Chapter 7

Dipper's POV

"So you two can work here, if you want, I guess. Or, you know, there's always outside activities as long as you don't get lost again," I said as I unlocked the Mystery Shack. "Although if you do happen to get lost, there are only a million signs pointing back here…" Which was actually how they got lost to begin with but…

"Can we see the one door?" Tammie asked.

I walked in and asked, "What door?"

She pointed to the "Employees Only" one.

Behind there was pretty much a house that Mabel and I had lived in during our summers in Gravity Falls. But I really only ever went back there for food and to get things out of boxes every now and then. And sometimes it acted as a supply room, with the occasional break room function. It could hardly be called a living area anymore though…more like a storage area at best. Mabel leaving was…sort of the trigger for its demotion. After all, with one twin gone there was no need for all that extra space.

"I guess so," I sighed. "But nobody really uses it anymore so it's not exactly a sight to behold."

Not to my surprise, Tammie led the way with a huge smile on her face…just like Mabel's, and both twins disappeared behind the 'Employees Only' door. I had to admit they were kind of cute… At least, their innocence was.

Tyrone's POV

Aaaand Dipper was right when he said this place was almost never used… My sister unsurprisingly found it amusing in just about every way possible. It was dusty and the paint was fading. There was a small crack in the wall. There were two chairs and an old TV. Some kind of little skull table… A very old gaming console with two controllers still connected to it but placed beside it, all shoved to the side. Ancient crumbs on the floor. A candy wrapper half hidden under the chair.

Right behind the tired "living" room was the kitchen. There were a few snacks in the cabinets and a half-eaten bag of chips on the wooden table. Couple of chairs, seriously expired milk in the fridge, and it seemed to be uninhabitable to human life. I ran out of there back into the allergy-triggering living room.

Beside it was another hallway that my Tammie seemed to have already gone through—no sooner than that thought crossed my mind did I heard rustling coming from it. So of course I had to go check it out for myself, see what other gross wonders awaited me.

The hallway turned to a set of stairs, which I followed all the way up to what appeared to be either a large loft or an attic space. Whatever it was, it had dim lighting coming through one triangular window and was thoroughly riddled with cobwebs and more dust. It was so bad that I saw Tammie's footprints in the layers of dust covering the wood floors.

"This place can't be healthy," I said as I found her rummaging around in some random box of the other fifty that had to be stored here. "Let's go back to the gift shop place."

"Suuuuure…?" she asked in a tone that prompted an air of curiosity.

"Uh. Yes, sure. I'm inhaling hundreds of years old spiderwebs that do nothing but collect more dust than all the downstairs together."

"I found a runaway note," she said suggestively.

"Yeah, Tam, that's great and all, but that's none of our—"

"From Mom," she interrupted.

Okay whether that was or was not our business suddenly wasn't relevant and considering this was our mom, wasn't it kind of our business? At least a little? Because she…she…

"But she never mentioned this place before…" I replied.

I snatched the note from my sister, who still beamed at having found something worthy of interest, just to verify the truth of her claims. And yes, she was right, this was our mother's handwriting and it was even signed with her first name at the very bottom. It didn't seemed to be addressed to directly one person, so either only one person was with her, or this note was meant for multiple people. But who? The note said she loved them and would miss them but who was "them"? Why had she left this place out of our lives?

"Ty, Ty, look!" Tammie exclaimed, holding up a photo of one boy and one girl who looked a lot like us.

I took that, too, and wondered if maybe this was our mom when she was younger. And she said she had a brother growing up, so maybe the boy was her brother. And…maybe they both grew up here. Since her brother died before we were even born, maybe that was why she didn't want to talk about this place. It…sort of made sense I guess, but still, that was a long time ago…

"Don't you think the boy here kinda looks like Mr. Dipper?" my sister asked.

I looked up and she was holding two other photos, looking back and forth at them. I went on to assume they had the same two people as the one I was holding did. But…I didn't really want to admit that the boy looked like Mr. Dipper. He did but…I didn't want to admit it.

It also did bring up the question of how our mom knew him. She lived here at one point, yes, but what was her relationship with him? Friend? Brother? Cousin? I still assumed brother but I kept an open mind.

Tammie, however, did not.

"I say he's an old flame." She winked at me.

"Ew, Tammie, I don't want to think about any of Mom's old flames! How about friend? Why can't he be her friend?"

"Llllllover kind of friend?"

"No. Friend kind of friend. Friend. Just. Friend."

"Maybe Mom had a love life here," she continued.

"Or she had a wonderful friend life here. Friend, Tammie. There is such a concept of a boy and girl being just friends, you know."

"It's better when it's romance," she decided.

She stole the note and darted downstairs.

Dipper's POV

As Wendy and Soos settled themselves in and I was busy counting the stock, I heard Tammie scream, "MR. DIPPER!" from behind the "Employees Only" door, along with the pounding of feet. It was approximately 1.5 seconds before the door slammed—and I mean slammed—against the wall.

"It's a bomb!" Soos yelled.

In all honesty it felt like one…

"MR. DIPPER!" she screamed again, this time with her brother wrapped tightly around her waist trying to hold her back from entering the gift shop.

"Tammie, stop it!" he yelled at her.

But her determination clearly outweighed his…well, lack of strength. She trudged onward towards me, dragging him like a heavy belt.

"Don't!" he cried.

But after screaming bloody murder, whatever it was she had to say, I suppose the right thing to do would be to listen…despite the…odd and…rather inappropriate circumstances…

She heaved on foot more forward and extended a fist to me. It clutched an old and wrinkly piece of paper. We sold a lot of strange objects here in the Mystery Shack and kept a lot of logs so I wouldn't be surprised if they'd dug around somewhere and found one of them containing some weird replica of…oh, say, one of those photoshopped bigfoot photos or something.

"Okay, let's see what's got you two so worked up," I chuckled.

I straightened out the paper. My frown deepened as I continued to read it, but I couldn't make it past "leaving for various reasons". It was at those vile words that I crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it across the Shack, somehow envisioning spontaneously combusting—bursting into flames just because I was looking at it.

"Okay I had nothing to do with what Tammie did, this was all her idea, I tried to stop her but she wouldn't listen to m—"

"Both of you, stay out of the attic!" I growled.

The twins flinched as I stormed past them, into the office where Grunkle Stan was usually found.

Tyrone's POV

I expected different possible reactions from him but not this, not fury. I thought that, maybe if what Tammie said was true, then embarrassment. Maybe sadness. Nostalgia. But not anger or fury or even frustration…

"Uh…wh-what exactly…did you two show him…?" Wendy asked from behind the register.

"Well, we—Tammie—found this runaway letter—"

She rolled her head back and groaned. "Oh nooooo you two have really done it now… Dipper…errrr…doesn't like to talk about the girl who wrote it. He was close to her."

"What happened to her…?" Tammie asked.

"Nothing… Mabel was just an ordinary girl from Piedmont and came here to visit every summer, all summer long. She always wanted to make people happy and the whole town loved her for that. But…one day, when it was almost time for her to go back to Piedmont, she just disappeared. She wrote that letter to let us know she was okay and chose to leave on her own but nobody ever knew why… She never told anyone she was leaving, she never even hinted at it. She just…left."

"Did she…like this place?" I mumbled.

Wendy smiled. "She loved this place! She would always pick flowers, catch butterflies, make new sweaters… She had so much fun getting creative and man was she hyper. She even got a pet pig and named it Waddles. She went on so many adventures, always had a smile on her face. She never liked leaving though. It always made her kind of sad."

"So Mabel and did you ever happen to catch her last name?" Tammie asked.

Wendy sat back in her chair and propped up her magazine. "Pines."

Both of us bit our lip exchanged a worried look that said it all.

"We'll be outside now. Thanks, Mrs. Wendy," I said politely.

I grabbed Tammie's wrist and pulled her outside, and we proceeded to go to the side of the Shack where no one could see us. For once she was just as shaken as I was. And there was a very thick fog of mystery surrounding our mother right now.

"When has Mom ever been hyper or creative?!" Tammie hissed. "In fact, when has she ever been anything Mrs. Wendy said?!"

"I'm more concerned about why she ever left this place. I mean, unlisted 'various reasons'?" I said. "If she loved this place so much what made her leave everything behind? If the whole town loved her then don't you think she had friends here? And if she was so close to Mr. Dipper then why didn't she ever tell him she was leaving? And Piedmont? She never mentioned anything about Piedmont! If that's where she's from then wouldn't she have had family there, at the time anyway? Why leave them behind too? What did everyone else do to deserve that?"

"Mom changed, Ty… Maybe she left because she just, I don't know, stopped being her old self or something…? I don't know when she stopped but maybe that's why she left."

"Okay, even how she is now, she still wouldn't run off on us…probably…"

My sister gave me a very skeptical look. "Ty. No. She would never do that."

"Sorry…I'm just really shocked at how she treated everyone… It's not like her…"

"What if she wanted to come back…?" Tammie murmured.

"Huh?"

"Yeah. I mean, if she visited this place every summer, she knows where it is. What if she really wants to come back here but she can't because of work?"

That…actually sounded like a legitimate answer. Yeah. Yeah, that could be just it. What if that was why she never told us about Piedmont or wherever this place was? If she'd told us, we would've gotten curious and wanted to go, but we wouldn't have been able to. Maybe she just didn't want to disappoint us. But…it still didn't explain why she left in the first place.

I sighed, knowing that now, knowing all this about Mom, would come some really awkward moments when she finally showed up… And a lot of questions.

A/N

WOH'KAY. Updated! At long, long, LONG, long, very VERY long, last! Those who followed Nova and have read the A/N at the bottom should've expected this despite my obvious "love" of writer's block.

I am suuuuuper pleased to announce that the very next story I update will beeeeeee... *ridiculously long drumroll* ...A Rose Without Petals! :D Yeeeyyyyyy! Your heartfelt, encouraging, flattering reviews kept slapping me in the face for the past two years. Like, seriously...

"UPDATE." *SLAP*

"UPDATE NOW." *SLAP SLAP*

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!" *SLAP SLAP SLAP*

XD So you win! I give, you guys get your update. I don't know when but seeing as I absolutely FORBID myself from working on any other story until I have that update ready and rarin' to go, it shouldn't be too long now.