July 10th 2020

Chapter 192
Their Circle Around Grief

Driving back up the lane, late that evening, neither of them knew how to express the way they felt. They had both awakened feeling light as air, anxious to see their people again, and now… now there was this weight, in the pit of their stomachs.

They had spent the day up at Zay and Nadine's house, the two of them, and Rosa, and in no time a few more, too. There had been plenty of time for them to imagine what it would be like to be reunited with their friends after two weeks away. They imagined great big hugs, and so many smiles, so much laughter, and stories and souvenirs and photos… There were hugs, big, squeezing hugs, but they were just kind of quiet, and the stories they told had more to do with getting the call about GiGi, and what they had been working on over the past few days, in preparation for the funeral/party. After that, they'd simply been helping Zay and Nadine with whatever they needed to get done. The rest of the band briefed Maya on the playlist they had been assembling, of GiGi's favorite songs, which they were to perform. She was right on that.

There had been lunch, and dinner, and the way they were going they might as well have slept there, but in the end the friends were thanked for their help and sent off home. Maya, Lucas, and Rosa got back in the car and drove off.

"She fell asleep," Maya reported, whispering, as she looked into the backseat. Rosa sat behind Lucas, her head resting on her arm, on the open window, her short raven ponytail flipping in the wind.

"I'll bring her in," Lucas whispered back with a nod.

Pulling up to park next to Maya's minivan, the headlights sweeping across the windows, they climbed out of the car to find the door was now open. There, outlined by the low light of a lamp and the television, stood a most welcome sight.

"Sammy?" Maya blinked, taking off at a jog a moment later.

She hugged him with enough momentum to lift him up his feet for a moment or two, giving no mind to how he had gone and grown to stand a good eight or nine inches taller than her. She had seen him, the day before they'd left, and he still felt taller. To see him now, with all their emotions in turmoil, it was the first time it all hit, and she cried. Sam kept on hugging her back, and it was really the fact that he knew, more than most people she'd seen today, what it was like to lose someone. GiGi may not have been her blood, but she was family, no doubt about it.

"What are you doing here, you're supposed to be in Tucson…" Maya looked up to her brother's face, that sweet, smiling face… Oh how she'd missed that face.

"I heard about GiGi, and I wanted to be here when you got back. I've been staying at your mom and dad's the last three days," he explained. That got him another hug.

"I will deny it if you say this in front of any of the other boys and girls, but you're my favorite, little brother," she whispered.

"I won't tell them if you don't tell them the same," Sam vowed.

Lucas had appeared a moment later, and the brothers had a heartfelt embrace of their own. His surprise at seeing Sam there had lasted all of a millisecond, and then it had felt more like 'well, of course he would here.'

The newlyweds followed the newly returned Sam and their temporary roommate/decorator into the house. By the looks of it, Sam had been awaiting their return with takeout, a movie, and his latest comic creation. One look at the containers made Lucas turn back to his brother.

"Cecilia get home okay?" he casually asked.

"I drove her back two hours ago," Sam confirmed, using the need to look at his watch to give him a reason to break eye contact.

"Must have been happy to see each other after two weeks apart," Lucas went on, trying not to smirk. It wasn't as though he would have had her come over for anything more than a very tame hangout while he was staying over with Katy and Shawn and the kids.

"Yes, very," Sam nodded, and Lucas swore he'd been about to call him Sir.

Messing with his younger brother for a minute, it had felt like any old day, and that had been good. Of course then they'd all started moving about toward going to bed for the night, late as it was, and then the day weighed on some more. It came back to him as he found Maya had stalled on her way up the stairs, staring at a framed photo on the wall. It showed their little group of six, her first summer in Austin, her first time at the Babineaux party. And there, sitting like a queen on her throne while they surrounded her, was GiGi with that smile of hers… It was impossible not to feel happy or loved when she smiled at you like that.

"I wish we would been able to see her again, to say goodbye or…" she looked back to him, still sniffling.

"No one really got to do that, not really," Lucas pointed out, looping his arms around her waist. From where he stood, one step down, they were almost the same height.

"I know," she let out a breath. "Our last conversation was as good as we could ask," she went on, likely her point from the start. "We did just like she told us to do, and she was so right. We never got to tell her about it though…"

"You want to paint right now, don't you?" he guessed, pressing a kiss to her shoulder.

"So much," she confessed. "First thing tomorrow," she added after a beat, as though she had gone and made a silent deal with herself, to go and get some rest now, rather than to completely wipe herself out.

"Your breakfast will be served in the attic, Mrs. Friar," Lucas promised, leading her to carry on climbing up the stairs toward their room.

For all he'd said about her getting to sleep, Lucas ended up staying awake for some time after Maya had successfully dozed off. He'd been thinking about what she'd said, about the last time they'd spoken with GiGi, the night of the wedding.

Maya was sad about not having had the chance to say goodbye, but then it was as she'd said. They had gotten so much out of the things she'd told them, to really enjoy their trip, not to always be taking so many pictures that they would miss it all…

For years already, he and Zay and the others had gotten used to the way GiGi would tend to see them off in such a way as to suggest that she was saying her bit in case it was the last time they saw her. At first it had been a bit weird, sure, but after a while it had almost become a bit funny. They wouldn't laugh at it, or at her, but it became something familiar to them. They could almost believe she would live forever, that it would never come to pass. And then as she'd surpassed a hundred years, year after year, well… maybe she would keep going.

He had lost people before, lost both his grandmothers. But he'd been a kid then, and his understanding and his experience of death had been different. It wasn't any easier, it was more just that… it made him contemplate things in a whole other way. It confronted him with the passage of time, made him think about other people in his life coming along with age. That wasn't the only way people could be taken from them, he knew, and they had very nearly seen that happen after Sophie had nearly been lost to them, but it still became much more of a factor. His parents, uncles and aunts… his grandparents… It was coming on three in the morning and he really wanted to hug them…

Maya woke with the sun. She only had a vague recollection of it now, but she knew she'd dreamed of GiGi. And as much as she had said that she was going to paint as soon as she got up, when she left the sleeping Lucas and stepped into the hall, it wasn't up into the attic she went but down, into the kitchen. Rosa was sleeping, on the couch, and Sam wasn't up yet, or at least he hadn't come down the stairs yet. Without a word, she started to grab what she needed from the pantry, the fridge, the cupboards… She didn't think she'd made these on her own enough times to know the recipe by heart, but right then it felt as though her hands knew what to do, and so she let them do it. She was sliding the first tray of unbaked cookies into the oven when Rosa came into the kitchen, dragging her feet for being not quite awake yet.

"Cookies?" she asked, practically prying one eye open with all her might.

"Still just dough," Maya informed her. Rosa gave a light grunt as though to say 'I'll take it anyway.' "How about coffee instead?"

"Mkay…" Rosa turned toward the table, then paused and turned back to go and hug her friend. Maya smiled, hugging her back.

"Glad to have you back, too, Shorty. Are you awake enough to keep an eye on these?" she asked, indicating the oven. Rosa nodded. "Okay, Sam will be up soon anyway," she told herself as she got the second tray in.

"I got it, I got it," Rosa promised, and so Maya made her way back up the stairs. Peeking into their room, she could see Lucas was still asleep, and so she continued into the attic, there to find that her brother was not in his room as she'd assumed, but here, asleep in the beanbag. Their father's gifted telescope in its spot next to him, she wondered if he had come up here last night, to look at the stars, before falling asleep on the spot.

She didn't wake him, telling herself she knew exactly what would have brought him up here the night before. It was part of what had brought her here, too. Where he'd expressed those feelings by using the telescope, she was going to be doing it with brushes, and colors, and canvas. She had plenty of photos on her phone for reference, whether she needed them or not in order to conjure up the smiling face of Geraldine Babineaux, their GiGi.

In one of the drawers on the desk, she kept a spare pair of headphones, for needs of a soundtrack to her art. She plugged it into her phone, pulling up the playlist Nadine had compiled for her, the songs they were to perform at the party. They put her just in the mood to call up the memory of Zay's great grandmother, as though the woman was sitting right next to her, looking on as she began to paint what would become her face and giving pointers about the size of her eyes, or the presence of a mole… She may have been gone from the world, but she had left her mark on the people who loved her, and she would stay with them. Maya counted herself so completely lucky to be one of those people, now more than ever.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners