A/N: Hey everyone! I apologize for how long this update took to push out. I meant to have it much sooner but I've been working through a lot of personal stuff for the last few weeks so it's been hard for me to really focus on my writing. I'm still going through a lot. I don't want to bore you all with details but it may be a little while before another story comes out by me. I'll do my best. I haven't forgotten about your prompts and I still firmly intend to finish them. I hope you'll enjoy the final chapter of this story, though! It's bittersweet, of course. Please let me know what you think in a review and/or PM. I love hearing your thoughts—they're always great pick-me-ups.

It was strange to think today was their last day together. It was strange to think that it might be their last day together for a while. But when Claire awoke that morning, the realization dawned on her that this was very much the case, and she would have to make this final day with Zach and Gray special. Especially since she was going to have to break the news to them by the end of it.

Secretly, she had been hoping to wake up and find out she had dreamed the whole thing. That Masrani wasn't demanding to move her to San Diego. That she wouldn't have to tell her nephews that she wouldn't be around for a few months. It was the height of denial. She knew that. But she couldn't help it. As unrealistic as it was, she didn't want to have to tell them. She didn't know the words to tell them. She barely had the words to tell Owen, but he already knew what was happening, so she simply handed him her phone and let him read the email himself.

"We have to do something special. It's the Fourth of July," she told Owen as she sipped her coffee and scrolled through her tablet. She should have been looking at condos for rent but she couldn't bring herself to actually Google that dreaded phrase. She couldn't bring herself to think of anywhere else as home. "And the boys go back today," she added.

"We could have a little barbecue," Owen answered. "Call up Karen. Ask her to come, too. You can tell them the news at the same time."

She noticed he had left out any qualifiers about good or bad news. It was just news. "Okay," she nodded her head, setting the mug down on the counter with a thunk. "I'll call Karen."

"I called the department chair at Wisconsin-Madison this morning," Owen mentioned as he scrubbed his breakfast plate in the sink. "Said she'd be glad to transition my course online as a temporary solution."

Everything had fallen into place. Claire had gotten what she wanted. San Diego was a temporary solution, just as Owen teaching an online class was. She had successfully negotiated with Masrani. She had won. But it didn't make her feel any less empty inside.

After Claire got off the phone with her sister, she sat in the office and stared blankly at the wall in front of her desk, covered in post-it notes. Each color meant something different. Green for paperwork that still needed to be finished, blue for important phone numbers, orange for appointments and due dates, yellow for miscellaneous things. They would all have to come down soon, thrown into the trash or tucked into a binder for safekeeping until they arrived in California.

Her browser was open to a real estate listing site, addresses and photos of condos arranged in a list from cheapest to most expensive. Each link she clicked contained the typical marketing fluff—SPACIOUS! Or Exciting Amenities or You won't find better value anywhere in San Diego—along with dozens of interior shots arranged in a grid view. She scrolled through endless images of granite countertops and cherry wood cabinets and open floor plans until her eyes ached from staring at the backlit screen without blinking.

"Aunt Claire?"

The redhead jumped as Gray poked his head in the door. She quickly—guiltily—closed out of the browser and turned to face him. "What's up, sweetie?" she tried to sound upbeat.

The boy shrugged. "I heard you in here. Everything's okay, right?"

"Yes," she answered quickly, unable to meet her nephew's gaze. "Everything's fine, honey." The boy lingered in the doorway, hesitating. "I just need to go through a couple files and I'll be right down, okay?" That seemed to relieve him, if only a little, and Gray vanished from the door.

The redhead sighed, turned back to her computer, and was unable to bring herself to open up her web browser again to continue searching for a condo. She had already bookmarked a few. She could find one after the boys left.

The folders stacked around her desk had piled up, a fact she noted with an exasperated sigh. She would have to pack all of this up. Or at least file them away in a closet and take the important stuff with her. She opened her desk drawer and found it overflowing with manila folders. An overwhelming sense of exhaustion filled her when she thought about sorting through every file, trying to determine which ones she would need and which ones could stay the few months in an empty house. Before she could stop herself, she ripped every folder from the drawer, heaving them in an uneven stack on the floor until only dust lined the woodgrain drawer. There was an immense satisfaction in her handiwork, the feeling that she had accomplished something. Now she had to sort through the paperwork. She knew herself well enough to know she wouldn't be able to leave the mess on the floor too long.

A hardcover book mixed among the beige file folders caught her eye. It was squat and wide, its cover lined with soft fabric with an inset containing a generic, black-and-white landscape. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized what it was.

Claire had never kept a scrapbook the way her mom and Karen did. They were kitschy and sentimental, annoying and clingy. Claire Dearing didn't do kitschy and sentimental. She could just as easily store all of her photographs on her computer, catalogue them on Facebook, or order prints she could frame on her desk—not that she ever did. But Karen had insisted she take the scrapbook their mother had curated so painstakingly over the years. The scrapbook that Karen had added to over the years since it had been in her possession. It had been offered to Claire along with the housewarming presents, an opportunity to catch up on the years she had missed since she'd been away from home. She had cracked it open once, a sinking, leaden feeling in her chest as first she and Karen, then Zach and Gray grew up over the course of a few dozen pages. She filed it away in the drawer immediately after, preferring to look to a bright future with her nephews instead of dwelling in all the ways she'd failed them before.

She picked the book up off the floor, ran her thumb over the pliant cloth on the cover. She should have inserted a family photo or something into the cover to replace the stock photo. Opening the book, she found herself staring at one of the only complete family portraits her family had taken in her childhood. She must have been about five or six, Karen around eleven or twelve. Her parents stood side-by-side. He had walked out about a year after the photo was taken. The rest of the first half of the book contained images of the Dearing sisters—Karen tugging Claire along on a sled in their backyard, Claire the day she took second at the state championship swim meet, Karen posing with the light blue Taurus that had been her first car, prom photos. There were photos full of awful 1980s hairstyles Claire couldn't believe she had ever worn and there were photos of Karen's college graduation, of Claire when she earned her MBA at U Chicago. And the rest were all Karen after that.

Karen's wedding pictures. Karen and Scott on a honeymoon. Karen and Scott's first Christmas card photo. And from then on it was all about Zach and Gray. Zach on the day he was born, looking pink and doll-like in his mother's arms with Scott leaning over the hospital bed and into the frame. Zach's first birthday party—Claire made a cameo in the background. She had been in town that weekend. Zach on his first day of preschool, sporting a bowl cut and Winnie the Pooh overalls that made the aunt cringe for him. Then there were the pictures of Gray—plump and curly-haired, swaddled in a receiving blanket in the hospital. Gray's first bath, a towel strategically placed to keep him modest. Zach holding his wailing baby brother in what was supposed to be a well-staged brotherly picture. They continued this way—first day of school photos, birthday parties, middle school semi-formals and fourth grade graduations and family picnics and family ski trips. Zach grew taller with each photo and Gray caught up. She'd seen the photos once already but the thought of having to catch up again when she returned—even if it was only a few months—was enough to sink her mood. Claire shut the book quickly, the by-now familiar pressure of tears building behind her eyeballs beginning to well up. She decided the scrapbook was the start of the "take-to-San-Diego" pile.

But even with the challenges of packing, the difficulties of deciding what to take and what to leave, Claire knew the hardest part of this move, of this upheaval, was still to come. She had yet to break the news to her family. She had yet to tell Zach and Gray. She had yet to tell Karen, who was only just beginning to get used to the idea that her sister was only twenty minutes away. And she had no idea how to say it to them, how to break the collective heart of her entire family in a few short sentences the way she used to break the collective heart of entire corporate departments when she canceled their projects in development or terminated the assignment they'd been working on for months.

I have something to tell you, boys. And it's not easy to say…And I want you to know that I'm always here for you and that I tried my best to avoid this. But…But…But

The lines she had so carefully tried to rehearse in her head, to herself as she stared at the stacks of scattered papers and files, remained unfinished and incomplete. She couldn't say it. She couldn't think it.

Zach leaned against the base of a tree and watched Owen scrape down the grill with a brush, a half-used bag of Kingsford charcoal leaning against the siding of the house at his feet. The man replaced the grate and began piling dusty gray briquettes into a chimney starter. Gray looked up from the ground where he had been lying on his stomach, observing two ladybugs. Noticing his brother pensively observing their uncle, he rose to his feet and sat down beside him.

"What's wrong?" the younger Mitchell asked.

"Nothing," Zach murmured, his eyes fixed on a small patch of discoloration on the house's siding.

"Why do you look sad?"

"Just thinking."

"I read the news," the boy confessed. Zach started. "I know Aunt Claire said I should forget about it and I know you said it wasn't a big deal so I should ignore it but I just couldn't."

"Gray…"

"I saw it online and I saw the newspaper in the recycling."

"Gray…"

"Aunt Claire's gonna lose her job, isn't she? Do you think they'll throw her in jail? It's not her fault! They know it's not her fault, right? 'Cause people keep saying things about her online and the lawyers keep trying to make the whole thing look like her fault but it isn't!"

"Gray, will you shut up?" Zach snapped. The boy silenced immediately and the older brother winced at the twinge of doubt, of hurt on his face. "I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I didn't mean to say that. I didn't mean shut up. I just meant don't worry."

"How can I not?" the younger brother questioned, hurling a clump of mulch into the grass a few feet away. "They put her picture in everything. They even talked about us, Zach. And it just looks really bad. Everyone's angry at her. They're gonna fire her," he sniffled. "And then she won't be able to afford this house anymore and she won't be able to get another job 'cause of what happened at Jurassic World and then they'll have to move away and we'll never see them again."

Zach put a reassuring hand on his brother's shoulder. "Listen. Aunt Claire's the toughest person we know, right?" He waited for Gray to nod in agreement. "And you know it's not her fault, right?" He paused for his younger brother to nod again. "She's gonna be fine. If they wanted to fire her, they would've done it already." He hoped the boy didn't pick up on the tremor in his voice that indicated his own uncertainty.

Gray sniffled again. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Zach lied.

"Aunt Claire's been acting weird," the younger Mitchell pointed out.

The older brother sighed. "Look, she's got a lot of pressure on her. If she doesn't say something soon, we'll go talk to her, okay?"

"Okay. But it has to be today," Gray answered. "It's our last day here."

Zach didn't like how his brother felt it necessary to add that last piece.

Karen's minivan pulled up at four and Claire felt her heart jump into her throat. She had been putting off telling the boys until their mother arrived, justifying that decision with the thought that it would be easier to tell everyone all at once. But she was actually terrified. Terrified of Gray's tears and Zach's reproach and Karen's breakdown. Terrified that her family would think she was flaking on them again. Terrified of becoming an island.

Owen poked his head into the office where Claire had been hiding out in between helping him prep for the barbecue or indulging her nephews in a game of fetch with the dog. "Your sister's here," he announced. His features softened when he noticed her look of terror.

"I know," she cleared her throat and composed herself. "I'll be right down." Owen nodded and ducked out of the room.

"Karen!" Claire did her best to sound cheerful as she descended the stairs, makeup touched up and hair brushed so she wouldn't look as frantic as she felt.

"Claire," her sister hugged her. "How were the boys? Not too much trouble, I hope."

"They were great," she answered honestly. "How was your week?"

"Quiet," Karen replied. "I can't believe I'm saying this but I missed having them in the house. It just feels so…empty without them."

Claire knew the feeling. After Zach and Gray left last time, the house had felt empty for a week. "Owen's working on the grill right now. I can make coffee," she suggested, starting for the kitchen without waiting for Karen's response.

"So what did you do all week?" Karen questioned, stirring her coffee and leaning against the island. Claire set her mug down on the other side, facing her older sister.

"Owen took the boys windsurfing," she replied. "We went hiking. Camped in the yard. Scott came to visit the boys one evening."

"How was that?" the mother seemed a little surprised.

"Better than I expected it to be, if I'm being honest."

There was a lull in the conversation, a slight one. Ordinarily, Claire wouldn't have felt the need to fill the space with anything. But it came out anyway. "Karen, I have to tell you something…"

Once she got started, she couldn't stop.

"…I tried. I really tried to prevent it but the most they were willing to offer was a temporary relocation. Owen and I are going to be in California by the end of the month until at least November. Maybe longer. I just don't know what to do, Kare." Another tear splashed into her coffee mug. She was certain the coffee was too diluted with salt water to even be drinkable anymore but she didn't care. Karen had long since come around the counter to rest a reassuring arm on her sister's shoulder, rubbing soothingly as if the woman was a child again. "I haven't told the boys yet. They'll be crushed. I don't know how to say it."

"Just tell them like you told me," Karen answered. "They'll understand, Claire. It's not your fault. You'll be back. They know you'll be back." The older sister paused. "Is there anything we can do for you?"

Claire stopped, sniffled, and locked eyes with her older sister. "There is one thing…"

"Pit Master Owen presents…dinner," Owen set down the aluminum tray of burgers in the center of the patio table. "Eat up! Everybody says Tennessee and Texas have the best barbecue in the country but I think Georgia'll give 'em a run for their money."

Karen smiled graciously but said little throughout dinner. Claire kept clearing her throat and offering small talk—observations about how Karen had gotten her hair done while the boys were away, how Gray seemed to particularly enjoy the burgers, or how much fun they'd had over the course of the week. Zach smiled weakly with each comment and shot concerned glances at his younger brother across the table, looks that Owen caught and winced at. Claire hasn't told them yet.

As dinner drew to a close, Claire was still trying to summon the courage to break the news to her nephews. Zach cleared his throat and found four pairs of eyes fixed on him. He ducked his head shyly. "Aunt Claire?" he offered.

The redhead gulped. She felt like a child about to be reprimanded. "Yes, Zach?"

"Gray and I…well, we have some…concerns," the teen managed to get out with some amount of difficulty. "About you. And about the while court thing that's going on and, well…"

"Are you they gonna fire you?" Gray blurted. His older brother gaped at him. "They're gonna fire you, aren't they? That's why you've been sad all week. It's not fair! It wasn't your fault!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Owen soothed as the boy's voice reached a fever pitch. "Nobody said anything about your aunt getting fired. But I believe she does have something she needs to tell you," he cast a meaningful glance to his partner, who wilted a little.

"I'm not getting fired," the woman began. "But there are going to be some changes. For starters, they are temporarily moving me…to San Diego."

"What?!" Zach cried out and Claire's stomach dropped. All the weight that had been lifted off her chest with the confession came crashing down upon her once more. She looked from Zach's expression of hurt-confusion-anger to Gray's, watery and devastated. "Why didn't you tell us?" the older of the two accused. Gray let out a sob.

"Zach," Karen's voice had a warning tone to it, but Claire held up a hand.

The redhead let out a puff of breath. "It's okay, Kare. They have a right to be mad. But the reason I didn't tell you both was because I was working out an agreement with Masrani Global. They initially wanted to relocate me permanently, but I insisted that the move be temporary. I didn't want to tell you until they agreed, which they did. I just found out yesterday."

She studied the teenager's face closely as the anger and tension melted from his features, leaving behind disappointment and resignation.

"Look, I know that this whole situation sucks," the aunt continued. She could feel her voice beginning to break, the familiar tightness of stifled sobs building in her throat and the pressure of unshed tears pressing at the backs of her eyes. "And it's not at all what we wanted, but if all goes well we should be back before the end of the year."

"What if they decide they want you to stay full time after all?" Gray had stopped crying but sniffled occasionally and he looked no less miserable than before.

"I'll quit," the redhead answered with resolution. "I have an agreement with the company. If they decide not to honor it, I'll leave."

Karen leaned over and said in a low voice, "Don't promise that if you aren't sure you can deliver."

"I will deliver," Claire replied loudly, stubbornly. "I mean it. They're taking me away from my family for a few months, taking us away from our family for a few months. I already can't stand the thought of it. If they want to make that arrangement permanent, I'm leaving."

"What about Uncle Owen? What are you gonna do?" Zach pointed out. "Aren't you supposed to be starting at Wisconsin-Madison?"

"That's right," Owen replied. "But I already talked with the department chair and she said she's fine with making my classes online. We should be back in time for spring semester. And in the meantime, a publishing house in Chula Vista offered me a book deal. I'll keep busy, don't you worry."

"This is really happening, isn't it?" the teen sighed.

"I'm afraid so," Claire replied.

"You'll come back, though, right?" Gray asked. "For Thanksgiving and Christmas if you're still there?"

"They won't keep us away," she answered reassuringly.

"We'll miss you." It was a confession both Claire and Owen had expected from Gray, but to hear it from Zach's lips surprised them.

"We'll miss you, too. All of you," Owen glanced at the faces around the table meaningfully.

"But we can Skype and Facetime," Claire offered. "And before you know it, we'll be right back in this house. Which reminds me," she looked to Karen, who tried to conceal a smirk. "Since we're moving halfway across the country, we're going to need a little help taking care of the things we leave behind. So I talked to your mother and she said she's okay with Blue coming to live with you guys while we're gone." Gray's eyes lit up. "She especially loves you, Gray, so do you think you could take care of her for us?"

"Yes!" Gray nodded his head vigorously, eliciting smiles from around the table.

"We knew we could count on you."

The family lingered around the driveway, forcing conversation to hold on just a little longer. But as the sky got darker, Karen realized she would have to get the boys home soon. Gray's hugs were tight and unrelenting, and the boy held on to his aunt for much longer than usual, eventually leaving her embrace for that of his uncle's. Zach wordlessly squeezed Claire tightly, willing himself not to tear up. The redhead could feel herself choking up as she hugged her oldest nephew and glanced over at Owen, kneeling to Gray's height and handing over Blue's leash, giving him instructions on how to care for her. When he finished, he stood and pulled Zach into a hug as well.

"Good luck in California," Karen approached. Claire could see tears welling in her older sister's eyes and felt the familiar guilt building up within her. She was abandoning her family again.

"You better come visit us once we get out there."

"I'm sure the boys would love that."

"You, too," Claire insisted. "You could use a vacation."

Karen forced a watery laugh, then nodded her head. "Alright. Yeah, we'll come visit you. If you aren't back before we get a chance."

"I mean it," the redhead tried her best to assume an admonishing tone. "I'm expecting you."

Karen pulled her sister into an embrace and held her there for a long moment. "We'll miss you. I'll miss you. Please, Claire, don't drop off the face of the earth again. Please."

"I won't," the younger sister promised. "I forgot how important family is. But I'm not going to forget again."

"Then we'll see you at the airport. And again in California. And again when you come home."

Owen's hand rested at Claire's hip as the couple watched the minivan back out of the gravel drive and disappear down the dark, wooded street. They stood waving until the taillights retreated out of view.

A/N: And that concludes this story. Thank you all for the support you've given me and for all the reads, reviews, favorites, and follows. You are all wonderful, beautiful human beings :D I make no promises about a sequel, but as you can see I've left the door open for one. Once my personal life is a little less messy, I'll be back to writing. I have unfilled prompts to address and the possibility of a sequel isn't out of the question… Until then, thank you again and I hope to hear your thoughts on how this story was as a whole.