Disclaimer: Any characters from S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders are used here for the purpose of a fanfiction story, and not for any financial gain.

Thanks go to BlackLightningDX for the beta-reading. :-)

Gina had carefully checked the obituary columns of the newspapers over the next few days, and found out that the funeral would be held on the weekend coming up.

"DARREL SHAYNNE CURTIS, b. Jan. 5 1946 – d. Mar. 10 2017. Survived by –" and here, Gina skipped ahead. She didn't know any of those people. "–service to be held at Moore Funeral Home, March 18 2017."

It seemed kind of bizarre to realize that Darry was actually seventy-one when he died. Seventy-one. Geez. It hammered home just how much time had passed since that story written on the paper. The date on the front had been October 3, 1966.

She made sure she had a tasteful outfit for the funeral, and then with some difficulty put her mind back onto her homework for her university courses.

- - - - -

The funeral itself was astonishingly sparse. Exactly three people showed up, if you didn't count the funeral home director and the priest the guy had gotten from the Methodist Church.

And one of those three was Gina. Do Ponyboy's grandchildren really no longer appreciate their great-uncle at all? Family was the most important damn thing these guys had!

She stood at some distance behind the two people with grey hair – so at least Ponyboy's children still appreciated Darry – listening to the priest intone the words, words that seemed futile and empty when you realized that death was one of the biggest transitions that ever happened to someone.

As the two people stepped forward to place flowers on the coffin, Gina hesitated. She hadn't brought anything… except the folded note. As the people stepped away again, she swiftly dropped the note onto the coffin as it was being lowered into the hole. She whispered, "Thanks for leaving me the story, Darry. I promise I'll take good care of it."

Gina turned, andthen saw the two peopleface to face for the first time. They were both men, likely in their forties or fifties. They both wore strained looks as if they hadn't slept enough to care for being cheery.

The taller of the two said, "Ma'am, who do we have the pleasure of meeting?"

"I'm Gina Kavanagh. Mr. Curtis had me clean his house once a month for quite a few years now."

"Ah. That explains why you're here. I'm Skystrip, and my brother here is Cicero."

Cicero was the shorter of the two, and a bit stockier. He said, "Unfortunately, you must think rather little of Uncle Darrel's family that only we two are here, but… our wives had other things they decided they needed doing and the children have barely seen their great-uncle at all. I guess we didn't do a very good job passing on our father's ideals."

Skystrip looked pained and said, "Our dad always told us family was the most important thing; it had been all he'd ever had. It's why we're here, but… I wish our families had had enough sense to come with us."

The strained looks on the two men made sense now; their uncle had just died. The man who they must have spent summers with in their youth had just passed away.

Gina felt somewhat less incensed. She'd been ready to tear a strip off the two gentlemen, but somehow, their own admission of imperfection tempered her feelings. Nobody's perfect, you know.

Her curiosity was piqued and she asked, "Did he have a wife? Ever?"

Cicero said, "Yes. He did; he married after he bought the construction company, but unfortunately she died almost seven years ago. Aunt Sarah, her health was a bit fragile and towards the end she had been ill for almost two months. Because of her health and the concerns that pregnancy might overstress her, they'd never had children. For my part I always wished I'd had cousins."

Skystrip said, "Yeah. We were a lot closer to Uncle Darry when we were younger. We lived here in Tulsa back then, and we'd often go and see Uncle Darry. But then we both went off to school and then did our own things. I guess we kind of drifted apart, all of us, after that. Dad stayed here in Tulsa right up until the end, though."

Gina said, "Darry – he asked me to call him that – never said much about you guys or even Ponyboy. I saw his brother exactly once, and I don't remember him very well at all. He always seemed lonely to me."

"He may have been, but at least he had contact with you every month, so someone was there looking out for him. Thank you, for that."

"And I'm glad at least someone besides me showed up for this funeral. But I've got to go; I need to take care of things at home and it looks like it's going to rain."

Skystrip and Cicero nodded, and shook hands with her. They were going to inventory the contents of Darry's house and see what they would want to take with them, and then sell what remained plus the house.

Gina headed back to her place, and rested on the couch, feeling drained. Without meaning to, she soon fell asleep.

- - - - -

Gina woke up, feeling very stiff and sore. It was near the evening, and the sun was shining. So much for the rain, she thought. She looked over at the yellowed papers, and realized that like it or not, her mission of getting them published meant she needed to get permission from the gentlemen she'd met earlier.

On a hunch, she drove back over to Darry's place after making a pit stop at a print shop. Two late-model cars were parked outside, and she could see Skystrip (she still had to chuckle inwardly at Ponyboy's strange naming habits) carrying what looked like an antique table lamp out to one of the cars. As she stepped out, he noticed her and waved.

Gina approached Skystrip and as she did so, Cicero came out of the house as well. She was a bit nervous, and said, "Hi. I'm sure you're wondering what kind of crazy cleaning lady comes back to her employer's house after he's gone and dead, right?"

The two men smiled a bit, and the tension lifted. Gina, still nervous, spoke. "Seriously, though… I hate to do this to you while you're still dealing with your uncle's death but there's something he left for me, and I'm thinking of getting it published. Because it used to belong to Darry, and you're his family, I need your permission."

The two men looked at each other and Cicero said, "Well, what is it?"

She showed them a photocopy of the first page, and their eyes went wide.

"Oh my god. Dad? He wrote something and left it here all this time? Never showed us? He wrote so much about so many things and he was never shy about showing us what he wrote!"

Gina couldn't tell if Cicero was bitter or sad. She said, "Look. I spent a fortune getting a photocopy made; I have it with me, and I suggest you read the thing. It's about when they were all young. It's vividly written and I seriously think publishing this could help someone, somewhere.

"The original sheets are turning pretty yellow and I don't want to handle them any more than I have to." She handed the stack of photocopied papers over to him.

Cicero was absorbed in reading the first few pages. Skystrip said, "Leave us your phone number and e-mail address and we'll get back to you as soon as possible."

She did so, and then left.

- - - - -

Author Notes:

Hey, all. Thanks for reviewing. This story does seem to want to keep going, so as long as Admiral Plot Bunny of the Universal Story Fleet keeps bringing me ideas,I'll keep writing. :)