February 23rd 2020

Chapter 54
Their Bonds to Tradition

"Hey…" Maya came to sit on the bed after having gone to say good night to Sam. Once they'd dropped off Cecilia and gotten back home, they were all pretty wiped out, so it had been straight up to their rooms to get ready for bed. The night had been long and lively. Juliet might have in fact been a mix between Pappy Joe and Melinda Friar. She had kept them wildly entertained throughout dinner and the evening, and she had prepared them a fantastic dinner.

It had been easy to get lost in stories, and food, and good times, but once they'd left, Maya knew he'd be caught up in his head, in what he'd learned about his late grandmother's will. She'd gone so far as to convince him to let her drive, on the excuse that it was only fair they each had a go. He'd been spacey at best, all the way to Cecilia's house and then back to the lane and to their house. And now… Now he was sitting on their bed, staring at one particular spot on the wall. They had all those pictures on the wall downstairs, but they had plenty more on the walls of their room as well. Family and friends both adorned this space that was more theirs than any other place even in this house. And up on the wall where he stared was the twin to the picture on top of Juliet's fireplace.

Maya crawled her way over to his Lucas' side of the bed, until she sort of sat there next to him and could put her arms around him. They both stared at that picture now.

"I can really see your mother and your uncle in her," she remarked.

"They had different fathers and they look so much alike," he pointed out, smiling, which made her laugh.

"See some of you in there, too," she added as he leaned his head to hers.

"Never really noticed it myself back when she was alive, I was too little, but now… Yeah, I see it, too." He paused, breathing. "I can't believe she actually…"

"I can," Maya looked at him. "She believed in you. I know a thing or two about believing in Lucas Friar, and it's powerful stuff." That got another laugh out of him. "I think your whole motivational thing is rubbing off on me."

"Don't sell yourself short, you were pretty great to begin with."

"Witness the master at work," she intoned as he turned and she pulled her arms back down. "What are you going to do about it? The offer?"

"It's three years away, it's a bit early," he pointed out.

"For definitive answers, sure, but… what's your gut telling you right now?"

"Besides 'you shouldn't have had that third helping of pie?'"

"But it was so good…" Maya gasped, remembering the pie. "Sorry, gut talk, not about pies."

"It's saying…" he sighed, stopping to think, maybe to 'listen.' "It's saying not to make any decisions yet, one way or the other, because my grandmother wanted me to have a choice, and to make the one I wanted, without obligations."

"You've got time," Maya nodded.

X

A couple days later, the dinner tour carried on and took the trio on to the Cassidy house. Where the previous invitations they had received had been made by people they didn't get to see so much – by choice or by distance – this one was different. They saw a lot more of Lucas' Aunt Dot and Uncle Emmett and their kids than the others, in great part thanks to the help they'd provided in the work done on the house and some of the furniture, but maybe even more so for the friendship between Sam and Dora.

"Hi, Lucas! Hi, Maya!" Dora greeted them both before zeroing in on the boy at their side. "Come on, I found it!" she told him, with excitement which seemed to carry a number of words her cousin and his fiancée did not have access to but that Sam could swiftly decode, as his eyes went wide.

"You did? Where?"

"In a shop near my school, it's upstairs," Dora pointed, and Sam quickly got his boots off and hung his coat up before running along with her.

"Please, come on in, make yourselves at home," Maya intoned in some approximation of Dora's lilting tones, which made Lucas swallow back a laugh.

"Hello?" he called out. "We're here!" A moment later, Dot came from the kitchen, saw the two of them standing in the hallway, and breathed out.

"Ditched?" she guessed.

"I think she had something to show Sam," Lucas explained, as his aunt came up to greet him.

"Oh, I'm sure she did," Dot laughed, moving on to greet Maya. "You know, I've never really known how to discipline her, most times she doesn't seem to need it, but then other times I ask her to do one thing and she'll do the complete opposite, and I can't say a thing, she looks at me and I just see… Bambi…"

"Like the cartoon?" Maya smirked.

"Yes, the very one," Dot nodded.

"They'll come down eventually," Lucas shrugged.

"Exactly. I guess I should be thankful she's here at least. Junior had to work tonight, last minute, and Alex is at the library, working on a project for school, and asked to spend the night at his friend's house after they finish there. So it'll just be you two, those two," she pointed upstairs, "And Emmett and myself."

"Do you need any help with anything?" Lucas asked.

"Oh, no, please, you're our guests. Besides, Emmett's got it covered, and when he starts in there, he usually doesn't like anyone else getting involved, it 'disrupts' the process," she told them.

"Oh…" Maya slowly nodded, and Lucas commended her for keeping a straight face, because was he ever struggling. Of course, he was already familiar with his uncle's ways in the kitchen. It didn't mean he wouldn't offer to help; his mother's alarms might go off, way back wherever she was.

"Tell you what, I think I might know just the thing to help pass the time," Dot looked them both, but Lucas had a feeling she was looking at Maya in particular here.

She took them through the house, stopping in the kitchen so they might say hello to 'the chef,' before continuing into the basement. Dot had her shop not too far from home, but she also had her personal work space in the house, usually reserved for personal projects and any particular orders demanding extra time.

"Dora mentioned you were looking to get into sculpting," Dot told Maya as the three of them went down the stairs. "Now I know you probably meant with clay, but I figure this might be right up your alley, too."

"Yeah, I did some of it in college," Maya told her. "Not a whole lot, but enough that I wanted to try and work at it some more whenever I had the chance, get better and all."

"The ones you did were pretty good," Lucas chimed in at this.

"Until that unfortunate encounter with the dogs?" Maya laughed. She'd brought her pieces home when that was all done, and not a week later they had broken to pieces when Trix, Lou, and little Peanut had been chasing one another. Trix had run into a table, it had buckled and… crash. Maya hadn't been too heartbroken over it. Mostly she just wanted to ensure the dog was okay.

"Yeah, exactly."

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they arrived in the Cassidy home workroom. The walls were lined with various tools, all neatly hanging, there were drawers, and shelves, and wood, and a large table with stools around it – enough for Dot and the kids whenever they'd be helping her. On the table, a number of small and medium sized pieces were laid out. Maya and Lucas both became interested in these, looking them over until they noticed Dot had taken hold of a box, which she was now filling with odds and ends, tools from one drawer or another, small pieces of wood, some carved, some untouched.

"What are you doing?" Lucas asked his aunt.

"Just hold on, I need to find… Oh, where did I… Yes," she moved to one drawer, looked through it for a moment and then extracted one more item for the box. When she was done, she slid it over to Maya. "Take this home, look it over, try it out, and when you have questions, just give me a call, yeah?"

"Wait, seriously?" Maya asked, straightening up in such a way that felt like that globe of light over her head had just turned on. Lightbulbs were just too small for the inspiration she could muster in that brain of hers, and it was one of the things Lucas loved most about her.

"Yes, seriously," Dot laughed. "You know, I must have been three years old, the first time my father took me into his shop and showed me everything. He started me on small things, of course. He wasn't going to just put a sharp tool in a child's hands, no matter how confident he was that it would be something I would be good at, same as he was." She had more than forty years under her belt now, by that count, and it showed in everything she made. Maya would never aspire to that, but maybe… she could make something of this new medium.

"Thank you so much," she looked to Dot, who was just as excited to share her own knowledge.

"That right there," the woman moved around the table to point to a high shelf lined with a number of wooden figures, behind a glass case. "My favorite pieces. The kids find it embarrassing that I've got their first completed carvings up on display like that. They can't help it, perfectionists like me, they look at those and think they're terrible. Alex is especially critical of his little dog up there on the end." Lucas and Maya both stayed quiet at this. "I know, I know, I can never decide if it looks like a fire hydrant or a salt or pepper shaker."

"Dalek…" Maya nodded now. "That's what it reminded me of…"

"Yeah, well, look at mine, over there," she pointed near the other end. "It was supposed to be a ballerina, looks like the poor girl had a bit of a proportion situation with her limbs," Dot laughed.

"Dora did that one, didn't she?" Lucas pointed to another. Next to the hydrant-shaker-Dalek dog made by Alex was what unmistakably looked like an owl. The details were minimal, but that was definitely an owl. He had been down there before, more than once. How had he never noticed those?

"Yes, that's her. Made that when she was six. Of the three, she was the youngest I felt secure to entrust with the tools. Always came naturally to her."

"That one doesn't look like a kid made it," Maya had become fixated on the figure on the left end of the shelf. It was a house, not this one, so finely detailed… Dot didn't even need to look at it to know, and she smiled to her nephew.

"My father made that one. It was the last one he did before he passed. That's eighty-some years of practice right there." As impressed as he was with this, with the long standing history of this family with this craft, he could just look to the side and see how Maya looked at it, her hands perched on the edge of the box Dot had prepared for her. She had her eyes on that house like that globe of light was ready to engulf her in brightness. That was the kind of thing she wanted in her life, maybe not in this particular medium but just something she would do, something she could look back on, years from now, as the accomplishment of her dedication and her talent. He couldn't wait to see it either.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners