Arc I: "Joy Comes in the Mourning"
Phoebe sat in the passenger seat of Piper's worn down green Cherokee. How Piper had managed to never get a ticket for driving around in her hunk of junk was beyond the youngest one's understanding. With a cigarette in hand, outstretched in the passenger seat. The ashes flicked off the cement curb.
"I told you not to smoke in my car, Pheebs." Piper said, after opening the door. Both of them were dressed in modest black attire. Of course, Phoebe required a visit to the newest thrift store on the Half Moon Boardwalk.
"I'm sorry, Piper. I just…" she trailed off, spent from the tears that still stung at the corner of her lids. Flicking the cigarette onto the pavement just outside of the graveyard brought her no peace. "It's a bad habit," Phoebe confessed with heavy breath.
"I know. I get it." Piper was the small percentage of servers who didn't smoke through their stressful shifts. Often, she was made fun of but it didn't matter to her. Smoking or not was all the same. Perhaps that was her problem, her indifference showed weakness instead of the strength she knew she possessed inside.
"What are we going to tell Prue?" The youngest questioned aloud.
"I don't know yet. We're not there yet. Take a second, compose yourself. I need to pick up the Port at Young Lee market." Piper sat at the steering wheel then rolled up the windows manually on her side.
"I don't get that about you, Piper."
"What do you mean?"
The Jeep began to move through the streets of Half Bay. Piper knew this city like the back of her hand. Every side alley, every street. With her grandmother's hand intertwined within her own, they would stroll lazily down the boardwalk and spent most of their days laughing hysterically; to the point that oftentimes Piper was left in tears of laughter.
Prudence and Piper were true Half Moon Bay residents. Phoebe was the one who had made it out of their sleepy, beach town. For a moment as they drove in silence to the Asian market, Piper considered if she was truly jealous of her sister's sense of free will. As the middle child, she had always felt compelled to keep the peace between the warring energies that came with sisterly affection.
Losing their mother at an early age didn't help either. Instead of clamoring for their mother's attention, they were stuck with their grandmother. Without her, Piper felt slightly hopeless and with every day since her passing, it became harder and harder to admit to herself.
Parking on a side street, distant enough from a fire-engine red hydrant where she felt comfortable enough to let her ratty Jeep sit while she shopped with her sister. Although Prudence had been the parental figure, assuming the role of the matriarch of the sisterhood after their mother's unexplainable death.
A drowning.
Ignoring the tugging of loss' strings playing in her heart, she swiped at her brow before opening the door. In her own way, Piper was the more maternal out of her sister's. Tough love versus reasonable. A never ending conundrum between responsibility and the tenuous battle for mediating between the sisters.
"So, what are we going to tell Prue?" Phoebe asked, her eyes inquisitive while she attempted to read her sister.
"I honestly don't know Phoebe. I put the hide-a-key back under the plant just in case I came home a little tipsy. Maybe I should call you an Uber?" Piper pursed her lips in thought while strolling with her sister through the marketplace.
Catching the eye of an ebon haired man with a name tag: "Kevin", she called out after taking a peak at the badge pinned to his green polo, "Do you have the port I called to put on hold?"
"Of course, Ms. Halliwell," he replied curtly before turning back towards the store. The familiarity of Half Moon Bay and it's cycle of residents and tourists was comforting towards her. While glancing at her sister hunched over a box of strawberries.
"You don't need to buy them for me," Phoebe said while glancing up to her sister, "But the Uber could be good."
"Prue's going to be super upset when you just show up out of the blue."
"Let her get angry, then. Grams left the manor to all three of us. My name is still on the lease."
Piper scoffed, "Phoebe. Get real. You don't even have a job. You didn't graduate college."
"You didn't finish culinary school," Phoebe retorted while rising up to turn and face the middle child.
"That's because I had to take care of Grams."
"Prue couldn't take of Grams?"
"That's not what I'm saying."
Phoebe folded her arms across her chest. Piper glanced away for a moment, searching for the tender words to heal her sister's unwinding grief. "I'm just saying you don't have a job. I can help you out if you want, but it's conditional."
"You're my sister. Why does it have to be conditional?" Phoebe inquired with mock surprise. It was always the same stories with the Halliwell sisters. Blame with no accountability - that was Prue's biggest issue.
"I'm just saying, you don't have a job so I can help you."
"Thank you. That's all I needed to hear."
With a jingle of the door's chime, Kevin appeared with the bottle of port gripped tightly in his hand. "Thank you, Ms. Halliwell."
"Hey, Kevin. Didn't you know Pheebs from high school?"
"Yeah, I knew her," he said, with a flicker of light in his eyes.
"She's looking for a job," Piper said, scrunching her face in jest.
Phoebe pushed her sister with love, "Piper! That's not what I meant."
And for the first time that she could remember, Phoebe laughed. The air was filled with faint delight.
"Phoebe! You're cackling! I'm so sorry, Kevin. We're leaving." Piper gripped her sister by the shoulders and began to carry her back to the Jeep parked a few feet ahead.