May 22nd 2020

Chapter 143
Their Time in Uncertainty

The more she worked on the painting for her grandparents, Maya couldn't help but feel like she had this tune trying to work itself out of the back of her mind. Truth be told, there had been some kernel of it coming through for the past months, like a reoccurring theme, a few spare notes, playing inside her head whenever she thought about any of her mother's family… like a jingle. And now that she was working on the painting, those notes were being pressed in so much, under each stroke of her brushes, that they almost had no choice but to expand if they didn't want to become so repetitive as to be annoying instead of appreciated. The whole reason she had her phone there next to her like this was so that she could open a voice memo and gather up the bits of music and lyrics that came to her as they did.

Or it had been, at least, until Sophie had called, putting an end to the song work as Maya now found herself retelling her adventures at the anniversary party. She'd mentioned being out there before, when she'd returned, but she'd only really given broad strokes up to now, their arrival, and meeting Charlie, and her grandparents… It wasn't that she'd felt any need to hide or anything, it was more like… It was all still so new, and she needed a little while with these new memories to really put them all into perspective.

"Okay, let's see…" Maya looked at the envelopes in her hand. She only even really needed to look at the return labels of each one and faces would flash in her mind's eye. Couple more cousins of my mom's, on her father's side… These ones fall under the category of 'First encounter was a bit weird, not totally writing you off but you're on probation, mostly I liked your kids and that might be the biggest reason you scored an invite.'"

"That's a very wordy category," Sophie declared, laughing.

"Yeah, well, you know…"

"Oh, I do, yeah. A bunch of my father's side of the family, the ones who sort of fell out of touch after he died, only showing up on occasional holidays, calling on my birthday for like a minute, didn't necessarily do well with the whole lesbian… situation…" she declared, the last word feeling like a summary of their feeling on it. "Made seeing my cousins who I do actually care about a bit more complicated. So, who are these cousins?"

"Marissa, no plus one unless you count her daughter, Sara Mae. She's twelve. Then Kyle, his wife Liz, plus two kids, Chris and Kyla, six and three." Just mentioning these six names, in her head, felt like placing six tiles on a board and then rearranging them into two trios, one under a smiling face, one under a big question mark.

As before, Charlie had been her way in, dropping a bit of shorthand info whenever new people arrived. Marissa was one of Tanner's youngest brother's daughters, while Kyle was Tanner's only sister's only child.

"I'm going to need a chart," Maya had declared, shaking her head, reaching over to stop Sam pulling his phone from his pocket to do just that even as she said it.

"A lot of these people you'll only see from time to time, if you come back to see us," Charlie had shrugged, to which Maya had given her a look she hoped her aunt would know meant that she had every intention to do exactly that, especially for her. It had made her smile. "Anyway, it'll come back to you when you need to remember, you'll see."

"Right, keep going," Maya had told her.

"Okay, well, there's not really much to tell on Marissa and Kyle, I mean… They're my cousins and I don't really know them all that well. The age difference didn't help, I guess. Like we're all supposed to be on the same level, but they just saw me like I belonged at the kids' table when they had grown out of all that. Kyle isn't even that much older than me, six years, but he and Marissa were always more like brother and sister than cousins, and he did everything she did. Our daughters are the same age…" she shook her head in the general direction of where they could see the new small group just arrived. They were greeting their aunt and uncle, congratulating them on the anniversary, and of course the big news of the day was that Katy had returned…

As far as Charlie had been able to piece together for her niece, Marissa's older sister had always been so close to Katy when they were kids, less so Marissa herself, which had turned into something like resentment, which was then turned into a desire to groom cousin Kyle into a similar connection when he came around. They would have been all of eleven and four when Katy ran away, so only one of them really had substantial memories of her, but they definitely kept a united front in how they reacted to her return or the introduction of her kids into the mix.

The brief interactions she had with the two of them, and Kyle's wife along with them, put much of that into perspective. Oh, they were courteous, sure, but the whole time it felt like they would stare at her like 'So this is Katy's big secret, huh? This explains a lot, actually.' They all seemed to have made up their minds and stuck to them throughout the evening, and the only real contact Maya had had with them since was these two envelopes returned to her and confirming their presence at the wedding. She didn't know if she'd end up regretting this or not, but the way she saw it… their first encounter had come as a bit of a shock for everyone, a need for readjustment, and she was a big enough person not to let that be the final nail, not to give them all a chance to know each other better.

"If you can find a way to put them further back and get the kids at the kids' table though, that'd be doing me a solid," Maya told Sophie as she paused her tale.

"Already done, my bridal friend…"

While their parents had been busy getting filled in by Auntie Angie and Uncle Tanner at the door, the trio of kids had been left to detach themselves and roam, which had easily been more fun for them, what with all these new people around, and look at that, more kids! Six-year-old Chris had taken his little sister by the hand and the two of them had gone and met the little Hunters. Looking at the two of them, it was easy to get a handle of the dynamics.

Chris had that whole way about him like he might as well have been going around the entire time in a shirt that said 'I'm the big brother' in bold letters stamped across his chest, and the back, too, in case anyone didn't see the front. This was not in any overly protective way at all, but there was absolutely no doubt that he loved his little sister very much, and it was imperative to him that she be happy, and safe, and loved. One look at the three-year-old girl tailing him every step of the way would suggest that she was exactly all of this, and where their own father had been shaped under his older cousin's judging hand, Kyla was shaped under her brother's care to be just as he was turning out to be, which was just a good little dude, funny and welcoming. When the pair of them had come up to Maya and Lucas – directed there by Nellie and Gracie – Chris had greeted them with a bright hello, followed by an introduction of himself and his sister, who had seen something peeking out of Lucas' sleeve and stared at it for so long that he'd finally crouched and shown her the tattoos on his arms. Both kids had been fascinated by this, little Kyla prodding at the birds and laughing. When they had discovered Maya had these same ones on her arm, too, the whole process had been repeated. Throughout the evening, they had come to 'visit' a few more times, before ending up asleep on a couch in wait of their return home. When their parents had come to collect them, they had groggily woken up and demanded to say goodbye to their new cousins, which they did.

As much as those two had been naturally open to the new arrivals, their cousin Sara Mae had been a similar but equally different scenario, all of this made supremely evident for how she first discovered her relation to Maya Hart. By now, both she and Lucas, and Sam as well, were familiar enough with this one particular look to recognize when someone would see Maya and know who she was, maybe not as family, but as the lead singer of TXNY, or that songwriter people were starting to talk about after she'd appeared on stage with Ree Forster…

"Hi," she had actually approached Maya, which seemed in complete contrast to how very small her voice sounded.

"Hey," Maya had smiled at her. The girl looked so overwhelmed as to be rendered speechless, though the question had been there in her eyes. What was she doing here of all places?

"Are you okay, Sara Mae?" Charlie had chuckled, not understanding this behavior in her cousin's daughter. Maya had looked back at her now, realizing she still didn't know, which was somehow even more surprising to Sara Mae, who found her voice again, if only to 'educate' her aunt. There had been a barrage of words and very little breath between each one, but somehow the message had come through, that this person here standing next to her was a singer she knew very well, and Sara Mae was a big fan. Charlie had turned back to her niece now with a new understanding of how she'd ended up in Olsen's in the first place, and also an intrigued smile that said 'tell me everything.' Maya had countered this with a look that promised she would do exactly that, but for now there was a girl who needed to be filled in on a few things, and it might come more easily from her. "Well, Sara Mae Clutterbucket, it is my sincerest pleasure to introduce you to your… oh dear, hold on… second cousin… Maya Hart."

It was a wonder she hadn't fainted.

"The rest of the night, whenever we happened to look and spot each other, she'd get this big smile on her face and wave. Took a while for her to recover enough so that I figured out she wasn't actually that shy in real life, but once we got there…" Maya recalled to Sophie, smiling to herself as she remembered when Sara Mae had gotten up the nerve to come and ask for them to get their picture taken together. Maya had caught a look of Marissa, who watched her daughter with her cousin's daughter and seemed to finally figure out why her face looked familiar, for reasons other than… well, family.

"Kids at the kids' table, parents in the nosebleeds, got it," Sophie was scribbling.

"I am not getting married in a stadium," Maya laughed.

"You get what I'm saying though, don't you?"

"Yes, and I agree," Maya breathed, flipping through the remaining envelopes for the next batch. "Right, more Clutterbuckets here…" She caught the tiniest bit of a giggle on the line. "Stop laughing at my family name or I'm giving your job to someone else, Wedding Planner Zvolensky."

"You wouldn't dare," Sophie 'gasped.'

"Wouldn't I?" Maya 'challenged.'

"So, who are these people with the totally not ridiculous surname?"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners