March 8th 2022

Chapter 67
Our Memories of Him

There hadn't been any definite plan for what they'd all do that night. Really, all they wanted was to be together, all of them, as they contemplated the anniversary. Not all of them in attendance had known Kermit Hart, because some hadn't been born yet, but they were of the family, and for that the grief of others echoed on to them. So, they would be together, and they would do… whatever felt like the thing to do on this night.

Once the guests had settled into their given rooms for the next two nights, they all made their way back down to end up either in the kitchen or the living room, the latter being mostly the kids. The conversation in the kitchen, where both Maya and Lucas were, primarily circled around catching up, talking about the flight out from Tucson, and how the last few days had been going for everyone around the table. This led them all the way to dinner, which was all it could be, with all of them there, children and babies and all, right down to the dogs, who were never far away during a meal. It was noisy and so very alive… If any of them had been weighed down by feelings over the anniversary, here at least they were able to feel some of that weight lifted.

After dessert, as the meal reached a point where the adults were just talking again and the children felt tempted to escape back where they could play, the triplets required a diaper change. Lucas was presently occupied in the living room, recruited by Marianne and some of the other kids for some very important tasks, so Maya was assisted by Emma and Dora up in the nursery. When they were all done and moved to return below, Maya had a flash of memory, thinking about Wyatt and his sleepless quest for images of their father the previous night. Her free hand went to her necklace, to the engraved guitar pick dangling there as her mind drifted to the day when she had received it, part of a box full of presents for her twenty-first birthday.

She was forced right back out of those thoughts and to the present day, eleven years later, as Kacey was attracted – not for the first time – to grab hold of the small pendant in her hand, and Maya had to gently coax her into letting it go. Even so, now that she'd thought about that day, now that she had Wyatt's previous evening playing at her mind, too… she had to wonder if they'd be up to it.

Some of them at the house that night had seen these videos before, others had only ever been aware of them, never actually seeing any of them. And others still might not even have been aware that they existed or were in their possession at all. The first person Maya consulted about this idea was her little brother. Wyatt had seen a couple of these videos, though it had been years ago. For his part, he would be happy to watch them that night, but he couldn't speak for the others, so they'd have to ask. Before they could do that, he pointed out that he also had several videos from over the years when he and his Hart siblings had been growing up, and while she would have seen some of these, too, there would be plenty of others that she wouldn't have ever seen before. So, they presented this suggestion to the others downstairs. Would they be interested in what would amount to a Kermit home movie night?

The overall and immediate reaction, as they could have expected it, was somewhere between 'oh, yes, naturally, please…' and a small flame of apprehension burning in their chests, threatening to spread out and consume them as they faced grief and regrets. This seemed to bloom primarily from the likes of Katy and Abigail, and Luna, and then Charles… Charles… Little by little, he had been rebuilding his relationship with his daughter, and that chance was a precious gift, to both of them. As bad as he had made things between him and Luna though, both of them would know very well that the one he'd hurt the most was Kermit… and he would never get the chance to mend that bridge. It would always be that he'd allowed his son to go to his grave without ever making things right by him. He'd had to lose so much to even get the chance to try and gain anything back. And now to see his son's life as it had been, with the families he had created for himself… He was sitting there, and as contained as he tried to keep his emotions, they could just feel them radiating off of him, like a wave of fear.

They decided to go chronologically, from the oldest videos to the most recent ones they had, so with everyone gathered around the television and the laptop connected, they began with the very first video. Maya knew exactly what they would see and hear; she'd watched them all countless times over the years, but this one was just special… It was the one from the day when she was born. All of a sudden, they would be hearing the voice of eighteen-year-old Kermit, and to say that it had an immediate effect on the room at large… Both Maya and Lucas were drawn to look to Luna, hearing her beloved brother, but more than anything to Charles Hart.

How many years he had remained cluelessly firm on a twisted view of the world, how much he had lost because of it… He had never known his son as an adult. The last he'd seen of Kermit, the voice that stayed in his head, it was this one, this young man, and even so, there was a difference, one they would only catch for having known him before and after he'd been forced from his home. Katy had mentioned it to her daughter, once, when she'd gotten to see the videos for herself. Freedom. Happiness. They could hear it. They could also hear (and see) the resemblance he bore to his sons. The Hart look had always been strong in Kermit and Luna, in their children, and they had plenty of proof here.

It mesmerized the younger viewers especially, who had never known Kermit in life. They had seen pictures, some of them, even pictures from when he was about this age, but somehow seeing and hearing him like this… it put it all into a different mind frame. They looked at the young man and they were confused. They'd look to Sam, and Wyatt… When Marianne spotted the young Katy, she gasped and turned to look at her grandmother, which made her laugh as she motioned for her granddaughter to come and join her. She lifted her up on her lap and held her there. Maya and Lucas heard the two of them whispering as the videos continued, like Katy was giving her a running commentary.

"Mommy, that's you!" Marianne blurted out at once, pointing to the newborn baby on the screen like she'd just realized it, and they quietly laughed.

The videos carried on and the progress was evident in how baby Maya grew. And just as they had spotted the resemblance between young Kermit and Sam and Wyatt, they couldn't help but look at the little blonde as she was starting to crawl… It was like looking at a copy of the small babe asleep in James Lane's arms, the one who, unlike her sisters, was showing no signs of figuring out her own crawling abilities. Even funnier to witness would be how Marianne would react to seeing her mother when she'd be the same age as her. The resemblance was bright here, too, aside from those features that Marianne had gotten from her father.

The further along they got, Maya would consider how far into the line of videos they should go, fully aware of how evident it would become, in the very last ones, that Kermit was struggling enough that he was nearly at the point where he would end up leaving his wife and daughter. They didn't need to watch those. She'd watched them, eventually, and she had to admit that they were those she'd seen the least. She couldn't bring herself to watch them the way she would often pull up the others. It was too hard to look at the images, to see the crash get closer, to spot signs in their faces… her own lack of awareness… So, when she knew they'd reached what she'd essentially labeled as the stop point, she made an excuse of wanting to 'pass the mic' to Wyatt so that they'd jump from her videos and go to his.

Just like with the first series of videos, the second series also started with a newborn. Sammy… Could it be helped that it was just a bit awkward, for Maya, for Katy, for Abigail, to see a scene not unlike that first video, only with Kermit and a different woman, a different child… No, it couldn't, but none of them brought it up. They'd had years to get used to it, and they were all sufficiently in one another's lives that it was just what it was, nothing else. Plus… Well, they got to see baby Sam, and oh how his siblings took a great pleasure in teasing him for how cute he was… Dora played 'the very loyal wife,' though they'd be willing to bet she'd have some jokes of her own, later on, when they'd be on their own. Meanwhile, as soon as Francesca realized that it was her father up on that screen, she dashed up to it as though she could touch him, and Sam hurried to go and bring her back before she left many a handprint on the surface.

As they carried on, baby Sam started to grow, and then there was Abigail with a belly full of Cara. When she was born and they got to see little Sam with his baby sister… Oh, they couldn't get enough of it. Cara was sitting close enough to her big brother that she could reach out her foot and nudge his leg when they saw it, even as Mateo had his arm around her and was kissing the side of her head. More and more, the erstwhile Harts of New York came together, with Eliza, with Wyatt… It was this whole other life that had taken place unbeknownst to several in the room today. They all now wished so much that they could have been a part of it… And as little Wyatt passed his first birthday, suddenly, one of them was.

Maya got to see herself, the moment she met her siblings and their mother for the first time. She had no memory of anyone recording at the time, but then she would have been too busy receiving a five-year-old Eliza, who had greeted her arrival with shouts of 'You're real! You're real!' That got a laugh out of everyone in the living room, even as the grown Eliza scooted nearer to her big sister from her spot on the floor, feeling the need to embrace her. They got to see young Cara, and then Sam, and baby Wyatt with Abigail… Maya wondered now, as she saw a few more recordings of her time with her siblings that one summer week, whether her stepmother had ever shown these to her father, back when she still didn't want to see him. She didn't ask, because frankly she didn't want to know, in case she hadn't. She liked to think, looking back, that her father had gotten to be part of the moment, at least a little.

The last of the videos had Kermit with all five of his children, after Maya had started to see him, and it was hard not to see that his health was already taking a turn for a while. The whole of those hours they spent, watching video after video, they'd been watching him grow older, same as his children did, and at some point, it felt like hitting the peak and starting the speedy descent, in a rollercoaster. There was no stopping it, and they'd have to acknowledge that, when the videos stopped, it was because he was in no shape to be recorded anymore, and then he was gone… Ten years…

As the screen went dark again, there was a spotty silence hanging over the room. The little children had long fallen asleep where they sat or lay, while the others felt at once happy for the memories they had witnessed and sad, thinking of the one they missed. In the end though, the good outweighed the bad. Charles Hart… He may not have been one for very overt showings of emotion, but there was no denying, looking at him… He was truly so thankful for what he'd seen, he was. But more than anything, ten years after the fact, he was feeling it, like he'd never felt it before… His son had died. His boy, once the light of his life, the one he'd so foolishly abandoned, was gone, and he hadn't been there with him. He could have sunk so deep, feeling it all, but he wasn't alone. Luna was by his side, and he gripped her hand as tightly as she gripped his. Maya watched them, barely keeping from crying, and all she could think was… You'd be proud of them, Dad… They're so much better now.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners