it's your day: Rebecca

September 29, 2086. Aurora Harris is 40, Zach is 9. Meadow Lind is 71, Brady is 72. Happy 3rd birthday, Rebecca Harris.


A year later, Aurora still had nightmares about the explosions. She saw some of them with her own eyes, large enough, close enough, that they looked like big orange stars, wanna-be suns. Pop, they would go, and people would gasp because they knew it had been a ship full of human lives. Almost everyone knew someone up there, a brother, a daughter, a husband. And all they could do was to stand underneath them in terror. Helpless.

There was a choice—try to fight back even though our troops were too weak and too primitive to stand a chance against the alien technology, knowing that we wouldn't win on our own, or else don't fight and let them suffocate the planet. Of course, we fought.

That was how he died.

Aurora didn’t see his exact explosion, probably. The command center was able to pinpoint the last known location of his ship and the moment they lost contact. He was entering the atmosphere somewhere above Mongolia. She couldn’t have possibly seen that from Michigan. The explosion she saw was someone else’s brother or daughter or husband. There were so many.

Most of the bodies could never be recovered. They had splintered into dust. So they sent the families an urn full of moon dust instead, along with their loved one’s personal belongings from base, and a folded flag.


Today, one year later, was just an ordinary Thursday, and this was just their life now.

"Zach, honey, time for school."

Maybe not exactly an ordinary day. It was also Rebecca's birthday today, so Aurora needed to produce a cake somehow. What did a three-year-old know about birthdays? Only that there had to be cake.

This week was hard. On the 22nd, she and Joel would have been married twelve years. On the 19th was the date they lost contact with his ship. She and Joel never got to have an eleventh anniversary, and Rebecca would spend her whole life having a birthday ten days after her father's death. The whole month of September was ruined now.


If she could wake her child by shouting from his bedroom door, then she would do it. But Zach slept like a rock and required a firm nudge.


She hated coming into his room. He wanted to keep the pictures—she understood why, she wouldn't deny him that—but she couldn't stand to look at them anymore.



At breakfast, Zach was in good spirits on his baby sister's birthday, teaching her how to count to ten.

"I’m gonna be ten next, you’re only three. One, two, three."

They counted on their fingers together and it was sweet. Zach was such a good big brother to her. For that alone, Aurora could never be sorry that she and Joel decided to conceive her, against all odds and in those precarious circumstances. Zach had wanted his little sister more than anything, and now they had each other.


"Time for school." They dressed to walk Zach to the bus stop.


Aurora checked the mail on the way back up, seeing it so full that letters popped out.


One was from the ISCA, and it wasn't Joel's benefit money because that was direct deposited into her bank account. This was something else, printed on fine grain paper with special edition Reclamation Day stamps.

Dear Mrs. Harris and children,

We would be honored by your presence at the first annual Reclamation Day ceremony, at Catalina Park in Catalina, California. On this first anniversary we will erect a memorial to the fallen heroes who were lost in the reclamation of our planet. If you require any accommodations or travel, it will be fully paid for. There will be a luncheon provided after the ceremony. We are forever grateful for the immense sacrifice your family has endured.

Sincerely, Dominique Beech, ISCA Coordinator

Has it really only been a year? It felt like an eternity.

Reclamation Day was next week. But that was Aurora's fault for not checking the mail. Some weeks she couldn’t bring herself to do more than feed her children. Their apartment in California was still new and unfamiliar. The first night here was sad. She had nothing to feed the kids, so she ordered a pizza. Most days, the best she can do is pizza. No child was ever disappointed in pizza. At least they were fed.

Maybe they could go to the ceremony. Or maybe they would watch it on TV. She had six days still to decide.


Today, she had one job only: cake. Just a simple cake. Vanilla. Candles. No more. That would be good enough. She oriented her life now in good enough. Her children were fed enough. Their clothes were clean enough. Perhaps they were happy enough—the children, at least.

Zach had his ninth birthday in March when the hurt was still too fresh. They'd only just moved out west and Aurora was still overwhelmed with everything. But the success of Zach's birthday celebration was no thanks to her. Clarice planned the party for him, Blake bought his presents. Her two best friends, they wrapped her up into their family and surrounded her and the children with love and care.

Now she was on her own. That part was completely her fault.


Box mix, oil, eggs. No eggs.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck."


"Come on, big girl. Your dumb mommy forgot the eggs."

They went down to the street, searching for a store or bodega or street cart that had eggs for sale. She was still rather new here and didn't know where everything was, partially on account of never doing any grocery shopping and ordering all that pizza.

There was a produce cart in the main square. She saw it and ran for it.


"Wait," she shouted as the man started boxing up.

"Going on break."

"No, wait, please. I just need eggs. Just two eggs. Jesus, can’t you just sell me two eggs before your break?"


No. He could not.

She tried street after street. "How is it possible I can't find eggs in this goddamned city?"


She ended up calling an Uber out to the suburbs where she finally found a grocery market. If she didn't find eggs here, she wouldn't find them anywhere.

"I wanna down. I wanna down."

"Just don’t touch anything, okay?"

But then she saw the pretty platters set up on the tables well within a three-year-old’s reach. Who was she kidding? She picked Rebecca up again. She needed a stroller. How did it happen that she didn't own a stroller for her toddler? It must have been left behind in one move or the other.



"Just, can you sit here? You can sit in a big girl chair? Look, it matches your dress."





"Nope, nope, nope."



Aurora had two dozen eggs and a quart of milk in her basket, but she felt just exhausted after trekking all over town for them.

"I have a better idea," she said. "Let’s buy a cake instead. Yeah? Hamburger cake, that’s silly. It's shaped like a hamburger but made of cake. Let’s get that one."


So they brought home the eggs, the milk, and the hamburger-shaped cake.

Then they went out to meet her parents at the subway.


"Grandma!"


"Hey, kiddo," Brady said, "What about Grandpa?"

"Oh, my goodness," Meadow said, picking Rebecca up. "Look at how tall you are! How old are you turning today? Eighteen, I bet."

Rebecca giggled. "No, Gramma. I three."


Meadow gave Aurora a warm hug. "You smell so clean, honey. Did you finally wash Joel’s sweatpants?"

Meadow had been worried when Aurora slept with Joel's sweatpants, the last piece of clothing that still smelled like him, for three straight months, clinging to them until they smelled more like her sweat than like Joel. Then, devastated by the irrevocable loss of his smell, she wore the sweatpants for two more months, imagining it was the closest she'd ever get to feeling him on her skin again. She finally put them away when Rebecca said the sweatpants smelled like cheese.

"No, Mom, these are mine," Aurora said. "They’re my sweatpants, and they’re clean. I washed Joel's sweatpants and put them on the dresser."

"That’s terrific, sweetheart. I'm so glad for you. That's a great place for them."

So Aurora made it through the day with the minimum necessary goals achieved. Present, check. Cake, check. Grandma and Grandpa, check. Candles, check.

"Aren’t your friends coming?" Meadow asked. "Blake and Clarice and the kids?"

"No. It’s just us."

"Oh, that’s odd. They always come to the parties. You all have been so close for twenty years. What happened? Did someone have a fight?"

"Mom, it’s just the five of us."


They were ready to sing, but as soon as Aurora lit the birthday candles, she was struck in the middle with a deep ache.

It should be six.

Rebecca didn't know any better. She had no idea what a terrible loss she'd suffered. She wouldn't know it for years.

🎶 "... Happy birthday, dear Rebecca. Happy birthday to you!"


When they noticed the look of despair on Aurora's face, Brady asked, "What’s the matter, honey?"

Wherever Joel was, no matter how far, he would always try to Skype in for their birthdays. He would sing along with them, half a second out of sync and echoing. However far, he was always still there.

"I did it wrong," Aurora said. "I didn't think of it. I could have played one of the old videos of him singing 'Happy Birthday,' but now it's done and she blew out the candles and he wasn't here."

When people talk about the pain, they aren't talking in metaphors. There is no room here for literature—this is ache. And if the soul is a tangible thing, it lies somewhere underneath the esophagus, behind the ribs, maybe nearby the spleen. That's where it hurts. It isn't romantic—it's ugly, it's sweaty, it smells bad, it has ratted hair and bad breath. It isn't a thing to be pitied. Pity will do no good here. It is a thing to be left with an occasional glass of water and some scant sunlight once a day.

But at some point you have to wash its clothes and brush its teeth, even if the ache is still there. She didn't know what should come next except for that.

"Cake, mommy," Rebecca said. "I wanna cake."





"You did such a good job," Meadow said to her daughter. "Look at how happy she is."

—

September birthdays:
1: Wylie Pickett is 11
3: Dominique Beech is 27
3: Gabriel Bradshaw is 2
4: Alice Nova is 65
5: Dustin Fontenot is 9
8: Jessica Pendleton is 24
14: Orion Deppiesse is 53
14: Heather Thompson is 53
16: Luca Phoenix is 2
24: Louise Fontenot is 47
26: Ingrid Thompson is 23
26: Ian Thompson is 23
29: Rebecca Harris is 3
30: Lauren Sanders is 14

September anniversaries:
12th: Nathan & Ally Lind — 10 years

September health strike:
Jeremy Nova—at the ripe age of 70, this sprightly old man still has one extra buffer point left. So this month he will move from +1 to 0. Still in better health than most of his peers.

September lot damage:
Morton household, 3 dead garden plants

^ more on the lot damage roll in a separate post, this post didn't feel appropriate for a long discussion of new gameplay ideas. :\


extras: Joel's obituary

notes: FYI, I have an awesome grocery mod that requires ingredients for all recipes, if you were wondering why she needed the eggs so desperately. ;)

It seems that I have been hoarding this story for at least six or seven years, because I know I drafted some of these paragraphs while I was still writing for TS2 LH. I remember having a harrowing dream about it, from Aurora's POV, and a few of these lines came straight out of that.

Finally saying it out loud, Joel was "the one" from that long long ago war ROS which turned into an epic story involving nearly every family in my world, so much bigger than I ever could have expected. Funny how a simple random idea, an ROS, can explode and take over and permeate everything like that. Now I can't even imagine Lakeside Heights and the stories that sprung from it without that alien war. It would have been a completely different world. 

But I feel like some of you must have figured out that it was Joel simply by process of elimination because I'd written about everybody else coming home already. I wasn't planning to delay it for so long, but maybe subconsciously I was avoiding it. 

Further notes on TS4 ghosts and birthday outtakes and Joel's obituary are still to come. I didn't want to detract any more than I already had from poor little Rebecca's birthday.