May 16th 2020

Chapter 137
Their Invitation to Try

By chance, it came to be that, as they were getting ready to go and pick up Sam from Cecilia's house, Maya got a call from her mother, who wanted to talk again. Soon enough, the decision came for Lucas to drop her off at her parents' house while he went on to pick up Sam and then swung back around to get her.

"What do you want me to do if I'm back and you're not done in there?" Lucas asked when they pulled up to the curb.

"Have Sam text me when you're nearly here?" Maya suggested, and he agreed. She took a deep breath, whether she meant to make this a 'big deal' or not, she couldn't help but feel her gut was in knots.

Walking up to the house, her nerves were momentarily released when she spotted a small face peering as high into the window as it could go. Maya squinted, her eyes saying 'now what are you doing there?' The response was a grin and a hand wave before the door was pulled open and she could see her little brother properly.

"You're supposed to be in bed, not playing doorman… doorboy…" she informed MJ as she pulled him up into her arms. "What are you doing up?" she whispered while MJ pressed his face against hers, blue eyes to blue eyes and crossing for being so close. He loved doing that, pulling back after a moment and laughing as his sight would settle again.

"Mommy said you would be here, I heard her, on the phone," he finally answered his big sister's question.

"Right, right, so you wanted to get some good hugs in?" Maya guessed. MJ nodded. "Sneaky," Maya laughed, kissing her little brother's squishy cheek as they walked into the house proper, closing the door on the way. "Where's everyone?"

"Up there," MJ pointed.

"Up there," Maya repeated, setting him back on his feet so he would lead the way, decked out in his favorite star strewn PJs. It had long been and continued to be his favorite shape, his favorite pattern, in any color combination. This one was yellow and dark blue stars on a light blue background.

Passing by the twins' room, Maya peered in to find they were both asleep in their beds. Then, in the nursery, she found Shawn, sitting on the small bed with Haley, as the smallest Hunter appeared to be almost but not quite asleep. Maya caught her father's eyes and he pointed down the hall while minding not to disturb the toddler. He also pointed to MJ, and Maya signalled she would handle it.

"You go to your bed, and I'll come and see you in a bit if you're still awake, okay? If doesn't mean you keep awake on purpose, yeah?" she whispered, leading him to his room. MJ nodded dutifully, though he still looked at her with those innocent eyes. She was at least going to tuck him in, right? Maya just pointed to the bed, and the boy hopped in, crawled and flipped on to his back, head to the pillow and ready. "Weirdo," Maya chuckled, pulling his blankets up until he was satisfied. "Good night, star boy," she kissed his forehead and turned the light off on the way out to find her mother. She met her father in the hall, as he was coming from the nursery and carefully shutting the door. The two of them shared a look. "She told you about…" Maya pulled out the infamous envelope and gave it over as Shawn nodded. He looked at the labels on the front, pulled out the card.

"MJ's got a bit of her father in him, doesn't he?" he remarked, looking at the picture.

"He does, yeah," Maya nodded. She'd noticed it, too.

"Soon," Shawn remarked now as he read the text inside, including the date.

"I already checked my schedule, if she decides to go…" she advanced the topic, asking without asking…

"That's still unclear," Shawn answered the unspoken question. "All she's really told me is what happened earlier, with this and the…"

"V-A-S-E?" Maya filled in.

"That trick's not going to work much longer," her father shook his head and pointed loosely in the direction of the twins' room.

"How are you with languages?" Maya inquired, shopping for a backup. Shawn chuckled.

"Anyway… We haven't gotten that far into it, not with the kids running around, and I can't be the one to…" he sighed. Maya knew he was right where she was, feeling like he wanted to help while also trying not to sway Katy in any way where she might chose to do something she didn't want to do, but at the same time… Sometimes people needed that extra little push, didn't they, not to choose but really to be shown that they would not be alone if they made the choice that needed some extra support.

"What's she up to now?" Maya asked as they headed to Shawn and Katy's room.

Katy sat on the bed, a plastic box at her side, which Maya recognized being part of their household since she was little. It had always been in her mother's room, somewhere, usually on a closet shelf out of her reach, until she was tall enough that her mother outright told her this was hers, and it was personal. Maya had always been very good about respecting this, no matter what, enough so that that sight of the box there, open, felt sort of startling. Some of the contents were already spilled before her mother, trinkets and memories from a whole other life… Katy was looking through a photo album, not yet aware of her visitors.

"Hey…" Shawn cleared his throat, making her look up.

"Hey!" she smiled, finding the two of them there. "Check this out," she turned the album around for them to see and they approached. "This is when I arrived in New York. I grabbed a couple of disposable cameras on our first stop out of Arkansas, so I could chronicle my 'escape,' my journey to shiny NYC," she narrated, her voice adopting a decidedly teenage turn. The image they were presented certainly fit the bill. Fifteen-year-old Katy, blond curls spilling from a ponytail in the wind, using her free hand to point at the closest landmark she had found upon leaving the bus station, her face perfectly stating 'look, I made it, I'm here!'

"I've never seen you this young," Maya stated, amazed. "How did no one stop you, you look like a kid…" she had to ask, thinking back to her own attempt at running away, when she was thirteen and longing for New York, too, if only to return there.

"Looking back on it now, I still don't even know. I thought I was so clever, and this would be… my first test, as an actress, to convince people that I was expected on the other end of this journey by an adult," Katy shook her head to herself. "But… here," she reached into the box again, finding another album. "I grabbed these before I left, felt I had a right to them… more than they did." Even as she said this, they could hear in her voice the regrets she had now, if only in her perspective as a mother instead of a child, and one who had very nearly experienced her baby girl making a run for it.

This new album showed Maya the first evidence of her mother's childhood that came out of something more than stories. Little Katy Clutterbucket, in her home, outside somewhere, on her own, with her mother, her father, some grandparents, and cousins, and aunts and uncles… It was always easy for Maya to look at herself, or her brother and sisters, and say that they looked like their mother for this trait or that trait, but now, actually seeing Katy as a child, she could see it even more.

"This is Betsy, isn't it?" Maya pointed to one photo of what had to be a roughly eight-year-old Katy with a girl of about eleven years. They were sitting side by side in some wooden steps outside somewhere, arm in arm like sisters. Katy had always been closest to her of all her cousins, and the feeling was mutual, which would explain why the girl had then gone out of her way to explain her departure from home, six years later. It would have been such a loss for Katy, her kindred spirit taken away.

"I'll go," Katy declared in response to the question they had yet to ask, like maybe the thought of her cousin had finally convinced her. Maya and Shawn both looked at her, a united front in wanting to ensure that she was absolutely certain. Katy had taken a plunge back in those memories, she'd had to, and now she'd kicked back up to the surface and there was no doubt. There was fear, oh, so much fear, but the doubt was gone.

"We will," Shawn nodded.

"We will," Maya repeated, taking her mother's hand in hers. Katy squeezed it, looking to her husband with a smile. "What are you going to tell them?" Maya asked, nodding back to refer to her younger siblings. At this, Katy showed a flicker of debate.

"I'm not bringing them," she told her husband and daughter. "Just because I'm ready to face whatever that's going to be like, it doesn't mean I'm ready to put them in the middle of it."

"Sounds good to me," Shawn backed his wife on this, and Maya did, too. Her mother had a point. This first return was going to be… complicated, no matter what they did. It was better that they all got that out of their systems and, if it turned out that the Hunter-Harts and the Clutterbuckets could co-exist in some manner of peace, well, then… then they would introduce Nellie, Gracie, MJ, and Haley into that mix. "So, just the four of us then?" Shawn turned to Maya, guessing that Lucas would be coming along.

"Yeah," Maya nodded, looking up from the album again. It was hard not to be drawn to look at it.

"Trade you?" Katy asked her daughter, holding out her other album again. The pages had been turned to a new page, where Maya was treated to the image of her mother again, possibly sixteen by then, huddled cheek to cheek with a boy the same age as her, the same age as his future eldest son was in Maya's present time, and oh was there ever a resemblance between them.

Sixteen-year-old Kermit had such a brightness about him that it was striking deep at his future daughter's heart. This was the boy before the complication of impending fatherhood and parental rejection, and he was just… She could see what might have drawn young Katy to him, make her fall so hopelessly in love.

"Can I… Would it be alright if I borrowed these?" Maya looked to her mother, sniffling and feeling like she might have been on the verge of tears.

"Yeah, of course you can," Katy's face echoed this feeling, leaning forward to hug her.

Sam texted not two minutes later, and Maya was waiting for him and Lucas when they pulled up. As she climbed into the car, into the back, Maya asked Lucas if he had called his mother yet. He had.

"Mind calling her back to see if there's more vacancy at Hotel Melinda for a few little Hunters?" Next to her, Sam looked confused, not yet aware of the fact he'd be bunking at the Friars' for a couple of nights.

"This is really not going to be helping our case with the whole…" Lucas pointed out.

"I know, I know, Granny Mel needs to hold her horses," Maya shook her head before turning to her brother. "Hey, Sammy, wait until you see what I've got."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners