January 18th 2024

Chapter 18
The Season For Love

"You keep getting this smile tonight, and I don't know what it's about," Maya appeared at his side as he put away the last of the dinner dishes he'd been cleaning. He chuckled even before he saw the look he'd find on her face, the very 'how dare you' squint, curved eyebrow and all.

"Well, you know, between homework, and dinner…" he told her.

"Huh uh. Well, my sisters went and took care of bath time for us, so we've got all this free time ahead of us… just you and me… and the tiny bean, but anything they hear, they won't be able to repeat for months and months…"

"Convenient," Lucas chuckled before finally telling her about the audiobook call and the request for the special edition, especially the part about them both doing it together. "You already want to do it, don't you?"

"I'm just saying, I'm going to be home a while, when I go on leave, and after the baby's born… I do love the idea of a project, you and me. And it'll be something good for the kids to have, to listen to. Bedtime stories… memories…"

"We could get them in on it, too," Lucas suggested. "All their voices…"

"We could, we should," she agreed. "I keep hearing them, thinking how different they all sound already, the more they grow up. I notice it so much with the triplets right now. Remember that little lisp that Lucy would get sometimes?" she smiled, hearing it in her head. It made him smile right back. "I don't want to forget those times, for any of them."

"We won't. We have way too many videos of all of them," he pointed out, and that got a laugh out of her. "But hey, there's another project for your leave."

"How's that?" she asked.

"Like a… timeline… for all of them." She liked that. She could see it already, hear it… Looking at each other, they knew they had the same thought. They only wished they could do the same for their eldest. She'd come to them grown, her childhood voices unknowable.

"If you want to practice your narrator stylings, you can give it a shot when you're having your talks with itty bitty," she told him, pointing down at herself. His hand floated down to her little bump, the reflex of years, the times they'd been expecting their girls… He still had that feeling that this one could be a boy. He didn't want to put too much weight on the idea. He would be ecstatic about this baby no matter the outcome, and he didn't see himself being disappointed if he did hold on to the possibility of having a second boy, but he didn't want to go on like his mind was made up until he knew for sure.

"Do you think we should find out about this one? Or wait until March?" he asked Maya.

"Oh, not waiting, no, I want to know. Soon as we can," she answered right away, and he breathed out. "I mean, if you don't…"

"'Soon as we can' sounds good to me," he cut in, and his smile must have been as silly as hers for how it made her laugh. "Then we can start and figure out what we're going to do about the rooms."

"My brothers and my sisters have all been saying that they'd move if we needed them to," Maya reflected. "I told them I didn't want that, or you, or…"

"The kids," Lucas spoke along with her, and she looked back to him. "We really don't," he confirmed. "We'll figure it out. Remember how the house looked when we first moved in?"

"A lot smaller," she nodded. "Hard to remember what it even looked like back then, without the attic, the extra rooms… And then Sam living with us, then Cara, then Eliza, and Emma, now the four of them up there with Finn… Won't be long now before Haley comes along, and then Maisie's already going around like she just can't wait to run across the road with her suitcase."

"The minute they put that diploma in her hand," Lucas agreed. "Just say the word and we can make this place even bigger if we need to."

"I don't think we're going to have that many more kids," she waved this notion off with a smile. "And the day will come when none of my siblings are living here anymore… and then…"

"Nope, no, hey, don't let your brain go there," he wrapped his arms around her.

"Go where?" she innocently asked. "I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to, I saw it in your eyes."

"They're all growing up so fast…" she whispered.

"We just reset the clock another eighteen years with this one, remember? That empty nest isn't going to empty for a long time, and the way we've been going, I'm not sure even that's going to mean that it'll be just the two of us."

"And some dogs and… unaccounted… other pets," she added.

"Yeah, them, too, but as far as us humans…"

"I know, I do. And you're probably right. Enough nostalgia for things that haven't happened yet. Right now is really good, more than good…"

"I can tell. I don't think I've seen you writing and playing this much in years, not since the musical with Sam and Cara."

"Yeah, I don't know if this is going to turn into anything like that, but it could definitely be something good…" she reported.

"Who's holding back now, huh?" he teased, and she squinted again, only a moment before relaxing into a new smile.

"You're always going to be the first to hear as soon as there's anything to hear."

He would be hearing plenty of a few songs she had penned in the coming weeks and months, he knew, and he couldn't wait. It wouldn't be the first time they had one of Maya's songs on one of the series. They had one at the top of every episode they'd put out. But they had never had so many at once as they would in this one pair of episodes. They were hitting a milestone, and with Katy Hunter at the head of the production, she could not think of a better way to celebrate than with an evening soundtracked by her daughter's work.

They were so glad to have show nights back in the house, all of them. All the episodes may have been harder to connect with the memories, but they had plenty of those. They were having one of those right that evening, which was not show night but the eve of one. The kids all knew it, even Ezra now. He was still just under two months shy of his second birthday, but his sisters had taught him very well, and through them he would experience the same giddiness that they did as they all went to bed on show night eve.

With as many kids as they had to get to sleep, with different ages and some different bedtimes, it could be hard to get them all down and staying down for the night without being prompted to rise again by a noise out of one of the others. They'd count themselves lucky if they only had two of them getting up again. The average was more like four. Marianne usually tried to take care of it when she could, so they wouldn't have to, but then sometimes it really couldn't be anyone else but Mommy or Daddy coming in to handle whatever was keeping them up, and they would scamper off in search of one or both of them before their big sister could stop them.

They made certain that everyone was officially and soundly asleep that night before addressing another thing, just the two of them, and this time it was a secret that they were both keeping, not from one another but from one of their daughters. This had not been their idea, but when asked to enable this surprise, one that would be sure to make Marianne very, very happy…

"Haruna Farrell called me at the ranch today to confirm Haru and his family would be landing a week from tomorrow," Lucas told Maya as they went to sit outside after MJ had come down to keep an eye on his nieces and nephew. He did not know about Haru's surprise visit, but he knew enough that he was more than willing to be kept in the dark if it meant being part of a good surprise. They appreciated him so much for that.

"Would I be a very bad mother if I bet money he kisses her before he heads home?" Maya asked, and Lucas would have shaken his head at the grin on her face if she hadn't been right to expect the expression on his face, full-on paternal shockwaves at the idea of his firstborn and a boy…

"You wouldn't be," he finally responded, but then let out a sigh. "So long as I wouldn't be a bad father for my counter wager."

"Which is?" Maya was intrigued. He looked at her like it was obvious, and she understood. "You think she'll make the first move?"

"You don't?"

"See, now that you mention it…" she started, then shook her head. "No, I'll keep mine." She held out her hand, and they shook on it. "No money though."

"Alright. What are we putting on the table for the win?"

"Naming? Winner gets first, runner-up gets middle."

"I like how you didn't say 'loser' there," he noted, and she nodded. "Done. We're fully committed on finding out then, huh?" They were, and they would. Until then, they could only wait, and speculate…

"Hey, guys? Sorry to interrupt…" MJ's voice just barely preceded that of Ezra's, as Maya's brother carried out his nephew, half asleep and crankily half awake. Lucas got up and received his son, to Ezra's gladness, before bringing him back to sit in his lap at Maya's side. She reached over and cupped his face and to see the way he didn't leave his father but also tipped himself to keep as close to his mother as he could in the process…

"Did you have a bad dream, bud?" Maya asked, and he nodded. "Those aren't fun. It's okay, we've got you, yeah? We've got you," she kissed the top of his head, and with his little hand in hers, it did feel like the stress in him was fading. They kept hold of him and kept talking quietly, letting their voices soothe him all the way back to sleep. As they carried him back up to their room, the thought of this audiobook project of theirs never felt so essential as it did now.

They didn't put him back in his little bed, instead taking him to rest between the two of them in their own bed. It brought back memories of doing this with… so many of the people living in their house, and not just those they counted as their children. It felt so easy to slip into thoughts of everything that would eventually happen, of days when there wouldn't be college-aged siblings or children living in their house, because it would happen. But then they'd stop and they'd see what they had, and this wasn't an eventuality, this was the present, and it so easily became the past that they couldn't turn their eyes forward for too long or they would miss it. So now they lay there, the two of them, their unborn child growing in Maya's belly, and their little boy curled up between them as they drifted off to sleep with him in their arms. They really didn't need much more than something like this to be happy, did they?

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners