May 24th 2020

Chapter 145
Their Time in Family

"Hello?" a shout came from below as Maya was shuffling her small envelopes around. Her hands fumbled and the stack tumbled loose before she could catch them again.

"What was that?" Sophie asked from the phone.

"Hang on," Maya sighed, starting to gather the responses before calling out. "Attic!"

"Who's there?" Sophie's voice requested.

"Little brother… not so little as he used to be," Maya tried not to let her thoughts color her voice, but it was no good. "I kind of miss him being ten, he had his glasses and… Shh, be cool," she whispered, turning her head a moment before Sam's appeared, coming up the steps into the attic. "Hey! How was the movie?"

"Okay, I guess, I…" he shrugged.

"Heeeeeeeey hey, Hart!" a surprisingly booming voice echoed from Maya's phone on the ground, which startled Sam so much he yelped and Maya burst out laughing, dropping off the bean bag until she managed to sit up again.

"Hey, Sophie," Sam muttered, trying to act like he was totally relaxed. "I'll just go and… start dinner," he pointed down the stairs.

"Sounds good," Maya beamed, waiting until he was gone before turning to her phone again. "You call that being cool?" she asked her friend, grinning on.

"I thought it was cool," Sophie innocently insisted. "So, what's with the mopey nostalgia about him?"

"Never mind that, we should keep going before Lucas gets here and I have to go eat. Let me just…" Maya shuffled through her envelopes. "Right, well, I've got two more of Mom's cousins, one with a husband, one with a… plus one that may or may not materialize itself…"

"What does that mean, like a magician?" Sophie snorted.

"Not exactly," Maya chuckled.

"Right. Kids?"

"Well, yes, one each, but they're both twenty-three, so if they're not with their parents it's not a big deal or anything, but maybe keep the two of them at the same table…"

Of all the names Maya had been aware of in some big or small way coming into this day, about the only one she'd yet to encounter was one Randall Clutterbucket. He was Walter's son, only child, inheritor of the family business, and once upon a time willing driver who would take his younger cousins, Katy and Betsy off in search of music stores, and clothing stores, the likes of which they would not have found in their hometown.

He had been twenty-two when young Katy had made her mad dash, and everything she had heard of him from her mother suggested to Maya that he would have been right there in the search parties when she went away, devastated at the thought of anything happening to another of his cousins, after Betsy's departure. Randall was the golden boy in their town, back in the day. Star athlete, top of his class, hardworking and on track to follow in his father's footsteps, which he had done… For all that, he was golden in the way of one warmed by the sun, not someone who could fall under the category of 'not all that glitters is gold.' Unlike Katy, he did not seek or require anything beyond what the town could give him, but it didn't mean he couldn't indulge others, couldn't find value in discovering what lay beyond their bounds. If Katy and Betsy wanted to go out there to get CDs, or books, or other things like that, he preferred driving them than risk them getting around in less secure manners.

If he hadn't gone on those drives with the pair of them, he would never have met the girl who would one day become his wife, and the mother of his daughter, Regan. She had passed away years ago now, when Regan had been just about nine and a half. He had raised her on his own ever since, never remarried, never really held much of a relationship either. He focused all his energies on his girl, and his work, and it was all he needed.

The day of the anniversary, he had arrived on his own, and soon it had become clear that he'd heard someone somewhere in town whisper of the return of one former Clutterbucket daughter, gone very nearly thirty years. His hair had gone to gray early, but it suited him well, even as he had walked into the increasingly crowded room with a half wild look in his eyes. He'd spotted Katy, and she'd spotted him, and there was no telling who had walked faster, but then he was hugging her and she was hugging him, and they held for several beats before standing apart again, talking excitedly. It was as though no time had passed at all.

Later, much as she had learned of her mother's original intention to make Betsy her godmother, she had learned of her dream – in a world where he would have even known she existed – for Randall to be her godfather. Like his cousin, he showed a wish to involve himself in what way he could.

"This is… Wow, of course you are, hello," he had been brought to meet Maya at the party, had shaken her hand with energy she warmed to at once. When Katy started to tell her cousin how her daughter was an artist, a singer, musician, and songwriter, he wanted to see it, hear it at once, and she had no doubts at all that he really did. She couldn't exactly do that there, but there would be time, some other day. After that day, they had that: they had time.

"Hey," Charlie had come and found Maya again, signalling toward the door. "Last cousin for the day," she smiled, and Maya turned with a laugh. One look at the woman who had just walked in, and it was like someone had taken cousin Marissa and ticked her age up just a bit. To no surprise then, she was revealed to be her sister and the eldest of Pastor Carter's two daughters. Carrie was just a few months younger than Katy, and so the two of them had grown up together, been in the same class in school… Maya's mother had been closer to Betsy and Randall, yes, and it was never really the four of them together, but as far as school went, Carrie had been her closest friend.

"So she'll be excited to… No?" Maya had started to say, before catching the look on Charlie's face.

"Anyone's guess. They kind of grilled her a lot after Katy left, and she'd keep saying she didn't know anything, but she did."

"How do you know?" Lucas had asked.

"Christmas, like ten years ago. I wanted to try a beer," Charlie casually shrugged. "Carrie stole me one. Took one sip and hated it, so she took it back, chugged it down. Next thing I know, she's going on about how my sister was so ungrateful, how she'd covered for her with her 'big plan,' and then she never wrote her, never called…"

With this bit of information on hand, Maya, Lucas, Sam, and Charlie had stood there, waiting to see how this reunion would go. Katy and Carrie had seen one another. There was a brief moment of silence, and when Katy had started to go toward her cousin, they had seen the uncertainty melt from Carrie's face. They'd met, they'd hugged, then Carrie had said something, and Katy had shaken her head, said something back, and Carrie had hugged her again.

"Crisis averted?" Maya asked her aunt.

"Looks that way."

While Carrie had arrived with her husband, Taylor, her daughter had come along about twenty minutes later, along with Randall's daughter. Kyleigh Hinton and Regan Clutterbucket might as well have been fused at the hip. Though this had been achieved due to the fact that Kyleigh had been born five weeks prematurely, the two cousins had been born on the exact same day. For this, the four parents had been brought closer than they'd already been, and even more so when Randall had lost his wife and Regan her mother. The girls had graduated high school together, and they had gone away to college together, and they were now roommates, living in Memphis.

"I'm just going to turn to you on this," Maya had turned to Charlie when the girls arrived.

"Well, Kyleigh's the only reason Sara Mae's not like her mom, you know, so…"

"Does that mean…" Sam had raised a hand, likely about to express the same thought Lucas had, and Maya, too. The answer came in the form of the aforementioned twelve-year-old dashing up to the new arrivals and excitedly telling them something before scanning the room and pointing over to where Maya stood.

"I really shouldn't be as surprised anymore, but… wow…"

What had soon resonated with Maya and the others was that, rather than approaching her and freaking out, the newly discovered second cousins had come to say hello, introducing themselves, and revealing how they had been at the Ree concert with Betsy back in December, so they had seen her on stage, too. They had essentially known that they were related to her since then, but without any expectations of ever actually meeting, what with the circumstances of their family, they'd sort of left the whole subject alone, like they might have been contented by the knowledge alone. Now that she was here though… well, they were happy to finally get to say hello, and share how much they had loved her performance, and the song itself.

"By the way, don't tell my grandfather about any of that," Kyleigh had requested, giving a discreet nod over to the pastor.

"Wasn't planning to," Maya had laughed.

"All he needs is one good reason and he's going to make her move back home," Regan declared, nodding over to her twin-ish cousin.

"I would like to see him try," Kyleigh raised her chin, barely holding it together before she started to laugh, along with Regan, and Charlie, and Maya, too.

"Great, you want to tell him about that boyfriend of yours?" Regan had asked, moving to turn and 'signal' her uncle.

"No, no, no, no, hey," Kyleigh had caught her into a hug that was part chokehold.

"Well they'll be fun, maybe I'll put them at my table," Sophie told Maya, after being told about these new additions.

"Works for me," Maya smiled, setting the envelopes aside to flip through some of the photos she still had to place in the stack of albums. She didn't want to make them entirely identical, but they still had to make sense, yeah? "I'm starting to wonder if I would have been named after Randall in some way, if I had been a boy…" Maya stated, stopping at a picture of her mother and Betsy and him. Her mother looked about seven, which would have made Betsy somewhere about ten, and Randall fourteen. If she had to guess by the clothes, it had to be around Easter.

"Speaking of once removed Randall, he's the one with plus one you said 'may or may not materialize,' isn't he?" Sophie guessed. Maya chuckled at this.

"He is, yeah."

"Still don't entirely know what it means…"

"Well," Maya put the pictures back down. "Like I said, from what I heard he hasn't seen anyone, hasn't been in a sustained relationship with anyone since his wife passed."

"So this plus one…"

"Would you believe it, after nearly fifteen years, someone may have shown up to get his heart doing a little dance again," Maya declared, and she could practically see the intrigue forming in her friend's face, way back in Houston.

"What? Who? When?"

"Three excellent questions," Maya snickered, reaching to pick up another of the remaining envelopes.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners