March 2nd 2021

Chapter 61
Our Work to Create

"Hey, I'm good to go for the rest of the day unless Manny needs me. I'm on my way to the old studio now, how's it looking for you? Are you two leaving soon?" Lucas asked into his phone as he moved from the clinic.

"We will be there before you know it," Maya promised him. "How did it go with your mom this morning?"

"Oh, well, she is looking for anything else that might be good for the archive today. She gave me some items already," he revealed, looking to the container he carried as he went. He'd stowed it up at the clinic when he arrived that morning. He didn't feel right leaving it in the car and there just hadn't been time to bring it up to the old studio before he had to go and meet Doctor Alvarez. "There's one thing I can't wait to show you in particular," he told her, and he could just feel, without hearing a thing, that he knew the smile that would rest on her face.

"Yeah? What is it?"

"You'll see. Do you know the way out here? I don't think I ever brought you this far in. I can go and get you two from the parking lot, just send me a text or…"

"It's alright, I think I can find my way," Maya replied, and the timing really could not have been more perfect, could it? Even as she said this, he reached the point where he could see enough of the building in the distance. He spied one figure, sitting outside, a blonde… with a car seat at her side and a baby in her lap. He smiled, let out a breath. "See?" Maya laughed.

"Should have seen this coming, huh?"

"Little bit," she agreed. "I was done with everything, and I figured, even if you weren't ready yet, this would be a good place for us to wait for you," she went on as he hurried his step to get to her faster. They both finally hung up as he was about to go and climb the two steps leading to the wrap around porch, where she waited with the baby. Lucas set down his mother's container before leaning to kiss his wife and pick up his daughter as Marianne reached out for him.

"Hello again, pumpkin girl," he beamed, seeing the way she settled there with him. "I should get you a key so you can go in without me," Lucas reflected as he turned back to Maya and handed her the chain from his pocket once he'd isolated the key belonging to the future archive.

"Juliet already gave me one when she brought us out here," Maya revealed. "She said I could go in, but I figured I should wait for you to show me around." She motioned to the door with the keys now, as though asking for permission to go. He nodded. He was plenty happy carrying Marianne around for now, and she was holding to him like she was about to fall asleep, so there was no chance he'd disturb her.

On the outside, the old studio shared some of the overall architecture of those other buildings across the land of the Sullivan Stables, right down to the first Marianne's old house. Once inside though, the needs and purposes were serviced in the layout. In this case, they were presented with a great open space, a couple rooms in the back sitting on either side of the doorway into the staircase. There was a landing, just a few steps up, as the stairs rose on both left and right before emerging on to the second floor and yet more open space, the bathroom sitting in between. All of this would come to be factored into the set up of the archive as they went along, but for now the one thing they zeroed in on was the array of boxes.

"You weren't kidding when you said there were a lot of those, huh?" Maya blinked in surprise.

"It'll be fine… right?" Lucas asked her. Had they overshot this? Would a month be enough?

"Oh, yeah," she turned back to him with a tone of reassurance as she caught on to his uncertainty. "Please, we've got you and me, and your mother, that's already a solid team, and we'll have others to help us, too. We've got this, okay?"

"Okay," he smiled. She spoke only truth; he knew that just from looking at her. This wasn't the kind of pep talk where you hoped to boost someone who might fail otherwise. This was pure and total confidence. They had this, just like she said.

Maya brought the car seat, and Marianne's bag and hers, and then the container from the elder Friars', while Lucas paced along with their baby girl, allowing her to properly slumber off. As he did so, he watched Maya. She was walking along the rows of piles of boxes now, taking it all in. The years, the different hands, the descriptions of contents… He could just see her start to figure out a few things in her head already, categories, potential displays… When she turned again, he thought she was about to say something, until he saw she had her hand on top of one of the boxes. From where he stood, he could see the year very well.

"Had a feeling you'd go there," he chuckled quietly so not to wake the baby.

"Hey, it was a big year," she pointed out innocently as she looked to the boxes from the year Lucas was born.

"It's not the Lucas archive, there won't be all these things about me in there."

"This is your grandmother's place, and you're going to tell me she won't have been all over this?" Maya challenged. "Telling me I won't open this here box and find… Ha!" she gave a small sound of victory.

"What did you find?" he asked as he made his way over to her. When he came up, he got to see for himself, as she had not touched anything yet, the better to let him discover how easily she'd come upon it all. There was a picture sitting on top, probably added last of all, as it might logically belong there.

There was the arch at the entrance to Sullivan Stables and, stood underneath it, there was Marianne Sullivan, her arm around the waist of a Melinda Friar who could not be more than weeks away from giving birth, going by the size of her belly. The picture was nearly thirty years old, same as the man who'd once been the baby soon to be born, but there was no mistaking the identity of that young woman. Melinda Friar, who would have been twenty-six at the time, still had so much of that fire in her at the time, although it looked to Maya and Lucas both like… well, exactly what it was. She had been so much younger, so much was yet to come for her. She was still being shaped into the person she would become, but here were the parts that would endure, the ones that made her and maintained her heart. Family. Legacy.

Lucas watched now as Maya took the picture with her and brought it to rest on a shelf on the wall, to put it on display. She turned back to him, and his confusion was quickly answered.

"That's it right there. That's where we start. That's what this place has to be about," she pointed back to the picture. Lucas looked at it, at her, down to their Marianne in his arms. Yeah… That was everything, purpose and goal both.

"We'll need to get a frame and hang it somewhere," he told Maya. She nodded before moving to rejoin him and look at the picture from where he was. She looked in on Marianne as she went, finding as he had that she'd fallen well asleep. Maya signed to suggest they put her in her seat. Lucas used one hand to reply: little while longer. She smiled and nodded again.

"So… what are you thinking so far?" she asked him, indicating the room, the whole structure. Lucas followed her gesture and considered it all for a beat or two.

"Documents upstairs, rest down here?" he finally suggested.

"Okay, sounds good," Maya went and took her laptop from her bag and opened it on top of a pile of boxes about the right height for her to work. "What about sections?" she asked, pulling something else from her bag: large circle sticker labels in a variety of colors.

As the day would progress, they would start to make their way through the various boxes. They weren't emptying or triaging any of the contents today, but they were developing a system. Once they had their categories identified, they could look through each box and start to mark them with the stickers. And once that was done, they'd have a better idea of what they were working with, and they could start collecting the items to be split among their groupings. Maya also wanted to keep track of where everything came from before anything started leaving any one of the boxes. She could do that part on her own in the mornings or whenever Lucas had to be somewhere else on his work tasks.

"Okay, I think it's time to call it a day," Lucas breathed as he looked at his watch and found that it was after ten in the evening. They'd had lunch and dinner out here, the first brought out by Juliet, the second by Missy Sanderson. She worked with them for a little while before she had to get back home. But now it was pitch black outside, or near enough to it, and they really had to pack it in until morning.

"I wasn't going to say it, but yeah, definitely," Maya yawned before reaching over to check on Marianne. She'd been awake earlier on, but now she slept again, and if they could keep her that way until morning, that would be ideal, wouldn't it? So, she and Lucas got up and went about settling everything the way they would prefer to leave it overnight.

"Hey, I never showed you earlier…" Lucas realized.

"Showed me what?" Maya asked, carrying Marianne and her seat over to him. He had opened his mother's container and now brought out the old box to sit on top of the re-closed lid. Seeing the inscription, Maya leaned in to read it. "Who's Annie?" she asked, which made Lucas chuckle as he recalled his asking his grandmother the very same thing, the first time he'd read it.

"My grandmother," he told her. "That's what my grandfather called her," he shrugged.

"Huh…" Maya considered this, looking to their sleeping daughter in her seat. Lucas opened the box now, pulled back the paper to reveal the old boots within. "Wow… These were hers?"

"Yes. He made them for her," he explained, and she got such a smile at the notion, like she found it so completely romantic and now she wished she'd known them both, not for the first time. "They are fifty years old," he went on, and here Maya was downright impressed. "Anyone who knew Marianne Sullivan over the years, they'll remember her in these. My mother kind of didn't want to let them go this morning."

"I get that," Maya replied with sympathy. Lucas could see her hand hover near the guitar pick around her neck. Melinda would never have to worry that they wouldn't be handled with care, not around here. They were put back in their box, and that was stored away safely before they could lock up and start back toward the car. "Can't believe you rejected my Lucas section idea," Maya teased him as he settled Marianne's seat and locked it in properly.

"Maybe I'm just scared you'll bust out your more… suggestive works," he teased right back, and her smirk said enough.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners