July 8th 2023

Chapter 217
All the Little Boys and Ghouls

She woke up first, more often than not, and when she would open her eyes, she would almost immediately keep herself very still, the better to determine whether or not Lucas was awake, too. He'd say that he was able to make her believe that he was still asleep, and maybe she'd consider letting him think it, but the truth was that, whenever he'd actually try and fool her, all he'd do was guarantee that she'd know for sure. This time around, he wasn't faking. He was still sound asleep, which made it all the more hilarious when she heard the sound of small feet converging on their room. Across from the bed, she could see the twins, sitting up in their cribs, disheveled, barely awake, and staring back like they were trying to find their parents amid the blankets, from their vantage point.

Lucas' day would start with his being startled awake by four of his children while his wife laughed. It was the perfect way to start Halloween, though as far as Lucas himself was concerned, that was very much on the debatable side. He got over it, of course, because all the confusion in the world could not make him anything but very happy to see them all climbing up to say hello first thing in the morning.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't keep them back today," Ava whispered to her parents after Elliott, Noah, and Jamie had all gone to greet Simon and Jackson and pull them from their cribs.

"That's okay, Sweetpea, it was perfect," Maya whispered back, catching her face in her hands and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

After they'd gone, all six of them as they took the twins with them, Maya first moved to rise, the better to follow them, but she was immediately prevented from doing so under the power of a good morning kiss from her husband. It made her laugh against his lips, finding no more reasons to so much as try and go anywhere else. When this was followed up with Lucas weaving his way down to be face to bellybutton with their unborn child, Maya rolled her eyes and laughed.

"You're just full of tricks, huh?" she asked, weaving her fingers through his hair as he nodded. She couldn't even be mad about this, could she? And why would she? He had such a wonderful bond with the children they had made together, and maybe some of the credit went to this, to their 'conferences.' They came into the world already with this connection to two different people, the one who'd carried them and the one who'd always been there for a good chat.

"Hey there, little chick," he spoke in the general direction of the tiny thing that was to be their sixth born and seventh child, maybe not confirmed but fully believed to be a second daughter. "Today's finally the day I've been telling you about. It's… Halloween," he intoned in his best 'funny spooky vibes' voice, which made Maya snort enough that she had to keep herself from moving too much, or else she might disrupt 'the conference.' "And it won't matter that no one knows you're there but your mom, your sister, and I. We'll all know, and when the others know, too, they'll be so happy that you were a part of it, you know? It'll be even better next year."

"Such a sweet little weirdo," Maya snorted, watching him.

They were off to a great start with the absence of even the smallest twinge of sickness in Maya, so they took it in stride in seeing to all the kids with breakfast, and then the great dress up race before school, which today included costumes. Ava had been working on her costume all month long, wanting this year to be another exercise in using her hair and her curls to play into her disguise. Last year's Medusa had been such a success, even as this was also the last time they'd heard from her birth father.

They hadn't even considered what it would mean for them to end up here again. It had been a year since Bill Nash had last been seen or heard from. His daughter, his brother, his lawyer, none of them had gotten any news, and with this anniversary coming around, they really did not want for the idea to come and sink on to Ava's head and leave her spiraling. Where might her father be on this day? Was he thinking about her… If there was one thing they believed they knew, it would have to be this one, because there was no universe conceivable where Bill would not be thinking of his baby girl, unless of course… Well, was he alright, was he even still… alive? They couldn't know, and that was the most frightening part of all. If that was so for Maya and Lucas, they couldn't begin to know what could be going through their daughter's head.

"Alright, first things first…" Maya stretched the small tights while Noah sat down on his bed and stuck his legs up. "Thanks, Bee," she chuckled.

She hadn't even gotten further than a single ankle when there was a great crashing noise from below, accompanied by a mighty scream. Maya could not express into words the lurch that her heart suffered for it, nor would she take the time to try, as she instead took off at a run, out of her sons' room, up the hall, down the stairs and toward the basement. Lucas and her, they were usually fairly evenly matched in speed, regardless of who had the longer legs, and he was right there with her, speeding to discover what was going on and calling for Ava to make herself heard so they would know that she was okay.

They barely had time to register the presence of several objects at the bottom of the stairs that their Sweetpea finally appeared, completely unharmed and instead laughing hysterically, declaring that she'd 'gotten them.' Her amusement deflated when she saw their faces, as good as expressing the way their hearts continued to thud in their chests, for fear that she could have been seriously injured. She was all apologies, and it took a lot of strength for them not to start yelling about what she could have been thinking, pulling a stunt like that. Right now, they just wanted to feel for themselves that she was okay and let everything else be forgotten.

The magical mood of their morning so far had been thrown askew, but they had to keep going, had to get everyone ready and off to school. The boys didn't understand what was going on, why their parents and sister were being all weird all of a sudden, but they weren't going to tell them, weren't going to make this worse. Lucas went ahead and focused on the boys, in equal parts because Maya would have had to be the one to do Ava's hair anyway and because right now he would think that keeping her seated wouldn't be a bad idea.

The loudest sound there was in Ava's room as she sat on her bed, her mother behind her and transforming her hair, was that of a brush, or an elastic, a quiet word of direction, a check for comfort… When it was done, Ava looked around to her Mama with such big, sorry eyes, that Maya could only pull her into a hug. She knew that it hadn't been her intention to scare them like that, but they were no closer to understanding just what her intention had been. Did it have to do with this thing with her father, with Bill's disappearance and uncertain status?

They didn't want to brush the incident aside entirely, not the root of it at least, hide it under costumes and candy and fun, but what else could they do right now? They had been parents for enough years by now that they felt they had a handle on things, regardless of how young they had been when they'd started, but this suddenly made them feel like they really had not known a single thing, like they were helpless. And here they were about to have yet one more child…

"You have a good day today, yeah?" Lucas looked to Ava, Elliott, and Noah before they could be let loose in the gym with all the other kids on Halloween morning. The boys were still stuck in this space of knowing that something weird was going on but not knowing what it was, so they finally just nodded, hugged their parents, and ran off. Ava looked like she wanted to say something and didn't know what, but then Kelsey came along to find her, and the moment ended there, with the two girls heading off together for their last elementary school Halloween day.

Maya knew she'd be thinking about that morning all day long, no matter how much she tried to immerse herself in her classes, her students, and all the Halloween fun she had been lining up for them. Here she'd worked to make her classroom into a sort of trap, ready to spring surprises on them throughout the day, and she'd been the one to be spooked the hardest, right in her own house. Maybe it was a fortunate incident that she should start her day with her Morning Makers and, among them, her young stepsister. Stevie had been so excited for today, too, and she had actually worked on her own costume alongside Ava while she'd worked on hers, the two of them, and Kelsey Farrell, and Ashleigh Tomlinson… The two seventh graders looked at their teacher when they arrived, and they had the furrowed brows of their concern clearly breaking through character. Maya might have been tempted to be open and tell them why she looked off, but she chose to go ahead and delve into what this day was meant to be. She might not succeed completely, but she would give it her all.

She definitely felt that she found her footing by the time she made it to the Class Creatives. It came down to something like 'if I can fool myself into playing the character, that should do it, yeah?' She never felt like she was actually doing alright, but the kids seemed to be going with it alright. Of all of them, the one that didn't look as though he bought it was Cade Foster, and maybe it was a good thing. It was easily the longest that he had gone and paid direct attention to her. All through the class, she could feel him staring at her if she didn't outright look up and see him with her own eyes.

"What's wrong?" he stopped at the front of the class, on his way out after the period had ended. Maya blinked, looking back at him. Just about any other kid, she would said something else, brushed it aside, but now this… It felt coming up for air, remembering that there was more to this than spooks.

"My, uh… I thought my daughter was hurt this morning, and… it stayed with me, I guess," she explained.

"I'm sorry," Cade told her, and the way he looked like he was almost about to walk up and pat her arm… She gave a small smile and a nod, and he nodded back before leaving. Maya let out a breath, her hand briefly resting to her very slim bump.

"Well, there's that, huh," she told her chick.

The hardest part was definitely the long stretch, waiting for her afternoon classes, and she spent most of it, of all places, in the tiny music room, using their instruments to play nothing and everything. It felt good, and it had her ready for her Mindscapes. They might have been the ones to get the best use of the art room's hidden surprises, and it made Maya laugh several times across the period. Taylor Munroe had definitely been spooked, letting out a couple of shrieks that reminded Maya of his older brother when the two of them had been the middle schoolers. Danny Arden had proven to be a tough nut to crack, and Maya had believed for a while that she wouldn't manage to get him, but then right before he left, she pulled it off, and it actually made him laugh, which was the true prize.

Finally, it came down to the Polychromatics, and Maya had been almost certain that they would have somehow been told, or that they would have seen through her antics. It was the end of the day though, and that at least might have been the thing to help her. She got to set off everything like her big finish, and it was everything she had wanted it to be. She could almost have forgotten about the incident in the morning, but it kept on following her, like a stone riding her coat tails. And just like some of the others had picked up on this throughout the day, here, she had Lea and Lambert, and they were giving her eyes like they were seeing that something was off about her and they didn't know what it was, same as they didn't know what to do about it. They came to her when the class was done and the day with it, and she told them both exactly what had happened with Ava, at least as far as she'd been able to take it in.

"I don't think she was doing it to be… mean, or anything," Lea shook her head.

"No, I know she wasn't," Maya sighed, and she hated to think that her daughter might ever have spent her day at school thinking that she did.

Lucas had been wrestling with similar thoughts that day, too, and he was just glad that it had already been in their plans for him to spend the day at the ranch instead of at the office with his father. Thomas Friar was still in the dark with regards to his unborn grandchild, as he would continue to be for a little while longer – not much longer – but this time around at least it had nothing to do with any of that. Lucas could have unburdened himself about what it had felt like that morning, what he'd been left to think ever since…

He knew his father would understand when he said that one of his first thoughts had been Pappy Joe. He had been thrown back to a day when he'd been in high school still, a night… and the image of his grandfather lying crumpled and injured at the bottom of the stairs, back at his parents' house. And now to match that terrible thought to his girl, his Sweetpea… He could have won medals for running, him and Maya both… But Ava had been fine. Ava had just laughed at the way she'd 'gotten' them. She was still a kid, sure, and kids did stupid things, but it felt like so much more than that to him, to Maya… There was only so much they could do before they'd all be reminded of how they'd come together as a family and why, wasn't there? Her father… her first father, before him…

He didn't know where he was, didn't know how he was, same as Ava, but sometimes he wished that he did know, and not just for the obvious reasons. It never sat well with him to think that he could keep keeping away from his daughter… Bill… He knew why he'd done it back then, and he had honored his wishes, as he would continue to do, forevermore. But after all this time, he felt this rising upset in him that a father could leave his child, his now twelve-year-old child, to spend a year not knowing if he was alive. He didn't know where he was, but he had started looking for him without meaning to. He didn't know if he would manage to find him… or what he'd find if he succeeded, but it very much felt as though he owed it to Ava to try. Whether or not they found him… this day would not be forgotten.

The thoughts worked their way through him to the end of the day, as he took a moment to sit, and contemplate everything, before he drove out to collect Maya and then the kids along with her. And as he sat there, his hand felt something, which made him look… He laughed. He found himself holding a small, worn, little figurine of a witch on a broomstick, and it made him smile, breathe out. He turned his eyes to the sky, feeling very much that at least one of his grandparents was trying to tell him something.

He showed the witch to Maya when he picked her up from school, told her the story behind it, which she remembered him telling her before. She held the little witch, and it made her smile, too. She turned it over and over in her hands as they drove on toward the preschool to collect Jamie. Their Tadpole looked as though he'd had a lot of fun already, thanks to Miss Alma and his classmates, and possibly a bit too much chocolate and candy. He would have to be convinced to sit still unless he wanted to be revisited by these. They made it to the elementary school without incident, there to get hold of the kindergartener, the first grader, and the sixth grader. The first two were in the midst of a 'battle' between the characters that they portrayed, to the best of their five and six-year-old minds' abilities. With who their parents were, those abilities were very much up there, if they did say so themselves.

Either way, the face-off made it so that neither of them noticed their parents' arrival at first, but their big sister sure did. They knew the moment she spotted the minivan for the way her gaze shifted, became both hopeful and afraid. That was kind of the flipside of what she'd done that morning, wasn't it? They didn't know why she'd done that, but here… Here she was afraid that she might have pushed them away, that they couldn't come back from it all.

"Mommy! Mommy, there was a pumpkin, and they cut it open, and we touched the insides!" Noah announced so very loudly when he did see them coming along. "It was slimy, and there was seeds."

"There were, huh?" Maya laughed as she was surrounded by three of her boys now.

Meanwhile, Lucas approached Ava, and gave something close to a curtsey as he presented her with the small witch. She blinked, taken momentarily out of her previous thoughts. She took the figurine, observed it, and looked back to her father.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A piece of… family lore… and now it's yours," he explained, smiling, and she smiled back now, her soul lighter as she hugged her arms around his neck and he lifted her off her feet.

It wasn't going to fix everything, no, but it would get them through the night, and that was what mattered to them. They took the four of them back to the house, the better to be reunited with their baby brothers, and after a quick dinner, they made their way out again, to join the Friar kids' friends, from Kelsey Farrell, to her brother Max, to his best friend Max… They had the Olsen kids, and Jamie's little friend Hazel… They were ready to go and get as much candy as they could carry, until they finally couldn't go on and went on their separate ways for the night. For as much as their ideas for the day had deviated for a while, what they came away with in the end was as close to what they'd imagined as they were ever going to get, and they were glad for it.

Their favorite part wasn't even the actual trick or treating, as wild and a bit all over the place as it turned out. It was instead the part where they were all home, just Maya, Lucas, Ava, and the five boys. The twins had long been down for the count, but they were kept around for the big dig through everyone's bags, while their older siblings had a sort of reenactment of their days at school, mixed with their night hunting for candy, recalling the best houses they'd seen… Even Ava, who knew about the baby, could not look at this the way her parents would. They liked very much the idea of their all being together, the eight of them and the chick making them nine.

Eventually, they had to close the night, say goodbye to Halloween as the kids were seen out of their costume, into their PJs, and off to bed. All the candy was hidden away where not even the wiliest of those kids would find it, which was likely for the best, unless their parents wanted them to get up and go digging at their loot until they made themselves sick… It didn't mean that they didn't squirrel away a few pieces for themselves. They settled in on the couch for a bit before turning in, too, and after such a long day and night, who couldn't do with a bit of chocolate?

"So… How do we do this?" Lucas asked.

"Well, you go and make as though this is an even split, but you're all Huckleberry Dad, so of course you find some way to give your wife a bit more, seeing as she's all… with child again," Maya hummed, tipping her head back to bat some innocent eyes his way. He flashed her a smirk that made her break into laughter.

"I mean, that's kind of a given, but I wasn't talking about the candy, okay?" he told her.

"Okay," she intoned, possibly imitating him, and he replied by kissing the top of her head. "You meant about telling everyone, huh?" she guessed.

"Correct," he confirmed.

"Mmm," she slowly nodded. "Well, there's always…" she started to say, then sighed.

"There's always what?" Lucas asked.

"I was going to say that we could tell them when the twins have their birthday in a couple of weeks, and then that just sort of reminded me that… they're going to be a year old already…" she whispered. It wouldn't make it any less true, and they both knew it. Their babies were growing fast, and they wouldn't stay their babies for much longer either.

"We can do that, we should," Lucas decided. "It'll be a fun surprise."

"Yeah, for sure better than how we had to tell it, when we were having Jamie," she sighed, remembering even as he did. Sure, the videos were something sweet to look back on now, but at the time, with how sick she'd been…

"It'll be so much better," he promised her, and she nodded. He kissed her, once, and twice, and offered her some of his half of the chocolates.

"For me?" she gasped. He grinned. "What an unexpected surprise…"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners