February 26th 2023
Chapter 57
We Marvel All Together
Even as he sat in his main office at the ranch, working his way through his morning routine, Lucas smirked. It was a little strange, admittedly, how the memory amused him… It was the memory of his wife's face, as she contemplated her boss and her ongoing frustrations. He'd been fully aware of the ongoing saga happening, Sandra Davenport's known attacks on the art department at her previous school, and how there was a very real concern that she would try and do the same at her new school, Maya's school. And, of course, as he'd eventually found out, there was her history with his family, with his mother, and his father… It was still so baffling to think about it, and he generally preferred not to.
Well, now, there was the… wrinkle… if they could call it that. Whatever issues she may have had with the arts, whatever she might have wanted to do at their school, she might have some more trouble accomplishing it now, and she knew it. Could she really shut down anything to do with the arts at the school where one third of the MSC production team was a teacher, and a reportedly very beloved one at that? Could she oust one of the writers of the recent Broadway hit? They had only been open for less than a month, but the buzz was undeniable.
Maya's completely unashamed glee at the thought of what this would do to the new principal was just too funny for him to recall and not want to laugh. They couldn't know for sure what she thought of the whole thing, as she would never dare express this openly, but from what Maya and her colleagues had been able to observe… Oh, she so knew that she was stuck, and it was delicious.
Right about now, thinking about Maya and her present victory was a lot more fun than making sense of everything he had on his plate these days. He had finally resumed his post full time at the ranch, as Juliet returned happily to her retirement. And he had done it just in time to be saddled with the task of planning for this year's edition of the Grand, which would once more be held at Sullivan Stables. He didn't actually mind planning it, had been involved with the previous one they had hosted and several smaller competitions since then. It was just a lot of different components to juggle, and he didn't want to drop any of the balls.
Shifting his thoughts from his wife, he looked to the pictures on his desk and focused in on the one of their firstborn and her horse. Marianne and Truffle, what a team they were, now more than ever, as Marianne had resumed riding with the previously injured horse. They were going to take part in the Grand. The moment Marianne had learned that it was going to happen, she'd asked if she could enter with her age group. Lucas didn't know if she was ready to ride competitively, but she so wanted to do this. Looking at her, he wasn't sure that she was even necessarily interested in the win; she just wanted to be part of the competition, see how she'd do. So, after talking it over with Maya, he had agreed. She wasn't signed up officially, not yet, but registrations were starting soon, and he literally had a form with her name on it, just waiting to be finished up, in her presence. In the meantime, she'd been practicing more than ever. She might not have been in it for the trophy, but it didn't mean that she wouldn't give her all and end up winning it just because…
"Lucas, there's the guy for the temp stables on line two," Olivia Zhu poked her head through the door after knocking and opening. The rule generally went that, so long as the blinds weren't shut, she could come right in, but she still knocked every time. Lucas moved to take the phone just as his office assistant raised her hand. "And your father's here."
"Tell line two I'll call them back?" he asked her, and she nodded before returning to her desk. Lucas stood and went to look outside his office door. There was Thomas indeed, standing and looking at some pictures on the wall, from across the years. Some went back as far as Simon and Marianne Sullivan, while others were as recent as last summer. In more than one, his mother appeared, as a small girl or a grown woman or anything in between. "Dad?" Lucas spoke and Thomas turned to look at him.
The beard had retreated just a bit, not as neat as he used to keep it but somewhere more in control than it had occasionally been over the near two months since the accident. Pappy Joe and Patty were still settling into the house, working alongside Thomas to install themselves, though it wasn't the easiest thing to accomplish. He found it so difficult to change certain things… many things… from the way they had been before Melinda's passing, even for his father and his stepmother. But he was trying, and it was all that they could ask of him.
He'd never want his father to feel in any way as though he was being handled, all of them trying to give him what purpose he might have lost when he'd lost his other half. He had handed off his clients, or at least he had asked Lucas to see to getting them handed off to others who could look after their needs after the accident, and as time had gone on, he'd given no inclination in the slightest toward taking them back or returning to his work. It wouldn't be out of the question for him to retire at his age, but they also knew that this had not been in the cards for him before the accident, so to have it happen here, in this way…
Now, with the Grand coming up and with how there were so many components to the planning, across many categories, he'd had this thought of calling on his father to help him with some of the work. Thomas had accepted the request with ease, and now here he was, ready to jump in. Lucas set him up in one of the closed off rooms where businesspeople would occasionally come for meetings, and his father got started at once.
"Hey, did I see your father back there?" Bishop asked when he came knocking.
"You did," Lucas confirmed as he motioned for his friend to come in and shut the door. "I asked if he would help with the Grand preparations."
"Right," Bishop nodded; this made sense. "Listen, is there any chance that you could take Evie and Rafa to your house this evening? I know it's last minute, but Cristina and I got these…" he started to go on, but Lucas stopped him.
"I'd be happy to, as would Maya," he promised, and Bishop relaxed, smiled. His face now read like 'of course he said yes, what were you thinking?' "So… Date night? Capital D?" Lucas asked. Bishop looked lost for a moment, but then he'd heard of his friends' classifications of dates before, and the answer revealed itself in his rekindled smile. This was very much a capital D Date for him and Cristina, which had demanded that they find sitters for his daughter and her son.
Bishop felt bad for it all to land on one of his nights with Evangeline, and he normally wouldn't have gone through with it, but it had been recommended to him that he try saying yes for a change, and so he was. And anyway, so far as Evie was concerned, she was looking forward to spending that evening with Rafa, who was about the coolest big brother in her eyes, even if he wasn't really her brother but her father's girlfriend's son.
Lucas and Bishop discussed a few of the things for the Grand which would specifically require the doctor for the dog retreat to step in. Previously, when they had hosted the Grand, they'd had to bring in the extra help, but right here they had someone already on hand, and many others to further assist them in seeing to all the horses who would be passing through the archway of Sullivan Stables. When this was done, Bishop went on his way and Lucas went to check in on his father.
It made him smile despite himself to watch him, to see him be bent to his work with that focus that Lucas had grown up seeing in him. To this day, he was sure, he emulated him in the way he worked, in the way he sat, and moved… It was the kind of thing he wasn't sure even Maya could have picked up on. Mom would have… Mom did… It made her happy.
"How's it looking?" Lucas asked him. "Do you need anything?"
"No, I'm alright," his father replied in that tone of his where, even though he was clearly still locked in on what he was doing, he was definitely hearing you and responding accordingly.
"Good," Lucas nodded. "I need to go find Katy, call me if you need me?"
"Will do," Thomas told him, working along. Lucas stepped back and shut the door, holding to his smile until he had left the building.
Just now, Katy Hunter and the rest of the television production side of the ranch were juggling the ongoing shoots for the established series even as they had started work on the spinoff, which was looking to premiere in the fall. That was all good and fine, but now with the Grand approaching, they had to figure out what they would do. To him, it felt most reasonable to shut down production for the length of the event, from when the competitors and their horses would arrive to once they had left again, but that might not be something they were able to do. They had the benefit, in using the ranch for parts of their shoots, that he was generally flexible and could be counted on, but he had to think of the ranch in some situations and this was one of them.
Looking at all that was going on over on this side of the property, he was hit with thoughts of his mother. It wasn't new. It would come and hit him every once in a while, a couple times every day at least. On the whole, he could say that his life was as it had been before the loss, but that wasn't the whole truth, was it? No, grief could still come and punch him in the gut when he least expected it, and there would be no quick fix in putting that aside again, no. Right now, he was considering all the work that was happening, the original series and the follow-up, and he imagined how thrilled she'd be to follow this new story as she'd done the previous. She'd already known that it was on its way, and she'd had very little to go on, but it had been enough for her to go and start to hype it up.
Katy asked him that day if he would be alright with them dedicating both the season finale of their main series and the series premiere of the spinoff to Melinda, and when she said it, he got another grief punch, but he smiled through it. Yes, of course they could, and he and his father would be so touched for it. In turn, he shared with his mother-in-law the plans he'd found in one of his mother's journals, for Mackenzie's third birthday already just a couple of weeks away. He told Katy what he and Maya had in mind when they'd found this journal, and Katy smiled at once. She understood what they wanted to do, and absolutely she would help them.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
