Chapter Text
It starts off as a completely normal day stacking CDs at the store.
The dry Texas air stifles because the manager wants to save on electricity, so the fan's only half on. The walls are beige, but that’s hard to tell because CDs and DVDs and vinyls lie stacked up to the ceiling, covering every inch of the walls.
“Hey, JC, can you pass me the Fats Domino stuff?” Ava asks.
Silence. Ava sighs.
“JC?”
“Hm?” He’s slowed down and looks at Shannon in the corner. Again. She’s chewing gum, eyeliner caking her eyes.
“Dude.” She pokes him with the CD.
“Hey! What?”
“You have got to stop pining for her. Either make a move or get with someone else.” She waves the CDs as she talks; it’s some album by a pretentious Serbian band whose name she can’t pronounce.
JC just shakes his head. “I’m not pining, just biding my time.”
Bullshit.
They delve into silence and it’s so boring. Like, mind-numbingly boring. Sly and The Family Stone keeps on playing in the tinny speakers, the same three albums by them again and again. "Dance to the music" has played at least three times today.
A fly buzzes around her head, but every time she tries to swat it away it attacks JC instead.
Ava’s arms ache from stacking. They’re moving all of the CDs from chronological to alphabetical order. In a month’s time they’ll have to sort them by genre or something, knowing the manager.
Aren’t there, like, machines for this?
Even though she’s twenty it all feels like the start of a crappy coming-of-age teen movie, like the doors will just open and there’ll be-
“Ava?”
Well, fuck.
Ava turns around to face the doors. “Um, yes?”
There’s a man standing in front of her. He’s wearing a blue and white striped suit, a blue top hat, and a watch. Like, the portable, round kind in his pocket. All in May. In Texas.
Okay. The drugs must be kicking in.
I don’t remember taking the drugs, though.
He watches Ava, and she moves towards him.
“Hello? Who... are you?”
He takes a breath. “I’m your uncle.” His eyes shine, and he holds out his hand.
“Ha-ha.”
His hand goes down. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re joking.”
“I most certainly am not.”
“Yes, you are.”
He goes up to her even as she backs off. “I am your uncle. You’re Ava Silva, yes?”
“JC, you can turn off the camera or whatever, this is not real. This,” She gestures to his outfit and his general vibe, “Does not happen. I don’t suddenly find some long-lost uncle. That just doesn’t happen.”
She turns to walk away. The manager will come out at any point and give her the stink eye (he has some uncanny ability of detecting when people aren’t working), so she may as well stack CDs (Fleetwood Mac this time) as she tries to ignore the crazy person.
Shit, should I order the album names alphabetically for the same band name? I didn’t for Culture Club…
“I knew your mother. Olivia Silva.”
And Ava stops at that. A finger jams into an edge and she drops the CDs. The edge digs into her much like her name digs into her chest, sharp. The other CDs fan out on the floor in a colourful arc.
“How do you know my mother’s name? Actually, how do you know my name?”
“I grew up with her. You’re so much like her, Ava.”
Something tender in his gaze makes Ava pause. “Alright, we’ll talk after I finish my shift. In three hours. And you’ll pay.”
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They’re sitting in Ava’s favourite diner drinking milkshakes. Hers is cherry, his is some god-awful combination of mint and peanut butter. Her chicken nuggets are just crumbs on the plate, his are almost untouched save one that Ava took when he was in the bathroom.
But now they’re both here, and there’s no excuse for silence anymore.
“You’re wondering what I want with you. And why we’re only meeting now.” The man- Eugene- states. He’s taken off his hat, and without the jacket he seems much more normal. As if this could be any uncle-niece day out. Like he hasn’t just disrupted the foundations of Ava’s life.
“Well, yes.”
Ava tries to take one of his chicken nuggets, and he moves his plate towards her, smiling.
“I’ve already had dinner. You can go ahead.”
“Part of it is the fact that I could only find you now. There are all sorts of laws and regulations that, suffice it to say, are hard to overcome when trying to access personal details of someone who isn’t your direct kin.”
He waves with his hands as he speaks, and Ava’s nervous his expensive-looking shirt will get a stain from the milkshake.
“Another reason is that I was not sure whether you would want to meet me. The choice was made for me when I realised I had lung cancer.”
He ducks his head the way she knows that she does when she’s trying to keep it together.
“Ava, I’ve got three months left. I had to meet you. You’re...” He swallows. “You’re all I have left of my sister. Olivia. Actually, hang on...”
He rummages around his coat pockets- “I know I had it somewhere...”- He pats his pockets and finally grins, pulling out a small photo. Ava bends forward to look. She swallows the lump in her throat. It’s of her mother.
He looks down to the table and fiddles with the glass. As he speaks, it’s more to the glass than to her.
“And it’s selfish, but I just wanted to see some part of her again.”
Ava stares at him. Bright brown ones meet hers.
Right, this is either true or it’s a really sick joke.
But looking at him now, she does see their similarities. They have the same cheeks. And something about his voice triggers a shadow of a memory.
“Let’s say I believe you. What do you want from me?”
“Just your time. Three months is all I have.”
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Two days later she’s packed up (having lived in an orphanage means that she’s really good at not keeping too much shit at any time) and driving to Kingman, AZ.
The farm is everything she thought it would be. Camila (her new cousin) welcomes her with open arms, and they spend the first night talking.
Camila opens her thick, black photo album. “This is you as a baby with Eugene.”
It’s her at two years of age sitting in a meadow. Her cheeks are chubby, her hair is all in one bunch, and she’s in Eugene’s lap. His hair is still black in the photo. She’s even wearing a matching mini top hat.
“Wow.” Her voice wavers. Her fingers trace the photo.
I have a family.
A family.
She dries the tears from her eyes. Camila sits next to her, head on her shoulder.
“How about you? Any cute baby Camila photos I should see?”
Camila laughs and flicks forward. A happy six-year-old Camila holds an ice cream cone bigger than her head.
“Did you finish the ice cream?”
“I did. I got a brain freeze right after. It was still worth it.” They both laugh.
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The next morning she walks up to Camila, who’s watching the fields. Birds chatter around the tree opposite them, just past the field.
“What can I do to help around the farm?”
Camila looks at her and then back to the fields in thought. ”Are you handy?”
Ava thinks back to the time she almost had a stroke because she forgot to turn off the lights when she was changing them.
“Um, no.”
Camila shakes her head. “There’s not much else we need help with. You could ask Eugene for ideas.”
She finds him at the kitchen table, writing out a shopping list.
“Well, what do you like to do?” Eugene asks. He scribbles out carrots and adds margarine. His waistcoat is red today. Ava hasn’t asked how he as a farmer keeps his clothes this clean.
“I like animals.”
Eugene turns to face her. His eyes shine.
So Ava buys chickens.
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They’re the nicest chickens ever, in Ava’s completely unbiased opinion.
She sets up the coop with Camila, and soon enough they’re clucking about happily around in the grass. It’s a large coop, and they only have four chickens (not including the rooster), so Ava sits in it sometimes.
She’s lying with the chickens, naming all of them (Hetty, Diana, Ruth, Mary, Odin), when she looks out on the porch and spots Eugene. He’s holding onto the railing, watching her.
He says, “You look like you’re having fun.”
And Ava just laughs as the chickens strut about around her, surrounded by feathers and softness and the smell of them.
“This is good for the business.” She states, feathers in her hair. “This is me being useful.”
Eugene raises his eyebrows. “Hm. Yes.”
“Because the chickens produce eggs. We can sell the eggs.”
“We could. Or we could just play with the chickens.”
“That sounds like a plan.”
Eugene comes out ten minutes later in shorts and a t-shirt. They pet and play with the chickens for a while.
It’s almost everything she wishes home could be. They talk by the campfire some nights, and Ava keeps the horses happy as well.
As her wrist and eyes droop her poor marshmallow slowly dips from the stick into the fire, incinerating in a glorious blaze.
“Ava?” Camila asks from across the fire.
“Mh?”
“Your marshmallow died.”
“Hm.” She closes her eyes again.
Sleepy.
Camila walks over and claps her on the back. “Let’s go to sleep. Eugene, you good?”
“You guys can go on ahead. I’ll sit out here a little while longer.” His eyes stay fixed on the dying fire.
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Eugene dies the next week.
Not three months later, a week later.
They find his body in his room, ashen. The paramedics come, but they’re too late. Ava’s left with a heartbroken Camila and a farm, and there’s no way she could leave now.
The funeral’s bleak. The whole town comes. The church is filled to the brim with row upon row of people, all with their own connection to the man. Looking out at all of them, there was so much about Eugene she’ll never know about, so many memories. The sky’s grey and heavy with sorrow.
Sure, she cries at the funeral, but it doesn’t hit her that he’s gone until the chickens cluck loudly when she greets them the morning after. Eugene used to feed them at night so that she’d get more sleep. Now she’ll have to do it all by herself.
After his passing they’re the most spoiled chickens ever. They get fed almost round the clock, she expands their coop, she buys two more chickens. Honestly, they may as well be chicken royalty.
Ava frowns.
There’s some kind of joke with poultry and royalty I could make but I can’t come up with it.
That September they harvest the corn and wheat. The last crops that Eugene sowed.
The fields lie open and empty until they replant the following spring again, and the cycle continues.