May 14th 2020

Chapter 135
Their Invitation to Return

"Hey, your mom's looking kind of weird back there?" Lily told Maya as she walked into the office a few days later.

"Weird how?" Maya looked up from her scribbling over some new lyrics she was trying to get polished. With any luck, she'd be able to start getting a demo track down over the weekend.

"Kind of pacing around," Lily replied.

"She's probably going over lines for Dallas. Trust me, I've seen weirder. One time when I was eight, I walked into her room and she was wearing a…"

Down the hall, there was the sound of a glass shattering.

"Okay, fine…" Maya scrambled out from her office, Lily on her heels. A few others had been startled by the sound, breaking through the early morning quiet. "I got this," Maya told her assistant, waving the others off before slipping into her mother's office without knocking. Katy stood half crouched, trying to pick up the pieces of what had been a vase until not a minute ago.

"I wasn't looking, I knocked it over, I… I need to find another one, they'll wonder where it went…" she mumbled, shaking her head. Maya realized this would have been the vase the twins and MJ had 'bought' for her, last Mothers' Day, because that way they would be able to bring her flowers all the time, to make her office look nice, and smell nice… They would replenish the flowers at least every other week. Now the vase was gone, shards and dust…

"Hey, it's okay, we'll replace it, they'll never know," Maya promised, pulling her mother up to look at her. "Are you hurt? Did you cut yourself?"

"No, no, I'm fine, I…"

"No, you're not, you're being kind of… fidgety. You look like you've seen a ghost," Maya told her, looking over to where the vase would have been. There was a small envelope sitting there, sort of tipped against the wall crookedly, like it had been tossed, and the poor vase had been in the way. "What's that?" she pointed to it. Katy looked to the enveloped, breathed out.

"Ghosts…"

Moving to retrieve the envelope, she flipped it over to look at the front. It was addressed to her mother alright, but it wasn't to Katy Hart or Katy Hunter, rather Katy Clutterbucket, with her home address. The return address said that this had come from Arkansas. Two labels affixed, to the center, to the top left corner, like one of so many. It had already been torn open, so whatever was inside, she'd already seen it, stuffed it back inside, right before sending it flying across her office, to be the death of that poor crystal vase. Maya looked to her mother, who just stood there, staring at the pieces on the floor. Finding no refusal for her to look inside, she pulled out the card.

On the front had been printed a picture of a couple, the man in a suit, the woman in a wedding dress… It was old, and she'd never seen these people, but there was familiarity to them. Inside, the text was printed in gold.

"Join us in celebrating the 50th wedding anniversary of Angela and Tanner Clutterbucket, Saturday, January 30th 2027, from 7pm until 11pm, at their home…" Maya read, blinking. "Oh."

"Throw it out," Katy looked up.

"Mom…"

"I'm not going, so what does it matter? Give it back," she reached out, but Maya put everything, envelope and card, behind her back, out of reach.

"How did they even know where you live, you haven't spoken to them in like…"

"Going on twenty-eight years. Give it," Katy insisted.

"Mom…"

"Maya Penelope Hart, you give me that thing right now."

"I am twenty-five, Mom, that doesn't work anymore," she resisted.

"Does it?" Katy asked, a bit too wide-eyed for her own liking, but Maya kept steady. After a few beats, Katy sighed. "Betsy…"

"Your cousin? The one who took you in?"

"She always told me it was ridiculous, running off to New York to be a star, kept telling me I should go back, even though she ran off, too, when Aunt Mary and Uncle Peter found out about her and that cheerleader. I was too stubborn, of course, so she let me stay, made sure I went to school. If it wasn't for her, I might never have met your dad, and then you wouldn't be here, think about that…" She was rambling, her pacing reduced to what space of her floor wasn't dusted in glass, but she was still pacing nonetheless.

Maya's track record, where grandparents were involved… well, it wasn't ideal. None of them had been in her life though, so what did it matter? Then, the last few years, her father's side had been made to resurface, and it had been… some good and some bad mixed together. The past was the past, and now she had her grandmother, up in Tucson, along with her aunt, and her cousins, and Abigail and James and the kids. She wouldn't give them up for the world. And if she lacked in blood kin, the whole of the Friar and Sullivan clans had taken her in as one of their own, thanks to Lucas. Alright, maybe not all of them, but the good ones…

Her mother's family though, the unfortunately named Clutterbucket… Well, they had been a blank for a long time, a list of names, some stories, provided by her mother but on the whole… outdated. That was to be expected, when her mother had not seen or spoken to the vast majority of them since before Maya herself was born. She doubted that most if any of them knew she even existed, much less her younger siblings.

She didn't know what they were like, not exactly. All she had to go on were the memories of a young girl who had felt stifled by her small town and sought bright lights. What had felt like unreasonable demands and unreliable people to her could have been perfectly good people, doing their best to provide what they just couldn't. When Maya had been younger, she'd been happy to contend with what she was told, but now, as an adult… She knew better than most how impressions could change, how some of them could really be worth re-examination, as difficult as that initial step could appear.

"I didn't know you and Betsy were still talking. I never even met her… Did I?"

"No, you didn't," Katy shook her head.

"Because when you found out you were pregnant, you told her you were moving in with dad," Maya slowly recalled, the same story she'd once told Lucas.

"I didn't want it to get back to them, didn't want the I-told-you-so's," her mother sighed. "I wasn't planning to cut her out, I just… wanted to have my life together first, but then the Harts kicked your dad out, and time just happened, and… it took a bit longer for me to 'get it together' than I thought it would, so by then I just… I couldn't pick up the phone. I put it all behind me, figured they'd done the same."

"So how did this happen?" Maya held up the envelope. Katy let out another sigh, which shifted into a chuckle.

"You want to take a guess who turned me on to Ree Forster in the first place?"

"Cousin Betsy…" Maya bowed her head.

"Might as well be the president of her fan club. To this day, she is very much on top of everything about her, even hops around from city to city to go and see her when she's on tour. Last month, she came to see her, in Austin, and who did she see on that stage with her idol, if not this young woman who looked a whole lot like she could be related to her. Didn't take her long to put two and two together, and a week later, she called the house."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Maya quietly asked. Katy shrugged, didn't reply. "What did she say? What did you say?"

"No one was home, she left a message." As silence stretched on, Maya looked to her mother.

"You never called her back, did you?"

"Can we not…"

"Mom…"

"Things are good now, they're great. Why are you trying to make me dredge up the past like that?" Katy looked at her, not angry, just still so… like a frightened child, like the kid she'd been when she'd run away.

"Because… it's not just you anymore. Maybe I would like to know where I came from, who I came from. And maybe one day Nellie, Gracie, MJ, Haley… they'll want to know, too." Her mother looked at her like she hated that she couldn't just brush this off; Maya had a point. "I'm not telling you that you have to go to this thing, just… Talk with Dad, think about it in some way where you can be calm and… nothing gets hurt in the process," she gestured to the glass on the floor. Katy considered this, finally relenting.

"Fine. Fine…"

"Good. I'm holding on to this," Maya put the card back in the envelope and stuffed it in her back pocket before moving to hug her mother.

"I don't know if I should be proud or terrified of this maturity of yours," Katy breathed, hugging her back.

"I'll take both, if that's alright with you," Maya gave her another good squeeze. "I'm getting a broom. At lunch, we can go and find a replacement for the vase." When she pulled back, her mother reached up to cup her face in her hands.

"I don't regret a bit of it, you know that? Not anything, not if it would mean I didn't have you, or Shawn, or the girls and MJ."

"I know," Maya smiled, and her mother nodded. "I love you, too." Katy laughed. "Broom," Maya pointed to the door.

"Right, yes…" Katy looked to the mess on the ground now, almost like she was seeing it for the first time all over again.

Stepping back out into the hall, shutting the door behind her, it felt like she'd stepped back out into the real world. Things were quiet, but she had a feeling people were listening to any sound they might catch, out in their own offices, wondering what was up with Katy. Maya ignored this and went to find a broom. Returning to her mother, she helped gather everything up, finally returning to her own office, with the promise of lunch with her mother – Katy's treat – and some vase shopping. All they really needed to do was call Shawn and ask where he'd gotten the first one.

Finally sitting back at her desk, with Lily doing her best impression of someone not quietly trying not to pry, Maya pulled the envelope from her back pocket, pulled the card back out and stared at the photo for a while. She could joke that, at least, if they went through with this, there really couldn't be any more surprises, any more family coming out of the woodwork, but it was about so much more than that. Her father had missed his chance. He'd died before he could ever find a way to make peace, if not with his father then at least with his mother, who would have wanted nothing more than to do the same. Her mother said she had no regrets, but Maya knew that might not be the whole truth, whether Katy could admit it to herself or not. If she could spare them all that missed opportunity… She had to try. Maybe it would never go any further than this, but she would have tried, and that would have to be good enough.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners