Archive of Our Own ^beta

Carole finds herself humming as she lets the top sheet billow out over the bed with a flick of her wrists and settles it into place. She’s always liked making beds. Okay, she didn’t like the drudgery of it as a young widow and newly single mother when she’d been rushing out the door before work with too many worries and too little sleep, but there’s something satisfying now about using her body to make everything neat and pretty. She likes feeling the stretch of her arms, the bend of her back, the dip of her knees as she gets things just so. She likes knowing that the sheets will be crisp and neatly tucked when she slips between them that night after a long day.

Not that she will be slipping into this bed, no, but there’s pleasure in doing this for her family, too, for Kurt and Blaine, so that tonight when it’s time for bed there will be nothing for them to do but get in bed and fall asleep.

She laughs a little as she pulls the bedding tight for a perfect hospital corner. It’s not up to her if they choose to do something else but fall asleep, but at least they’ll have a place for that, too.

“I’m gonna take a look at the dishwasher and see what’s making that grinding sound,” Burt says from the doorway, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders a little tight. He’s excited for Kurt and Blaine to arrive for the long Fourth of July weekend, she knows, but he’s a man who doesn’t like to wait. He doesn’t do it gracefully. The anticipation has been making him pace and grumble like a tiger in a cage.

“Oh, I fixed that yesterday,” Carole tells him. “You were right. It was something caught in the filter.”

“All right. Good.” Burt’s face falls as he nods, like she didn’t just save him an hour of work on the hard kitchen floor, but then maybe that’s what he needs while he waits for the boys to get here. He’s been puttering all morning, antsy and irritable, though not so irritable that she can’t coax a smile out of him with a kiss.

She does just that, gets her hard-won smile and a welcome loosening of the lines in his forehead in return, and then dusts off the shoulders of his flannel shirt. “But I did notice the handle on the front hall closet is loose,” she offers as an alternate means of distraction.

His kind, worried eyes perk up, and he says, “I’ll get right on that. Can’t have that breaking on us.”

“Thank you,” she says, and there’s something in his grin that tells her that he’s onto her plan and is grateful for it.

She knows he isn’t actually nervous or upset. He’s just ready for the boys to get there. She’s ready for them, too, and she goes back to making the bed, her own distraction from the way her stomach is fluttering with anticipation.

The boys are coming home. Their boys, if not her boy. Not all of their boys, never that, never again, no, that knowledge is a constant weight on her chest, an anvil pulling down her heart, but still. Kurt and Blaine are coming back for the long weekend, coming home, and she wants them to feel welcome and comfortable.

So she plumps the pillows before she puts them back on the bed, smooths the covers just so, and makes sure everything looks tidy and perfect when she’s done.

Kurt has always liked everything to be perfect.

Carole stands in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips, and turns in a slow circle, just to be sure. It’s still Kurt’s room, but there’s so much less of him in it than there used to be. His shelves are only lightly decorated. His dressing table isn’t covered with bottles and brushes. The few pictures scattered around are old. His favorite possessions are all in New York, where he lives.

It’s a nice room. It’s his room. But he doesn’t live in it. It feels more like a museum or something left behind than a place where someone lives.

Some of his things are still here, but he isn’t here anymore, not really.

There’s no music coming from his iPhone dock, no homework waiting on his bed, no notes for a project piled up on his bedside table, no well-dressed boy draped across the bed raising his eyebrows at her as she sticks her head in to tell him it’s time for dinner.

She can hear the echoes in her mind of Kurt talking a mile a minute on the phone with Blaine, yelling at Finn about the mess in the bathroom, singing down in the living room with a handful of friends as they fuss over Glee Club drama or a group homework project...

If she closes her eyes, she can almost make herself believe she can hear Finn’s voice down there with him, his footsteps heavy on the carpet, his laugh loud and genuine.

But no, she thinks with a sadness she will not ever shake. She can’t. That’s all in the past now. Finn will never come back. Neither will Kurt, not really.

She takes a quiet breath and holds it, fills her lungs and her chest and the gaping hole in her heart with it.

Kurt and Finn and all of her boys, they aren’t here anymore. It’s just the truth of the world.

It’s not okay, of course. There’s no way that it’s okay, any more than it’s okay to have your body cut in two, but it’s fact now. She doesn’t hide from it or silently beg to change it anymore. She just lives it.

Carole gives the ghost of a room - once vibrant and alive and now just a shadow, a skeleton - one last look and deems it ready. She nods, satisfied that she’s done her part to welcome Kurt and Blaine the best she can.

But before she goes, she walks over to the closet and peeks inside, smiling at the way her heart pounds at something that feels like it ought to be forbidden.

The closet, at least, is still full, and she knows there are boxes of clothes up in the attic, as well. There are shirts and pants, shoes and sweaters, hats, accessories, and jackets of all sorts in fabrics she doesn’t even know how to recognize. No, Kurt might not live in this room, but off-season so many of his clothes still do.

Her smile turns fond and wistful, and she’s glad he will be home soon so that she can hug him like she wants to. She hopes he never changes. She hopes, in some odd way, that he never takes all his fabulous and sometimes odd clothing away, no matter how much space he might someday be able to afford in New York. It will be a hard day when all of this, all of Kurt, is gone, off on his own forever, and there’s another room that should be a bedroom standing unused in the house, without purpose, without life, without someone who calls it home.

Carole clicks on a light beside the bed to make it feel inviting and leaves the room. Her eyes catch on the spare room door down the hall, the room that used to be Finn’s, that still has his bed and his dresser but not him, and her breath stops, just for a moment.

No, finality and forever are not things she knows how to want for the future anymore.

*

Carole is in the kitchen putting together dinner when Kurt and Blaine arrive.

“Are you sure you’re not just wasting your time?” Burt asks, dutifully draining the pot of hot pasta into the colander in the sink for her. “You know Kurt’s going to come in, tell us we’re eating all the wrong foods, and demand we all pack up and go to the grocery store.”

“Thank you,” she says as she accepts the colander, pours the pasta back into the pot, and ladles the tomato sauce she made over it. “And yes, I do know that, but they’ll have been traveling most of the day. They deserve a home-cooked meal they didn’t prepare.” She pours the mixture into her baking dish and reaches for a bag of shredded cheese. “Kurt can take over my kitchen and judge me tomorrow after he’s had a good night’s sleep,” she says with a grin over her shoulder at him.

“I wonder if we could convince him the doctor said - “ Burt starts, but then the doorbell rings, and for a moment she can see her husband as the little boy he once was, his eyes lit up with the magic of presents appearing under the tree at Christmas. It’s a subtle change in his face, gone in a flash, but the utter delight she catches from him sticks hard beneath her rib cage, propelling her to the sink to wash her hands.

Dinner can wait, and she doesn’t want to. The boys are home.

Burt’s at the front door before she is, but she’s there to see it swing open.

“You don’t have to ring the bell,” Burt says as he steps back to let Kurt inside. “It’s still your house.”

“My keys are at the bottom of my bag.” Kurt sets a small rolling bag to the side in the front hall, deposits his messenger bag on the ground beside it, and steps into his father’s waiting hug. “Hi, Dad,” he all but whispers against his father’s shoulder, his arms fast around his father’s back.

“Hey, kid,” is Burt’s equally soft and heartfelt reply, holding him tight like he just can’t bear to let him go.

Carole’s smile almost hurts her face to see them so happy, and she steps forward to help Blaine roll a much bigger bag through the front door.

“Sorry, it’s heavy,” Blaine says, watching and guiding it carefully as he keeps it from bumping into the door jamb. “I can do it.”

“I don’t mind, honey,” she tells him, and as soon as the door is shut and he’s settled his share of the luggage she opens her arms up to him.

Blaine looks momentarily startled, lost and unsure in a way she is surprised by as his eyes flicker over to Kurt and his father, but his smile flashes warm as he steps close to hug her. He’s small in her arms but so strong, no hesitation in his embrace despite what his face had shown, and she’s hit with the scent of his hair gel and aftershave, so familiar after so many years and yet something dear she hasn’t been able to experience in person in months. She holds onto him just as tightly as Burt with Kurt, almost too happy to have the opportunity, but she doesn’t linger. She knows it isn’t her place.

“We’re glad you’re here,” she says, giving him an extra squeeze. It feels oddly right to have this young, masculine energy in her front hall again, but even more it feels right to have them there, these two young men she loves so much.

“Thanks for having me,” he says politely. He steps away and looks over at Kurt again with a little furrow between his brows. “Us.”

“You’re always welcome,” she assures him, meaning it for them both but knowing that Blaine always needs it more.

Carole gives Kurt a hug as Blaine and Burt do that kind of half-hug, half-pat-on-the-back move that she’s never understood. Kurt’s willow-slim in her arms but broad-shouldered and muscular, not tall enough for the ache in her body that never goes away but still absolutely perfect. He’s grown so much since she first met him, when he was still so much more boy than man, and it’s amazing to her how much more mature he seems month after month, away in college in New York and living with the boy he’s going to marry. His face has changed, his body has, and yet he’s still so much himself, the himself he was always meant to be.

It’s amazing to her that she’ll never get to see Finn do the same. Amazing, shocking, breathtaking in the worst possible way -

“How was your flight?” she asks quickly, sliding her hands up Kurt’s trim back before letting him go.

“Good,” Blaine says.

“Bumpy,” is Kurt’s less positive reply. “There was turbulence, but there was also a darling little demon of a child behind me who kept kicking my seat. I think she was perfecting her audition for Stomp.”

“I offered to switch with you,” Blaine says, strained with a simmering undercurrent of a conversation had more than once before.

“It was shaking the whole row; it’s not like it would have been any better,” Kurt tells him. “And besides, you were very clear that you wanted to look out the window.”

Blaine’s eyebrows draw together. “Yes, but - “

“Aren’t you only staying for a couple of nights?” Burt asks as he attempts to heft the larger of the two suitcases. It’s more suitable for a couple of weeks away than a long weekend. “Don’t tell me you brought dirty laundry home. I thought that cliche was only for college students driving to their parents’ house. And school’s not even in session. It’s July.”

Kurt’s narrowing eyes leave Blaine’s face and turn to his father. “It’s not dirty laundry, Dad,” he says more easily. “I’m switching around my wardrobe for the season.”

Burt makes a little noise of begrudging acquiescence. “Bet you had to rent a bigger car to fit that in. Should’ve let me pick you up with the truck after all.”

Kurt’s eye-roll is a thing of beauty, and Carole doesn’t even try to hide her grin at the elegant yet scornful gesture. The two of them have been bickering by text for the past week about how the boys were going to get to Lima from the airport. “We rented a car, not a moped, so we had plenty of room,” Kurt tells him.

“Here, I’ve got it, Burt,” Blaine says, rushing to take the suitcase from Burt’s hands before he can carry it to the stairs. Carole makes a mental note to give him an extra cookie tonight, though she knows he isn’t actually doing it for a reward. Blaine’s good manners run deep. But they’re still saving Burt some strain, and he deserves the cookie.

“Besides, you know we need a car while we’re here,” Kurt continues. He scoops up his messenger bag and slings it across his body. “Blaine might decide to stay with his family for a day or two when they get back. We don’t know yet.”

Blaine nods, though Carole doesn’t miss the way his smile freezes on his face and his jaw tightens with some sort of emotion. He looks brittle the same way Kurt looks sharp-edged as he gathers up the other suitcase with a crisp snap of his wrist.

Carole’s gaze flicks to Burt, who is watching the boys with a similar kind of suspicion in his eyes. He meets her eyes and raises his eyebrows in reply.

“I made up Kurt’s room with fresh sheets,” Carole says to try to break up whatever the tension is, because the boys have been home all of three minutes, and standing here in the front hall with the luggage is neither the time nor the place to figure it all out. “And I didn’t touch anything else,” she assures Kurt.

“Oh,” Blaine says, sounding surprised again, but not unhappily so. “Thank you, Carole.”

“My pleasure,” she replies. “The last thing you boys want to do when you get here is have to make a bed before you unpack. I’m not sure how much room Kurt has left in his dresser drawers or if they’re as packed as his closet, but you’re welcome to use the guest room for your clothes, Blaine. That closet just has my fancy dresses in it, plenty of room for you.”

Burt’s eyebrows lower, like he’s going to make another comment about how weird it is to have his son sleeping with his high school boyfriend in the same bed under his roof, even though he knows they live together in New York and aren’t boyfriends but fiancés - not that the distinction would even matter; they’re adults now - but since there are more people here to hear it than just her and Blaine looks like he might be worrying about the very same issue, Carole smiles brightly and says, “There are fresh towels in the hall bath for you both, too. Now you boys go settle in. Take your time. Dinner’s at six. You two have table setting duty, just like old times.”

“Let us know what else you need. We’re happy to help,” Blaine says, and he pulls the heavy suitcase toward the stairs.

Kurt doesn’t follow him immediately. Instead he looks her straight in the eyes, his expression going a little more gentle than it has been since he got there. “Thank you,” he tells her.

She reaches out to pat his arm, stroking it from shoulder to elbow and hoping the butter-soft fabric under her palm isn’t going to be hurt by the touch. “Welcome home,” she replies, the words almost catching in her throat.

His smile is tight and a touch watery, and he nods before pulling his own bag toward the stairs. “Let me get the big one, Blaine. It’s all my clothes,” he says, almost like a peace offering.

“I can handle it,” Blaine insists, his voice low, and hefts the bag up the steps with some effort. Kurt follows slowly after him.

Carole and Burt watch them for a moment, and she leans into Burt’s side as he comes to stand beside her.

“Maybe they’re just tired from their flight,” she offers, though she doesn’t quite believe it. She has known the two of them a very long time, through friendship to love through break-up and despair and back to love again, and she can see that this strain between them isn’t just something that happened today. She’s seen them worse, but she’s seen them so much better.

“Maybe,” Burt replies. He sounds as skeptical as she does.

They stand there for a moment listening to footsteps and male voices upstairs where it’s been too quiet for too long. It’s the past and present linked together, and Carole feels a tug deep in her chest, where the hole that won’t heal always lies.

Burt kisses her hair, and she squeezes his side before letting him go.

There’s dinner to make and stories to hear. There’s life to be lived. She’s going to live it.

*

Blaine comes down bright and early the next morning.

It used to be Kurt who would blink at her as he fumbled with the coffee maker and bump companionably against her as he slid an English muffin into the toaster while she poured milk for her cereal. They used to share a few moments of quiet in the kitchen before Burt would come in for a second cup of coffee once he’d reached the sports section of the paper and Finn would thunder down the stairs, always running late for school.

She loved those moments with Kurt, the times where they could just share space, where they could pass the milk or open the silverware drawer for the other without having to ask. There were a lot of things she did with Kurt over the years that made them feel like family, but those easy mornings of just knowing each other and being together before hair was done and pajamas were set aside for street clothes were some of the most important to her. There was something about being around each other with their guards down that mattered so desperately much.

After living with only Finn for so long, establishing a new life day in and day out not just with Burt but with Kurt, in each other’s private spaces without it feeling weird at all, was a huge leap of faith to take. And it had worked. She’d gotten this wonderful family, not just a husband but a son she’d never expected and whom she loved so very much, alien as he so often was. He was still hers. And she misses him, too.

When she thinks of who is missing in her house, he’s there, too.

She’s glad to have him back, at least for a little while. She’s so glad it’s like a gnawing hunger in her chest she usually tries to ignore, but now she doesn’t have to. Now he’s home, there to smile at her over his coffee and talk in the hushed voices of early morning about their plans for the day. She gets to see his face. She gets to laugh at his dry wit. She gets to hug him.

But today it’s Blaine who is down first.

Carole hears him on the stairs and mistakes his soft, careful footsteps for Kurt’s, and her heart falls and her smile shifts on her face when it’s Blaine who walks through the door, not in pajamas like she is but dressed for the day in shorts and a tidy polo, his hair already slicked down neatly.

“Good morning,” she says and forces herself to sound welcoming, not so much disappointed to see him as not ready to wake up and be a hostess. She pushes away from the counter and turns to pull out a mug. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” he replies. “But you don’t have to get it for me. I mean - I know I’m a guest, but I don’t mind serving myself.”

Carole immediately shakes her head and then pours the coffee for him. “You aren’t a guest, Blaine. This might not be your home, but you’re still family. And didn’t I put you to work last night? I would never have had a guest make the salad.”

It isn’t entirely true, because she remembers nights in high school when Blaine had been there dutifully chopping cucumbers and washing lettuce as she and Kurt worked on some main dish he’d been dreaming about... but then, hasn’t Blaine always been family, in a way? All of the Glee kids were, but especially Blaine and Rachel. Those two had been here so much, part of hard conversations and heartaches even when they weren’t present. They’d come for dessert after Thanksgiving, brought special gifts for birthdays, and snuck heartfelt kisses under the mistletoe that Carole had always pretended she didn’t see.

Yes, maybe Blaine’s always been family, she thinks, even in those long, dark months when he and Kurt had been torn apart and hurting so much. Family is the people who can hurt you the most, after all.

Sometimes, she has learned too many times in her life, hurting you even just by no longer being there with you at all.

Carole finishes the dregs of her coffee and makes herself focus on the present.

Blaine, oblivious to her train of thought, is smiling into his coffee, giddy in a subtle way she’s not sure she’s ever seen from him before. Usually he’s like a floodlight of emotion, spreading it everywhere around him, but this is a more focused beam of joy. It looks good on him, but she’s surprised by it. She might not know the lines of his face and body as closely as she does Kurt’s, but she can see he’s growing up, too.

Carole pats his shoulder as she passes by him to freshen up her cup of coffee, and his smile turns to her, softer and more grateful. He looks like a wilting flower made strong again by watering, even if that vulnerability he came here with still hides in the edges of his eyes.

“Did you sleep well?” she asks to save him from having to comment on her previous words.

“I did,” he answers. “Thank you. I was tired.” He taps his fingertips lightly against the edge of the counter. “I think I was out the minute my head hit the pillow.”

“I’m not surprised. You had a long day getting here. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d slept much later. You can, you know. It won’t bother us.”

Blaine’s laugh is self-conscious. “It’s funny, but it was so quiet when I woke up that I couldn’t fall back asleep. I guess I’m used to the sounds of New York.”

“I’m glad,” she says, though a part of her heart pulls at the memory of the first time she went back to see her parents after moving out and their house didn’t feel like home anymore. It had been a shock to realize it wasn’t a place that was hers anymore, not because of what it was but because of who she had become. She knows it’s what he must been feeling, too.

It’s not just their house that doesn’t feel right. Lima isn’t home. Home is New York for him now. It should be. That should be his future, the life he’s building there with Kurt. That’s all normal and natural. But it still tugs at her to be reminded that she really doesn’t have any children to come home anymore. They’ll just come visit, and she hopes they will.

“It’s always nice to have you here,” she says, “but I’m glad you’re so happy there, Blaine.”

“Thank you.” Blaine looks down at his coffee again, some of the light draining out of him, and Carole makes herself bide her time instead of asking what’s going on. She knows she needs to let the boys come to her... or at least she needs to give them the chance to before she goes digging into things, anyway.

There’s a scuffing noise in the doorway, and Kurt shuffles in, wearing a pair of soft sleep shorts and a t-shirt with his hair sticking up in every direction, and Carole feels her heart swell to have him there looking so much like the boy she got to mother every day for a few short years before he went off to chase dreams that were always so much bigger than her own.

“Morning, honey,” she says as Blaine grabs another mug and pours coffee into it before offering it to Kurt.

“Morning,” Kurt says to the room at large. He accepts the mug and gives Blaine a soft kiss of thanks in return, and he rubs at his forehead sleepily as he comes over and gives Carole a hug, too. He looks so young and unguarded and so much like the teenager he once was.

“You look tired,” Carole tells him, pulling him in and rubbing his back before she lets him go. “You didn’t have to get up.”

Kurt takes a sip of coffee, closing his eyes as he swallows it. “It was too quiet,” he says. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“That’s what Blaine said,” she says with a laugh.

The boys share a faint, amused look, and when Kurt goes to lean against the counter beside Blaine, Blaine turns slowly into him, their arms brushing.

They’ve been a pair for what seems like forever to her, those two. They’ve been attached at the hip since before Carole married Burt, and it’s been years now that she’s caught them finishing each other’s sentences or seeming to know where the other will be in space without really looking. They’re connected, in love, and part of what was hard to watch as a mother while they were broken up was how lost they both could seem sometimes, not quite anchored in the world, like part of each of them was missing.

But now, no matter what friction is between them, they’re clearly connected again. Maybe they always were through it all, but it’s good to see it in action once more, wanted and easy. If the boys have to be growing up and living on their own, at least they’re not alone. It warms her heart to see it, lets her breathe that much more easily.

They have something special together. They have something that can carry them into the future, far from childhood, far from Lima, far from this house that is no longer home.

She’s always known the job of parenting was to let her son grow up and leave the nest. Finn leaving hadn’t happened the way anyone had expected - with a sudden, devastating finality - but at least with Kurt she can see all of those big plans coming true.

It can’t fix her broken heart, but it can patch it up a little.

“So,” she says, setting down her coffee and putting her heavier thoughts aside. She wants to enjoy the boys while they’re here, not brood over them. “What would you like for breakfast? Eggs? Waffles? I think I have some turkey bacon left from last weekend, since your father never eats it.”

“Carole, you don’t have to cook for us,” Blaine says, standing up straighter. “We can help.”

“I don’t mind,” she tells him. “It’s nice to have more mouths to feed than just ours, but I won’t turn down the extra hands.”

Kurt inhales slowly, like he needs the oxygen to wake up, and he glances over at his fiancé as he says gently, almost like it’s an apology, “Blaine does make excellent pancakes.”

Blaine’s smile is small and crooked with emotion, and he slips his hand up Kurt’s back and drops a kiss on Kurt’s shoulder. “Then pancakes it is,” he says.

“Okay,” Carole says. “Tell me what you need.”

“I’ll make the bacon,” Kurt adds, and the two of them smile at each other before they all set to work.

*

After breakfast, there’s a flurry of showering and muttered grumbling about the overworked water heater, which isn’t used to having to put out so much hot water in a single morning anymore. Carole gets about thirty seconds of blissful heat before her shower becomes tepid, and she’s glad for the warm air of her hair dryer to break the chill of the air conditioning on her damp skin. Burt drafts Kurt’s help to fiddle with the water heater, and the two of them disappear into the basement while she’s getting dressed.

She comes out of her room to find that Blaine’s made up Kurt’s bed and tidied everything away in the room, the only signs that they’re staying there a few extra jars on Kurt’s vanity and a book on one of his bedside tables. The closet doors are closed, there are no suitcases anywhere, and the pillows look like they haven’t been touched in months. It’s almost exactly like the room she passes day after day, week after week.

Hovering in the doorway for a second on her way past, Carole almost wishes the boys were messier, just so she could enjoy their full and unquestionable imprint on the house while it lasts.

For a little while, it feels like a regular day, a weekend she almost remembers, with Blaine helping her load so many more dishes than usual into the dishwasher and Kurt and Burt walking through the kitchen toward the garage talking to each other in incomprehensible shorthand about wrenches and valves.

It feels so normal, so natural, so much like what she remembers and like what she dreamed about when she thought of the boys graduating and going off to college or wherever their dreams took them. It’s just them here, fitting back in, taking over their old roles with a few little changes here and there. They’re still family. It still works, no matter how tall the boys get or how many more grey hairs her stylist Marlene colors for her every six weeks.

It feels so simple. It feels so easy. It feels so right.

It feels like what she thought the future would be over holidays and breaks, these homecomings, at first with laundry (or in Kurt’s case his wardrobe to change around) and fraught career decisions and later with doting spouses and darling children to spoil and...

“Carole?” Blaine asks, looking with concern into her face, and she realizes that her mouth has crumpled with emotion, with both a desperate joy for what she has in front of her and an even more desperate grief for what she never, ever will.

It’s not that she thinks about Finn every minute of every day. She’s not trapped in her own grief. She’s not mired in it, not anymore. But she does think of him. Every day. Every minute his loss is inscribed on her heart like a tattoo or a scar, never to be removed. And sometimes she touches it and can do nothing but feel it, just for that moment.

“I’m fine, honey,” she tells him, and she finds a more genuine smile, because that’s what she needs to feel the most right now. She needs to focus on the joy. “I’m just really happy you’re here.”

She reaches out her hand to him, and when he takes it she squeezes it firmly. She means it. She really does. She’s so happy he’s here, filling her heart and her home. She loves him, with his crisp bow ties and good-natured helpfulness. He’s not a replacement for Finn, but he’s welcome in his own right, the future of the family instead of what must remain in the past.

“I’m glad, too,” he says, just as heartfelt, and she wonders what griefs he’s holding onto in his own tender heart that makes his eyes go that dark and worried.

She hopes this weekend is as good for him as it feels like it will be for the rest of them, a chance to reset from the daily grind and settle back into what really matters: family. Because at the end of the day, she thinks as she finds a place for the mixing bowl on the lower rack of the dishwasher, isn’t that what matters? Not all of the things that take up everyone’s time - work, school, chores, errands, annoyances, and responsibilities - but the people you love.

When you’re sitting in the hospital holding your boyfriend’s bruised hand or staring at a casket that you can’t believe holds your own child, at the end of your life and all of the days in between, isn’t what matters most? Aren’t the people you love the most important thing in the world?

It’s good for them to be together and remember that for a few days before they get swept up in all of the rest of life again.

“Thank you,” Carole tells Blaine as he shuts the dishwasher door and she pushes the button to start the cycle. She means for his assistance with the dishwasher but also so much more, for being there at all, for being one of them.

Blaine smiles back at her. “I’m happy to help.”

“I know,” she says, patting his shoulder, because if there’s one thing she’s sure of with Blaine it’s just how much he wants to be a part of their family.

It’s endearing and encouraging in its own way, even if she wishes he were certain that he already is.

“We’ve got to go to the hardware store,” Burt announces as he and Kurt walk back in from the garage. “I’m out of three-quarter inch washers. Don’t know when I used the last one, but there aren’t any.”

“Don’t you dare try to blame me this time,” Kurt tells him with a hint of a grin.

“You made a jacket one time out of my washers and O-rings,” Burt reminds him. “Can’t blame me for suspecting you when my hardware’s missing after that.”

“It was a vest,” Kurt says, and Carole and Blaine share a smile at the old, familiar banter. “And also that was when I was fifteen. It was a long time ago now.”

Burt pulls out his wallet, opening it up to look at the money inside. “Hate to break it to you, kid, but fifteen might feel like a long time ago for you, but for us it’s just the blink of an eye.” He slides his wallet back in his pocket. “All right. Who’s coming with me?”

“Can we stop by the grocery store on the way back?” Kurt asks.

“I can go out later and get whatever you need,” Carole says.

“It’s not a problem,” Kurt tells her. “I just want to pick up some Greek yogurt and maybe the ingredients to bake cookies later.”

“Mmm,” Blaine says approvingly.

“Anything you want us to grab from the store?” Burt asks her.

“Let me check my list,” she says, turning toward the refrigerator to check it, her mind on extra light bulbs and whether she’d bought enough snacks for the boys before they got here, because she wasn’t sure if they’d still be eating like teenagers, but she also knows their friends might come over -

The doorbell rings like she prompted the potential deluge with her thoughts, but on the other side of the door is only Rachel, not the entire McKinley High football team.

(It had only happened that way one time, the entire team showing up on her front lawn at once, but apparently that was enough to give her nightmares about the locust-like nature of growing teenage boys. Someone had even eaten the instant stuffing mix dry once all of the chips and snacks were gone. She never did figure out if that was Finn or not.)

Rachel and Carole stare at each other for a moment across the threshold, and Carole can only imagine what echoes Rachel has in her heart from showing up at Finn’s house. Rachel’s back is straight, her chin up, and there’s a tension in her that’s undeniable. The two of them are Finn’s mother and the love of his life, and they will never be able to see the other without seeing him, too.

“Come in, Rachel,” Carole says, fitting a smile to her face because it’s her job to make this as easy on the kids as possible. “How nice to see you.”

“Thank you.” Rachel steps inside, the shallow breath she takes to steel herself only visible to Carole because she’s looking for it. “Kurt texted me earlier, so I figured it was safe to come over without calling.”

“Of course,” Carole tells her. “You’re always welcome here. They’re in the kitchen.”

Slipping off her sunglasses, Rachel meets her eyes and softens a little, more girl than well-dressed star of stage and screen. “Thank you,” she says again. Then she turns toward the kitchen and cries, “Kurt! Blaine! I’m here, and I have so much to tell you!”

Carole smiles to herself. It’s been too long since Rachel’s strident voice ordering everyone around has been in the house, and it’s nice in its own melancholy way. Rachel is family, too. Or at least she should have been someday.

Burt finds her in the front hall, looking back over his shoulder at the excited chatter following after him. “It’s starting early,” he comments to her. “Thought we’d have the house to ourselves at least until lunch.”

Carole laughs her agreement and says, “We’re going to need a lot more snacks.”

Slinging his arm around her waist, Burt gives her a quick kiss - how does he always know when she needs his touch to ground her? - and says, “Come on. We’ll go run some errands and let them get the worst of it out of their system. Maybe we’ll get some earplugs; my ears aren’t used to the volume anymore.”

“Aw,” she says to him, playfully putting her hands over his ears as the boys and Rachel all seem to talk at once in the other room, the noise spilling out over into the rest of the house in a way the rooms never seem to be filled anymore.

WIth a laugh, he takes her hands and wraps them back around his waist.

There’s another burst of chatter from the kitchen: happy, loud, and so terribly familiar Carole can feel it in her chest. She breathes through it, remembering the endless stress of being the parent of teenagers as well as feeling the warmth of having them in her kitchen once more, a bit older but no less full of emotions they need to express. It feels so right to hear them that it’s almost painful, because they won’t be staying for long. The house will be quiet again all too soon.

“It’s nice,” Carole says, leaning her head against his shoulder for a second as their voices rise and fall around them.

Burt squeezes her waist. “Yeah,” he murmurs, and they stand there for a minute, just letting it wash over them, before they go to get ready.

*

When they get home from the hardware and grocery stores, they find Brittany and Tina in the living room as well, and by the time the groceries are away and Carole pays the gas bill online before she forgets Mike and Sam are also sprawled on the couch like they’d never actually left after graduating.

Carole swings through to say hello and to drop off a bowl of fresh strawberries and cantaloupe for them to snack on, but otherwise she leaves them to it. They don’t seem to be using her vase as a football, and they aren’t raiding the liquor cabinet, so as college students she doesn’t think they need a chaperone.

So she goes outside and tends to her garden before the day gets unbearably hot, and if she lets herself get distracted picking cucumbers and ridding her flower beds of weeds, well, there’s an honest satisfaction in the hard work. There’s a cleanness to the way her back aches, to the way her neck sweats under the warm sun that skirts the wide brim of her hat, even to the dirt that gets under her nails, because she’s doing something. She can see her work in the ripe vegetables in her basket and the neatness of the beds, and when she stands up and stretches her sore body she can feel like she’s done something productive.

She’s created something. She’s made something. She’s left a mark in the world, if only for today.

When she goes back inside, she’s surprised to find six half-empty pizza boxes on the counter and Sam emptying the dishwasher.

“Did I get heat stroke?” she asks with a surprised laugh, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist. “What’s going on?

“I thought I’d help out,” he says. “We’re making a lot of dishes, and I still remember where everything goes.” He picks up the whisk from where it was lying on the counter. “Well, except for this.”

Carole sets down her basket of vegetables on the island and picks up the whisk before tucking it into place in her container of cooking spoons that sits on the counter. “You always did have trouble with that one when you lived here.”

“Yeah,” he says with a laugh that’s not self-conscious at all. “Sorry.”

“Don’t you ever apologize for emptying my dishwasher,” she tells him and runs his hand down his back, surprised but delighted when he turns into the touch and gives her a hug. He’s broader than both Kurt and Blaine, not as tall as Finn but something like him, smelling of summer and boy in a way that she remembers with that same tug in her gut that she keeps feeling, and she hugs him tightly back, glad to see him and glad for the reminder, too.

“Hey, Mrs. H.,” Artie says as he wheels in, a plate balanced on his lap.

“Hello,” she says, and she just can’t be surprised anymore by all of the people showing up in her house.

“What’s your poison, Artie?” Sam asks him.

“Double-roni,” Artie says. “Two slices.”

“The one true pizza,” Sam says with a nod, and he grabs two pieces from one of the boxes and slides them on to Artie’s plate.

“You know it. Thanks.” Artie turns around and wheels himself back toward the living room.

“Want anything?” Sam asks her. He starts to fill the dishwasher with the dirty plates and cups that have somehow multiplied exponentially since this morning. “We ordered a lot. Why not, right? It’s buy three, get one free, and it’s as good for breakfast as it is for lunch.”

“Thank you, honey, but I’m not hungry right now.” Her head feels a little spun around by too much sun and the noise spilling into the kitchen from the rest of the house, music and possibly the television as well beneath chatter and laughter. She blinks herself into focus and shoos Sam away from the dishwasher. “I’ll take care of that. You go see your friends.”

“I don’t mind,” he says, and she’s reminded of just how easy a houseguest he was when he lived with them.

“I know,” she says with a smile. “But you go enjoy yourself.”

Carole pours herself a glass of water, closes the pizza boxes, and fills the dishwasher, and by the time Burt comes in for lunch she’s almost used to the noise again. It’s been a while, but she had kids in and out of her house for almost two decades; she knows how to filter out the sounds to the ones that matter: alarm, mischief, anger, and the growing need for more food.

If the way Sam thunders down the stairs makes her feel like Finn could follow right behind, well... she knows how to filter out that thought, too.

She and Burt eat their lunch at the kitchen table, a stream of various young people who don’t belong to them wandering through for more drinks and pizza, and then she swings through to make sure everything is all right. She sees kids everywhere, on the furniture, on the floor. She sees a deck of cards and some board games sitting on the coffee table, and some video game is playing on an endless loop on the television, but everyone seems to be ignoring them and talking instead, happy to be together once more.

A nostalgic smile tugs as sharp as knives at her mouth as she meets Kurt’s eyes to check in that everything’s fine, and he nods easily at her from his perch on the arm of Rachel’s chair, Brittany on the floor at his feet. Blaine’s focused on braiding Tina’s hair on the other side of the room while Sam lies with his head in Tina’s lap and waves his arms around to illustrate whatever story he’s telling to their friends nearby. Blaine doesn’t meet her eyes or even notice her, but he looks happy enough. They don’t need her. She doesn’t need to be here.

Carole retreats upstairs to give them a little space and herself some space as well. It’s wonderful, but it’s a lot. She doesn’t need to be in the middle of that wonderful chaos all day. She can do something else and rejoin them later, dip in and out of the scalding emotional water instead of being burned by it.

Instead of carrying her to a calm retreat, though, her feet stumble to a halt in the upstairs hallway.

She’d thought it would be quieter there, but she’d forgotten how sound carries in the house and distills into crystalline focus at the top of the stairs. It hits her like a blow to the gut. Without seeing their maturing faces, it’s like she’s hearing voices from so many gatherings from years ago, like a radio or a tv playing in another room taking her back to a time when New Directions ate all of her food, tromped dirt all over her floors, and filled her house with so much love.

Standing with her hand against the wall, her chest tight, she can pick out Rachel’s lilting laugh. She can hear Kurt’s dry snark. She can hear a high voice full of judgment that must be Kitty, because it can’t be Santana, who is off with Mercedes performing somewhere that isn’t Ohio. She can catch bits of Blaine and Sam, Tina and Puck. She can even sense Mike’s low murmur beneath it all.

All of those voices she knows, people she’s supported and loved, and yet as hard as she listens she can’t quite pick out the one she wants, the one that’s supposed to be there, the one she knows isn’t there but was a part of the music of their conversation for so long that a part of her feels if she just listens hard enough she’ll be able to hear even if he’s gone, because surely if he lives anywhere it’s in his friends, it’s in their laughter, it’s in the song she can hear Blaine and Sam starting to sing, but she still can’t hear him and -

“You okay?” Burt asks quietly behind her.

She nods, dashing tears from the corners of her eyes, and can’t quite make herself look at him. “It’s good to have them all here,” she says, and she means it. She truly, deeply does. She loves those kids, loves them even more now for how much Finn loved them, and she loves that they’re unexpectedly filling up her house with their friendship and memories old and new.

And yet...

Strong hands land gently on her shoulders, and she turns into the comfort of Burt’s chest and cries silently, because as hard as she listens Finn is just not there.

Her son is supposed to be in the middle of that riot of joy and friendship. He’s supposed to be leading the songs, laughing at the jokes, sharing his love with his friends right there in her living room. He’s supposed to be there.

But he isn’t.

All of his friends are alive and well and happy in her living room, growing up and growing older, their faces and bodies changing with the years, and Finn isn’t there doing any of it with them.

Finn isn’t there.

Instead there’s a black, gaping hole in the world that will never be filled, a body she will never to able to hug, a voice she will never again hear call her ‘Mom.’

Carole’s tears stream down her cheeks and soak into Burt’s soft shirt as she clings to him and cries and cries without making a sound, her heart too broken to put voice to it.

There’s so much that’s wonderful about the day, but Finn isn’t where he’s supposed to be.

He’ll never be there again.

*

Later, when the light is turning golden from the late afternoon sun streaming through the windows and the air conditioning is churning extra hard to try to keep the house cool, Carole goes down into the basement to do a load of laundry. It’s cool and dark in the basement, calm where the rest of the house is not, and she finds her chest expanding more easily as she sorts and folds with only the hum of the pipes and the muted footfalls above her ringing in her ears.

When she’s finished, she takes the stairs slowly, like she’s a diver rising from the depths of the ocean who needs to acclimate bit by bit before she breaks the surface. The murmur of voices becomes louder, and she tries not to listen to the specific words, except that two of the voices are startlingly close.

“ - just be a night or two. I could sleep on the couch,” Blaine is saying.

“Dude, what’s going on? Are you moving out again?” Sam asks, his voice thick with worry. “Tell me you aren’t moving out.”

“No,” Blaine says, though he sounds anything but sure. “I don’t want to. And this is just for here, obviously. This visit. Kurt keeps hinting that I should go over to my parents’, but I’m still not sure when they’ll be back, so I thought maybe I could stay with you. It’d be like old times.”

“Mi sofa es su sofa,” Sam tells him seriously. “Always. But I don’t get what’s going on.”

Carole doesn’t, either. When Kurt had said Blaine might stay with his parents for a night or two, she thought it was because he wanted to spend time with the Andersons. She had no idea it had come from Kurt.

“I think Kurt just wants to be able to spend time with his family,” Blaine says.

“But you’re his family,” Sam replies, echoing Carole’s reaction to his words. She has a visceral response to the idea, possessive and fierce. Blaine is theirs. He might be the Andersons’, too, and obviously Kurt has the right to draw whatever lines he needs to, but in her heart, Blaine is one of her boys. He’s family. There’s no doubt at all.

“You know what I mean,” Blaine says.

“I kind of don’t, because you’re getting married. How much more family can you get than married?”

Blaine’s voice is soft with something that sounds awfully like defeat when he speaks. “It’s not the same.”

*

Carole watches them more closely that afternoon as she breezes through with pretzels and more napkins.

Kurt is bright and sharp with Rachel at his side, talking about anything and everything.

Blaine is busy with Mike and Sam and whoever else wants to play video games or roughhouse outside with a football.

They both sing when Sam and Puck pull out their guitars. They both laugh. They both tell stories and finish each other’s sentences. They both offer each other beverages when they go for refills and check in about plans when the group starts to split up around dinner time to go their separate ways.

But Carole notices that even with all of that, when they don’t have to - or when Kurt doesn’t have to and Blaine doesn’t let himself, which she thinks is more accurate - they don’t really look at each other.

These two boys who have always been connected, whose eyes have always followed each other or met meaningfully across the room... in this group of friends, they barely look at each other at all.

*

Late that night, after the hordes of young people have left the house and Kurt and Blaine are off with them seeing a movie and making a dinner of popcorn and candy like the teenagers they used to be, Carole snuggles into bed beside her husband and turns out the light.

“Has Kurt given you any idea of what’s going on?” she asks as she pulls the covers up over herself. The house is cool again, the air conditioning no longer struggling now that the sun has gone down, and at some point they really do need to figure out whether they need better insulation or a new compressor to keep the house at a more stable temperature on summer’s hottest days.

“Nope,” Burt replies. “Hasn’t said a word.”

“But something is,” she says. She’s sure of it. On the surface they are fine, but the little glances, the little remarks, the tiptoeing, the little worries and touches of coldness... something’s going on.

Burt sighs, sounding tired from more than his day. “Yeah.”

Carole settles onto her side and tucks herself against Burt’s warm, safe body. A part of her relaxes just to be near him, and without having had a partner in life for so long, she just can’t take it for granted. She smiles a little and closes her eyes, soaking his presence into her skin.

This is what they want for Kurt and Blaine, this sure, stable ease of love. Both of the boys want it, too, she knows; they’ve never been shy of what love means to them. It’s not her choice or Burt’s make, the boys have to make it, but it feels like they have. They’ve chosen each other. They just don’t always know how to make it work.

It’s hard fitting yourself together with someone else, she knows. She was once young and in love, too, and then she did it all over again decades later when it felt like she should know how to do it but still didn’t quite have all the answers. Growing up is hard. Growing together is even harder. That’s why she wants to give them whatever support she and Burt can.

They can’t make any choices for them, but they can help the boys see a little more clearly, maybe, give them a different perspective. They can try, at least.

“If he won’t come to you, we’ll have to go to them,” she reminds him.

Burt sighs again, deep and heartfelt and with a tangible lack of enthusiasm, but his reply is another simple, reassuring, “Yeah.”

*

The next morning, Carole goes out into her garden first thing, walking along the beds with her cup of coffee in her hand. The breeze is cool enough that the warm mug feels nice against her skin, but there’s a promise of heat in the air, something in the way it smells, like grass and banked fire, that makes her sure it’s going to be a scorcher by the afternoon.

She checks to be sure the dirt has enough moisture for her plants to make it through the day, waters the hanging basket of geraniums by the kitchen window, and breathes for a few minutes on the back porch. The soundtrack is the clicking of sprinklers and chirping of crickets, the hushed sounds of cars on roads nearby, and the murmur of masculine voices in her very own kitchen.

She smiles a little to know that they’re there in her home, these men she loves so dearly, and she takes one more deep breath before going in to join them.

Kurt and Blaine are seated at opposite ends of the table, Blaine eating cereal and Kurt nibbling at an English muffin with his face buried in the paper, and Burt’s by the coffee maker pouring the last of the pot into one of his battered travel mugs.

“I need to go into the shop for an hour or two,” he says.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. They both took off time from work to be with the boys, after all, and she knows he feels strongly enough about it that he wouldn’t go in if there weren’t an issue.

“Problem with one of the lifts,” he replies and fits the lid tightly onto the mug. “With the long weekend, we won’t be able to get anyone out to look at it ‘til Tuesday if we’re lucky. I want to see if I can get it working.” He glances over at the boys. “Either of you want to come? You’re both handy with a wrench.”

Blaine’s eyes brighten a little, but Kurt sets down the paper with a decisive snap. “I’ll go,” he says and pushes back from his chair. “I’ll change my clothes.”

Burt watches Kurt as he hurries from the room, and then his eyes land on Blaine. “What about you, kid? Want to come?”

Blaine sets down his spoon in his bowl with care and says with what she’s sure is supposed to sound like his own preference, “Thank you, but I think I’ll stay here.”

Burt’s eyes remain calm, but Carole can see him thinking behind them, weighing his words. He settles on, “Okay. We’ll be back before lunch.”

With a nod, Blaine goes back to his breakfast, not looking at either of them.

Carole busies herself at the counter until Burt leaves the room, her own mind turning as she thinks about what she has to do today compared with what kinds of activities she most wants to share with this young man who is set to become her son-in-law, and when they’re alone she remarks casually, “I was planning on going to the berry farm this morning to get some of the last strawberries of the season to make shortcake, if you’d like to join me.”

“Are you going to pick them?” Blaine asks, his face lighting up again with hope.

She had actually just been planning on grabbing some pre-picked quarts from the stand, but at his suggestion she replies, “We should do that! It’s always more fun doing that with a partner.”

Blaine’s smile is answer enough to assure her that she made the right choice, and the two of them bid goodbye to Burt and Kurt with barely a shadow crossing Blaine’s face.

The berry farm is on the outskirts of Lima, a family-run business that Carole has been going to for decades. The stand itself has grown and changed over time, adding a greenhouse to one side and expanding their selection of vegetables and fruits to more than just what they grow on their land, but once she’s standing in their fields, the sun heating up overhead, rows of low strawberry plants at her feet, and the scratchy-handled berry basket over her arm, it feels like it could be any year, any time of her life.

It feels like summer, like family, like tradition.

Blaine is a careful berry picker in a way that Finn was not. She remembers when Finn was little, no more than four, he had that same furrowed brow of concentration that Blaine has as he moves from plant to plant, looking for ripe berries to pluck. Finn, though, ate half of them before they were even out of the fields, staining his face, his hands, and his denim overalls bright red. She can remember how wide his smile was, even after he threw up his treats all over the back of her car on the ride home.

Carole turns away from the memory of the shining face of her son, but the next berry she picks leaves juice on her hands, and the smell brings her right back to that summer and her laughing little boy.

He’s been gone a long time. She’d said goodbye to that preschooler more than fifteen years ago ago, and as much as she’d missed him as he’d gotten older she’d been okay with it. That’s what parents do, watch their children grow and change. It was right to send him to school, to see him inch up year after year, to hear his voice deepen and see his shoulders broaden. It was right to see him leave childhood behind. It was right that every once in a while she’d catch that sunshiney smile on Finn’s face and see in him the little boy in overalls he once was.

But they’re all gone now, she can’t help but remember, bending her head over her work. All of those parts of him are gone. Just memories are left, vivid in her heart and fresh like the smell of strawberries that brought them back to her.

“I keep thinking I should plant a strawberry patch at home,” she says aloud, her voice thick. She moves on to the next plant, wishing it were as easy to take a step away from sadness. “But there isn’t room for as many plants as I’d like, and the rabbits would have a field day. We’d be lucky if we got a handful of berries the whole summer long.”

“My mother used to put up every type of fence, netting, and cage she could find in the stores, and she’d still lose half of our tomatoes to the groundhogs every year,” Blaine says from the next row. His basket is halfway full of bright red berries.

“Dealing with animals is part of the process, I guess,” she says. “I’ve never been fond of those cages, though. Part of what I like about gardening is seeing things grow and thrive, seeing them lift their leaves toward the sun and spread out. I know the cages are good to keep animals out, but... I’d rather just let the rabbits win, I think.” Life’s too short to spend it worrying about animals; she’d rather share the bounty with them and watch them hop happily in the grass.

She glances over at him, knowing how poorly he reacts to criticism. “But that’s just me. I’m sure your mother’s garden is very impressive.”

Blaine carefully places another plump strawberry in his basket and says, his voice low, “I agree with you. Everything deserves enough room to grow the way it wants to.”

Carole ponders Blaine’s words as they pay for their fruit and head back to the house. It’s hard enough parenting Kurt, who is at least her son by marriage and who lived in her house, but if Blaine’s part of her family, too, she’s not always sure what her role is in his. He already has a mother, after all. Not that she’s ever tried to take the place of Kurt’s, but he accepted her as his father’s wife and co-parent from the start. Blaine just got her as part of the package that came with falling in love with Kurt Hummel.

And yet, Carole doesn’t know how to be anything but a mother to all of the Glee kids. She’s not a friend, she’s not a chaperone, and she’s not simply there at competitions to see her son the way she used to. She’s none of those things. But she’s still Finn’s mother - and Kurt’s, too, more or less - and without Finn there to be the Glee Club leader, she feels like she owes him at least a little to look after these kids he loved so much.

Talk to him, Mom, he’d be telling her right now about Blaine. He needs someone to talk to, and you always knew how to make me feel better.

Carole knows with an ache deep in her heart that it just isn’t the same, that Blaine won’t feel the same way about her comforting him that Finn would have, that heaven knows she could have done better with Finn, too, but she still looks for an opportunity.

She doesn’t want to push. She doesn’t want to barge in where she’s not wanted. She doesn’t want to treat them like they’re kids when they’re young men living together and planning to get married. She just wants to leave the door open for her help.

So she waits, and after Blaine changes when one of the berries tumbles across the counter and leaves a bright red splotch of a stain where it comes to a halt against Blaine’s neat khaki shorts, she leads Blaine downstairs to the washing machine so that he can pre-treat it before it sets, and a memory appears in her mind that she knows is the right one to share.

“You know,” she says, leaning against the washer as Blaine rinses his shorts in the laundry sink, “my first fight with Kurt was over laundry.”

Blaine’s hands still for a second, and he looks over with almost luminous eyes as he says, “I didn’t know you two fought.”

“Sometimes,” she says easily. “I got lucky with this family, I know I did, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.”

He nods and goes back to work, swirling his clothes in the water. His lashes are long and dark, low over his eyes as he focuses on the contents of the sink.

“It was funny, though,” she continues. “Because I thought Kurt would have trouble with me as an authority figure. I mean, the last thing you want at sixteen is to have another adult telling you what to do, right? Burt and I talked a lot about how we should handle the transition and where he should step in and where he should step back to let us figure it out on our own. But Kurt never gave me any problems with being a new parent in the house. Do you know what he did?”

Blaine glances over and shakes his head. “What?”

“He’d move everything back.”

With a laugh, Blaine says, “What?”

Carole can’t help but grin at the memory, even though at the time it had been incredibly frustrating. “After we moved in, I started to rearrange things here and there to fit our stuff or to make more sense to me. I’d change the way the sheets were organized in the linen closet or move the dishwashing detergent from one cabinet to the other. And then I’d come back the next day, and he would have moved everything back.”

He laughs again, this time with a dark sense of understanding beneath the bright love. “He wants what he wants.”

“Yes, he does,” she says. “And his way is often fine. He’s thoughtful and organized. A lot of it is a matter of personal preference. But one day I finally got really fed up with the stain spray being on the upper shelf, where I had to get on my toes to reach it, and he’d moved it back there yet again, and we had it out.”

Blaine squirts the spray on the spot on his shorts and puts it back where it belongs: on the bottom shelf. “What happened?” he asks.

“Well, Kurt was smart enough to know Burt and I weren’t going to tolerate him being disrespectful, so after we had a few minutes of sharp words about the changes I’d been making he gave me the cold shoulder for nearly a week. He knew he couldn’t win. He knew that I wasn’t wrong to ask him to stop doing it, because it was also my house now, and I got to decide things, too. But he wasn’t happy about it. He spoke when spoken to but otherwise stomped around and ignored my very existence as much as possible.” She has to smile at the memory. He had been such a teenager.

“That must have been hard,” Blaine says with a thoughtful nod.

“It was, and it wasn’t,” Carole says. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut forever. He has too many opinions.”

His only reply is another nod.

“There were times where I really had to question what we’d gotten ourselves into, of course,” she continues. “Kurt was being bullied, Finn was having his own troubles adjusting... They were both acting out in ways we didn’t always understand. There were nights where Burt and I sat at the kitchen table and spent hours trying to figure out what to do with these two boys of ours.” She takes a breath and finds herself grateful, yet again, for the strength of heart and of conviction of the man she married. He’s not perfect, but he never stops trying. “But I was never really worried about my relationship with Kurt, not in the long run. You know why?”

“Why?” Blaine asks, barely a whisper, not looking up from his shorts.

“Because being family doesn’t mean it’s always easy,” she says, “but the flip side of that is that just because it’s hard sometimes doesn’t mean you’re not still family where it counts.” She touches her chest over her heart.

Blaine nods yet again, and he is silent as he puts the shorts in the washer and starts it up on a cold soak cycle. She wants to finish the story and talk about how hard it is for Kurt to feel like he doesn’t have some control, that even when changes are good for him they still make his world rock on its axis, that the only way he can stride forward and conquer the way he does is by knowing his home is safe and secure... but what’s important is Blaine right now, and so she waits.

“I’m not sure I can ever be what he wants,” Blaine says finally, when the machine is whirring its way awake. He stands with his hands on the lid for a moment before turning back to her. “It’s like I’m the spray, and I don’t fit on the top shelf where he thinks I should go. Or maybe I’m not the spray he wants me to be at all, and that’s the problem.”

“Honey, Kurt loves you,” she tells him. She might not know all the details, but she knows what she sees. She’s seen Kurt with Blaine and without him. She knows what love looks like and what it doesn’t. “It’s always been you. Of course you’re what he wants. Didn’t he show you that by putting your ring on his finger?”

“Maybe he was wrong,” Blaine says even more softly, but there’s a steadiness to his words that worries her, because of all of the things he seems to doubt in the world this thought he seems utterly certain about.

“Do you want to talk about what’s going on?”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s... it’s just more of the same. Most of the time we’re fine, but then we aren’t. It’s the same kinds of things that made me move out, or close enough. He’s himself... and I’m me. Sometimes it’s perfect, and sometimes the apartment is so small I feel like I can’t breathe. I know he can’t, either.” He swallows and looks away for a second, pain etched deep into his face. “Maybe we just shouldn’t live together. Maybe we can’t.”

Carole takes a little step closer to him, her own chest going tight to see him so unhappy. “Blaine, living together isn’t easy. It takes work.”

“I think he thinks it’s too much work. I am.”

“Has he said that?” she asks.

Blaine shakes his head again, and she gives in to her instincts and pulls him in for a hug. “Honey,” she says, “love isn’t always enough, and I don’t know what’s in your hearts, but I’ve known you two a long time. Kurt loves you. He loves you. You are what he wants.”

“I love him,” Blaine says helplessly, his arms coming tight around her and his voice watery against her shoulder.

“Then don’t stop working,” she tells him. “And don’t stop listening, either. It takes two to tango, right?”

He nods.

“But take it from me. Sometimes with Kurt you have to remind him that you get to have things your way, too. He is always sure his way is right, but he’ll get there. He did with you, just like he did with me. He loves you, Blaine.”

Blaine’s inhalation is shaky and wet, but he says, “I know. I do know that much. But he’s just so...”

“Stubborn?” she offers. “Inflexible? Controlling to the point of being impossible when he’s stressed?”

Blaine laughs and nods again. “Yes.”

Watching dust motes dance in a stream of light coming from one of the narrow basement windows high up in the wall, Carole strokes his back, petting him like she used to pet another boy who needed her. “Maybe you and I should start a support group for living with Hummel men,” she says. “We can compare notes, share tricks, maybe go on strike together if they get too ridiculous.”

His arms tighten around her almost to the point of hurting her, but when he lets her go if his eyes are deep with emotion his smile is more relaxed. She has no illusions that she’s fixed his problem for him, but clearly he is feeling better, and she’s glad to see it. Just having someone to talk to can make a big difference, she thinks; it must be so hard for them to be so relatively alone in New York this summer after having so many friends around for the past year.

“I hope it won’t come to that,” he says.

There’s the sound of footsteps above and the thump of a closing door. Blaine straightens up, pulling himself together that much more. The time for talking is over, at least for now.

“I hope not, either,” she tells him, leading him toward the stairs. “But someday Burt’s inability to find a laundry basket with a dirty sock is going to explode in his face, let me tell you. It’s not going to be pretty.”

Blaine laughs again, more freely than he could have when they came downstairs, and follows her up to greet the men they both love.

*

That afternoon, Carole pops some popcorn for a snack - air popped, no oil, in honor of Kurt being home to fuss over Burt’s diet in his own particular way - and gets a kernel stuck in her teeth for her trouble. She hurries upstairs for her dental floss, tongue worrying at the spot of sharp pain in her gum, and realizes when she’s nearly at the top that there are voices coming from Kurt’s room. Slightly raised, emotion-filled voices.

“ - can just go to Sam’s, if you need time away from me,” Blaine is saying.

She pauses for a second, but either they’ve heard her footsteps and will notice if she turns around or they haven’t heard her at all. Either way, she really needs that floss.

“I’m not saying you have to go,” Kurt replies. “But you know I’ve been needing space, and since we’re here - “

Carole tries to tune them out and continues on past Kurt’s room toward hers. Kurt’s door is closed, and a part of her feels like she is supposed to be doing something about it, even though it’s a ridiculous line to draw now for two young men who already live together and can do whatever they want whenever they want. Old habits die hard, she guesses.

“Am I part of this or not?” Blaine’s voice trails down the hallway after her. “Am I part of your life or not?”

“Of course you are.” Kurt’s snapped words carry easily into her bedroom.

“Then you need to let me fit in it, Kurt.”

Carole doesn’t meet her eyes in the mirror out of guilt at eavesdropping, even if it is accidental, and opens the medicine cabinet. There is her dental floss, and she feels oddly like some spy in a movie as she grabs her prize.

She hopes, as she extracts a piece of floss and gets to work on her tooth, that maybe she’s just far enough away or the boys have lowered their voices enough that she’s not in range to overhear anymore, but then Kurt’s quiet, almost desperate words filter into her bathroom: “Blaine, you fit. I want you to fit.”

The piece of popcorn pulls free, and with a sigh of relief, Carole tosses the floss into the trash can.

“I’m trying to figure it out,” Kurt says as she heads back out of her bathroom.

“You don’t have to do it,” Blaine replies, soft and hurt. “We do. You’re not the only one in this relationship.”

The closed door doesn’t bother her this time as she passes it. They’re grown-ups having grown-up problems.

They deserve their privacy. They need it.

*

The boys go out for dinner with their friends that night, and Carole can see the tension in their shoulders and the way their gazes dart toward and away from each other, not quite sure of their welcome.

But she also sees the courtly way Blaine holds the door for Kurt, the tenderness in Kurt’s fingers as he adjusts Blaine’s bow tie, and the desperate longing in both of their faces for everything to be okay.

“I talked to Blaine today,” she tells Burt as the boys’ rental car pulls out of the driveway. She feels an odd sense of satisfaction that Blaine has left his glass on a coaster on a side table; he’d probably be mortified at the oversight, but she loves that despite the tension he’s comfortable enough in his own way to leave a little bit of an imprint.

“Yeah,” Burt says from his recliner. “I talked to Kurt, too.”

“How did it go?” she asks.

Burt’s sigh is thoughtful, and his eyes are a little sad as they meet hers. “I don’t know. Kurt’s always had a lot of pressures on his shoulders, but he needs to learn that Blaine isn’t actually one of them.”

“And Blaine needs to learn how to give him space to figure that out,” Carole agrees.

“Yeah,” Burt says again. He holds out a hand to her across the gap between his chair and the sofa. His smile is rueful and grateful at the same time, his hand firm and sure. “Glad we aren’t that age anymore.”

She smiles at him, her heart thudding with love for his amazing, unwavering, big-hearted man, this unexpected love of her life. “Me, too.”

*

The fourth of July dawns bright and hot, and as she sips her coffee and contemplates her day Carole’s glad that they’re past the age of pool parties and day-long outdoor barbecues. She has good memories of spending the holiday with her family, Finn running around with his cousins and all of the adults clinging desperately to any little bit of shade, but give her air conditioning any day.

Kurt wanders into the living room, wearing a pair of shorts and a short-sleeved shirt that look simple and she assumes probably cost more than the fanciest dress in her closet. His attention is focused on the phone in his hand.

“What are you up to today, kid?” Burt asks him, muting the television as Kurt sinks down onto the couch.

“I’m not sure,” Kurt replies. He types something on his phone, his thumbs working in a flurry Carole knows she’s the wrong generation to be able to mimic, and then rests it on the arm of the couch. “Rachel wants to go to the fireworks tonight, Artie’s trying to convince everyone that we should film some sort of movie for him so he can get ahead on his school work for next semester, and Sam keeps texting about having a cookout.”

“We’re going to the fireworks,” Burt says. “Does she want a ride?”

“But we don’t have to sit by you, honey,” Carole jumps in to tell Kurt. “I know you probably don’t want to go with your parents. Have fun with your friends.”

Kurt’s face shifts from thoughtful to something more delicate, vulnerable, and he says in a thin voice, “No, I was planning on going with you. We’ve always gone together.”

Carole knows he and Burt have attended the fireworks together since they were little, just like she did with Finn and later all of them as a family, but she can see in the tension in his body just how shaken he must be feeling about whatever is going on with Blaine and whatever else is pulling at him. She tries to look encouraging. “Of course you can go with us. We’d love that. And invite Rachel, if you want. Or anyone else.”

“As long as she doesn’t sit up front with me,” Burt adds, much less helpfully. “She’s got quite a voice, that one, and I don’t need to hear it quite so close.”

“Okay,” Kurt says, his head lifting with what looks like satisfaction. “I’ll let her know. Not about the seating, because the minute you tell Rachel she can’t do something is the minute she suddenly wants to, but about the invitation.”

Blaine walks into the room, head down over his phone in a similar pose to Kurt’s from a few minutes before. “Kurt, do you know why Sam is texting me to ask if my parents’ grill is gas or charcoal?” he asks.

“He wants to have a cookout, and for some reason - “ Kurt’s voice goes very dry. “ - his parents said no to the entirety of New Directions descending on their house without notice. So he’s looking for alternatives.”

“Well, I can’t have it at my house,” Blaine says, looking up at him. “My parents aren’t home. And we don’t even have a grill.”

Kurt tips his head to the side, thinking. “Do we know where Puck is living right now? He’s usually up for hosting.”

“If only Brittany’s pool wasn’t an inflatable kiddie one,” Blaine says with a sigh.

“Yeah, we learned that the hard way,” Kurt agrees, and they share a grin over some memory Carole knows nothing about.

“I’m probably going to regret mentioning it,” Burt says, “but you guys know we have a grill, right?”

Kurt’s eyes flash over to him. “I know, but I assumed you’d already had your fill of New Directions for this visit.”

Burt scoffs and says, “Invite ‘em over. The house is yours, too. We’ll throw some burgers on the grill, you can make us one of your fancy salads, and anyone who wants can go to the fireworks with us.”

Carole’s chest freezes for a second, because she’d thought she’d gotten through the worst of the memory-inducing gatherings. She reminds herself that one of the best things about getting married to Burt and having this house and this family was how they were able to open their doors to their kids’ friends day after day when they were in high school. Just because they’re older doesn’t mean it’s different.

When she was young, before she’d even gotten married, she’d always dreamed of having a bunch of kids, but it hadn’t worked out that way... at least not how she’d expected. But family isn’t always a connection by blood. This second chance at love has given her more gifts than she could have imagined.

Having them over is the right thing to do, and she’ll be glad she did. She knows that. It might make her cry in the upstairs hallway again, but she will take it for all of the good parts.

So when Kurt and Blaine look to her in question, she swallows down the hint of panic fluttering in her throat and nods without hesitation. “Absolutely. Have as many people over as you want. I’ll go check on how many paper plates we have, and then we’ll hit the store once you have a rough idea of how many people might show up.”

Kurt’s eyes are warm on her and filled with gratitude, and he smiles at her openly for a moment before he snaps back to attention, all business. “Okay,” he says, pulling out his phone and beginning to type. “But we’re definitely having more than just burgers and a salad. I’ll make a list.”

*

Somehow, Burt and Blaine end up being the ones to go to the grocery store. Carole’s still not quite sure how that happens - something about Burt wanting control over the meat if he’s the one who has to grill it and Kurt not being willing to shop with him if his dad isn’t going to listen to him about which cuts to get and where they can substitute turkey for beef - but she can’t say she’s sorry to be hulling strawberries quietly at the kitchen table with Kurt instead of out at the busy supermarket.

“How are you doing, Kurt?” she asks, using a paring knife to scoop out the leaves and stem of a strawberry.

He glances up at her, and she’s pleased when he doesn’t offer some glib response to divert the conversation. “I’m all right,” he says slowly, like he’s thinking about it. “I’m okay. Sometimes great. Sometimes not.”

“How’s New York?”

As he deposits a hulled strawberry in the bowl sitting on the table between them, Kurt glances up at her again. He looks suspicious but not angrily so. “It’s New York,” he replies. His mouth twists a touch with something like amusement. “It’s the most amazing city on Earth, and it smells absolutely terrible in the summer.”

She laughs. “But you love it.”

“But I love it,” he agrees, but with far less enthusiasm than he used to have when he expressed that sentiment.

“You’ve had a hard year,” she says after a moment, testing the waters, thinking of Blaine moving in and moving out, friends coming and going, school and work and, of course, Finn. Always Finn.

“We’ve all had a hard year,” he reminds her. He takes a slow breath and lets it out, separating another berry from its leaves with a quick flick of the knife in his long fingers. His back is straight, his face composed. He looks relaxed, but she knows him well enough to know he isn’t, not completely.

Carole nods, because it’s true. It’s a bit over a year since Finn’s death, since her child died and turned the world into an incomprehensible nightmare, and she doesn’t know how it won’t be the worst year ever of her life. She doesn’t want to think what else could happen to make it not be. “I know,” she says.

Kurt drops a strawberry into the bowl and discards the stem in the bowl that will be dumped into her nascent compost pile behind the garage. He picks up a plump strawberry and turns it over in his hands, drawing in a slow breath and letting it out again before he speaks. “I’m tired of things being hard. And it feels like everything is. Even things that aren’t supposed to be.” Like Blaine hangs in the air, unspoken, but she sees it in his face.

“I know, honey.” She puts down her knife, though she doesn’t reach for him, not yet. “Some of that’s Finn, and some of that’s college, and some of it’s just life.”

Kurt’s mouth presses into a grim line, and he nods at her words. “I know. But I’m still tired of it. It’s a lot better than it was, but... Somehow I thought it would all work itself out. I’d fight to get to New York, I’d fight to get into the college of my dreams, and then I’d find a way to marry a man so loving I couldn’t have even dreamed of someone so wonderful before I met him... and it would all feel good.”

“The work doesn’t end just because you reach your goal,” she says. “In both careers and relationships.”

“I know.” His jaw tightens and relaxes, and he goes back to hulling the berries. “I know. I do know that.”

Carole works on the strawberries, too, her fingers staining red with the juice, and she thinks of young Finn’s bright mouth and Blaine’s khaki shorts. She thinks of this focused, beautiful man in front of her, whose dreams are huge, so huge that they must weigh on his shoulders so much that they threaten to suffocate him.

She thinks of all of the sharp edges of his life - auditions, classes, work, struggles, even hatred in the city that was supposed to take him in - and how much he must wish for somewhere that’s soft and easy, where nothing hurts at all.

She thinks of Blaine, who loves Kurt so dearly but who is a person with his own needs and dreams, who desperately needs to be himself and yet whom Kurt desperately needs to be by his side, on his side, a support and a partner against everything coming at him.

“You’ve always been a hard worker, Kurt,” she reminds him. “Just like your dad.”

“Yeah,” Kurt says, but he sounds brittle. He sounds tired.

Sometimes when they get an e-mail or a picture from some fabulous day Kurt and Blaine have had, she thinks that it must be fun to be young and in love in New York, even though it was never her dream. Still, she knows too well how even when you get your dream it is never what you thought it would be. And nothing about Kurt’s path - from his choice of career to his choice of how to present himself to the cards he was dealt around loss and even his very deepest self - is easy to navigate. None of it will ever come easy.

He might find bliss, but his life will probably never be one of peace. He feels things too deeply and wants things too fiercely for his life ever to be peaceful.

Love in all of its incarnations, she knows all too well, is neither safe nor peaceful.

“How are you doing with so many of your friends leaving the city?” she asks.

Kurt shrugs one shoulder in an elegant gesture she doesn’t know how he pulls off with strawberry juice on his hands. “It has its good side. It’s less busy. Less crowded. The apartment is quieter, which can be lonely but helps a lot in every other way.” He picks up another berry and fits his knife to it. “I miss them, obviously. Sometimes I even miss the drama, and I never thought I’d say that in the height of the Rachel and Santana debacle. But it was never the same thing twice.”

“And now it is?”

He sorts the stem from the flesh and drops them in their respective containers. “And now it’s just the two of us, which isn’t always... good.” He dips his fingers into the basket and lifts out another berry, his engagement ring bright on his hand. His voice goes even softer. “Except when it is. Sometimes it’s perfect.” There’s another pause, another drop of his voice. “And sometimes it really isn’t.”

Carole sits for a second and thinks, because she knows how important it is to let them make their own choices. It’s easy from her point of view with so many years and losses behind her to tell them to make hay while they can, to throw caution to the wind and to love as hard and to forgive as quickly as possible, because you never know just how many days you or the people you love are going to have. It’s so easy for her to look at how head-over-heels these two boys are and have been for each other for so long and tell them that the details don’t matter but that kind of love does.

But it’s not her life. It’s not her choice to make. It’s not about her at all.

So she puts down her knife, wipes her hands on the dish towel beside her, and says what’s really at the core of how she feels. “Kurt, I’ll be the first person to tell you that there are no happy endings. There aren’t. There’s just life, and it’s hard. Some days are harder than others, but nothing you want ever comes easy. You know that. You live it. You’ve seen it, too.”

Kurt nods, his eyes going wet, and she can see in them his mother, Finn, Blaine, and countless other dreams he’s lost for a while or for good.

“But,” she says, leaning forward and putting her hand over his on the table, “even though there aren’t happy endings, even though there isn’t one moment where life becomes perfect forever, there’s a lot that can be happy at any time, on any day, if you let yourself focus on it instead of everything else. I know just how much it can hurt to love things in this world where there are no guarantees, no promises, no absolutes, but when you do, it can be so worth it.”

Kurt’s hand is as still as a statue’s under hers, and she squeezes it tight, hoping the words make sense. He stares at the table, his chest rising and falling and his eyes liquid and pensive. “Are you telling me to seize the day?” he asks finally.

“I’m telling you you should think about it,” she says. “Only you get to choose what you seize and what you let go. Only you get to decide what makes you happy at the end of the day. It’s not up to me. But I think you should think about what does make you happy.”

He nods again, slowly. “Okay,” he says. “Thank you.” He nods one more time, and then his gaze flashes back up to her, sharp with amusement. “But if you ask me to stand on the table and recite Whitman to you, I’m done here.”

Carole laughs and assures him, “I think you’re okay.”

Kurt’s smile twists again to something more worried. He slides his hand free and picks up another strawberry. “I hope so,” he murmurs, almost to himself.

*

Carole experiences the rest of the day in fragments. It’s not that she’s not paying attention, but there’s so much to do, and there are so many kids in her house, that she feels a bit like she’s blinking her eyes open to find different things happening around her.

She loads the fridge full of drinks with Blaine, who kindly carries them over to her to save her any lifting. She sets up bowls of snacks with Kurt, who arranges the carrot sticks around the hummus to his exacting specifications. She fights with the grill’s propane tank with Burt, who swears under his breath just like he always does. She opens the front door countless times to let in a steady stream of young people whose faces are so dear to her and who are somehow growing up beyond the pictures in her memory, the ones with her son in them.

They aren’t all coming, it’s not a competition or a wedding, it’s not everyone minus the one she loves the most, so she tries to focus on who is here instead of who is missing. She focuses on today.

Tina, her hair streaming long over her shoulders, gives her a bubbly hug hello. Sam comes in with an enormous watermelon under one arm and a guitar case in his other hand. Marley brings her a big bunch of sunny flowers that make Carole breathe through her sudden bout of touched tears as she puts them in a vase, because it’s such a sweet gesture and one that will remain after they’ve gone again.

There are video games in the living room, gossip in the kitchen, and from what Carole can overhear Rachel holding court about her fabulous Los Angeles life in the dining room. Ryder helps Burt with the grill, Mike helps Blaine clean up and throw away leftover paper plates and trash, and Puck actually asks Carole where the coasters are. Puck. She nearly faints.

Maybe the military is good for him, she thinks as she directs him to their container on the bookshelf. Maybe Quinn is good for him. She hopes Quinn is, hopes they can both find a future together, those two kids who loved Finn in their own difficult ways. Something positive should come out of all of the ups and downs that they have already had in their young lives. She knows Finn would want that for them.

There are spills and laughter, bickering and hugs, roughhousing and piles of friends weighing down furniture that thought it had seen the last of that kind of treatment. There are dance moves in the front hall, touch football in the back yard, and some sort of water gun fight on the front lawn that Kitty wins decisively with the hose.

And there’s music everywhere. From speakers, from instruments, and mostly from voices lifted in song.

Carole’s heart catches again and again to hear them singing songs old and new, competition songs, fun songs, love songs, and everything in between. There’s “Jump” and “Hate on Me” and “Call Me Maybe” and “Wannabe” and as the day winds down “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “Don’t Stop Believin’” and more than one teary smile passing Carole on the way to the bathroom.

She’s glad in her own way to see their tears, even as she hides the way she dabs her eyes with a tissue before she refills the bowl of chips. She’s glad she’s not the only one who is thinking of him, but she’s also glad that they’re smiling as they do it. They should. They should all remember him with love.

Carole sits outside with Burt on the back steps, the grill cooling down and the sun sinking from its zenith, and lets his strength hold her up for a little while.

“You okay?” he asks her after a while, tender and concerned.

She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and nods. Her heart hurts, but it’s... it’s not okay, but it’s not wrong that it does. “It’s good to see them. They’re all growing up.” Sam’s so tall. Mike’s filling out. Marley is growing from a girl into a woman, her lankiness turning into a lovely elegance.

“Yeah,” he says, sounding as wistful and proud as she feels. “They are.”

“But they’re still here,” she says in some wonder. So many of them have graduated, but they’re still here in her house. They’re still remembering and celebrating everything they had, everyone they had.

Burt settles his arm around her shoulder and says, “Yeah, they are. Guess we’re stuck with them.”

Carole laughs a little at the gruffness in his voice, because she knows he doesn’t mean it at all. She knows he misses Finn and Kurt and all of them in his own way as much as she does. She knows it means as much to him to have them all there as it does to her. She knows he’s touched, too. She knows he’s happy.

She knows he feels the rightness in this day and in these kids being here as much as she does.

Finn’s death had been an ending, but somehow, no matter how it had felt at the time, it hasn’t ended everything.

“I guess we are,” she says in some wonder.

*

Carole is coming back with another case of soda from the garage when she finds Tina standing in the small mud room between the garage and kitchen. Tina’s leaning against the wall, her eyes shining with tears and tipped up to the ceiling, her hands flat against her stomach. She’s not sobbing, but she’s definitely upset.

“Honey, are you okay?” Carole asks, hurrying to set down the soda on the bench under the coat hooks.

Tina nods quickly, though her shuddering breath tells another story. “I’m fine,” she insists.

“T? Tina? Where are you?” Blaine’s voice comes from the kitchen a second before his head peeks around the doorway. He hesitates and looks between Carole and Tina and then comes inside, putting his arm around Tina’s shoulders. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he tells her.

“I know,” Tina says, but she curls into him and dashes the tears from her cheeks. “It was just one of his favorite songs.” She looks guiltily over at Carole, and Carole realizes she’s talking about Finn.

“I know,” Blaine says, stroking her back. He pulls a neatly folded tissue from his pocket, clearly unused. “Here.”

Tina sniffles a little and takes the tissue. “Thank you.”

Kurt appears in the doorway, his brow furrowed with concern. “Tina?” He blinks at the three of them in the tiny passageway. “Oh,” he says, then re-focuses on Tina. He holds out a box. “I brought tissues.”

With a teary giggle, Tina says, “You guys are both so prepared.”

Kurt and Blaine lock eyes for a moment, and Carole watches Kurt’s mouth soften into something of a smile. “We like to look out for our friends,” he says.

“Thank you,” Tina says and smiles at him even as she turns more into Blaine’s chest. “I’m sorry. It just hit me all at once, you know?”

Carole reaches out to pat Tina’s shoulder in sympathy and understanding. “Don’t apologize. It happens to all of us.”

Kurt steps in closer to the three of them, his free hand coming up to rest on Blaine’s back. Blaine glances over his shoulder at him, his eyes going gentle.

Carole watches them all look at each other and feels the love among them like a tangible thing, filling the empty spaces around them.

“Thanks, you guys,” Tina says, gracing them all with a wobbling smile.

“Any time, T,” Blaine tells her and squeezes her shoulders fondly.

“Tina?” Sam calls from somewhere beyond the kitchen. “Blaine, I think Tina’s crying again! Code Blue! I repeat: we have a Code Blue! Blaine!”

Kurt’s eyebrows rise up almost to his hairline in surprise, Tina starts to laugh, and Blaine ducks his head with a fond smile.

“You have a code for me?” Tina asks Blaine, poking him in the chest with the tip of her finger.

“Just for you crying,” Blaine replies, quite serious, and Carole picks up the soda and edges around them, because she’s fairly certain that explanation is not going to appease Tina.

They’ll all be fine, she knows it, but she doesn’t want to get caught up in the explosion.

*

The party moves back outside in the late afternoon. It’s hot out there, but the shadows are getting longer, and the kids don’t seem to care. They run a few wires and set up some speakers in the back yard, and the dancing and singing gets louder and more enthusiastic to the point that Carole fears the neighbors’ reactions.

But let them complain. It’s one day out of the year, one day of celebration. They can deal with it.

The commotion lessens some when Rachel stands up in front of them, her hands clasped together in front of her.

“I don’t believe in going backwards,” she says to the quieting group. “In my career or in life, I always want to go forwards. But since not all of you were willing or able to come see me on Broadway, and since I feel like tonight should be memorialized in song, I’m going to break my rule about going backwards and sing a song from my time in Funny Girl.”

Her hand on the railing, Carole watches from the steps as Rachel opens her mouth to sing “People.”

Rachel is still and composed, rocking back on her heels as she draws breath and pulls them all in with the power of her voice. Carole has heard Kurt play the Streisand version of the song more times than she can count, but there’s something about Rachel’s voice that gives her chills. There’s some heart in it, some pain, some deep love that Rachel might not know how to express in any other way.

Carole’s body hurts to listen to her, but she couldn’t turn away even if she wanted to.

It hurts her into her bones to see Rachel at all - not because of her rocky relationship with Finn but because she embodies the unfairness of Finn’s death to Carole, the happiness he never quite got to reach - and Carole wishes she could enfold her into her family the way she should have been, like Blaine is. Rachel is the future Finn never got to have, the future Carole never will, the culmination of all of her hopes she built up from the first time she held him as a newborn, the future with grandchildren with Finn’s happy smile to dote on, the one with Finn standing tall and sure every day, the way he was learning to do before he died.

Rachel stands for all that Finn never got to be in Carole’s mind, but when she’s there in front of her she’s also just the woman who lost the love of her life, surprisingly small and fragile as a bird, yet still strong as an elephant and as unmoving as a mountain in her own heart.

Kurt comes to lean against the railing beside Carole, and he watches Rachel silently as she finishes her song.

“She’s quite something,” he murmurs when she’s finished. Quinn and Brittany get up to join her.

Carole slips her arm around Kurt’s slim waist and says, “So are you.” She means his shining, amazing talent, but she also means his strength, the way he keeps going. His life hasn’t been easy, either. Maybe nobody’s is.

His smile is quiet, and he hugs her back as the girls start to sing something much more upbeat. His arms are strong around her, and he’s at ease and content in her embrace. She closes her eyes, just for a second, and enjoys having a son, someone who lets her love this way.

“Thank you,” he says after a moment. “Thank you for talking to me earlier.”

“Any time, honey,” she tells him as her heart expands with relief and gratitude at his words. “But I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know.”

To her surprise, Kurt laughs a little. “Dad said that, too, when I talked to him. That I already knew what he was going to say.”

Carole squeezes him and then lets him slip away to stand on his own again. “We know you, Kurt. We trust you to know your heart. You have a big one. That’s a wonderful thing. But it means that sometimes it’s going to hurt.”

He nods, his chest rising and falling as he looks out over the yard. “But sometimes it doesn’t,” he says, like it’s a decision instead of a statement of fact.

“If you’re doing it right, most of the time it doesn’t.” She thinks of afternoons watching football with Burt, trips to the grocery store together that don’t feel like a chore, even sad, tear-filled nights that are so much better for a strong shoulder to cry on.

Kurt’s gaze focuses on Blaine, who is talking with Tina off to the side, his body swaying in unconscious rhythm with the music. “Yeah,” he says softly, and with that he steps away, striding with purpose across the yard.

Carole watches him step up beside Blaine, she watches him extend his hand, and she watches Blaine’s face start to glow with almost painful joy as takes it. Blaine lets Kurt pull him into the dance, the two of them moving together like they were born to it. No, like they’ve learned about each other and have come up with the right rhythm together, just like she hopes they will in life.

She watches for a minute, watches them smile at each other, watches them both relax, watches their hands catch between them and hold tight as they spin and move and dance together, and she smiles to herself.

“That looks good,” Burt says, pausing by her shoulder as he passes by with a platter of grilled hot dogs. He nods out at the boys, who aren’t looking anywhere but at each other.

Kurt twirls Blaine under his arm, and Blaine laughs with a raw sort of delight, switches their hold, and spins Kurt out to the end of his arm before tugging him back in close again.

“I think so,” she says, and they share a moment of satisfaction together before she takes the platter from his hands.

*

At dusk they all pile into cars to go to Faurot Park for the fireworks. It’s a madhouse, as it always is, with tens of thousands of people gathering for the show, but somehow they all manage to find a place to park and don’t lose anyone as they tromp through the crowds to the little hill that’s their favorite place watch the fireworks. They stake out a big patch of ground with beach towels and coolers, and some of the kids wander off while others sprawl out, talking and playing games on their phones.

Carole doesn’t know how they can possibly have more to say to each other after spending all day together, but she guesses they’re all spread out so much that it’s not like when they were in school together. They have a lot of catching up to do. And it’s not like they didn’t talk all day and night in high school, anyway.

As the sky darkens and the crowd gets thick around them, Carole feels Finn’s absence growing like a hole in the pit of her stomach. He’d always been their best lookout to find lost friends, since he towered above everyone else, and she misses his tall shadow against the indigo sky. She misses his enthusiasm for life. She misses his generous heart and generous hugs.

She misses him, the child she used to hold in her lap through these fireworks year after year, growing from drowsy toddler with his warm face tucked against her neck to a gangly teenager far too big to sit on her anymore.

She’d gladly let him into her lap, though, if she could hold him one more time.

It’s like missing a limb that he’s gone. It’s like missing something more vital, like her heart, only somehow blood keeps rushing through her veins, keeping her going even when she doesn’t want to.

She’s past feeling like the black chasm of grief is just an inch away, ready to swallow her whole every day, but she knows it’ll always be within arm’s reach. For the rest of her life, it’s going to be there, ready to darken her day, ready to wake her from her dreams sobbing and gasping, ready to remind her of just how wrong the world is.

The child she carried in her body, the child she raised every day of his life, the child she held and soothed and watched grow, the child she gave all of her hope and love to - more love than she’d even known a single person could possess - so that he could have the best life possible and outshine where he came from, the child who was her entire present and future from the very first day she knew he existed, that child is gone, and without him the world just doesn’t make sense.

It doesn’t make sense at all. It’s like gravity has stopped working, like trees are now blue instead of green, like fish breathe air and two plus two is three hundred twelve. It’s just wrong.

Without Finn, the world can’t ever make sense.

As Burt sits down beside her, Carole blinks back tears she wasn’t even aware of filling her eyes. They’d only had one summer here together as a family with the boys still home, and she remembers how Finn and Rachel had been sneaking kisses and Kurt and Blaine had been hiding holding hands in public, and sitting here with them but without Finn just makes the memory hurt.

But then the first firework rises up into the sky, the crowd cheers, and Carole’s grief begins to roll back like the tide. It’ll return, but it can ebb as well as flow, and she lets it. She chases happiness instead.

She leans into Burt’s arm as the inky sky turns into a vibrant display of colors and shapes, and she lets the designs imprint themselves onto her eyes and into her heart. There’s wonder everywhere if she looks for it. And she hopes maybe somewhere Finn is looking down on them and watching the very same fireworks with them.

A little in front of them, she sees Kurt and Blaine lean into each other, their hands linked this time without any shyness. Blaine puts his head on Kurt’s shoulder, and Kurt tips his cheek against Blaine’s hair.

Tina laughs and points upwards, tugging on Sam’s arm, Brittany is on her feet beside Artie, clapping her hands, and Puck presses a kiss to the back of Quinn’s head as he stands with his arms around her, their faces lifted to the sky. Marley and Unique watch the fireworks with rapt expressions, and Ryder and Jake somehow seem to be asleep on their blankets.

Only Rachel sits alone, her arms around her drawn-up knees and her face looking upwards. Carole wonders if she’s thinking of Finn, too. It’s hard not to, she thinks, not when so much of Lima must mean him to her. She wishes she knew how to reach out without hurting Rachel more. She wishes she knew anything to say to make his loss feel better.

She wishes without hope, like she has so many times since Finn’s death, that there were an easy answer, a perfect phrase, a simple way to make sense of something that is utterly and completely senseless.

There isn’t. Not for her, and not for Rachel.

But then Carole’s view of Rachel is blocked by Kurt and Blaine, who sit beside her, and Rachel curls into Kurt’s left side while Blaine takes his place on the right. Kurt puts his arm around her as Blaine tips his head onto Kurt’s shoulder again, and they watch the fireworks together.

They look like they fit. They look like they belong.

They might never be all married into the Hudson-Hummels, Carole thinks with her throat tight for the lost future and the wonder of the present, but they’re still somehow a family.

She links her fingers with Burt’s and looks back up at the heavens, which are bright with light and motion, wonders of their own.

No matter what has happened and will happen, they’ll all always be tied together. It’s not just New Directions but something more special.

Kurt, Blaine, Finn, Rachel, Burt, Carole... She can feel the truth in her heart. Despite all that’s happened, or maybe because of it, they’ll always be family.

*

Late that night Carole finds herself staring sleeplessly at the ceiling, so she pulls on her robe and goes downstairs to empty the dishwasher. She knows it’ll be there in the morning, but there are a ton of dirty dishes from the day she could load in and wash overnight, and it’s something to do with her hands.

She hears an odd noise as she passes Kurt’s door, and she’s startled into stillness. It happens again, a low groan, and her face goes hot in understanding. A cut-off moan, husky and desperate, follows her down the hallway as she pads away as quickly as she can. A hushed, laughing murmur filled with love trails after her down the stairs.

She thinks she should probably be more shocked than she is, but Kurt and Blaine are adults. They live together. They sleep in the same bed. They’re in love. Of course they have sex. She isn’t at all surprised by it.

Besides, having a son who was a sophomore in high school when he told her he got his girlfriend pregnant made the scales fall from her eyes pretty quickly when it came to the idea of her children being sexually active.

Carole turns the radio on in the kitchen when she gets there, both for company and to keep from overhearing anything she’s not supposed to. If she’s happy that they feel the need to connect with each other she doesn’t need to hear it. They don’t need her to, either.

It’s between them. She hopes it means something good for them both... but that’s as far as she can think about it before it feels invasive.

She’s just glad that Burt’s asleep so he doesn’t have to think about it at all.

*

In the morning, Carole wakes up late, groggy from her sleep being so off, and she comes downstairs blinking her eyes against the bright morning sun.

Kurt and Blaine are in the living room, sitting close to each other on the couch, Blaine’s arm around Kurt’s shoulders. They’re looking at something together on Blaine’s phone, both of them smiling. They look comfortable and connected, two halves of a whole.

Kurt laughs as Carole walks into the room. “I can’t believe you got a video of that,” he says to Blaine.

“I know. I got really lucky,” Blaine agrees, and his smile is so sunny Carole had almost forgotten he could look that happy.

“Good morning,” she says to them both.

Their eyes swing up to her in unison as they greet her, Blaine’s shining and Kurt’s maybe a little more hesitant but somehow fierce. They’re determined. She thinks maybe he’s made a choice, or the start of one. Whatever it is, Blaine seems to be feeling good about it, too.

She wonders if part of being a parent is hearing about the hard parts when your children need support and then getting left behind when everything is solved, never quite hearing about the solution.

She doesn’t mind, though. As long as they’re happy she’s happy.

“What are you two up to today?” she asks, sitting down in one of the chairs.

“Blaine made a ton of waffles,” Kurt says. “With whipped cream and some of the leftover strawberries from the shortcake. We’re digesting.”

“There are some keeping warm in the oven for you,” Blaine tells her.

“Thank you,” she replies, and somehow despite all of the food she ate yesterday her stomach growls in interest.

Kurt’s face goes a little tighter, and he rubs his palm over Blaine’s shoulder before he says, “We thought this morning we’d go over and see Finn’s tree at the school. I know Coach Beiste has been taking care of it, but we thought it would be good to check on it.”

Something in Carole freezes for a moment - reminder of his death are ever-present and yet never stop surprising her - but then she nods. She tends to Finn’s grave regularly, but she doesn’t go see the tree unless she has a reason to be at the school. Maybe she should. “That’s a great idea, honey,” she says, grateful for the concern for Finn’s memory, grateful for Kurt’s part in that memorial, grateful for the love they all share.

It feels good to know Kurt’s thinking about him, too. Grief is easier when you aren’t alone, she thinks.

“You’re welcome to come with us,” Blaine says, his hand on Kurt’s arm stroking him in a sweet, soothing gesture.

She almost says no so that they can have the time to themselves and so she doesn’t have to rub that wound raw one more time this week, but even if they’re adults now they’re always going to be her kids. Part of her job is to be there for them. For them and for Finn, no matter that it might hurt sometimes, her job will never end.

So she makes herself smile, and she gets up off the chair. “Let me get dressed.”

“Have your waffles first,” Kurt tells her, gentle and kind, like he can see how sore her heart is. He watches her with tender eyes, like his own heart is sore, too. “There’s no rush.”

*

Blaine stands with his arm around Kurt’s waist as they look at the memorial tree.

Its trunk seems too thin to support its branches, like Finn had been at fourteen when he’d grown what seemed like six inches taller and his shoulders four inches wider over one summer but hadn’t gained a pound. The tree, like Finn was back then, is weedy. It hasn’t filled out properly yet. It hasn’t reached its full potential.

Like Finn never will.

She looks down at the ground. The grass is neatly trimmed and still green despite the summer drought. The plaque with Finn’s name and the dates that are inscribed on her heart has been kept tidy. The ground seems undisturbed around the tree’s roots, and the earth looks damp, like it’s been watered that very morning.

She looks back up at the green leaves and the way they flutter in the hot breeze and tells herself she’s not going to cry. Not here. Not today.

Kurt bends down and puts a white daisy from Marley’s bouquet on top of the plaque. Finn always liked daisies. He said they looked like smiles if smiles were flowers.

Carole can hear Kurt’s shaky breath and can see the way he stands straight and sure even as he tucks himself back into Blaine’s encircling arm.

“It’s getting taller,” he says, and if he sounds sad he also sounds satisfied. “It’s growing.”

She nods. “Life goes on,” she says softly. Not for everyone, but life does go on. One life ends, but not everything does.

The bright green leaves dance above them. The earth below calls out to her to plant flowers at the tree’s base, to give something of her heart and hands here, too, to tend to this place and nurture the memory she cherishes so much.

Looking small, Blaine kisses Kurt’s shoulder and remains dark-eyed and silent.

Kurt takes another breath, more steady this time. There’s a tranquility in him she admires as he speaks again. “Life goes on.”

*

There’s no more discussion of Blaine going somewhere else for their last night in Lima, as far as Carole can tell. It certainly doesn’t happen in front of her, and as the four of them spend the rest of the morning putting the house back to rights after the previous day there’s a centered calmness underlying Kurt and Blaine, the kind of calmness she’s used to with them. They work together well, take turns, share burdens, smile thanks.

Whether it will last or not, she doesn’t know, but they’re on the same side again. It's good to see. She wants that for them.

When she enlists Kurt’s help in the kitchen to use his long arms to get the serving bowls back on the upper shelves, she asks as mildly as she can, “Are you looking forward to getting back to New York tomorrow?”

Up on his tiptoes - this is one job they’ll never be able to replace Finn for, no matter how many years pass - Kurt fits the big fiestaware bowl into its spot and then sinks back onto his heels. He seems to consider the question for a moment, and then his bright, beautiful eyes lift up to meet her gaze. He looks young for a moment, lighter than he has in days. “I think so,” he says, sounding a little surprised. “Smells, tourists, and all.”

“It’s been a good trip,” she says.

Kurt nods, chewing on the inside of his lip thoughtfully. “I didn’t realize I needed it.”

“We all need a break sometimes.”

“Yes. But I was wrong about what kind of break I needed. I thought it was from Blaine, but... maybe it was from everything else.” Kurt picks up the next bowl but doesn’t move to put it up on the shelf. “Sometimes I’m looking so hard at where I want to be going that I think I lose sight of where I am.”

Carole frowns a little, because that doesn’t quite sound like what she knows of him. He’s young, but in some ways he’s always been wise beyond his years. The way he handled Finn’s death humbles her. “Kurt, you’re one of the most grounded people I know,” she tells him. “I don’t think you ever forget who you and where you are. I’ve never seen you forget that for a single second.”

His brows draw together, and he turns the bowl over in his hands. “Then I don’t know how to explain what’s been happening with Blaine. I know I shouldn’t be mad at him for needing things or being different from me.”

“It’s not that simple, honey. It’s never that simple. Do you want my opinion?”

Kurt nods.

“I think you know who you are. I think you know where you’re going. But I think sometimes when you’re working so hard toward a goal you forget that the journey is worth something, too. Life’s a journey, Kurt. It’s not just the destination.”

“I know,” Kurt says, his face crumpling, just a touch. “I do know. And this trip has reminded me of it.” He shudders in a breath, his eyes going watery again. “Finn’s been everywhere.”

“Yes, he has,” she replies in a whisper.

“I miss him,” he says, his voice cracking.

Carole can feel something in her break apart, leaving her raw yet again. “I do, too, honey.”

Kurt nods, and he doesn’t look broken or bowed. He doesn’t look devastated anew. He just looks sad.

It’s not a burden but a blessing in a way, the grief the price one pays for loving someone so very much.

It hurts, but it’s a clean hurt. If this is what life has given them, Carole thinks, if they’ve gotten to love so much and lose someone so dear, it’s right to feel this kind of pain.

Carole opens her arms as Kurt steps into them. “I love you, sweetie.” She curls her arms around this man, this boy, this son she has been lucky enough to have join her life. He’s strong and alive, tall, warm, right there, holding her back.

“I love you, too,” he tells her, and she holds onto the words as tightly as she does to him. She needs them. “Thank you.”

“You never have to thank me,” she promises. “It’s my pleasure.”

It is a pleasure. It’s a pleasure to talk to him, to listen to him, to love him.

She might have lost one son, but thanks to Kurt at least she hasn’t stopped being a mother.

*

There are a few visitors that afternoon, though nothing like the deluge of the previous day. Sam and Artie come over to hang out for a while. Tina brings back the beach towel she accidentally took home with her. Mike stops by to pick up his forgotten cell phone and ends up playing video games for an hour. Puck returns a cooler he’d borrowed and apologizes for the new dent they left in the coffee table.

Carole closes her eyes and accepts Sam’s strong, boyish hug. She smiles when Tina kisses her on the cheek. She laughs when Mike spins her around and dips her in the front hall.

She’s never going to see them without thinking of Finn. She knows that. They’ll always be a physical reminder of his loss, of the fact that they’re growing up and living their lives and he is not.

And yet... she’d been worried that when they all graduated his memory would leave with them. She’d been worried that when they were gone that he’d be gone, too.

But they’re still here. Kurt, Blaine, Rachel, New Directions, all of them.

They’ll grow up and drift apart, she knows. That’s just life. That’s how things work after high school. People drift away.

But not all of them. A lot of them will be back. And even when they aren’t, wherever they are, they’ll remember. She can see in their faces and feel in their hugs that they will always remember.

They might have left the nest, but they aren’t gone, and as she hugs Tina goodbye and waves at Mike as he dances down the driveway she finds a peaceful kind of relief in the knowledge that in that small but important way Finn isn’t gone, either.

*

Late in the afternoon, Carole looks in the refrigerator for inspiration to make dinner. Her eyes are gritty and her brain blank after such a busy few days. She stands there with the door open the way she used to yell at Finn for doing and stares blankly at the odd bits of leftovers and way too many cans of soda on the shelves and wonders idly why eating the rest of the strawberry shortcake isn’t a good life choice.

She looks up as Blaine walks in his careful, contained way into the room. “What do you want for dinner?” she asks. She doesn’t offer the shortcake; there isn’t enough for all four of them to share.

“Oh, um...” He draws in a little in that way he does, going polite and regretful. “My parents got home this morning, and we thought we might have dinner with them.”

“You and Kurt?” she asks, trying not to let her excitement come though.

Blaine’s smile floods onto his face. “Yes,” he says, and he looks so happy she can’t help but let the refrigerator door swing shut so that she can turn and smile back at him.

“That’s great, honey.” As tired as she is, she is buoyed by his excitement. His moments of despair have been hard to watch, especially with the way he wears his heart - no matter how battered - on his sleeve. She wants so much better for him.

“Yeah,” he says. He glances back toward the rest of the house and lowers his voice a little, all earnestness. “Thank you for everything.”

Carole pulls him in for a hug, still amazed that he comes to her so readily but glad for it, and says against his too-gelled hair, “We didn’t do anything, Blaine. We just let you two be yourselves.” She can’t fix things for them any more than Blaine can fix things for Kurt, as much as he wants to be able to be everything Kurt needs and more.

“We needed that,” Blaine says softly against her shoulder. He stays there for a moment before letting her go.

“We all do sometimes.” She rests her hands on his shoulders - too low, too narrow to be right, but yet just right for him - and looks directly into his worried yet hopeful eyes. “We all do, Blaine.”

He nods. “I hope we have it right this time.”

It’s never that simple, Carole knows. There’s never ‘right’. That’s not how life works. “You just have to keep trying,” she tells him and hopes he hears her.

Blaine nods again, his head turning to the side at the sound of Kurt’s voice. His eyes light up even more. “We are,” he says, and then he raises his voice to call out toward the front hall. “I’ll be right there, Kurt!”

Carole wonders if it’s too much, if he’s too optimistic, but he is who he is. He’s all hope and passion and love shining out of his eyes. She can’t change that, and she’s not sure she would even want to, though he’ll most certainly get hurt by it again. He wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t have that enormous capacity for getting swept up in love. “Have fun, honey. I’ll save you some shortcake for dessert if you want. You deserve to eat the last of the strawberries you picked.”

Blaine leans in and kisses her cheek. “We picked,” he reminds her with a bright, almost conspiratorial grin, and then he hurrying off, gone to join the man who is clearly the center of his world, for good or ill.

With a furrow between her brows, Carole frowns a little after them and hopes for both of their sakes that it’s ultimately for good.

*

Dinner is quiet without them. The house seems dark, most of the lights off because the only two people in the house are both in the kitchen. It’s quiet, just the sounds of cutlery against plates and quiet conversation. There’s no talking in the background, no music, no laughter, no friends, no half-shouts of alarm or delight.

Burt leans back against his chair as he chews on his bite of leftover pizza. He looks out of the kitchen door toward the rest of the house. “Gonna take some getting used to again, isn’t it,” he comments with a sigh.

Carole spears a grape tomato from her salad but doesn’t lift it to her mouth.

She loves her life. She loves her husband, her house, her job, and her friends. She can’t complain about any of it.

But after a few days of her house being full, she can tell in the way her stomach is in knots and her chest is seized up that it’s going to be hard for these rooms to be empty again, missing so many people who used to be there with them. It’s going to be hard for the house to be quiet again, filled only with echoes and memories, some loved ones gone because it’s right that kids grow up and move out, and some gone because it’s wrong that not every kid gets to.

“Yes, it is,” she says simply. There’s no way around it.

He reaches for her hand across the table, and she puts down her fork and slides her fingers into his. They’re work-rough and dry, but they make her heart settle in her chest. She knows those hands. She loves them. They mean comfort and understanding. They mean safety and home.

He watches her with affection and concern in his eyes, a sweetness just for her, until a twinkle creeps in. “We’ll just have to find a way to make some noise of our own.” He raises his eyebrows with unmistakable promise.

Carole laughs and squeezes his hand, her heart filling with fondness and a deep gratitude for having him in her life. She can’t be alone, not with Burt, not with this family around them, no matter how far they are scattered. She is definitely not alone, and she loves it. She loves him.

“I’m sure we can manage that,” she replies.

*

Late that evening when Carole’s in her pajamas and rubbing moisturizer into her hands and Burt’s putting something away in the closet for once, Kurt knocks on their open bedroom door. He seems almost hesitant as he leans against the door frame, his body a graceful, uncertain curve.

“Come on in, honey,” she tells him. “You never have to knock when the door’s open, you know that.”

He comes in, his bare footfalls soft against the carpet, and he sits carefully on the edge of their bed. Burt glances at him from the closet door, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Is everything okay?” Carole asks, because apparently it’s her job, like it used to be when Kurt was in high school and would wander in after his homework was done and need to talk about what was weighing on his heart but not know quite where to start. “Was dinner all right?”

Kurt nods. “It was fine.”

She raises her eyebrows and smooths the last of the moisturizer into her skin.

“Blaine’s parents are his parents,” he says with a shrug. “It was good I was there, too... and good that we’re both staying here, I think.” He looks at the empty doorway with distant eyes. “I think he’s more himself here, oddly enough. Or maybe he’s more himself at their house, but not in a good way.” He draws in a breath and blinks himself back to their room. “I just wanted to say thank you for letting us stay here.”

Carole sits down beside him, leaning her shoulder into his. “Honey, this is your home. It’s been wonderful having you here. I know someday you’ll probably want to stay somewhere else when you visit, but your dad and I love having you. There’s always room for you here.”

Shutting the closet, Burt turns toward them and says, “Door’s always open, kid. You and Blaine can come back any time.”

Kurt nods again, slow and almost relieved with his shoulders sagging forward. “Thank you,” he says. “We needed it. We both did. More than we realized. It was... getting difficult.”

“You guys look like you’re doing better,” Burt says, not quite a question.

“We are, I think,” Kurt says, but it’s not as fervent as Blaine’s response earlier in the day. Then again, Kurt’s always been more aware of nuances, she thinks. It’s part of what’s gotten them into trouble before, but it also allows him to see that their differences don’t just go away even if they’ve reconnected again. Carole hopes that will help them instead of hinder. “We are. It’s been good to be here.”

“You can come back any time,” Burt says again more gently and claps his hand onto Kurt’s shoulder. Carole slips her arm around Kurt’s waist, and they sit there for a moment, the three of them.

“Thank you,” Kurt murmurs one more time and leans into them with his eyes shut.

He looks so young to her, his skin smooth and his face like an angel. He looks so old, tired around his eyes and weighed down by experiences and pressures no one else can shoulder but him. He’s always been a bit of an enigma to her, so different from her and so driven in a way she never was, but he’s no less dear to her for it.

She rests her head against his and keeps him close while she can.

As much as she might wish otherwise, they can’t shield Kurt from the hardships of growing up. All they can do is support him and love him as he figures it out on his own.

All they can do is be here if he needs them.

*

In the morning, there’s a flurry of activity that spins the household to a fevered pitch. With Blaine’s help, Kurt finishes picking the wardrobe he’s taking back to New York - including modeling various jackets and shirts for him, which seems to require him to grab Blaine’s face and kiss him when he likes Blaine’s compliments (to Carole’s amusement when she brings up the moth crystals Kurt requested and finds them mid-lip-lock) - and packs away whatever pieces he’s leaving at home.

There’s moving of boxes into the attic, frantic rearranging of Kurt’s dresser drawers, and a last-minute trip to Lowe’s for storage bins and a new light for Kurt’s closet when his breaks. Blaine and Burt empty the dishwasher together one last time, Carole finds herself holding a stepstool for Kurt as he organizes hat boxes on his closet shelf, and Blaine strips Kurt’s bed - not quite their bed yet, but Carole thinks maybe soon she’ll think of it that way - puts the sheets in the laundry, and smooths the blankets and bedding so that it looks neat once more.

And then somehow Kurt’s room is back to its usual empty state, the boys’ suitcases are packed and in the front hall, and it’s time to say goodbye.

It’s so abrupt to Carole she doesn’t quite know how to process it. Hadn’t they just gotten there? Hadn’t they just begun to settle in? Hadn’t they just woken up that morning?

But no. It’s time.

Her throat closing up, she hugs Blaine extra hard, keeping him and the boundless energy he contains in his body close even as it feels like he’s slipping away, and says, “Thank you for coming, honey.”

“Thank you,” he says so very warmly as he hugs her back with enthusiasm and tangible love.

“It was our pleasure,” she assures him. “It really was.”

And then it’s Kurt in her arms - taller than she remembers, whip-thin and masculinely muscular - bending his head to hers. “I love you,” she murmurs, feeling the vibrant, living force of that emotion fierce and frightened beneath her ribs.

Until she was a parent she couldn’t understand just how precious a single person could be. It’s not the consuming passion of romantic love, which she’d thought was the greatest passion she could feel; it’s quite literally everything. Loving a child is everything.

Finn was her whole being, her whole universe remade once he appeared in her life, and in losing him she can understand how people can be driven insane by circumstance instead of chemistry, sanity shredding on the jagged reality of loss. She can understand how people become addicted to alcohol or drugs, needing a constant escape because rising to the surface of the truth leads only to utter, soul-crushing devastation. She can understand the single-minded drive of Gollum in those movies Finn made her watch, because Finn was precious to her. She’d never felt anything like her love for him before he was born, but afterwards, he was everything.

If she could fight an impossible war or climb an unscalable mountain or turn her body inside-out to get him back, she would in a heartbeat.

Carole breathes against Kurt’s shoulder and tells herself she can’t keep this child, either.

Kurt’s not her son the way Finn was. He can’t be. It’s not that he’s her son by marriage but that he was almost a grown-up when he came into her life. They don’t have the shared experiences of growing up together the same way. It was never her job to protect him the way she had to protect Finn.

But still she loves him. She wants everything for him. She wants his life to be perfect and easy. She wants him to come home again and again, sharing it with them, telling them tales of glittering successes and dreams she barely knows how to understand.

It’s hard to let him go into that unknown, into a world that has broken his heart, that has quite literally beaten him and left him for dead on the street, that doesn’t just not appreciate him but doesn’t care about him at all, that will chew him up and spit him out without blinking.

But it’s her job to let him go, because that’s where he needs to be. Both he and Blaine need to. She wouldn’t wrap either of them in bubble wrap even if she could. It’s their job to be fabulous and soar up into the sky, and it’s her job to let them.

So she squeezes Kurt tight and then steps back, keeping a smile on her face as much as she can.

The boys and Burt talk about traffic and routes to the airport, and Carole just watches them. She lets her heart unknot as she sees Blaine’s hand light at the small of Kurt’s back. She lets her panic fade into the background as Kurt dips his head over Blaine’s phone and nods along with something he says. She lets her despair ease as she looks over at the new dent in the coffee table left by Puck, the flowers from Marley by the window, and the pictures on the bookshelves that have been all rearranged by Kurt, tangible touches in her life that will remain long after they’ve walked across the threshold and away from here.

By the time they’ve finished sorting out their plan and Blaine has agreed without argument that Kurt can carry his own bag this time but only if Blaine gets to drive them to the airport, she can breathe again. She’s not sending either of them out into the world alone.

They have each other, and they have this home to return to if they need it, this home that will always hold some of them both in it.

She has to believe it will be enough.

*

She and Burt stand for a moment on the front porch after the boys’ car is out of sight down the street. She leans into Burt’s arm, holds his hand tight, and listens to the roughness of his breathing. This isn’t easy for him, either.

Kurt’s precious to him, too, and just as fragile as Finn in quite different ways. Where Finn doubted himself too much, Kurt doubts himself too little. He’s already proven that it can hurt him, and deeply. They’d both give anything to protect their children, and they can’t. They just can’t. They could keep them from choking on toys and patch up skinned knees when they were little, but they can’t protect them from life.

She can’t fix his sadness and more than she can her own, so she stands there for a minute with Burt, giving him the silent support of her presence and love.

Then she lifts up onto her toes, kisses him on the cheek, and says softly, “I’ll be in the back weeding if you need me.”

He lets her go, and she knows he needs the space, too.

Her garden has suffered a little from the neglect of the past few days, and it’s with some satisfaction that she puts on her big gardening hat, gets her tools, and sets to work watering her plants and ridding her beds of the weeds that seem to spring up overnight. If only her tomatoes would grow so quickly.

If her eyes are blurry with tears and a deep-rooted pulling feeling in her heart as her boys get further and further away, she’s calmed by the rich smell of the earth and the buzzing of the honeybees in her flowers. With each pulled weed she feels a sense of satisfaction, of doing something, of her body being useful and busy even when her heart aches. She wonders what she’ll choose to do when fall takes over and she can no longer garden. Knitting, maybe. Or quilting. She’s always wanted to learn how to quilt.

They won’t fill the hole in her heart any more than the seedlings she nurtured do, but at least she’ll be doing something good.

Endings have always been hard for Carole, no matter how used to them she ought to be by now. She’s always had trouble letting go of memories, of mementos... hell, of her first husband’s ashes long after it was healthy to be mourning him.

But today she’s not mourning, she reminds herself as she yanks out a weed and drops it into her bucket. This is a normal thing to feel, a sadness and a pride in children growing up and away. This is right. This is healthy. This is good.

She’ll miss Kurt and Blaine, but for once it’s the right kind of missing. She’s sad, but it’s the right kind of sad.

This ache in her heart is something so many parents feel, she knows from talking with her friends. This is what she felt when Finn went off to the army, growing up on his own, not what she felt when he died. This is right.

This is right.

She moves to the next bed and kneels down in front of her little plot of vegetables, the ones she started in egg cartons months ago that are now big and full, producing fruit for her table and her heart.

Finn’s gone, but the future isn’t. There’s more ahead, more of what she was supposed to have: Burt with more grey hair or less hair altogether, Kurt and Blaine’s wedding (which will be something to see, she just knows it), grandbabies to spoil if they’re very lucky...

Carole plucks a ripe red tomato from the plant in front of her and places it in her basket, the warm green smell of the garden all around her like a promise.

Finn’s gone, and life will always be harder without him. It will always be darker, sadder, and more empty than she ever could have imagined. It will never be what it should have been. It will never be the same.

But it will go on.

She looks down at her fingers in the earth, looks at the vegetables she grew with those hands, looks at her second, unexpected wedding ring glinting in the sun, looks at the yard and the house that just welcomed so many people who loved her son and whom she loves, too.

She looks up at the sky and the endless span of the universe beyond it, bigger than she can ever comprehend.

Her loss is enough to swallow her up some days, but it won’t. She knows it won’t, no matter whatever might lie ahead.

Whatever comes next, she thinks with a sense of sadness and peace rolled into one, life will go on.