February 16th 2024

Chapter 47
The Trouble With Waiting

Maya had been taking the kids into the studio all their lives, so it was hardly a special occasion when she did, but there could be exceptions. And taking Mackenzie along for a recording session when she'd been so sad at missing a fun Christmas activity at her school really felt like a necessary and purposeful choice. Crutches were still kind of tricky for her, and Maya wouldn't have had her try it in the snow that had fallen the night before, so it ended up being that MJ came along with them, carrying his niece from the house toward the Hex. Maya would have preferred he didn't make a run with her and run the risk of falling and either dropping or crushing her, but they made it safely, and it made Mackenzie laugh uncontrollably, so this time at least she would allow it. The girl was more excited about being there now than she had been when her mother had asked her to come along. MJ had not been invited or uninvited to sit in, too, but he sat in the big chair and sat Mackenzie in his lap, his arms around her waist like a security belt, and there'd be no splitting those two up.

The rest of the band came shortly after this and they were soon in the booth to get started. For the first part, the lineup would include Morgan, Rosa, Nadine, Riley, and Isadora, as their returning founding member/substitute was slowly but surely dipping her toes back in. She had done next to nothing in the way of performing or recording in so long, which left her shaky on the landing at first, but she was doing better now, not needing to pause and start again so often as she'd done on their first session back. This one was very important to all of them, as it would be part of their contribution to the Jenny Tapes, so they all expected Isadora to be nervous all over again, but she handled herself very well, all things considered. In the great spirit of what they were attempting to do with these particular songs, it really felt as though everyone was performing at peak levels, which only motivated the others to do the same. As of yet, they had only talk about Isadora subbing in for Maya at this stage of her pregnancy, but there was hope yet that this could become something more on the permanent side.

Outside the booth, in the two big chairs, Maya, MJ, and Mackenzie looked on and listened. Noting that it was the three of them, Maya couldn't help but smile to herself, thinking of the days of herself, Morgan, and Miranda being the school musicals' three muses, thanks to their shared initials. If she and her brother and her daughter could be that for TXNY right now, then they would take it.

All of her children's relationships to music were different, all going by their personalities. With Mackenzie, as she was getting bigger, more herself than they'd ever known this to mean something, she would always pick the upbeat if she had the choice. Anything slow - and the criteria here varied - coming on in the car, in the house, anywhere, would immediately send her mind to wander away, like she couldn't concentrate on it at all. That would probably change as she got older, but for now, this was where she was. A song coming on with the right beat, oh… She'd be the first to get on her feet and dance around. The fact that this was not an option since her accident was not helping matters in the slightest.

"Alright, my turn," Maya hummed when Isadora started to go about leaving the booth. "Wish me luck?" she turned to Mackenzie with a fist extended for bumping.

"You don't need luck, Mommy. You have the prettiest voice ever," the girl declared, with so much conviction in her little self that Maya felt her eyes welling up at once.

"Compliments work, too," MJ told his niece, which made her smile proudly. "Especially when they're true," he winked at his big sister. Maya got up, taking a moment to kiss her daughter on the head, doing the same to her brother - under mild protest - before swapping places with Isadora. "Everybody ready in there?" MJ asked over the speakers, earning a squint from Maya. She knew he just really loved pressing the button. It made him feel like he was in a movie.

"Yes, Mr. Hunter," she teased him. MJ grinned before leaning to whisper at Mackenzie's ear. She nodded and he scooted forward with the chair until she could safely reached The Button, to let her voice sound through the booth.

"Then make some music!" she called out, and they happily did as they were told.

Could Maya reasonably have kept performing with the band for a while more before stepping back and letting Isadora take her place? Definitely. But like it or not, no one had forgotten her last pregnancy, Maya especially, and it was just the safest route for all concerned that she start and take things easy earlier. For all that, just getting to sit here with her bandmates and record a song, that was all she needed, and she was happy. She already had plans for being in here sometimes over her leave, but this further proved why she would need those small doses of music.

After the rest of the band had left, and after MJ had to head out, too, it was finally just the two of them in the studio. Mackenzie's broken leg stuck out ahead of her, but her other foot could do what it pleased, and she was very focused on attempting to get it on the ground, the better to propel herself into a spin while she held onto the arm rests. Maya reached over and stopped her before looking over.

"I promise I'll let you do one, not too fast, right before we leave, okay?" She looked mildly disappointed, but she nodded. "Do you want to help me with the tracks?" Maya asked after a moment, and the glowing smile she got in return was all she ever wanted. She'd gotten to show a bit of the controls to the triplets by now, which had been as informative as it had been amusing for the way that each of them would receive and take in the information. They weren't at a point where she would let them do anything unattended, and they had all promised that they wouldn't do it, but they were taking it in, to one day be given that privilege.

It was the first time that she got to show Mackenzie any of this. She might have been a bit younger than she would have originally decided, but everything that had happened lately, this had felt like the right time, so she'd listened to herself. She looked overwhelmed at first, but Maya took it slow, and by the time she got her spin, she'd picked up on a few things, making this day an even better memory than it had already become.

Lucas came out to transport Mackenzie this time, and oh did she have a lot to tell him already in the short walk from the studio back to the house. Her brother and sisters were all sitting around the kitchen table, as though they'd been waiting for her and Maya, and she restarted her story for all of them. She was so proud of the fact that she'd been shown a bit of the console, and while this meant very little two-year-old Ezra, his five-year-old sister soon turned a pout to her mother. When was she going to get to do that, too?

"Soon, okay? I promise," Maya told her, and Aubrey knew this would be true, though she couldn't chase away the whole of her disappointment just yet.

Though they had all hesitated to do so, once Mackenzie asked them to tell her, the girls told their sister about the activity at school. They would try and downplay how great it had been, but they couldn't do it. The whole thing had been one of the best things they'd experienced at their school. They knew that Mackenzie would be disappointed, and they'd all set out to bring back as many things as they could, from treats to eat, carefully stored in napkins and empty containers in their lunches, to little presents, both received and won by each of them. It was an entire treasure trove, placed over the table's surface, and to see Mackenzie's eyes get bigger and bigger with amazement, it was like watching her sadness get smaller and smaller until it was gone. She and her sisters may have fought from time to time, as sisters would do, but ultimately it never lasted, because when it came down to it, her sisters, all of her siblings, were favorite people, right there with her parents.

"Wait, they're recording, too?" Kacey sat up all of a sudden, and everyone looked out the windows to see what she'd seen. Leaving footsteps and long, unbroken, weaving wheel tracks in the snow, there were Ava Nash and Kelsey Farrell of the Hexes, on their way to the studio that had given their band its updated name.

"Mommy, can we go back?" Mackenzie asked Maya without looking away. "I want to show them what you showed me."

"Uh… not yet, Macaw, okay?" Maya told her, drawing the curious eyes of a good half of her daughters present in the kitchen. "The others aren't there yet, and you should wait until then, yeah?"

The girls all looked at each other, and this made sense, yes, they supposed… Marianne, Kacey, Remy, Lucy, and Aubrey all rushed out of their chairs almost as one before filing side by side to stare out the windows, waiting for the others to make an appearance. They wouldn't come through the house, especially when there would be boots to take off and put on again, so they'd be coming up the side of the house, triggering the automatic lights as they went. Mackenzie took longer, but she managed to stand on her good foot and hop the two steps that would station her between Marianne and Aubrey.

Behind them, Lucas went and scooped up Ezra when he came running, too, clearly needing to see what his sisters were all so curious about, but looked to Maya. The two of them knew something very important that the kids did not know, something that made it so that they'd had to make sure not to have any of them, mobile or not, go and barge into the Hex on that December evening.

When they saw no one joining the pair in the studio - because they were not due to come - but instead saw them come back out of the studio, a long half hour later, they were thrilled to have something finally happen, yes, but then they were confused. What was happening? They had to be quite a sight, all of them lined up in the window, like a captive audience to Ava and Kelsey's presence back in the snow. But then the thing that stood out the most was the looks on their faces before and even after they'd found the Friars snooping on them. They were smiling… They were smiling like their whole bodies were part of that smile, and Ava sped the wheelchair through the snow, to Kelsey's frenzied delight.

Tracks of melting snow or not, it didn't matter, they were let in through the kitchen door, to share the happy news that had just come to reality. Under the pretext of a recording session for the Jenny Tapes, Ava had brought her girlfriend to the studio to the place that had come to mean so much to them, the better to ask her to become her fiancée, and then to become her wife. And Kelsey had accepted.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners