where: mark’s apartment when: saturday afternoon/evening (though after their dad’s announcement :///) with: @doctor-keaton
“You know I think it should be law that you have to open up the door within a minute of your sister knocking on it!” Maureen rolled her eyes as her brother opened the door. “Though I guess you can be forgiven, since you didn’t study law.” He would have made a good lawyer, but he’ll probably be an even better doctor, and as much as they loved both their parents, neither of them directly followed in their footsteps (and being a lawyer would have made Mark even more like their mother) - Mark had always been especially keen to go out on his own, with Maureen feeling much more attached to tradition, to doing much more of what was expected of her.
Except that she had become a journalist. One at the very same paper that had just published an article about their father that had made her go out for an extended walk around the city - in the middle of the work day - and have too many cups of coffee and tea because focusing on the way it made her need to tap her fingers against her thighs was better than focusing on what was going on with her father. On worrying about what was going on with him.
So she’d stress-cooked, and had made food he’d like, without any vegetables snuck in. She’d made too much though, and so she held a pyrex dish in her hands and held it out to Mark. “I made too much.” Maureen said, pushing her shoes off before making her way into the apartment. “So you get some. It’s not even one of my super health kicks, unlike when I tried to make you lunch when you started high school and I stole your chips and replaced them with celery. Promise.” They’ll have to talk about what happened, soon, probably, but she bit her lip and sat down on his couch.
“You know, you still owe showing me all your fancy Appalachian Trail hiking photos. How was it? Maybe some weekend we can go for a hike? It’ll be an effort to get there, but maybe it could be good for both of us, for...” dad, too, she didn’t finish. “Plus side, you don’t have to give me a piggyback ride any longer like I made you do at Prospect Park when we were younger.”