A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

February 18th 2023

Chapter 49
We Wonder With Broken Hearts

Lucas had not felt like himself since the day he'd lost his mother. He was haunted, two memories competing for his attention until it just seemed as though his trauma would not let him keep both feet on the ground. His mother, luminous and dancing at the Equestrian Ball... His mother, lifeless and colorless in the hospital...

No matter what he'd be doing, those two images would come at him, like someone had a clicker in their hand and he couldn't know when they'd press it. Sometimes, it would just about trip him up, so much that he would hesitate to drive. Maybe that wasn't just the memories so much as the manner of her death. He'd think a lot about that, too, and he would think about his own accident, with Maya, back in high school. Their whole family, careful drivers, very self-aware drivers, but then that only took care of them, didn't it? It didn't make it so that every other driver was as careful and as attentive, and for that he'd lost his mother.

When he'd be with the girls, that was when he'd be most able to keep the memories at bay, but it wasn't a guarantee, and he hated that he couldn't shield them entirely. Now today... Today would be as direct of a confrontation as they would get toward the fact that their grandmother was gone. The funeral.

Of the six of them at home, only Marianne had any experience of attending one of those, and they had done their best to prepare the others for what it would be like, but it would only do so much until they were actually out there. For now, all they had to hold on to, other than that they would get to wear their special day lockets and that Aubrey had been gifted hers roughly three months early, was that they would be wearing dresses and not just any dresses. When Maya had gone about scouring the closets to see what they would all wear, Kacey had pointed to one of her dresses with a very determined look. Maya had asked her why that one, and Kacey had answered her at once.

"Granny gave it to me."

Maya had heard this and felt a jolt, even as she could see that the others, Marianne especially, met this notion with a desire that would soon belong to all of them. Whatever they wore on that day, it was going to be something that Granny Mel had given them. She could always he counted on for random additions to her granddaughters' wardrobes, and at the time Maya has occasionally wished she wouldn't do it so much, but now...

They all came along now, one girl after another in her chosen dress, and they all had some variation of the same apprehensive look on their faces. They knew where they were going, they knew why, but after that... Maya and Lucas had been trying to figure out what they would do when it was all over, how they would end the day, and they still had absolutely no idea.

"That's five... Marianne?" Maya called up the stairs.

"She's not there, Mommy," Remy told her, and Maya turned to look at her. She and Kacey and Lucy all pointed in the same direction, seemingly the kitchen, but she had a better idea of it.

In the next moment, they heard the kitchen door open and then close, and along came Marianne, lugging a guitar case and wearing a look that declared she was ready to go. They'd figured she might have been working on something. While she'd still been home from school, she'd started going out to the Hex at least once a day, as she'd done not too long ago, when she'd been preparing a song gift. That had been a happy occasion, while this one... Well, they figured that it might do her some good to have this outlet, and maybe it did. When they'd asked her if she would be ready to return to class on the following Monday, she had told them yes. Her one remaining hang up, if she had one, would be the desire and the need to keep being there for her father, but he'd assured her that it would make him feel a lot better if she went to school, and so she would.

Today, she would be right where she wanted to be, which was sandwiched between her father and her grandfather, holding one each of their hands as they left the parking lot. They all arrived in mass together, Melinda Friar's extended family, her husband, his father and stepmother, their son and his wife, their daughters and granddaughter, her brother and his husband, their children... They all felt her absence, but they had each other and they would lean to one another for the support that they so needed.

There were so many others there, people whose lives had been touched by Melinda's in one way or another, and like the family they carried this air about them, the terrible sensation that, as they prepared to put her to rest, none of them had been ready for it. How could they have been? They'd all been blindsided by the accident that had taken Melinda Friar much too young, and to be there that day, they all walked around with a sense of 'we shouldn't be here...' but they were.

"Uh, Mom?" Ella came up to Maya, Taylor not too far off with Tori. She pointed behind them as discreetly as she could, but she really didn't have to. As soon as Maya looked up, she saw what her eldest wanted to tell her about. "That's her, isn't it?" Ella had never set eyes on the woman, but clearly her mother had done an excellent job in describing Sandra Davenport that she could be identified anyhow.

"No, no..." Maya took a breath. Everything in her hated that the principal had decided to show up, but then what was she supposed to do, cause a scene in the middle of her mother-in-law's funeral? With any luck, she'd just make an appearance, achieve whatever she'd sought to achieve, and then she would leave. This was not her place, and she was not welcome.

To her surprise, she soon found that she was not the only one to think so. Before she could reach the woman, someone else approached her. Lee Beaumont, Melinda's old friend and Marianne's friend Harper's grandfather, who now co-ran the archive with John Carson… He met with her, and his expression was one that crisply read as 'what do you think you're doing here?' As for Sandra Davenport, she got one look at the man, and Maya was sure she'd never seen her drop her mask of cordiality so obviously. The impression it gave her was that the principal had had one idea in showing up here today, but whatever it was, now that Lee Beaumont was in the picture… there was no point. He spoke to her, and she looked so frustrated as she tried to save face. Finally, she said something and moved to leave. When she did, she happened to spot Maya staring back at her. She stopped there, held her gaze for a moment, and then she left.

"I'll be right back," Maya told Ella before moving to catch up with Lee, who was moving off on his own. "Hey, hold on," she called to him, and he turned to see who was calling after him. He hesitated, briefly looked ashamed. "What was that back there?"

"Nothing you need to worry about, just old ghosts," he tried to brush it off.

"What's that supposed to mean? How do you two know each other?" Maya asked and, off his look of sudden confusion, she realized he didn't know how she knew her. "She's the new principal at my school," she revealed, and Lee stood there, stunned and still.

"Lucas told me you were having troubles with a new principal, but I had no idea it was her… Imagine that…" he shook his head. When she kept looking at him, waiting to know how he knew her, Lee looked uncomfortable, like he'd realized now that maybe this wasn't his place. "Well… She was a rider, you know, same time Mel and I were," he explained. "She did alright, but she was never one of the best. That was Melinda, and I just know Sandra resented her for it. Went to our school, too, and it was the same there. No matter what, she always had to put her foot in it if Melinda did, so one of these times she could actually one-up her. She even went after Thomas when the two of them started."

"She did what?" Maya's brows rose.

"Oh, yeah," Lee chuckled, which hardly matched what she was feeling at the moment. "That was really the last blow. She thought she had that on her, that she could sway Tommy Friar, but Melinda had her beat from the start. She had the guy's heart… and he had hers," he slowly nodded, like the nobly respectful runner up that he'd been in the race for Melinda Sullivan's affections. Maya turned to look where she might spy her father-in-law, sitting on one of the small sofas with his two youngest granddaughters in his lap, looking ready for a bit of shuteye. He was with them, but he was also so, so far away as he sat in the midst of this spotlight on his grief. It wasn't as though things would get better all of a sudden once the funeral was over, but he really did not want to be there, and she felt for him.

"They really did," she quietly agreed with Lee. "I… I should go find Lucas. Excuse me."

She would definitely have to tell him about what she'd just learned… but not today. This was neither the time nor the place, and she was just glad that they'd managed to prevent anything even worse happening. She didn't know what might have happened if Sandra Davenport had managed to encounter Lucas… or Thomas… She didn't even care that all this new information was making her wonder if the principal might have had it in for her solely on the merit of her married name and the connections that came with it. She would not spare the woman one more thought for the rest of the day.

As much as they could not escape the heaviness of the day, they were gifted with one bright spot at least, and it came in the shape of one eight-year-old girl and her guitar. When the time came, Marianne stood before everyone gathered there that day and she played the song that she'd been learning and practicing in the Hex over the last few days. As she explained it, she'd asked her father's uncle Mike about the songs that her grandmother loved the most growing up. He had provided her with a few, but this one, he'd said, had been hands down her very favorite. According to him, she'd hear it in her head whenever she'd be riding and, when Marianne started to play and sing this song, there were people in her audience, those who would have known her enough or at the time, like her grandfather, and Lee, and Donna, who were brought to smile with a rekindled memory. Even Lucas, who'd only heard stories, would be made to recall moments of his childhood tied to this song, to his mother…

"You did so good, Hucklebucket," he told her when she hurried over to him afterward. She smiled, glad for the knowledge that he'd liked it. "She would have been so happy that you did that," he told her. It took him a moment to let the thought finish its rattling in his heart, but Marianne just went on smiling and hugged him. He hugged her back, leaned to kiss the top of her head.

"I have something else for you, but not now," she revealed. "When we get home."

"I can't wait," he told her, and did he ever mean it.

The day didn't get easier as it advanced. It was just a steady strain on all of their hearts, their minds… Everyone said what they had to say, and the tears were never far away. But then, finally, after what felt like a non-stop fever dream, it was all done. Everyone went home, except for the Sullivan-Reyes family and the senior Friars, who along with Thomas Friar were invited to dinner at Lucas and Maya's. It was not the most cheerful of dinners, especially as it was the first dinner of its kind without Melinda there, but after the day they'd had, being together was really the best thing they could have asked for. And when the time came for the triplets to go to bed, they had two requests. They wanted a story from Pappy Tom – which he gladly accepted to read – and they wanted him to stay at the house, so he could have breakfast with them in the morning.

He accepted this as well, which in the end worked even better for Marianne. After the rest of their guests had gone on their way and she'd changed into her PJs, she went looking for her father and grandfather and found them sitting in the living room along with her mother. She wanted them all to come to sit on the big couch together with her, so Thomas stood and came to join his son and daughter-in-law and now his granddaughter, too, as she landed between him and Lucas.

"Dad, is it okay if I tell a story this time?" she asked, and Lucas saw that she held a photo pressed against her heart.

"Sure, you can, pumpkin," he told her, so she settled in, long legs folded beneath herself as she extended the picture into view.

On it, they found a Marianne significantly younger than she was now, younger than the triplets were, sitting in the lap of her smiling grandmother, who possibly had her phone, or a camera, held out to capture the image. They'd seen the picture before, they were sure, though it had been long enough that they didn't readily recall where it came from. All they could see just then was how happy they looked together, and just for the way she held it, they knew that this one image meant so, so much to Marianne, as did the memory that went along with it. She looked over to her father, then to her grandfather, and she hesitated for a bit, recognizing that seeing the photo had already made them emotional.

"You go ahead, Annie girl," Thomas told her with a small, encouraging smile, so she nodded.

"This was the last day we spent together before I started preschool," she explained. "I was sad, because I just wanted to keep being with her a lot, so she decided we were going to have the best day…"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners