January 11th 2024
Chapter 11
The Potential For Siblings
With how many of them there were living in the house already, not just Maya and Lucas and the kids but three Hunter siblings and one Hart-Lane brother with his son - and the many pets on top of it all - there were many sources for random noises in the morning, as any of them would start to wake. Those of them eighteen and over might have to get up very early for work, or school…
"I think we have a visitor," Lucas whispered, barely awake. Maya hummed, in the same state, and they both remained as they were, lying in bed, not ready to get up for just a couple more minutes unless they had to. They listened to the approach as it believed itself discreet. There was lightness to it, enough to be identifiable so long as they could piece together the source, the reason.
"She's getting better at that," Maya reflected, and Lucas quietly laughed into the flowers on her shoulder.
They still went ahead and played along, allowing Haley Hunter with her stealth-light approach to reach them. She came around the bed, not unlike one of her little nieces, and crouched to her sister's eye level.
"Hey, can I get a ride to school?" she whispered, a grin in her voice. Maya opened one eye before raising her arm in invitation.
"You're so weird," she sighed as her little sister settled in next to her.
They'd have more space, which they would benefit from, once Lucas went ahead and got up to start getting breakfast ready for the house plus one. Haley climbed over her sister, showing a care that further strengthened Maya's belief that she was on to her about the baby and sat there, cross-legged and smiling.
"Do Mom and Dad know you're out here?"
"Uh huh," Haley nodded.
"You sure?" Maya held her gaze.
"Yes, I'm sure," Haley gave an exasperated sigh. "Can you not be a parent or a teacher right now and just be my big sister?"
"I can," Maya sat up. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah," Haley promised. "I just miss you sometimes, that's all. And I know we see each other every day at school, but that's not the same. Plus, you're all here, you, MJ, Nellie and Gracie, while I'm back home all by myself. Who decided that was fair?" she asked. Maya tried not to chuckle too much at her indignation.
"We had nothing to do with that. We were just born before you… Some of us were born a long time before you," Maya pressed a hand to her heart.
"If you say so," Haley squinted, but she couldn't keep it up very long before she just had to smile.
"You know you get to come and stay here, too, if you want to, when you're in college."
"That's still so far away though, and it won't be all of us anymore, will it?" That was probably true, and there was nothing that either of them could do about it. For now, all Maya could do was hug her little sister with all the love she had for her.
"Auntie!" They looked up even as the top of Finneas Hart-Lane's head could be seen, along with his little arms, as he worked to climb on to the bed. Haley reached over and helped him at once, and he let her, all the better to hug her faster.
"Hey, Finny! Good morning!" Haley beamed. All her nieces and nephews, blood or not, loved her to pieces, and the feeling was mutual.
"He woke me up," Wyatt yawned in the doorway, having slowly followed his son down from the floor above. "He was so sure he'd seen you coming up on your bike."
"I know, I saw you up there, too," Haley informed Finneas, which made him laugh.
Maya watched her little brother as he watched his son and Haley, and she could see a bittersweet tone sitting heavy on his smile. Finn was growing up, too, same as everyone, but it would matter most of all to Wyatt, and right now there was one thought above all others that would not leave him be. The older Finn got, the more the question of his mother gained traction. He had none. He didn't lack for love in any way, but he could also tell that there was something other kids had and he didn't. He didn't really ask about it, but the way he would cling to the women in his life, it was clearly on his mind. He was still so young though, and Wyatt wasn't sure how to explain that the mother he did have out in the world just didn't want him, that she hadn't seen him since the day he was born.
MJ swept into the room, still half asleep going by the look in his eyes, and made a beeline for his little sister. He scooted in and caught her in his arms like a kid going to sleep with his teddy bear.
"Hey!" Haley protested, even as she laughed along with Finneas. The boy had no problem whatsoever with being caught in the middle of this embrace.
"Dad wanted me to make sure you made it here okay when he saw you were gone," MJ mumbled. Going by the silly faces he made for Finn, he wasn't nearly as asleep as he let on.
"Busted," Maya squinted at Haley, who turned a sheepish smile to her older sister.
"I did tell him," she insisted. "He must not have been as awake as I thought, that's all."
"This is what we get for leaving her out there, unsupervised," MJ told Maya.
"I don't need to be supervised, Matthew Jonathan Hunter!"
"Yep, now you full named me, now you're going to get it. Finny, go for the neck," MJ looked to the toddler, who reached out his hands at once, the better to tickle his aunt.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, not the neck!" Haley laughed and squirmed. This only made Finn keep going, amused by her reaction.
"That's two strikes this morning, 4H, what are we going to do with you?" MJ asked. Haley always said how she missed having her siblings at home, but she wasn't the only one. They longed for the day's when they lived with her, too. MJ missed her most of all, his partner in quippy shenanigans.
"Whatever you think you've got, I can take it," Haley declared, a moment before bring recaptured by her brother, leading to a 'rumble' that made Maya scoop up Finneas before he got caught up in the middle. He wasn't scared. He just laughed, which made his aunt laugh, too.
"Hey… What's going on here?" a sleepy voice heralded Gracie's arrival.
Standing there, she definitely looked like someone who'd worked a late shift and had to follow it up with a bit of school work before she could allow herself to head to sleep. Her new session was just a few weeks old, but she had a lot on her plate already, and she was doing her best to juggle it all without allowing a single ball to be dropped. Those who knew her well enough generally didn't see reason to worry, and there really wasn't. It didn't make it any easier on her to balance it all. As soon as they heard and saw her, both MJ and Haley moved to make space for her, and she walked over to be swallowed up into the sibling heap.
"Wyatt, get your butt over here, come on," Haley called, and the others chimed in with her. Finn called for his father, and finally he had to go and do as told. Maya passed the small boy over to his father, and he was joined to them, gladly so.
"Where's the other one of you?" MJ asked, waving in the general direction of the lone twin. Haley snorted, and Maya put her arm around her.
"She's coming down," Gracie promised, turning her attention toward Finneas when he turned his attention toward her. "She was writing to Bobby when I came down."
"Bobby!" the other siblings called up, as though toasting their sister's boyfriend. It was a running joke between them, same with Gracie's boyfriend and Bobby's twin brother, Ethan. This was their little way of noting the growing likelihood that the Davis brothers would one day be their brothers, too. Nellie always found it hilarious, while Gracie would usually start to turn pink.
"Are you sure she's going to come anytime soon?" Haley asked.
"Sure, she will," Gracie told her, shaking her head.
"I don't know," MJ cut in, siding with his little sister. "When those two get going sometimes… Remember Dad's birthday?" Gracie did remember. They all remembered, and it was not a memory they would soon forget, though some people would really wish that they could forget.
"Don't even mention that right now," Nellie came in, dragging her feet. The moment they saw her, her siblings had the same reaction, just an immediate draw to pull her in, to look after her as she looked like she should just go ahead and be tucked into bed with how pale she looked.
"You look ready to… spew…" MJ hesitated before mouthing the last word, for fear of triggering a reaction, especially in such close proximity.
"Mark checked," Nellie hummed. Gracie held her cheek to cheek, which might have been the only truly soothing presence in her heart and mind. "Couple of times," she informed them.
"What did you eat last night?" Maya asked, caught up between sister mode and mom mode.
"Same thing as us," Wyatt looked around as though any one of them was going to be next.
"I don't even have the energy to do this whole thing," Nellie sighed. "Not food poisoning, okay? I'm just a tiny bit…" she gestured. She'd stumbled her way up to this point, but now that she'd made it, she struggled to keep going. She turned to her twin for help, and Gracie looked like she would have preferred not to be called up, but because Nellie had asked her, because she'd essentially given her permission to unveil the thing she'd been keeping secret by her request…
When Maya saw the twinkle of emotion on Gracie's face, as she looked to her twin sister and held her gaze, she understood what this was, and it was truly a miracle that she didn't gasp and give it away. At this moment, she was the only one in the room who knew what the next several months would mean for their entire family, and it had her bowled over on the inside even before it came out that her sunny little sister was going to have a baby.
It was a wonder the others didn't all rush upstairs when they heard the cacophony of voices coming from that room. The reaction was just a wave of complete shock, and disbelief, and… joy? Were they joyous right here? Yes, they were joyous, they should be. Had this been in any way part of the plan, at this point in time? Not even a little bit. But it had happened, and once the shock had come down, all that remained for Nellie and for Bobby was a pair of smiles that would not fade. It had been so hard for them to be apart since then, but if they wanted to keep up appearances…
"Wait, did you know this?" Haley looked to Maya with a furrowed brow.
"Not at all, no," Maya shook her head. She still had happy tears clouding her vision. "Why?"
"You didn't? No, but you did, you had to. That's why you had me confused, thinking you were the one who was pregnant, isn't it?" she asked, and the speed with which the siblings turned on their eldest sister was as comical as it was giving her no choice but to do what felt as right as it would be, and she hoped both Lucas and Marianne wouldn't mind her not letting them in on this one.
"I didn't know, look at my face," she pointed to her tear tracks. "And I am pregnant," she informed them, looking from Haley over to Nellie, as the realization would hit her, too, that the two of them were going to be going through these pregnancies together. Morning sickness may have had her off balance, but this… this planted her squarely back on her feet, and she was the first to hug her before the rest of them had the chance to pile on.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
