May 21st 2021

Chapter 141
Our Time With Healing

"Can I come in?" Lucas asked after knocking at the closed door.

"Sure."

He opened the door to find Gracie settled at the bay window, with cushions at her back and both legs up on the seat while she looked out the window. It was getting to be a familiar sight, in the past few weeks, enough so that he'd spotted her there as he drove up to the house. She turned her head to look at him now as he pulled a chair to sit next to her. Looking at her, as much as she had been a very quiet person from the day she was born, the energy that radiated off of her now was hard to ignore. She wasn't just quiet anymore, there was something about her that felt pulled back, pulled in out of sight. It had been a month since the accident now, long enough that her current state had really sunk in as reality. Maybe things were not moving as fast as she would have hoped, or maybe she was just an eleven-year-old girl who'd started losing some of that hope. It was hard enough to ponder what would happen as an adult, so as a child…

"I wanted to bring you something. Actually, I was charged with bringing it to you, by your big sister," Lucas explained as he sat down. Una the dog, curled up on the floor next to the bay window, stared up at him a moment before rising and climbing her way up on to his lap. He smiled and scratched at her ears. Meanwhile, Gracie watched him with half-hearted curiosity.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Hold on, let me just…" Lucas pulled out his phone, went and tapped around until the room was suddenly flooded with the sound many voices talking over one another, and the thumping of loud music in the background. "It should be starting soon, here you go," he passed her the phone, and she took it. She didn't need long to figure out what this was. She could see the stage, suggesting that whoever was holding the other phone was standing right up front, right in the middle. "You couldn't even be in that spot if you did go with the others," he pointed out. "You'd have to be backstage with the rest of them until you're old enough, and that's not going to happen for a few more years," he pointed out with his best conspiratorial tone.

He didn't exactly get a grin in return, or even much of pleasure at the notion of pulling a fast one on her siblings, but the promise of this video was enough. It wasn't a video so much as a live feed, and soon TXNY would take the stage, and she would get to watch them all. First, of course, Cara would come up and open for them, as she'd done since Riley had resumed her position last month.

"Can… can we turn off the lights?" Gracie asked. "So that it's like we're there?"

"You bet."

She could have been there that night, backstage like her parents and her siblings, but she had feigned exhaustion and discomfort just enough so that no one would feel obliged to stay with her and they would attend anyway. She hadn't fooled anyone, not her parents or Nellie or the younger kids, and it had taken a lot to get her twin to even go and leave her here, but Gracie had begged for her not to miss out on her account. It was conspiration between Nellie and Maya which got Lucas out here as a willing messenger.

He supposed he understood why she was struggling in this way. On the surface, it might be said that things would have gotten better once Katy and Shawn made their way back to Austin at last. There'd still be the long recovery, but at least they'd be here, right? And yes, it was great for them to be here, for all the little Hunters, and Maya, and Marianne, and the Clutterbuckets, and for Katy and Shawn themselves. They were all together, as a family, as they should be. Maybe somewhere in her heart Gracie had believed that once her mom and dad were there with her things would get so much better for her, physically, because how could they not? Wasn't that part of the parental package?

They were doing their best. They were one hundred percent by her side, seeing her through that slow recovery with morale, with encouragement… They were not pushing too hard or doing anything that might be considered excessive, no, they were actually doing everything right. But there was no magic to it, and the results could only get so far. She was not much further than she'd been when she'd started, or at least it appeared that way to her. What was worse, as Lucas and Maya and the parents and grandparents suspected, was that she was being isolated. Everyone else was at school, and she was home. Everyone would get to go and play, and she'd be home. Her siblings weren't ignoring her, and they would be a constant presence for her, happily so, but then she'd feel as though she was holding them back and she'd insist that they go on and play without her.

"Why didn't you go to the show, too?" she asked Lucas. "You can see Maya," she pointed to the screen, as Cara finished the second of her two songs and the crowd cheered while she walked backstage.

"I am seeing her, or I will," he pointed, too. "And she gets to watch, too," he added as he pet the dog now sitting up in his lap. Una had been at attention all through Cara's songs, and it had amused her forlorn friend in the bay window. "They should really allow more dogs at these things," Lucas declared, and Una barked, which made Gracie laugh. "Look, here they come."

At the other end of the feed was someone else holding a phone, and that someone was Missy Sanderson. She was part of a small group just in front of the stage, and Maya and the rest of the band would get to see them as they took the stage. Her neighbor had her boyfriend, Kai, on one side, and on the other was 'Houston's own Shayla Blake,' as Maya would call her. Cara would be joining them and Mateo – standing next to Kai – as soon as she could make it down there. Next to Mateo were Phoebe Munroe and Stella Buckley, and next to them were Sam and Dora. They all made for an interesting grouping, especially with the girl with an arm in a very decorated and very hard to miss plaster cast, and also the one who was coming along on five months pregnant already. But they were there, and they couldn't wait for the show to start, as Maya could tell from her spying spot backstage.

"Look, see, there she is with the phone," Maya told her siblings, as they all tried to get a look.

"Do you think Gracie can see us?" Nellie asked.

"I don't know, but you guys just stay here when we go out there, okay? I'll try and get Missy to point you out if she sees you."

She was always glad to be on stage, always felt that fire come alive in her chest, running down to her fingertips, but it was different when the show had a purpose, a special someone or some few she was setting out to play for in particular. It was like that when her parents would be in the audience, and they were here tonight, backstage with the kids, but it wasn't for them exclusively that her fire became brighter. It was for someone who wasn't in the building at all but instead sat back home, kept company by her very helpful Huckleberry of a husband. If she could give her a good time with her music tonight, oh… It was all she could want.

The fire understood its job, and it burned and burned all through the show, from the first song to the encore. She couldn't wait to go and see Gracie, when she'd go rejoin Lucas and Marianne at the Hunter Hart house, before they headed on home.

"Hi! Hello!" she couldn't help but squeal, after the show, when Sam and Dora came to say hello.

She was discovering this feeling in herself now, the closer she got to becoming an aunt, and it made Sam's relationship to Marianne that much more understandable. She greeted her new sister-in-law today with a magnetic need to embrace her and lightly – and respectfully – feel at her belly. She was definitely showing, though she'd remained on the smaller side, something they'd been assured was perfectly normal. The baby was growing just as it should. To see Sam as he experienced all this for himself, alongside his wife, was as comical as it was endearing to his sisters. They couldn't even tease him for how excited he was, showing sonograms, asking Maya and Lucas questions… They didn't know what they were having yet, and they weren't going to. That was the plan anyway. They had agreed that they would be happy regardless, and they didn't want to build up any kind of preconceived ideas of who this child would be.

"I'm so happy that you were here tonight," Maya unashamedly addressed her unborn nephew or niece, which made Dora laugh. For someone who had been shaken to the point of withholding the fact that she was pregnant not too long ago, she had grown into this state now where she so looked forward to meeting this child of hers and Sam's, and it was so good for them to see it.

Maya was also very happy to see her students in the audience that night. She thanked Missy profusely for the assist with the phone. Missy had been thrilled to do it. Then of course, there was Stella's presence. It wasn't the first time that her shy bird had braved a crowd like this, and she was growing more at ease about it. But then there was her arm to consider, and maybe it was a tiny bit of transference, thinking about Gracie and her leg at the very same time, but she couldn't help worrying that something could happen. She could get knocked around by others standing nearby, which was not uncommon at a show like this. At least, with her being at the front with the rest of her group, it was less of a risk. And now it was over, and she was allowed backstage, too, to say hello to her teachers and their bandmates.

As much as Maya had been looking to her sister when she was out of school, when she was in school, she was shifting that attention over to Stella. The last few weeks, with her being unable to draw or paint, had been as bad as anyone would imagine if they knew her for even one minute. It wasn't so easy to help her compensate, wasn't as though she was ambidextrous. The best she could do to help her was to take this time where she couldn't use her drawing hand to expand her horizons, her knowledge. She borrowed a page from her Rochelle methods and let her peruse her books.

She specifically lined her up with photography material, and for that she was very glad to have her father in town. Shawn was eager to point her in one direction or another, and Maya brought it all for Stella to explore. She didn't suddenly forget that she missed what she usually did, like her oldest and dearest friend hadn't been removed from her, locked away under a cast, but it was in her nature to see the world with an artist's eye, and she appreciated her teacher's efforts and expressed as much.

"Can you give this to your sister?" Stella approached her that night with what first looked like a post-it note and instead turned out to be a sticker. "I have one, too, see?" she pointed to her cast, on the inside of her wrist. "I thought she might like it, for hers."

"I will put it on her tonight if she lets me," Maya took it with a smile. "Thank you for that."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners