A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!
March 25th 2022
Chapter 84
Our Look Back on Memories
She had waited to do this until today. Maya knew too well where her mind would be at, waiting until the time came for all of them to head out to the airport to pick up the returning travelers. Ella and Tori… It was still something she was discovering, this feeling of having one of her daughters so far away, even if it was only for two weeks, even if she knew she was safe, and happy, and would return… Regardless of that, she was experiencing that anticipation, as she'd known she would, so a task had been set aside to help counter it: her end of year rollover up on the second floor, in her art room.
"Okay, everyone's good in here?" Maya breathed as she stepped out of the play pen settled under the skylight, where she'd just finished transporting the triplets from downstairs. They had their toys, and they had their big sister. They might not have been able to respond to her with their voices, but their demeanors said it all: they were as good as they could hope to be. "What about you? Got things under control?" Maya asked, setting her hand atop her daughter's head. Marianne looked up at her and nodded with a big, toothy grin. "I thought so," Maya bent over her and gave a brief side hug. "Alright, then," she let her go before moving over to her shelves, built under the former trap steps mounted on the wall.
Maybe it had to do with the plants sitting on top of those steps, coupled with the contents of the shelves, but very often when she'd stand there, she'd recall Patty Robinson's old home, back in Houston. She could still close her eyes and remember how she'd felt, the first time she'd walked in there, back when Lucas' grandmother had been her professor, before she'd ever known of the man who would be her second husband. It was not unlikely then, she guessed, that this little space of hers had been inspired by the old woman, to some degree. Maybe that was part of why she always felt at peace when she was here.
With how the shelves held a mixture of student folders, and quiz team folders, and sketchbooks, and Marianne things, and Lucas ranch files, and recent music projects – for the musical, for her contracted pieces, and for the band, the bands… well… At least once a year, it was just a necessary thing that she go through all those shelves and do a bit of a clean-up. Some things would be thrown out, others relegated to other places, like the Hex, or the basement, her classroom…
Part of Juliet's efforts to get Lucas lined up to take over Sullivan Stables in earnest had involved giving him an office in the main building, so his ranch files, at his request, were to be put in a box he would take out there. He did have an office in the clinic, Dr. Alvarez' old office, but he rarely used it, almost like he still considered the space as belonging to his predecessor but mostly because he wasn't usually in there long enough to make it worthwhile. That office was where he primarily had his files on the horses themselves, whereas the other office would hold everything to do with the ranch as a whole, the archive, the events, the camps…
That was one easy part of her cleanup. Once the box was packed up and set aside, she could start looking through the rest of the shelves. Marianne asked if she could put some music on, which was a very good idea, considering her task, so she gladly obliged. It was just a bit distracting at first, as she would be drawn to look back and observe the way Kacey, Lucy, and Remy would respond to the music. Marianne wanted to hear the new TXNY album, and it was hard to say if she was happier to hear her mother and her bandmates' voices or to watch her little sisters. They looked like they were recognizing their mother in there, too, and they'd get so animated, either tipping their heads this way and that, or batting their arms or legs about… By now, Kacey and Remy were getting pretty good at pulling themselves up on their feet if they could hold on to something, though they never stayed up too long before dropping back down. They did that here, too, looking like they were nearly compelled to dance but just couldn't manage it… not yet. Lucy was looking like she was almost starting on her way to some sort of crawl, or at least like she was coming around to figuring things out.
Maya's favorite part of the cleanup, every time, was the rollover. When she'd first taken over the art class at her high school, she'd received her predecessor's files, one each to the students she'd be inheriting for the next one to three years before they all graduated. It was easy then for her to keep this up, whether by updating the existing files or creating new ones for the incoming freshmen. She couldn't do that just yet, but until then there was plenty to do. First off, she had the seniors to close out, their four years completed… Down in the basement, she had a file cabinet containing those closed out files, for all the classes she'd seen graduate. One of these days, she supposed, she would have to think about thinning these out… maybe… But she wasn't ready to do that, so she wasn't going to do it.
She could easily get lost in these files, especially the seniors. She'd try and just give them a cursory look, but she'd get caught up in her various notes, or in artwork, or letters… It was no wonder she'd gone to the trouble of cleaning out everything else first, keeping the rollover for the end. Of course, she was going to get drawn to her daughter's file. She'd trace her finger over the label at the top, which read both Levesque, Summer and Friar, Ella. When she'd added the new name, she remembered, she hadn't known whether to cross out the old name. In the end, she'd only traced brackets around it. This wasn't about erasing Summer's existence but joining it to Ella's.
She's coming home… Maya hummed to herself, closed the file, and put it back where it belonged. So much for distracting herself, huh?
Putting this odd little in-and-out year to bed felt good. She looked forward to returning in the fall, going through all those pillars of a new school year. New diaries, introductions, fall festival, tryouts, auditions, a new jacket for a new quiz team freshman… With all those thoughts in her head, Maya was not all that surprised when she suddenly stopped and discovered that she'd finished. Her shelves looked all neat and organized again. I'll have do something once the girls start getting around… She hadn't forgotten how Tori used to pull books, records, magazines, DVDs, anything she could get her little hands on, from any shelf within her reach…
"Hey, we should start getting ready to go," Lucas appeared at the top of the stairs. Marianne was moving to him with haste before Maya had a chance to start getting up from her spot on the floor.
"A letter!" she heard Marianne gasp and looked up to see that Lucas was indeed holding an envelope. It was easily identified as being from Ella, the latest but maybe not the last, depending on when she'd stopped mailing anything out to them.
"We can look at it on our way to the airport," Maya told the giddy sheriff. "Or at the airport, while we wait for the plane."
They ended up waiting until they'd arrived and found somewhere to sit, so Lucas could participate more actively in the discovery instead of having to focus on the road. Marianne was just a bit anxious to finally get to see what her sister had sent, but once they were in the minivan and driving along, she eventually focused on that instead. She'd almost forgotten about the letter by the time Lucas pulled it into view again and went about opening it. Marianne sat in her mother's lap, at his side, while the stroller was in front of them, the triplets just coming around from a brief road nap.
When Ella and the others had gone off on their trip, it would have been easy for them to stick to calls and e-mails to keep in touch with their friends and families. But then she had a mother who was an avid letter writer, and a little sister who loved to go to the paper store with her and help stock their mother's supplies up as needed. For that, she could not have gotten away with not writing physical letters, could she, especially when she'd been gifted with her own stationery kit. So, she'd been writing, day to day, always making sure to include some interesting stamps purchased in whatever country they were visiting at the time. They'd been saving those inside a small box inside Marianne's 'Georgie box,' along with stickers and pictures that Ella had sent especially for her along with her letters.
"This one's pretty thick," Lucas 'considered' the envelope as he reached inside. "Wonder if there's anything…" he pulled out the letter, which was folded around a small stack of gifts for Marianne. She gasped when she was handed it all and Maya helped to make sure nothing would fall to the ground by offering one hand like a platter while Marianne explored what she'd been sent. There were a few spare stamps, a couple of stickers, a postcard, a coaster with a picture of a turtle on it, and a few pictures. Thinking back to their honeymoon, Lucas and Maya had gifted their eldest daughter with a portable printer for her pictures. She'd put it to good use when it came to her little sister. Each picture had an inscription on the back, leaving no doubt that this had been intended for Marianne specifically.
There were fireworks here tonight. We watched from our hotel room. Look at that big green one!
When Ella and the others did arrive, Marianne was the first to reach her big sister, and all Lucas and Maya could think, with how Tori was currently in Taylor's arms, was that Ella had predicted this exact scenario. Arms free, she was able to scoop up the little blonde and hug as good as she was hugged. It was in times like these that they had to acknowledge how much those two meant to each other. On the one hand, there was Ella, who had always been the little sister even as she'd had an eternally complicated relationship with her big sister. The day she'd come into the Friar house for the first time, she'd been presented a nearly two-year-old girl who'd as good as adopted her like a big sister from the start. She'd shown her so much love, which could have been easy at her age, especially for her, but was always so particular to Ella herself and no one else… and she'd felt it.
On the other side, there was Marianne herself who, again, had been so little when Summer/Ella had come along, enough so that she was in the privileged position of not being able to remember a time when she hadn't been there. As far as she was concerned, Ella had always been there, always had been her big sister, and she loved her to bits. She'd been handling not seeing her well enough these past two weeks, they suspected, mostly thanks to the steady influx of letters with treats inside. Now that she had her sister back, she didn't look ready to let go anytime soon. It was enough that hugging their parents hello meant an immediate group hug.
Lucas soon had his granddaughter to hold, as Lea and Taylor went and found their families. This was a very good trade-off, going by the smile on Tori's face.
"What do you have there?" Lucas inquired, spying the source of a crinkling sound as being a small, open bag, sitting in what looked like a short plastic bucket, sort of like what might be used to build a sandcastle on the beach, the handle dangling from her arm.
"Cookies from the plane," Tori informed him before offering them to him.
"I can take one?" he asked, and she nodded. "Thank you so much."
As they waited for Ella's bags, Marianne spotted something new on her sister's arm. Just above where her flowers ended, there was a new, small tattoo, which Marianne rightly identified as a lamb, appearing to be resting atop a flowerbed.
"You like it?" Ella asked, and Marianne nodded. "They've got one, too," she went on to inform her, indicating Taylor and Lea, the latter of which was presently showing her own lamb to her fathers and her sisters. With them, same as the Friars, the meaning was not lost. It was received with an understanding smile. "I got a couple more, too, but if you want to see them, I have to put you down."
This was a satisfactory trade-off, and Marianne was put back on her feet before being directed to stand behind her big sister and look at the back of her ankles. On her left leg was the interconnected outline of the Andromeda constellation, while that of Orion was on the right. As she explained, to her sister and their parents at the same time, though these had been meant to be done by Cheyenne, as a graduation present from them, she'd ended up getting them done, on the spur of the moment, their last of three nights in Greece. Lucas and Maya were more than fine with that. This had meant a lot to her, and she would remember it forever.
The Friars returned home, the whole way listening on as Marianne asked for stories which Ella provided. From all that Lucas and Maya had been hearing, the trip had been more than what any of them could have hoped for. It meant so much to them that they got to have this experience together, and to Ella it was as much about having her best friends with her as getting to take her daughter out into the world beyond Texas. She might not remember much if any of what they'd done, but they had pictures, and videos, and memories, and they would share them with her. As to the three recent graduates, saying goodbye to this era of their lives, there was no telling how much or little of their time out there together had been kept to the three of them, apart from their families, no matter how curious they got. Two weeks on their own, a crossroads up ahead… A lot could happen.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
