Ringo's Requiem

Chapter 10: Catching On

Ringo sighed as he stepped through his front door.

It had been a few hours since he left the studio, and he doubted that his friends had stayed there much longer after left, whether they eventually noticed his absence or not.

Closing the door behind him, he kicked off his shoes and hung up his coat, turning to face the living room.

Maureen was looking at him as she had the phone pressed up to her ear.

She placed the phone up against her shoulder.

"Oh Ringo, wasn't expecting you to be home so early again."

Ringo blinked, not surprised.

"It ended early," he sighed.

"Once again..."

Before Maureen could respond, Ringo walked up the stairs, not letting the conversation continue.

Maureen pressed the phone up against her ear again.

"He... he says that you guys had ended session early..."

George's voice spoke on the other end of the line.

"Well, we didn't. We're still here..."

John's voice spoke up in the background.

"And why are we staying anyway?"

Paul's voice followed.

"Shh."

Maureen sighed.

"So... you mean to tell me that none of you noticed that he left?"

Nothing but silence came from the other end of the phone for a moment.

Eventually, George sighed.

"Um... did he say where he went?"

Maureen looked in the direction of the staircase, biting her lip.

She had promised Ringo that she wouldn't tell anyone about his secret place, but, now that things were starting to sound suspicious, she figured that it was the time to come clean.

"He... Now, promise me that you won't tell him about this, but..."

She paused, making sure that Ringo wasn't coming back down.

"He told me that... there's this place near the studio that he goes to..."

"What place?" George's voice asked.

"He didn't tell me a lot a lot about it, but... he did tell me that it was a large field that had a tree in the center of it that he sat under..."

Maureen heard John and Paul whisper in the background.

"We... we know a place like that, but we never really thought that much about it."

Maureen, taking a moment to look over at the staircase, sighed.

"Um... there's something else that... I need to tell you about."

"Uh, okay?" George's voice spoke.

"Ringo... he... h-hasn't been himself lately..."

Maureen was unsure about going this far, but she now knew that something was going on. She couldn't just let it pass by her unnoticed, but, at the same time, it felt so wrong about talking with Ringo's friends about it first rather than him.

But, either way, she wouldn't let it go on for much longer.

"What d-do you mean?" George asked, snapping Maureen out of her thoughts.

"He... I don't know. He seems... gloomy... like he's depressed or something..."

"Oh..."

Maureen heard john and Paul talk in the background, but she couldn't make out what they were saying.

"Listen... when you all go the studio tomorrow, I want all of you to patch things up and make him feel better. We know that he cares about you all a lot, so... maybe it'll help."

"Alright..."

"So... goodbye?"

"Yeah... goodbye."

Maureen hung up the phone and sighed.

She sighed as he heard footsteps start to come down the stairs, thankful that the phone call had ended in time.

Ringo reached the bottom of the stairs.

"So... who were you talking to?"

Maureen couldn't think about an answer.

"I, uh, was talking to..."

She paused.

"To my mom. She just called here to check up on me and see how thing were going."

"Oh..."

Ringo walked past her and went into the kitchen.

Maureen grabbed the remote once Ringo was gone and turned on the television, letting it play some old show that she didn't care about.

Something in her wanted to talk to Ringo about his problem, but a sense of unease stopped her from wanting to do it herself.

After all, she wasn't the reason he was feeling so down lately.

Maureen sighed once again, leaning back against the sofa as she let herself think back to when she had gotten the call just minutes before her husband came home.

She knew that things were getting bad at the studio, but bad enough to the point where Ringo was...

She shook her head.

Whatever happened tomorrow, at least Ringo would be thankful because of his friends.

At least, that's what Maureen wanted to believe.

However, even she couldn't guess as to how things would play out tomorrow.