the end of the tune.

"Thanks," he smiled weakly. "I usually sing to myself when I'm in the kitchen at home," he admitted.

"You should do that at the bakery, too," Maya encouraged him.

"Yeah... Okay..." Lambert replied, and much as he might have tried to hide it, she could see how scared he was again about what was going on. She held his hand the rest of the way.

When they reached the hospital, she was able to stay with him long enough so that she had information to give his parents when they arrived, both of them with a barely contained unease in them that she recognized and sympathized with. As she saw their faces, what she also felt was some amount of guilt, as though it was her fault that their son had been injured, when what he'd done had potentially saved her son from a worst fate. The Days were not upset with her in the slightest. If anything, they were both just so very thankful to her for having seen to him and accompanying him to the hospital. She told him what she'd heard, hurrying to the fact that they were about to take Lambert off for some tests, so they might want to hurry and find him.

After that, she could do nothing except sit in a waiting area and... wait. She couldn't have made herself go anywhere else, back to the bakery, or the house... She was going to be right here, and if the family needed something, she would get it for them.

"Mom," a voice landed in her ear, and she blinked, looked up.

"Ava?" she stood from her chair and opened her arms for her daughter, who walked right into them. "Sweetpea, what are you doing here? How are you here?" she asked, sounding very clearly happy to have her there. The way Ava held on to her, she had to know.

"I took the bus," she shrugged when she pulled back. "Dad knows, it's okay." It was the first thing to make Maya properly smile since before the incident at the bakery. "I didn't want you to have to be by yourself."

"No, I didn't think you would," Maya slowly nodded, cradling the back of her daughter's head before leaning to press a kiss at her forehead. "Well, I'm really glad you're here with me, thank you." Ava's smile warmed her heart.

"Is Lambert okay?"

"Honestly, I have no idea what's going on with him yet. He was mostly okay, as far as I could tell, but they want to check out a few things, make sure he's really okay. He hit his head, you know, and that can be..."

"I know," Ava nodded with a worried look, and coming from her, Maya trusted that she would be informed as she claimed. "I don't like hospitals," Ava frowned, leaning to her mother's side.

"Yeah, not a fan either. Except when there's babies being born, and I say this for having had three of your brothers at home and not by choice." The notion made Ava laugh quietly, and Maya was glad to hear it.

They waited together and, in the effort of keeping her daughter from feeling too pressed in by their location, even if she'd been the one to 'choose' it, Maya asked Ava about whatever she might have wanted to discuss, any and all things. Ava expressed how she was looking forward to summer with all of them. It was the second summer that they had all known each other, but more importantly to her, it was the first one where they had been a family. And now that the twins were with them, and they weren't such tiny babies anymore, it would make for maybe the best summer of her young life.

She was about to express another thought when Maya spotted Barton Day coming their way and the conversation was put on hold. She couldn't explain the expression on the man's face, whether it was good news or bad.

"What's the matter? Is Lambert okay?" Maya asked as she and Ava stood.

To hear it out of him, even Barton wasn't sure. It seemed that the tests had turned up something to concern the doctor who was looking after Lambert, but not so much as a result of his injuries back at the bakery. Whatever it was, she didn't seem to think that his life was in any danger at the moment... but she also gave off the impression that there could have been cause for concerns further down the line.

"The way she talks, it's as though his getting hurt today was actually a good thing," Barton shook his head, confused as ever.

"Can we see him?" Ava asked.

"As soon as you can, I'll come and get you two, alright?" Barton smiled at her.

"Do you guys need something?" Maya asked her fellow parent.

He finally agreed that he and Michelle might have benefitted from eating, so Maya and Ava made their way to the cafeteria together. Maya was well aware that her daughter responded well to having a task to do when she was in a setting that left her overwhelmed in any way, and being at the hospital was doing that just enough that she looked so eager for the two of them to pick out the ideal lunches for both the Days and themselves. She let her lead the charge and gave her input where it was required.

"Grandpa Shawn told me about when you and Dad were in here once, is that why you don't like being here?" Ava asked out of the blue, and Maya looked at her, surprised. "Or is it because of when your father was sick and he..." she averted her eyes, as though she might have said something she shouldn't have.

"Probably a mix of both those things," Maya admitted, not wanting her daughter to feel uncomfortable about bringing up difficult subjects around her or Lucas. "But I am trying to remind myself that there can be good things about this place. This is also where Elliott was born, and then Noah... This is where I became a mom for the first time, and where my Hunter siblings were born... And today, maybe, this is where Lambert's life will have been changed for the better."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners