Sugar reaches out, over hundreds of miles, over decades, because of the knack she's discovered, the one she can't tell her parents about— Mom would worry, and Mama would try to stop her— and follows her fingertips, in a flash of blue— to a barn in Indiana.
The bright yellow bridesmaid's dress flounces as, for maybe the hundredth time, she lines up to participate in her parents' wedding.
Sometimes she wishes she could simply crop out Uncle Kurt's wedding from the scene, but she has to accept that it happened, how it happens every time. She still thinks of how things fell apart over time, again and again, but Kurt didn't have a time-traveling daughter to help him out. If she gets a chance this time, she'll accidentally land a shoe in That Man's package just for pre-emptive revenge, even though it's wrong and not her business.
She focuses her attention on the brides. Since her family reunited, she keeps coming back. Her brother Charlie says she's obsessing and that maybe she should talk to somebody about it, like an adult, but for her this wedding just makes her smile and happy and proud.
She zeroes in on her parents' hands and how they twine together. Like those trees she sees sometimes that someone has woven together, grafted together, never quite— whole— apart from one another. She flashes on their decades of grief without her. Mom can't remember that timestream, and it pains her from time to time knowing that the rest of the family can. But her heart stays brave and strong, especially when she and Mama stand together. And today, this day, they stand and dance and sing together.
She loves seeing them here, so beautiful and young and happy and generous. They glow golden in the candlelight as they dance, and she can't help herself— she just bursts into her own happydance.
Mama notices, smiles, and joins her. It's Hairography all over again— Troubletones couldn't shut up about how weak it was— but she and Brittany always knew its strength and its rapture. They exchange grins, and Brittany spins her and dips her, laughing.
Sugar catches Santana's eye as Brittany stands her up again. Sugar reaches out to Santana with her timesense and can almost swear that Santana senses who she is. Santana catches her hand and pulls her in for a strangely motherly embrace. Brittany closes to make a Sugar sandwich. Sugar lets that sink in. This hug hasn't lost its potency in all these visits, because here, now, nothing impedes Santana's presence. She hides nothing; she embraces all her awesomeness. And by her side, Brittany plays, delighted, delightful, playful. They are more themselves, just themselves, than any other times she's experienced with them.
These are the moms she misses. The ones she kind of never had.
The strange vibration begins again inside. She has to break from them in order to slip off somewhere discreet where time can tug her back home without alarming the others. Almost, her fingers won't loosen from them. Brittany helps, speaking softly into her ear as she does, "You gotta go. They need you. We need you to go."