Work Text:
As far as she is concerned, Tabitha Scarlet is coping with her mother’s death in a perfectly fine and reasonable manner. It was bound to happen eventually, after all. Logically speaking, no one lives forever, and it isn’t as if she and her mother were ever particularly close. They had no need to be; they are—were—Scarlets.
This did not stop any number of others from attempting to insert themselves into her life and her own perfectly serviceable process of grieving a mother she knew as well as anyone else in Scarlet Hollow did. Janey brought a premade and prewrapped tray of snack foods that was appreciated in that it meant Tabitha didn’t have to cook for herself, and less appreciated in that Janey had clearly grabbed the first thing she saw without any regard for what Tabitha could and couldn’t eat.
Her cat had enjoyed the remnants, at least, insomuch as Frou-Frou truly enjoys anything.
...It would be easier to focus on her work if Stella would stop texting her, though.
Tabitha’s phone chimes with another received text. She picks it up, sees who it’s from—again—and exercises an immense amount of restraint in not hurling her phone against the wall in sheer exasperation. Perhaps Stella will consider that she might just want to be left alone if she continues to pointedly not receive a response.
(Unfortunately, Tabitha knows from experience that engaging with Stella will just result in her being pestered more.)
Her phone chimes again. In the privacy of her own office, Tabitha has no reason to suppress the groan she lets out as she begins to swipe Stella’s previous texts away. Generic well-wishes and apologies for a loss that she had nothing to do with, of course—Tabitha doesn’t know what else she expected, besides pictures of her dog in particularly undignified-looking positions, which are also there.
And then Tabitha pauses. Her thumb hovers over one of the latest message notifications for one moment, then two. Unfortunately, and very much against her better judgment, she is curious.
She groans to herself louder, and opens up the messaging app. Because amidst all the messages that serve no purpose except making Stella feel like she’s being helpful, there is one that’s... odd.
I don’t have a Facebook account, she types, and hits send.
The reply comes quickly enough that Stella must have still been on her phone. rly? but she looks like u and everything!
Tabitha raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t have time to do much else—or anything else—before Stella helpfully provides her with a link to the Facebook page of... a blonde woman calling herself Tabitha Scarlet.
Huh.
It’s an interesting distraction, if nothing else. So Tabitha succumbs to the urge to mute her phone after all, if only because she doesn’t need to see even more unwanted text messages from Stella constantly popping up while she is trying to deal with Facebook’s terrible mobile website on her phone.
The first thing Tabitha Scarlet discovers about the other Tabitha Scarlet is that, if she is attempting to impersonate her, she is doing a remarkably terrible job of it. Her hometown is listed as well away from Scarlet Hollow, her occupation isn’t even close to what Tabitha would have described herself as under the narrow framework that this website provides, and her posts sound nothing like anything Tabitha would have done, if she did have an account of her own.
But Stella was right about one thing: they have the same name, and this other Tabitha does look a lot like her. Same eye color, same hair color, and Tabitha thinks they have the same general facial shape...
She frowns to herself, and scrolls further. She doesn’t have to scroll too far before she stumbles across something unexpectedly... almost familiar.
Thanks for all the well-wishes and condolences, everyone.I’m doing as alright as I can be with Mom gone, but either way, she’s not coming back, and she’d want us to accept that and move on with our lives. The funeral’s on Sunday, and I hope to see some of you there.
There’s a flyer attached advertising a date and a time, for the funeral of a woman whose last name is—was—also Scarlet. Tabitha recognizes it, too. But not because it’s her own name.
Vivian Scarlet was her aunt’s name. The one who left town. Tabitha’s mom hated her sister for leaving Scarlet Hollow, and... probably quite a few other things, too. They hadn’t been in contact, Tabitha knows that—she hadn’t even known if her aunt was still alive, let alone where she’d gone after leaving Scarlet Hollow if she was.
Apparently, she hadn’t died much earlier than Tabitha’s mom. She... hadn’t expected her mom to be right about that, of all the things she could have been, near an end Tabitha hadn’t known then was coming.
If that Vivian Scarlet was, in fact, Tabitha’s aunt... then that means...
...Huh.
Huh.
Tabitha wonders—briefly, ridiculously—what her mother or her aunt would have thought, if either of them had ever lived long enough to find out that they had named their daughters the exact same thing.
Tabitha honestly wasn’t expecting her long-lost cousin to take her up on the offer of paying for her to visit. But she had.
And now, here she is, stepping off the last in a long line of buses, looking frankly exhausted. Tabitha sympathizes, a little.
That sympathy vanishes when her cousin holds out a hand for her to shake and says with an awkward laugh, “Hey, you must be Tabitha!”
“And so are you,” Tabitha says, and shakes her cousin’s hand for as little time as she is reasonably able to get away with. “One of us is going to have to change.”
“Yeah, that’s going to get confusing, otherwise.” Her cousin laughs and offers, “I used to go by Tabby when I was younger, if that helps?”
Tabitha thinks briefly of Stella and says, “It doesn’t.”
“...Oh. Uh. You don’t really strike me as a nickname person.”
“I’m not,” Tabitha says, more sharply than she meant to. “We’ll figure something out before the funeral. Now come on.”
In retrospect, she can’t believe she made a Facebook account for this. But she did, and now she has to live with the consequences.
They both just have to make it to the funeral.