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When MJ arrives at her mother’s place, it’s mid-morning and the house is deserted.
Her mom had offered, of course, to take the day off work to come pick her up, but MJ had insisted. She’d taken a late-night train from Boston, and although she’d managed a bit of sleep during the ten-hour trip from there to Rochester, she’d assured her mom that the only thing she’d want to do upon arrival was take a nap. No sense in taking time off for that.
She’d been given her own key to the place years ago, despite not ever living there, and she lets herself in. She hears Felix before she sees him, trotting around the corner at a fast clip, curled tail wagging enthusiastically. He stops a few feet away and sits, ears up, watching her attentively.
MJ’s extends her hand for him to sniff, shifting closer to scratch his ears once he obliges. She’s only met him a few times, the last one being nearly a year ago, but he seems to remember her. That, or he’s the world’s worst guard dog.
The floor creaks under her socked feet as she makes her way further into the house, duffel in one hand and garment bag in the other. It’s a big house, certainly larger than the townhouse MJ had grown up in, and she pauses on the second-floor landing, trying to recall which door leads to the guest room.
A spot of color catches her eye. A sign taped to one of the doors, thick blue card stock emblazoned with the words “Shelly’s Domain” in her mother’s neat handwriting. The edges of the sign are bordered with a pattern of seashells, and as MJ draws closer she notices that they’re hand-drawn.
MJ smiles, reflexive, then smothers it.
The room is exactly as she remembers it, that sort of bland but elegant style you usually only see in magazines or fancy furniture stores, creams and greys and navy-blue accents. One of her mom’s paintings hangs above the bed, and that’s new—a lighthouse overlooking a stormy sea. She kneels on the bed to get a closer look, fingers brushing against the canvas. Her mom usually uses oils, but this one’s acrylic, and she’s rendered it in that thickly layered, almost impressionist style that MJ herself loves.
She wonders when her mom picked up the medium. It’s one of MJ’s favorites, always has been, but her mom had always claimed it was too frenetic for her tastes, preferring the slow build and subtle blend of oil. Or so she’d said, those times they’d bickered over it, good-natured, when MJ was younger.
Maybe this is the only acrylic piece her mom had ever painted. Tested it out for posterity, maybe, just to be sure she didn’t like it, then banished the results to the guest room.
She doesn’t bother to unpack fully, setting her bag on the dresser, but she does hang her dress. It’ll need a proper ironing before she wears it, but in the meantime she’ll let gravity do the work of getting rid of the worst of the travel wrinkles.
Her phone buzzes on the nightstand as she’s shutting the closet door—empty, aside from her dress and a few spare blankets folded neatly on the shelf above the hanging rod.
She flops down on the bed with a sigh, snatching up her phone as she goes, and grins when she sees the most recent text.
by my calculations you’ve been there for an hour, any bloodshed?
it’s the middle of the day, Ned
I haven’t seen anyone yet
except for Felix the schnauzer
well that’s just not right
felix is a cat’s name
take it up with my mom, dude
i WOULD but you cruelly refused my offer to be your +1
She snorts and rolls onto her belly. It had been sorely tempting to let Ned come along, but he knows her family entirely too well. MJ just wants to get through her brother’s wedding with minimal drama, and Ned’s knowing glances and not-so-subtle probing wouldn’t be conducive to that in the slightest.
i have a strict one hallmark trope at a time rule for my life
we’re already doing the prodigal child returning for a significant family event thing
i can’t also permit a fake dating subplot
“fake” speak for yourself
you’re right you’re right sorry but my point still stands
mommy issues now, love confessions later
valid
MJ rubs her eyes, feeling the tell-tale drag of sleep deprivation settling into her limbs.
gonna nap a bit call you later
oh yeah remind me that i’ve got a thing i want to show you
so forward, Nedward
jones i s2g
MJ wakes to late-afternoon sun spilling in through the window.
She feels refreshed in a way that she rarely is after a nap, energized instead of groggy. She checks her phone to find it’s only a little after four—it’ll be another hour at least until her mom or James get home from work.
She could take Felix for a walk, maybe. Her mom lives on the outskirts of the city, only a block or two from the woods, and this far into spring the growth should be fairly luscious. Just green leaves, and damp earth, and… quiet.
She pauses in the hall outside the guest room. Across from her is, conveniently, the bathroom, and to her right is a door she thinks is a linen closet. Investigation confirms this. If she’s remembering correctly, that means the next door will be her mother and James’ master suite.
Which means the last door, at the very end of the hall, leads to the studio.
MJ practically lived in her mother's old studio, back in their family’s old townhouse—a cramped, joyously cluttered room that nevertheless still managed to accommodate all her mother’s projects and supplies, the spare easel she’d set up for MJ, and a few over-sized bean bags that were perfect for lounging and, on more than one occasion, napping.
MJ’s never had the time nor inclination to go invading her mother’s workspace, on her few visits to this house. She tries to spend as little time inside the house as possible, frankly, and when she’s in the mood to lie outrageously to herself, she pretends she doesn’t care what the new studio looks like.
She is curious, though. She won’t lie to herself about that.
The door leads to a set of stairs, and MJ realizes as she climbs that the studio must take up the house’s attic space.
Even anticipating it, she’s startled by how much room there is.
It’s been partially finished, no exposed beams or insulation, and the walls are lined with plain, utilitarian metal shelving, packed with all manner of art supplies in clear plastic tubs, each with a neat little label in her mom’s handwriting. There’s a drafting table near one of the windows, situated so the natural light can illuminate it entirely, and next to that is an easel standing on a paint-splattered drop cloth. A long table runs through the center of the room, several open cardboard boxes sitting on top of it.
MJ takes a peek: they’re filled with hundreds of paper flowers, different shapes and sizes, each one carefully painted in layers of gauche to create an ombre effect in an array of pastels—pink and blue and purple, colors of the season.
They’re for the table centerpieces, MJ realizes. Daniel had complained extensively in their sibling group chat about the sheer expense of most pre-made wedding decorations. Their mom must have offered to put something together herself.
Figures. Gayle had eloped, depriving their mother of the opportunity to get over-involved in her wedding. She must be making up for lost chances.
Beyond the table is an open space, the old and worn bean-bag chairs from her mom’s old studio clustered in a corner, next to a large dog bed. MJ pauses for a moment in front of them, tempted to sit down, but turns away.
Directly across the bean-bag chairs is a second painting area, easel and drop cloth and fully-stocked shelves. MJ’s first thought is that it seems excessive, even for her mother, and it takes her a moment to register what is off about the set up.
It’s too… clean. The drop-cloth looks brand-new, pristine off-white without any stains or paint splatters. The easel too looks like it’s never been used, matte black without a single scratch or sign of wear. There are supplies on the shelf, but as MJ draws closer to inspect them, she notices that the brushes look too stiff to have been painted with, the tubes of acrylic clearly never opened. Everything is coated with a fine layer of dust.
MJ stands there for a moment, fingers resting lightly on one of the cool metal shelves, leaving imprints in the dust. Then she goes back downstairs, closing the door to the studio firmly behind her, grabs Felix and his leash, and leaves the house.
It’s a nearly perfect spring day, sunny, with just enough of a breeze that MJ doesn’t feel overheated, and she walks for a long time.
Felix is impeccably trained, not pulling on his leash or chasing after squirrels, despite the fact that MJ can see them skittering up tree-trunks as they pass. In return MJ is patient, pausing when he wants to investigate something further, taking the time to breath deeply, feel the warmth of the sun touch her skin, and think of nothing at all.
By the time she starts to head back it’s coming up on six o’clock, and she knows her mother should be back soon. Sure enough, just as she’s closing the front door behind her she hears a faint clatter from the kitchen, then her mom’s voice.
“Shelly? Is that you?”
A moment later, her mom comes around the corner, wiping her hands off on a tea towel as she does. She’s been home long enough to change out of her work clothes into sweats, and from the smell of things she’s already started on dinner. She looks just the same as she ever does—tall and straight-backed, mess of curls pinned back from her face, eyes bright and focused intently on MJ.
Her smile, already a little tight and uncertain, stiffens as she watches MJ unclip Felix' leash from his collar. She leans down to scratch his ears as he trots up to her, then looks back up at MJ.
“You didn’t put him in his harness.”
MJ’s muscles lock up for the briefest of moments, freezing as she moves to pull her shoes off, then she forcibly relaxes them.
“Didn’t see it,” she replies, tucking her shoes away into the closet and shrugging out of her jacket. “He seemed fine with the collar.”
“He’s leash-trained on the harness,” her mom replies, and now she sounds impatient. “Dogs need consistency, Michelle, or they’ll try to get away with whatever they please.”
MJ hangs her jacket, then slides the closet door shut. It’s one of those mirrored ones, floor to ceiling, and in the reflection she can see her mom frowning at her back.
She turns, then shrugs, keeping her expression and tone as neutral as possible. “I’ll keep it in mind for next time, I guess.”
Her mom opens her mouth, then closes it. They stand in silence for a moment, looking at one another from opposite ends of the hallway. Then her mom lets out a breath, slow and controlled.
“Well, go get cleaned up and come down to help with dinner. Your brother and sister will be here soon.”
MJ shrugs again, nonchalant. “Sure thing.”
She considers lingering in her room for awhile, maybe calling Ned, just to see how long her mom can hold in the desire to nag her, but decides for the moment to leave it be. She’s going to be here for a whole week, longer than she’s ever stayed before. She just needs to keep her head down and get through it until after Daniel’s wedding, and then she can antagonize her mother to her heart’s content.
Her mom plies her with polite questions as they move around the kitchen, MJ chopping vegetables as her mom efficiently deveins and shells an ever-increasing pile of fresh shrimp. The recipe they’re making is second nature to her, at this point, having grown up avidly watching her mother and father navigate their family’s tiny kitchen, and as long as they keep the conversation to MJ’s classes it’s easy enough to split her focus between the food and her mom.
That doesn’t leave her much attention for much else, however, and that’s how Gayle gets the drop on her.
She sets down her knife, moving to sweep the carrot ends she’d just chopped off into a pile to be thrown out, when arms close tight around her middle, dragging her back from the counter and lifting her off the ground.
“Shelly belly!” Gayle chirps happily, swinging MJ around once and blithely ignoring her squawk of indignation. “Home at last!”
She sets her down and laughs as MJ pushes away, whipping around to scold her sister because she’s 21, not 4, thank you very much. Before she can say a thing, however, she’s in the air again, this time scooped up fireman-style, slung over her brother’s shoulder.
“DANIEL!” she shrieks.
“Shelly bean!” he replies, carrying her away from the island and into the adjacent living room area. She catches sight of her siblings’ respective significant others, standing off to the side and observing her predicament with amusement, before Daniel dumps her unceremoniously on the couch, flat on her back.
Both her siblings’ faces pop into her field of vision, grinning identically as they look down on her, and MJ has to work to keep herself from smiling back.
“Fuck you very much,” she says instead. “I’m going home.”
“We’ll just steal your wallet,” Daniel replies, holding out a hand to her. She takes it, letting him heave her up, then uses the grip to tug him off balance. He stumbles with a little yelp, and she twists her body in a move she learned years ago, back in high school, sending him sprawling onto the couch, face first. Then she sits on him.
“Well, that was a predictable outcome,” Julia says, walking around the couch and leaning down to hug MJ. She looks radiant, smiling brightly, long black hair pulled back from her face in neat little braids and swept into a loose, elegant pile on top of her head. MJ hugs her back, ignoring Daniel’s muffled grumbling beneath her. He’s not trying all that hard to get away, in reality, and he turns his face out of the couch cushions to give Julia a soppy, starry-eyed look as she draws near.
“There’s still time to escape,” MJ tells Julia when they break apart. “You don’t need to marry him just because he asked.”
Julia shrugs. “I’ve already spent the money on the dress, and my deposit on the cake was non-refundable. Might as well go through with it at this point.”
“Nice,” Daniel says, turning his face back into the couch cushions. His next word is muffled. “Priorities.”
“This is the sort of thing you don’t have to worry about when you elope,” Aamira says brightly from where she’s standing with her arm wrapped around Gayle’s waist. She waves when she catches MJ’s eye, and MJ waves back.
“Certainly,” MJ’s mom says, “if you don’t mind breaking your poor mother’s heart.” Aamira and Gayle just laugh, hugging her in greeting. She turns towards MJ, something slightly reproving in her gaze.
“Are you done roughhousing with your brother, Michelle?” she asks. “I need those carrots whenever you’re ready.”
Behind their mother’s back, Gayle cuts MJ a look, and MJ swallows the reply that had instinctively bubbled to her lips. She just nods, and climbs off Daniel.
“C’mon, Sea-Shelly,” Gayle says in a sing-song voice. “Let’s finish up and let Mom hound Daniel and Julia about boring wedding stuff.”
They’re about halfway through dinner when anyone thinks to bring up James.
It’s not entirely surprising—Daniel and Gayle are much more up to date with the ins-and-outs of their mother and stepfather’s life, since they live in Rochester. MJ, for her part, tries to avoid thinking about James much at all, if she can help it.
“He’s working late,” her mom says, in reply to Julia’s question, asking after him. “And Philip’s plane lands at 9, so he’s going to pick him up from the airport.”
“Dad’s coming tonight?” MJ asks, startled. “Where’s he staying?”
Her mom looks at her, evenly, from across the table. “He offered to come early, to help out. Since we’re hosting everything here. And he’s staying with us, of course. We have two guest rooms.”
MJ can’t help but raise her eyebrows. “Here? And he’s alright with that? I thought—” She catches herself before she can finish expressing her skepticism, pivoting away from the dangerous territory she’d almost barreled into. “Isn’t Felix a problem, with his allergies?” She looks over at where he’s lying in his dog bed. He lifts his head when he hears his name, wags his tail, then flops back down with a sigh.
Her mom sets her fork down, fidgeting with it briefly so that it lies parallel to her half-eaten plate. “He’s been here often enough, Felix has never been an issue for him before. Besides, schnauzers are hypoallergenic.”
“How forward-thinking of you,” MJ says, before she can think better of it. The room has gone abruptly quiet, the others looking uncomfortable and uneasy by turns.
Her mom’s mouth presses into a thin line, the skin around her mouth turning slightly pale, bloodless. Then she picks her fork back up. “Just lucky, I think,” she replies, deceptively light, and takes a bite of food.
The others follow suit, the scrape of metal tines against porcelain hesitantly cracking through the silence MJ had brought down on the table. Slowly, conversation picks up again.
MJ concentrates on her plate, focusing on mechanically finishing off her dinner, and saying nothing at all.
Her dad arrives in a flurry of bear-hugs and back-slaps just as MJ, Gayle, and Daniel are finishing up the dinner dishes. He sweeps each of them into his arms in turn, and MJ takes the moment to rest her head on his shoulder and simply breathe. She’d seen him over winter holidays, of course, happily whiling away her school breaks in his tiny two-bedroom flat in Queens, and they talk at least three times a week on the phone, but she’s missed him nonetheless.
He gives her an extra squeeze before letting her go, moving over to hug Aamira and Julia, and then, finally, her mom.
“Madeline,” he says, face going soft and fond in a way MJ remembers, vividly, from her childhood. “Look at you.” They hug, and as they pull apart, he presses a kiss to her cheek.
MJ looks away, something ugly roiling around in her stomach. She looks over to Daniel and Gayle, only to find that they’re both looking at her, expressions serious, and speculative.
She turns away, not able to deal with that on top of everything else, only to spot James as he strides into the room, hauling her dad’s suitcase behind him. He smiles once he catches sight of her, extending a hand to shake hers.
“Good to see you, Michelle,” he says. “How was the trip up here?”
“It was fine,” she replies, giving his hand a perfunctory shake. “I slept, mostly. Worked on assignments.”
“That’s good,” he says, rocking back slightly on his heels.
MJ nods.
“Oh, James,” her dad says, releasing her mom at last. “Thanks for grabbing my gear.” He takes it, nodding towards the stairs as he does. “Same room as last time?”
“Let me take it up,” MJ blurts, a frisson of urgency propelling her forward, reaching for his bag. “I’m feeling pretty tired, I was going to head to bed anyway.”
Unnervingly, her dad exchanges a look with James, and MJ is swept with a surge of irritation so strong she feels physically hot.
Something must show on her face, because her dad’s expression turns gentle, placating. MJ is abruptly certain that she’s going to start yelling if she doesn’t leave.
He hands her the suitcase, then steps forward to kiss her forehead. She lets him, feeling stiff and awkward, the sharp fizz of anger still itching under her skin.
“Thanks, Shelly bean,” he says. “Sleep tight, sweetheart.”
She mumbles a goodnight in reply, pushing past James and not bothering to say goodnight to anyone else. She’ll be seeing them plenty over the course of the week, in any case.
They won’t miss her for a night, anyway.
She waits to call Ned until she hears the gathering wind down, her siblings and their partners leaving, her parents and James heading up to their own bedrooms.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she says, phone on the pillow beside her, blankets pulled up over her head. “This is a rom-com now, not a family drama. How soon can you be here?”
He laughs. “Going that well, huh?”
“It’s so—fucking weird, dude.” She’s quiet for a moment. “My dad comes and visits them, apparently. Like, often.”
He hums, non-committal.
She frowns. “What?” she asks, defensive.
“Well, I mean. It kinda makes sense, right?” he says, slowly, like he’s thinking aloud. “He’s still got parenting things to do with your mom and James—”
“James is not my parent,” MJ interjects, but Ned keeps talking.
“And like, he’s gotta do something to work through all the—" she hears a slight rustling on the line, like Ned is waving his hands around expressively, “—and he’s basically only got two ways to do that. Either he talks to your mom, and they deal with it together, or he… ignores it. And he seems like the type to deal with his problems head on, you know. Healthy and honest, or whatever.”
The line is silent for a long moment.
“Subtle, Ned,” MJ says, tartly.
“Yeah, well,” he replies.
They fall quiet again, and MJ pushes the blankets off her face with a sigh. She likes the warmth, and the dark, but after awhile it gets hard to breathe like that.
Something snags in her memory. “Hey, didn’t you have something you wanted to show me?”
“Oh! Yeah, okay,” he says, and he sounds so excited MJ can’t help but perk up. “So I was looking more into that anomaly I thought I found, that magical resonance I was trying to identify, right?”
She hums in encouragement. He’d spotted the faint magical signature months ago, a slow, pulsing thread of magic weaving itself along the ground, settled like some vast spiderweb over the city and, potentially, beyond. They’d been operating under the assumption that it was leftover from whatever the Avengers did to undo the blip, but that hadn’t stopped Ned from diving head-first into a research rabbit hole in his spare time.
“So I haven’t figured out what it is—yet—but one of the things I did come across was a numeric-based mirroring spell. The original used Babylonian numerals, which is a binary system, and I was able to transfer it pretty easily into 0s and 1s.” He pauses for breath.
“Okay, I’m following so far.”
“I’m going to send you an image file. When you get it, open it up and lay your phone flat somewhere you won’t disturb it.”
MJ does, opening up something that looks suspiciously like a QR code, then setting her phone down on the nightstand.
“Okay, done.”
“Cool. Watch this.”
For a moment, nothing happens, but MJ has borne witness to enough of Ned’s forays into magic by now that she knows to be patient. Sure enough, after several long minutes, she notices a tiny spark of light flare into being over surface of her phone.
She inhales sharply, biting back her initial instinct to ask questions, not wanting to break Ned’s concentration. The spark is joined by another, and then another, and before long there is a flood of them rising out of her screen, swirling up into air and spreading out over her room, a glittering haze against the dark of night.
They cluster in odd ways—swirls of light forming as more sparks pour out, joined by a faintly glowing mist of different colors—pinks and greens and oranges.
That’s about when she realizes—he’s conjured the universe in her bedroom. Constellations and galaxies and nebulae swirling in the air, with her at the center of it all.
“Ned,” she whispers, barely able to push the word past her lips and teeth.
“Pretty cool, huh?” he says, sounding both proud and gentle.
It takes her a moment to speak again. “How long will it last?” she murmurs. It feels as though she might shatter the magic if she speaks too loudly.
“It’s tied to the image, not to me, so if you leave it on it should stick around all night. When you want it to fade just exit from the file or turn your screen off, and it will dissipate.” He pauses. “Probably. Let me know if it doesn’t.”
She nods, then remembers that he can’t see her. “Yeah, I will.” The illusion isn’t giving off enough ambient light that she won’t be able to sleep, and abruptly she is reminded of her childhood, crawling into the living room at night to sleep next to the Christmas tree, bathed in a wash of multi-colored light.
She swallows. “This is… really fucking cool, Ned. Thanks.”
“Anytime, MJ,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice. “Literally, anytime. I need practice.”
She lets out an obliging chuckle. “G’night, Nedward.”
“G’night, Jones.”
To MJ’s relief, time slips by quickly over the next few days. There’s a lot to do in a short amount of time, and it’s easy enough to spend her days running errands with Daniel, or hunting down last-minute provisions with Gayle. MJ and Aamira accompany Julia, her mother, and her maid of honor to her final dress fitting—Gayle would wear flannel to the wedding if MJ would let her, perfectly happy to fulfill at least one stereotype—and MJ gets dragged along to Daniel’s suit fitting as well.
Watching him stand on a small podium, the tailor and her assistant making a few final adjustments—of what, MJ isn’t sure—she finds herself feeling a little shaky.
He used to be her little brother, and then all of a sudden he was her older brother, and now—
Now he’s getting married.
Daniel meets her eye in the mirror. She smiles, and hopes he can’t see how tremulous it is.
“Not too bad, Danny boy,” she says.
“I know, right?” he replies.
At her mom’s house, her father is a welcome presence, a balm on the omnipresent tension that lingers between MJ and her mother. It’s still bizarre, to see how well he gets along with James, the easy affection he somehow manages to retain with her mother.
MJ hadn’t even been aware that he’d been to the house once, let alone however many times it had taken for this kind of comfort to develop.
She wants to be angry that he’d never told her, except a part of her is afraid to find out that he’d tried.
Her mom spends the evenings up in her studio, and MJ spends the evenings blithely ignoring her father’s—and even James’—not-so-subtle insinuations that she would be welcome to join.
Two days pass in this tenuous, fragile peace. Then MJ’s siblings run out of patience.
“Sea-Shelly, Sea-Shelly, by the seashore!” Gayle sings obnoxiously, pushing open MJ’s door without so much as pausing to knock.
MJ is sitting cross-legged in the center of her bed, notes spread out around her and textbook open in her lap. It’s early afternoon, and she’d thought she would have a couple hours to herself to try to get some class work done. James and her father are out, off to pick up the rented chairs for the outdoor ceremony they’ll be setting up in the house’s spacious backyard. Her mom is at work, apparently wrapping things up, having taken the final few days before the wedding off in order to deal with last-minute preparations. MJ is hoping she can manage to find somewhere elsewhere to be when that happens. In the meantime, she had been enjoying the quiet.
At least she hadn’t had Ned’s illusion up. That would have been hard to explain.
Gayle plucks MJ’s textbook out of her hands. “C’mon Shelly, we’ve got places to be. Daniel’s waiting in the car.”
MJ scowls up at her. “You couldn’t have texted me some warning? I need to shower, get changed—”
“None of that,” Gayle says imperiously, making a grab for MJ’s notebook that she only narrowly avoids. “We won’t be going anywhere with people. Chop chop.”
MJ sighs, then gets up off the bed. There’s no point in arguing with Gayle… well, ever, really, but especially not when she’s like this.
In the car, Daniel and Gayle refuse to answer any of her questions, turning the radio up every time she tries to speak and singing along obnoxiously to drown out her voice. Eventually, she gives up, slouching in the backseat and texting idly with Ned.
After about 20 minutes, Gayle slows down, eventually parking and urging MJ out of the car. She looks around—they’ve driven deeper into the forested area that borders her mother’s house, along a service road that looks as though it isn’t used very often. Around them MJ can hear the sounds of the breeze lazily stirring tree branches, the occasional chitter of an animal or call of a bird.
Daniel slings an arm around MJ’s shoulder, steering her towards an overgrown path.
“There are easier ways to murder me, you know,” she says, grudgingly following along.
“Sure,” he replies. “But not half so fun.”
Gayle leads the way, heavy boots cutting through the overgrowth that has crept over this trail since the last time it was used. MJ finds herself curiously unwilling to break the silence that falls over their little procession, and neither are Gayle or Daniel, it seems.
MJ isn’t entirely sure how long they walk for, but she’s just starting to feel it in her calves when the trees open up into a little clearing.
It’s like something out of a picture-book, a perfect carpet of sun-dappled grass and clover, punctuated by wildflowers that sway gently in the breeze. Gayle is more careful as she walks, stepping around the clusters of delicate petals as she crosses the clearing, and MJ mimics her.
Gayle leads her all the way across the clearing, to the base of a large tree. There, nestled securely among its roots, are two stone slabs.
It takes a moment for MJ to realize what she’s seeing, and when she does, she gasps.
Daniel comes up beside her, a source of warmth and solidity, and slips her hand into hers, squeezing carefully. Gayle settles in on her other side, the tallest of the three, and grips at MJ’s elbow, as though to steady her.
One of the slabs reads: Philip Andrew Jones, 1962-2018.
The other reads: Michelle Jones Watson, 2001-2018
Below MJ’s brith and death dates is a delicate carving of a seashell.
“It was illegal to host funerals, during the blip,” Gayle says quietly. “For anyone lost to the snap, anyway. There were too many people to memorialize individually. Half the world would have been a graveyard, if they’d allowed it.”
MJ nods. She’d learned about it in school: the proliferation of memorials in the weeks following the event, the vandalism. The riots, when the decree had been made. A week straight of fighting in New York alone, let alone across the country, across the world. The first coordinated legislative effort the world’s governments had made in the aftermath of the apocalypse, and the people had refused to listen. A categorical disaster, by all accounts, but eventually the violence had burnt itself out, and the law held.
“This was like, the first thing Mom did, after we moved up here,” Gayle continues. “We couldn’t risk it in the city, but it was barely a week after we moved into the house that she found this place. She could have been arrested, if anyone else had found it.”
MJ clears her throat. “She still could. They never rescinded the law.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Gayle nod.
“People used to tell us we were lucky,” Daniel says. His voice sounds hard—brittle with the type of anger that never quite fades away. “Some people had lost their entire families. We lost less than half.”
“Like Lola,” MJ says. Ned, his parents, his brothers, his nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles and cousins—all gone, in the blink of an eye, with only Ned’s Lola left behind.
“Yeah,” Daniel says. “Funny enough, she never said a thing like that, not to us.” He sucks in a breath, then lets it out, slow and noisy.
Gayle makes a small noise, almost a chuckle. “She’s basically the only reason we made it through those first few weeks, you know. Just. Showed up on our doorstep the day after everyone… And didn’t leave. Just cooked for us, and our neighbors, and anyone else who came by who was hungry.”
MJ blinks hard, trying to clear away the blurriness in her eyes. She’s heard all this before, curled up with Ned on Lola’s couch, listening to her tell stories about the blip, about the things she’d done to keep herself going, waiting for the day her pamilya would return to her.
“She didn’t believe the snap was irreversible,” MJ says. “She knew we’d be back.”
“Shelly,” Daniel says, and for the first time since they’d arrived here he steps away, turning to look at her head-on. “What would you have had us do? Never even try to live our lives again, even though there was no hope that you’d ever be back? Not from the Avengers, not from the UN, not from anybody?”
MJ clenches her fists, tugging her elbow free of Gayle’s hold and taking a step back from each of her siblings.
“Of course not,” she says. “How could you ask me that?”
She swallows against the lump in her throat, blinking hard against the burning in her eyes. “I’m happy for you and Julia, Daniel.” She looks over at Gayle, whose expression is impassive. “And you and Aamira. You guys deserve the lives you’ve built for yourselves, after all that—bullshit.”
Gayle seems unmoved. “And Mom doesn’t?”
MJ looks away. “That’s different, and you know it.”
“Maybe,” Daniel says, and he takes a couple steps toward MJ, getting up in her face. “But what, Shelly? Are you just going to keep punishing her for—nothing? Shit circumstances and lose-lose decisions? What would you have done, huh, Saint Michelle?”
MJ pushes him away. “Fuck you.”
“Fuck you!”
“Hey, knock it the fuck off,” Gayle says, voice sharp, stepping between the two of them. “Shelly, stay here. Daniel, let’s go for a walk.”
MJ splutters, but Gayle speaks over her protests. “You don’t know where we are Shelly, and you’ll never find the car if you try to strike out on your own.” She hands MJ a water bottle from the small rucksack she’d had slung over her shoulder. “Drink this, take a fucking minute. Enjoy the sunshine. Yell if you see a bear. Daniel, c’mon.”
She strides away, not looking back. After a moment of glowering at MJ, Daniel follows.
For a second, MJ considers going after them. Gayle’s always been the coolest head among the three of them, but MJ knows her sister well enough to know she could get under her skin if she really wanted to pick a fight.
And part of MJ really, really wants to pick a fight.
She sighs. Takes a long drink of water. Looks over at the gravestones, a couple paces away, and approaches. Then she sits, back against the tree that shelters them, and runs her fingers over the scalloped edges of the seashell. They’re worn slightly, like someone else—three someones, possibly—had touched the same spot, a hundred times before.
Gayle and Daniel return within an hour. They both look slightly red-eyed, their faces wan and dull with exhaustion and the aftermath of adrenaline. MJ is certain that she doesn’t look much better.
Daniel opens his arms for a hug when he sees her, and MJ doesn’t hesitate. Gayle’s arms come up around them both, and for a long time they stand there, clustered together with their foreheads touching.
MJ doesn’t pay much attention to the trip back, but it seems not to last very long at all. The sun is setting as they drive back to the city, and on the way Gayle stops at an In-N-Out. Between the three of them they demolish half a dozen cheeseburgers and a truly gratuitous number of fries, leaning against the hood of Gayle’s car, shoulder to shoulder with the night falling around them.
When she gets back to her mom’s house, MJ finds her dad and James watching basketball in the living room. There’s an open pizza box on the coffee table, and a handful of empty beer bottles, and they’re chatting idly as the game unfolds.
“Hey Shelly,” her dad says distractedly. “Pizza’s on the table if you’re hungry.” He glances up at her briefly, glances back towards the TV, then does a double take.
She cuts him off before he can ask, smiling tiredly. “I’m fine, Dad. Sibling bonding stuff.”
He studies her, looking as though he’s considering pressing, but eventually he sits back. “Everyone still alive, then? All limbs intact?”
“Nothing important was broken, wounded, or lost,” she confirms. “Hand to god.”
He snorts, but seems reassured.
MJ looks over James, who is doing an admirable job at pretending he is not also examining her carefully. She tries on a tight-lipped smile, awkward and uncomfortable, but he seems to see that it’s sincere because he smiles back. “You hungry, Michelle?” He nods towards the open pizza box. “We’ve got lots of extra.”
She shakes her head. “We stopped for junk food on the way home.” She pauses, considers her next question, then decides there’s no casual way to ask, regardless. “Has Mom had any? I could bring her a plate. She’s in the studio, right?”
Her dad and James both freeze, and if MJ weren’t already so emotionally drained she might have burst out laughing. A part of her wishes she had her sketchbook, to capture their expressions.
“Uh, yeah,” her dad says, recovering himself. “I think she’d appreciate that.”
“Cool,” MJ says, and turns away so they won’t see her grin at their bafflement.
She puts together a plate quickly, stopping at the fridge to grab a couple of bottles of beer. Then she makes her way upstairs.
There’s a radio playing in her mom’s studio, something bright and pop-y, but turned down low enough that it’s not distracting. Her mom is humming along, bent over an array of paper flowers, glue-gun in hand.
Felix is lying on her feet, and they both look up as MJ emerges from the staircase. Felix almost immediately goes back to sleep. Her mom stares.
“Hey, brought you some food,” MJ says. She lifts the plate in demonstration. Her mom blinks.
“Oh, thank you, Shelly. I got quite distracted and forgot all about it.”
MJ sets the plate down in a clear spot on the table. “I figured.”
Her mom nods. MJ shifts on her feet.
“Did you eat?” her mom asks, after a moment.
“Gayle and Daniel fed me, no worries,” MJ replies.
“Okay, that’s good.”
“Yeah.”
Her mom looks at her. MJ looks at the flowers. Then she looks up again. Her mom looks down.
Fuck, they are so bad at this.
“Was there anything else—”
“Look I was wondering if—”
They both stop, startled at the jumble of overlapping words. Then her mom laughs, gesturing at MJ to go ahead.
MJ takes a deep breath. “I was wondering if you wanted a hand with the centerpieces. I’m pretty good with a glue gun.” She gestures with the hand that’s still holding the beer bottles, now a little damp with condensation. “And I brought libations.”
Her mom’s smile is slow, but bright, like the morning sun inching its way up into the sky.
“I’d love that, Shelly.”
MJ can’t help but smile in return, relief sharp and cracking in her chest. She takes a seat next to her mom, then slides a beer across the tabletop to her.
“Great,” she says. “Let’s get started.”