A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available.

February 25th 2024

Chapter 56
The Feeling of Life

It took until the next morning before the girls finally started catching on to something very important about their advent calendars. Lucas and Maya had not expected for them to notice within the first ten days, though in the next ten days they had imagined one of them was bound to pick up on it. It in fact took until the twenty-first day for one of them to look at her own calendar, with the picture that was forming out of the emptied little boxes with their numbers facing the inside, and then to look at one of her sisters' calendar… and another, and another… and finally realize…

"Oh!" Kacey gasped, head turning from one side to the other, and her parents struggled not to burst out laughing. The others were looking at her now, with not a clue of what had gotten her so worked up all of a sudden. "They go together!" They didn't follow. "I think if we put them next to each other, they make a picture! We just have to put them in the right order. Look, see? Right here, where mine stops, there's half a tree. I think you have the other half," she pointed to Marianne's calendar, and there was the half of a tree.

It took a very chaotic and noisy two minutes, with Mackenzie being helped to sit on the floor with the others, but the calendars were placed in the correct order to make their whole picture. They weren't in order of age or anything. It was made random, because that only made it more of a challenge. Now they all looked at the result, and they were in awe. Now they were even more excited to get the last boxes flipped around, to get the completed design.

From there, maybe for being in a sort of creative mood, the girls asked if they might join their mother while she went through the day's batch of diaries. She was not about to say no to spending more time with them, so they settled in on the living room couch, all the better to have everyone comfortable. Maya didn't really have any rhyme or reason as far as deciding which group she'd pick from each day. The ones she'd already done versus the ones she still had to do were separated by whether or not the spine faced out, so she'd just go into her chosen box, pick out the number she needed, and she'd go through them. Sometimes, that meant picking some from two different boxes, but that only made it more interesting.

"Why don't you guys go ahead and pick a stack?" Maya suggested. "Surprise me," she told them, and Marianne left with the triplets and Aubrey, while their brother hurried after them as best he could. Aubrey stopped and went back to help him. Mackenzie watched them go, letting out a little sigh that made Maya want to hug her as much as laugh, just a bit. "I know, Macaw, I'm sorry," she put her arm around her and leaned her head against hers. "But for that, I'll let you pick the order, okay?" That worked.

When they came back down with the sketchbooks, Remy was about to announce which group they'd picked from, but Mackenzie asked her to wait and explained that she was going to be picking, and she wanted it to be a surprise. Her sisters were all on board with that idea, so as Marianne made sure that her mother couldn't see anything about the books she had, from the spines or the covers or any part at all, the others hurried over and whispered to Mackenzie the names of those they'd brought. She thought for a moment and then whispered her answer. Lucy hurried back to Marianne, and the book was taken from the stack before Lucy - again, discreetly - brought it to Mackenzie, who brought it around to place in Maya's hand. In preparation, before it could get within her line of sight, she'd closed her eyes.

"You can look now, Mommy," Mackenzie told her.

"I can? You promise?" The girls replied together, with Ezra jumping in a second later.

They had picked their aunt's diary. Maya was not even surprised. She had sort not picked her yet on purpose, to maybe go through it with the girls, so they'd just done it for her. They all sat around her, some of them leaning over the back of the couch so they could see. She almost gave a disclaimer to her students by now, letting them know that her children were known to sit with her when she did this, so they would keep this in mind. If for whatever reason they didn't want the kids or anyone else to see inside their diaries, which was of course entirely up to them, they had a way of indicating it to her. Maya had in turn pointed this out to the kids so they would know not to look. They were all well aware of the boundary rules, especially with so many of them in the house, all of them sharing their room with some of their sisters, so she trusted them to do as asked. They knew that, if she found out they had looked where they were not invited, there would be consequences.

Haley had absolutely no boundaries from her nieces and her nephew. She had invitations, more like. They were all very happy with their tour of her diary, and now it was time to pick the next one. When they did bring her more of the AP Juniors, Mackenzie looked at her choices but quickly noticed.

"Oh, no, not this one, not this one!" she quickly fished it out and gave it to her mother. "We can't look at that one," she shook her head, pointing to the mark on the edge of the pages.

"We didn't see it," Lucy shook her head.

"That's alright, I'll just set it aside for now and we'll do the others, okay?" Maya told them. She had seen the cover of the marked diary, but she didn't need to see it to know who it belonged to. Reese Quinland. He was the only marked diary in his group. "So who do we have?"

Before they could decide, Lucas came bounding down the stairs, phone in hand, to let them know he'd gotten a call from his uncle Hank Hillard. He was about to be a grandfather again, as his younger son, Henry, was about to become a father for the first time. That meant Stevie Brett was about to have her baby, and they had to go.

It took them a while to even leave the house. They were going to go, just Maya and Lucas, but the girls wanted to go and they argued for it. Eventually, they caved, and so they saw to getting Mackenzie settled into the minivan, then Ezra, then everyone else. As Lucas drove, he saw the barely contained laugh on his wife's face and asked what it was about.

"Oh, I'm just picturing us walking into a hospital right now, with me pregnant up to here and Mack with her leg…" Maya explained, and now he was picturing it, too. Yeah, she kind of had a point.

She was not wrong either. By the time they made it to where the others were waiting, they'd been stopped no fewer than five times by people who were under the impression that they were there for the baby or the leg. By the end of it, anyone who looked remotely in their direction got a 'we're visitors!' from an annoyed Mackenzie, and it was almost funny enough that they wanted people to look at her or Maya.

"Oh wow, hi!" They had barely arrived that Maya was approached by not one but two of her former students, both of them eager aunts to be for the baby on its way. On the one hand, she had Daphne Brett, from way back in the class of 2030, and on the other Maggie Hillard, class of 2037. At this point, it was really easier for her to keep track of everyone and situate them this way, even if they were family. "You're not having yours today, are you? That'd be so weird," Maggie smiled.

"No, still many weeks to go," Maya hummed even as she was approached by a very nervous Stephen Brett and a smiling Hank and Tanya Hillard.

Maya and Lucas both knew that the couple's eldest, Joseph, couldn't make it because he and his spouse and their kids were on a ski trip, but they would be calling in when the baby and the parents were ready. They also knew, regrettably, that while daughters Sarah and Evie were very much within driving distance, they would not be coming. There had been some big falling out between them and the rest of the family, enough so that no one on either side ever came out with whatever it was that had caused it. All they would say was that they were keeping separate for the time being and 'when they were ready,' they would reconnect. To hear them tell it, it was really difficult to know when… or if… that would actually happen, and it was very unfortunate to know. Today, the future grandparents were ecstatic for their baby boy, of course, but there was no denying some emotions at the back of their minds that were sliding closer to the front whenever left unchecked.

"Pappy Joe?" Mackenzie asked, from her vantage point as her father still held her. At the sound of the name, they all turned to look where she was looking, and there he was indeed. The old man was walking up the hall, from where they'd come, carrying a paper cup of coffee. When he saw the rest of them, he gave a small smile before remembering the coffee and focusing on it. Marianne ran over to him and offered to carry it for him.

"You go and give that to Mr. Brett, alright?" he asked her and she nodded, marching over to the man and presenting him with the cup. He thanked her, and Pappy Joe for getting it, before sitting to drink. "Poor man looked like he needed it. I remember the day I became a grandfather," he noted, patting Lucas on the arm, which made him smile. "Took some time before it happened again, didn't it?" he turned to Maya and she laughed before hugging him. "Hello, sweet girl."

"How are you doing, Pappy Joe?" she asked him.

"A new baby coming," he told her, looking at her when they pulled apart and smiling again. "No shortage of them lately. That's good. We need more of that. New life. I don't think I ever saw Patty so happy as when another baby was on its way." It was the first time they heard him mention her like this, in passing, since she'd gone. It was also the most they'd heard him speak at one time since that day. The pain was still very much there, but this was something, and it gave them hope. "Your dad's here, too. He went to the gift shop. He probably got sidetracked looking at the flowers, trying to remember which ones to get. You know, the way your mom would do it."

"I remember," Lucas nodded. "I'll go help him."

Thomas was located and assisted in finding his December flowers, so he and Lucas returned to the waiting group. They were not a minute too soon either, as they'd barely made it to show the flowers to the everyone when Maggie spotted her big brother coming their way. The look would vary, but it would be recognizable every time. It was the look of someone hit with the overwhelming and grandiose realization that he had just become a parent, and he could barely contain himself. Hank was up and ready, arms out, to close in around his son. He would only have to hold him briefly and the emotions would come rattling out, tears of joy running over his smile.

"How was it? How's Stevie?" Daphne asked, looking like her heart was drumming out of her chest, same as her father's. They could tell enough from Henry's face that both baby and mom had made it through alright, but they needed to hear it and be certain.

"She's good, she's resting, uh… When they looked, they saw that the baby was just…" he gestured, the words failing him in his current state.

"Breach?" Maya helped, and Henry nodded.

"But they took care of it, and then…" he paused, smiled. "And then we got our baby girl," he told them, and the reaction was immediate. They had kept everything a surprise, though they had clearly known for a while. "She wanted me to come and get you guys… Stevie did…" he specified, before looking to his parents and the others.

"Go, go, what are you waiting for?" Maggie nudged her brother back the way he'd come, then just as quickly stopped him and pulled him into a hug. They stayed together for a few seconds before Maggie let go and Henry went off with the Bretts.

In time, it was the Friars' turn, and it had been decided that they would go in little by little, not all at once. Maya and Lucas would go, and then would alternate taking the kids in, two by two. When they went in, Stevie was barely awake, dozing off, and they might have left her alone without saying a word, but she had noticed them, and she wanted to say hello, just a little.

"Did you see her?" she asked, mumbling. Henry brought her over, snug in her blankets, and they got to meet the newest Hillard. Having their own baby very close to being born, it really was something else to be holding the baby girl, less than an hour old. "Her name's Carolyn," Stevie told them, and even though Lucas didn't know the significance right away, Maya's expression filled in the gaps for him. The newborn had been named after her late grandmother, Stevie and Daphne's mother. "I think she looks just like her. Probably can't tell yet, but I'm telling you… just like her…"

With Stevie asleep, the rest of them went as far from her into the room as they could, where Lucas got to hold little Carolyn Hillard. He remembered very well holding baby Henry Hillard the day he was born. That had been a whole twenty-five years ago, and he still found it hard to believe even as he stood across from the young man he had become, holding his daughter now.

"Looks like Christmas came early for you guys, huh?"

"She sort of hoped she wouldn't come so close to it," Henry admitted, looking at Carolyn the whole time, a smile on his face like she had already become the entire world to him. Her and Stevie, that was all he needed for now. "We're just glad she's here with us."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners