March 3rd 2021

Chapter 62
Our Work to Grow

After three weeks of work, the archive building felt as though it had taken on its identity. It was no longer the old studio, or the future archive, it existed now. The great opening was only a week away.

They were not ready.

They all still fully believed that they would be ready, that the next few days would feel like that home stretch, where everything just fell into place, but at the same time they couldn't shake this feeling like they'd come up short. It didn't help that they were presented with a whole new batch of boxes that had somehow materialized at the start of this week, forcing them to stop and re-evaluate their plans.

"We could always have a rotation for the displays. Then people can come back and see something new… We could have special exhibits, loaned items… School tours… Tour guides…"

"How did you find a way to bring it back around to me?" Lucas had been left to laugh, looking at her with that sort of humbly enamored look about her.

"Very easily," she'd replied.

The more they had been working at this though, the more it did feel like things were coming together. Better yet, they were getting to learn so much about the history of Sullivan Stables, of the people, from those who had created it in the first place down to those who made it what it was today, be they human or equine.

Lucas had found this entire exercise particularly stimulating for how it all put him in touch with certain things. For one, it allowed him to get much more of a sense of his mother's birth father than he'd had in his entire life. It wasn't as though she had never told him anything about the man, even if she would never get too much into the subject, and for that he could never blame her. She'd been a year old when he'd died, all she had to go on were stories, but then she also had Jax, and he was the father she remembered, which made it hard for her to build this bridge out to the man who'd helped give her life. To this day, it was something she struggled to address, and both her son and husband were entirely aware of how it quietly weighed on her.

When they'd found themselves identifying the boxes with their color code, both Lucas and Maya had come upon a number of documents, of photos, relating to the man himself. Simon Sullivan. According to Melinda, her mother would always joke about the fact that she hadn't needed to take his name. The two of them had been Sullivans before they ever tied the knot. They weren't related, they had both confirmed as much with a bit of family tree scaling which had been at the heart of their very first date. It was that whole conversation which had made the young Marianne fall in love with him, and Simon with her. It had also led to their coming up with the name for their ranch. Not so much of a stretch, true, but to them it was the kind of thing that would make them smile every time they remembered. When Lucas had heard this, he'd been left with this memory of how his grandmother would smile, whenever they'd walk by the arch. She'd never forgotten him, never let him go.

"Lucas, look," his cousin Lea had proudly come running, the day she'd found a picture of the two of them, standing under the barely raised arch.

"Thank you, where did you get it?" he'd asked, and she'd pointed to one of the newer boxes, which she had been going through with her sisters and her fathers.

He looked at that picture… for so long, before and after he set it next to the one Maya had found on that first day. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a picture of his grandfather, but this one felt like the most… open. It was simple, but it showed a great deal. He saw so much of his mother in the man, more than he'd ever done. He'd always seen her as looking so very much like her mother, but now he saw flashes of her father, and he could even imagine he had gotten some of those features in himself as well.

Everything he came to know about him as the work continued told Lucas about the kind of man Simon Sullivan had been. They spoke of him for having this energy about him, and so much heart… He was a fighter, for everything and everyone he believed in. That was what had gotten him in the end, even if he would have likely expressed zero regrets for it, given the chance.

Melinda found the articles about the incident one day. Lucas didn't know that was what they were until he realized she'd been sitting there for a while, bent over the clippings. There was a slump about her shoulders, and Lucas knew what would bring it up in her. He went to her, sat with her, and found her clutching to the tissue she kept near her face, frozen there until she'd need it again. When she realized he was there, she passed him the folder. All she'd been able to surmise was that there had been some kind of accident, something sudden, not an illness. She'd never known the details, never asked. Likely the story had just been too painful to speak of, but now…

"You never asked her? Never?" Lucas slowly asked his mother. She shook her head, sniffled, and dabbed at her face with the tissue.

"There were times… I wanted to. Oh, of course I wanted to. But I would look at her, and I could swear that she knew. It would be just there, in the back of her eyes. This was… the worst day of her life, and I did not want to take her back there. Before she died, the last time we spoke, I think she wanted to tell me. I couldn't bear it, not when I was about to lose her. I made my peace with it a long time ago."

"I'm going to call Dad, okay? He'll take you home." She wanted to say no, to say that she'd stick around, keep helping, but then she finally nodded. She would go home for the day, take a breath, take it in, and she would be back in the morning to help some more.

Lucas kept that folder apart, all day long. There was no telling yet what they would do about the articles. They needed to include them, didn't they? This was Simon Sullivan, one of the founders of this place they were honoring with the archive. He'd lived here once, in the house where Juliet now lived. He'd become a father here; he'd only just started. And he had died here.

"What happened with your mom?" Maya asked, when it was just the two of them. They would spend their evenings at the archive, working away as long as they felt they could stick it out. They didn't mind it at all. That day, she'd been upstairs most of the time, while he'd been downstairs, so she hadn't heard about Melinda's departure until somewhere about dinner time, and at that point she'd decided it best to wait until it was just him and her. He was truly glad she had.

"Come here," Lucas brought Maya to sit with him, on the steps that led into the stairwell to the second floor. She brought the car seat nearby, checking on Marianne while Lucas retrieved the folder. The clippings showed their age, but they had been preserved well over the last fifty-three years.

"Lucas?" she asked. She could probably sense the dread in him, couldn't she? He hadn't been able to get it out of his head either. He didn't think he'd be able to get it out of his head for a long time.

"There was a… massive storm, in the fall of 1976. My mother was a year old," he started, and the shift in Maya's posture told him she knew what this was going to be about. She knew what had happened when Melinda was one. "Her father, my grandfather Simon, he went out to check on the horses, to make sure they were all secure and calm them down a bit."

He'd read the articles, the mentions of his grandmother's recounting. She couldn't go anywhere, couldn't leave her daughter, and looking at his Marianne in her seat, he understood… more than he could ever want to. All she could do was stand there and watch, and wait, and worry.

"There were a few others with him out there, they had everything under control, my grandfather was leading the guys back to the house to… dry off and warm up, I guess. Then the lightning struck, it got… a tree, and it caught on fire, and it crashed… into one of the stables. They all hurried back there, worked to get the horses out as quick as they could, before the fire could spread. My grandfather went back for the last one, got her out, but then the roof caved in, and he got stuck. They tried to get him out, but by the time they did, it was too late, and he was gone."

They were both silent a while after that. Lucas showed her the articles now, and she read through them while he went and lifted Marianne from her seat. He couldn't help it; he needed to hold her just now. If she woke up, he'd get her back to sleep.

"He wasn't going to leave a single one," Maya read out his grandmother's words, their daughter's namesake's words. "Getting to see the family resemblance," she looked back at him. He would call himself honored, to think he had anything of Simon Sullivan coursing through his veins and through their little girl's. "She stayed…" Maya reflected, looking back to the articles, the one especially with a photo of the once happy family.

"This whole place, it was their dream. She wanted to keep it going," Lucas nodded. Maya was careful to guard the clippings as she reached to brush tears from her eyes. She took in a deep breath, let it out.

"We're going to get it done in time," she stated. She nodded to herself, to him, and he nodded back. "Even if we have to work non-stop until opening day."

"We will," he agreed, reaching over to put his arm around her shoulders, the better to get to kiss the top of her head.

It was so much to discover at once, so much to consider. On the one hand, he thought about his mother, realizing her father had died in a fire like that. Would it stir up memories of the fire back at the house a couple years back? Would it make her think the two incidents meant something?

On the other hand, he thought about Maya. He watched her sitting there, her hand at their Marianne's back. He could read her face like no one else. He had a feeling she was thinking about him, and how he would one day be running this place. Was she worrying that something like that might happen to him, too?

"Are you going to put these up anywhere?" Maya asked after a minute of silence had passed. The articles.

"I kind of feel like we have to. They both created all this, and he… he literally gave his life to protect it. They need to remember him. And she needs to know about him," he spoke, his lips pressed to their girl's blond head.

"We should name it after him," Maya suggested. "The Simon Sullivan Archive." The moment she said it, he knew that was exactly what it had to be, and what it would be.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners