May 21st 2020

Chapter 142
Their Time in Arkansas

Most times, when Maya would find herself at home on her own, that stretch of time would be spent up in the attic, at the desk Lucas' aunt had made for her, just sketching, or painting, doing anything to clear away the clutter of ideas begging to come out. It was remarkably sort of… soothing, like quieting a cacophony until at last… harmony. Today, up until Sophie's call had come in, she had been painting, the large canvas taking up the whole of the wide surface of the desk pulled into its more upright position. This also enabled her to pull out an extra panel, to set any tools she might have needed as she worked. She really loved this desk so much…

She was working on a belated present for her grandparents' anniversary. When they had gone up to see them weeks before, they hadn't known what they were walking into, they had brought a present that felt, in hindsight, sort of impersonal. Now that she knew them, Maya really wanted to give them something… to signify this renewal in their family, this introduction. And this painting was as good of a way as she could think of. It was a portrait, a reproduction of a photo she had there at her side, under her phone.

"You know, I found out the other day where the Penelope name came from," she told Sophie as she worked at details on the canvas.

"Yeah?" Sophie asked.

"Turns out it's Betsy's actual first name. Her full name is Penelope Elizabeth, and somehow there was another Penelope in her class, and instead of going by any other form of it, she went for her middle name instead. After a while, that got shortened, too, and she was Betsy. My mom said she would have wanted her to be my godmother when I was born, but then that was only possible if she went back to her, so… she gave me the name, to connect us in some small way." She wondered if her mother had told Shawn about all this, when they had then passed the name on to one of their twins, too.

"Wow," Sophie responded, a smile in her voice. "Does Betsy know all that?"

"She does now," Maya nodded. "She said she was looking forward to making up for 25 years of missed godmotherly opportunities," she chuckled.

"Okay, good… okay…" Sophie went on scribbling, the activity so clear in her voice that Maya could practically visualize her stamping a decisive period with her pen, all those miles away. "Are Aunt and Uncle Who-Must-Not-Be-Named coming, too?" she went on to inquire. Maya smirked, understanding who she meant all too easily. Betsy's parents.

"Oh, they are," she confirmed, pulling the envelope from the stack.

"We don't get to choose, do we?" Sophie sighed.

"Honestly, I wasn't sure if they'd decide to come," Maya told her. "We didn't talk much the one time, I mostly sent the invitation out of courtesy. But they're coming now, so we have to put them somewhere." Sorting through the envelopes, she pulled out a few more.

There had been plenty of holes to fill in when they had all gone to the anniversary party. Lucas had reminded her of the time they had all been made to create family trees in Mr. Matthews' class. At the time, she'd had next to nothing on her father's side, but her mother's side… Most of it had been names, and vague estimations of dates, and all of it based on what had been on that tree back when Katy had left her hometown. Plenty of her cousins had been young like her, unmarried, no kids of their own… And the rest of them, aunts and uncles and the likes… they had been little more to Maya than those names.

After Betsy had arrived, they all knew it would only be a matter of time before others started to arrive, and they didn't have long to wait. Maya had been nervous, couldn't help it, but she had done her best to push it down, to focus instead on her mother, who was definitely taken on a rollercoaster of emotions, every time someone new came along. She had been lucky so far in meeting her sister and her family, and then reuniting with her parents, and her cousin… but then once those had come through, what did she have to look forward to?

Charlie had been able to shield her parents from hearing about Katy's return before she got the chance to see them, but others had heard rumors around town. This included Angela's younger sisters, Mary and Anna.

"Just how bad do you think it'll be?" Maya had gone and whispered to her Aunt Charlie. Hard as it was to put someone a year older than her on the next step up when she felt more like a cousin than anything else, it had been very easy to feel kinship, with the age and with the affinity toward music.

"Honestly, I'm wondering that myself," Charlie had whispered back, as she also watched the small group walk in. The door was unlocked at this point, no one rang the bell before entering. "That's Mary, Betsy's mom, and Peter, her dad," she filled in, for Maya, Lucas, and Sam, standing around her. "That's Anna, Mom and Aunt Mary's younger sister. You never met, but her husband was called Roger, he died… eleven years ago now," Charlie had counted. "You would have liked him. Those are their kids, Roger Jr, and Lilah," she indicated a pair who had to be in their early to mid-thirties. "RJ was married, been divorced two years. Lilah recently broke off an engagement, it was messy. I really shouldn't have brought it up, but it's better that you know, so you know to… well…"

"Don't bring it up?" Lucas guessed.

"That would be best," Charlie confirmed.

"How are they going to be with my mom?" Maya had to ask. She wasn't just meeting the family, she was checking for trouble.

"I…" Charlie needed to think about it for a moment. "Aunt Anna should be fine. She'll ask a lot of questions, to her and you both, probably, but it will come from a good place. She and Uncle Roger were her godparents," she revealed. This sparked a memory in Maya, if an incomplete one, but she was almost sure that had to be the aunt and uncle she'd go to sometimes because they had a television she could watch. RJ and Lilah, she figured, would have been somewhere about five or six when Katy ran away, possibly they remembered her, vaguely, but if she would be at their house a lot, they hopefully had good memories of her and would be happy to be reunited with her. Charlie made the same estimation, and they were proven correct in the end.

"And what about them?" Maya asked, giving a discreet nod in the direction of Betsy's mother and father. Charlie considered this for a moment as well.

"The sentence 'I really do like you but you make it hard sometimes' comes to mind," she'd finally told them. "It's like they think they mean well, but they really don't stick the landing. You learn to navigate it after a while. As for Katy, far as I heard they were there for Mom and Dad when she left, they helped with the search. Then they found out that she'd run to Betsy, I guess, and that kind of complicated things. When I was little, I remember hearing them all talking, and they were big on not making the same mistakes with me that they made with either of their daughters. They all knew they could have done so much better by them."

"Does that mean they're okay now? Them and Betsy and…" Lucas had asked.

"I don't know if 'okay' is the right word, but they do visit, at least a couple times every year. I think by now they will sort of recognize if they say something they shouldn't, if you point it out to them. They've come a long way."

Throughout the day, both Maya and Lucas had been able to witness this for themselves. When 'Aunt Anna' had come to introduce herself to Maya she had been very sweet but also very chatty, wanting what felt like a rundown of the past twenty-five years, stories of her childhood, and adolescence, and now young adulthood… She wanted to hear about school, and now her job, and the other things she did, and oh she was in a band, that was wonderful, and oh she was getting married, what a beautiful ring, and he seems like a fine young man, and were they thinking about kids?

"That woman makes me dizzy…" Maya had breathed, when she'd been dragged off by her daughter, Lilah, who'd turned a smirk to the two of them like 'sorry about that, I'll take her off your hands.' "And I swear I'm this close to wanting to have a kid right now, just so everyone will stop asking about it…"

"Hang in there," Lucas had chuckled, pressing a kiss to the side of her head.

"Okay, but it's just really kind of weird to think about," Maya had maintained on this diatribe. "When we were in high school, it was all 'don't have sex, you don't want to get pregnant, do you?' and then we'd have to go sneaking around. Now it's turned into 'we want grandbabies, why aren't you making them for us already?' and that's a lot of pressure we don't need," she grumbled, turning to Lucas to find he was trying very hard not to laugh. "You're supposed to be on my side," she pointed her finger at him.

"I am, I am, hey," he caught her finger in mid-air. "As the person on your side, I'm telling you: take a breath, forget about all that, okay?"

"Fine… I'll try," she'd squinted at him.

As dizzying as Great Aunt Anna had been, at least they had more or less expected as much going in. For all they'd heard from Charlie, they really had no idea what would happen once they were put in the path of Mr. & Mrs. Young. Back then, neither Maya nor Lucas had gotten to the point where they could consider the idea of inviting any of these people to their wedding. They were all new, strangers to one another. If they had been thinking about it, they would have had a debate already in their head whether or not they would ever want either of them to be anywhere near their family and friends on what was to be their special day.

They had been very polite upon coming up to introduce themselves to their niece's daughter and her fiancé. If not for that bit of background information playing in the backs of their minds, they would had had no trouble seeing them as perfectly good people, without finding themselves staring at them like they were waiting for either of them to say something bad. Throughout the evening, whenever they had either found themselves in conversation with them or within earshot of other conversations where they were involved, Charlie's words from earlier had come to mind, whenever Betsy or Sasha were nearby, or mentioned, and the same to Katy as well… The Youngs would sometimes teeter on the edge of faltering, but inevitably would find their balance again in some way. It didn't mean that their past was entirely forgiven and forgotten, but when it came time to make out those new invitations, it just hadn't felt as though they could be singled out. If Betsy had given them a second chance, Maya and Lucas could give them a first.

"Right, so you've got one couple and three solos, any idea if any of them will bring a plus one?" Sophie asked Maya, as she paused in her tale once more, switching from one paint brush to another.

"Only RJ ticked yes on that," Maya informed her. "He's still single, but he's hoping he won't be by then, I guess. I've got a few here now with couples and kids," she grabbed two more envelopes.

"Ready when you are."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners