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+0
They walk for as long as he can bear, enough to get them past the smell of smoke, until the wind and snow pick up again and made it hard to see more than a couple dozen feet, until Ellie is holding him upright as much he is her. The church in front is small, the stained glass window smashed and when he makes to turn them towards it, she lets out quiet anguished whimper, shoving him away from it, almost enough to make him stumble and right himself before pointing to the the little white A-frame, 100 foot to their left.
As they limp towards it, he finds himself praying, to who or what he had no idea, for there to be be something, anything, they can make use of. A dented can of beans, a too big winter coat, something to build a fire with. Right now, he would take anything.
‘Stay here, I’m gonna make sure we’re clear.’ She says nothing as he guides her to lean against the wall, just tightens her grip on the edges of his coat and her backpack as he drops his arm from her shoulders and takes the gun in one hand, the door knob in the other.
The house was small, open plan, the mezzanine visible from the doorway and only a bathroom door towards the back. As he moves in to check it, he can feel Ellie just a step behind him, bumping into his backpack, the toe of her boot catching his heel.
Her eyes are wide, unblinking, meeting his and boring into him so deep he think she might be able to see inside his soul and see the terror he feels right at that moment. That she can see what he did to get out that basement and to get to her and know that he knows it wasn’t enough to save her from whatever what happened, from happening.
‘You’re ok, kiddo. I’m right here.’ Ellie doesn’t break her gaze, nor move until he does, replicating his steps, move for move. He’s seen this before. Back at the beginning, when death and chaos was fresh and new, sending some folks in to hysterics, some folks in to catatonia. Minds going into shutdown to protect themselves from their reality.
The place hasn’t been touched for years, dust coating every surface. But there are signs that life existed here beyond the first few weeks of infection, a side window boarded up, half melted candles on top of the useless television, the makeshift barricade across the back door, and mercifully, more firewood than was necessary for a pre-infected world home to realistically hold.
‘Ellie, let’s get you sitting down.’ He guides her backwards to the floral armchair, dragging a cold and musty smelling blanket from the arm and and tucking it round her lap, her backpack and all, as she watched his face, staring and staring like he might disappear at any moment. ‘I’m right here.’ He tells her again, cupping one cold hand against her cheek. ‘Going to light a fire, get some snow melted and we’ll get you all cleaned up.’
He thinks she understands him, but she says and does nothing, her eyes the only thing that moves as he sets to getting the fire going, a risk he’d have to take right now and hope that anyone who might be left to come after them wouldn’t see the smoke through the wind and snow, maybe would be too busy dealing with the aftermath of what had happened, to leave the resort.
He moves slower than he’d like, the wound weeping into his shirt and making his breath hitch with every stretch of his arms but he’s decisive as he goes, taking care to find anything that could be of even the tiniest use. As he rips open cupboard after cupboard, he finds kitchen cloths, damp smelling but clean enough, some chipped mugs bearing the University of Iowa logo, and the top prize, an open box containing three packets of powdered vegetable soup.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ He mutters under his breath and his stomach reacts to the sight, growling angrily. He turns back to Ellie, still exactly as he left her, looking frail and delicate against the high back of the chair and the swaddle of the blanket. Words he’d never thought he would associate with her, despite her diminutive stature. Ellie had only ever used her size to her advantage, to climb on his shoulders to get in to hard to reach places, to whip around him and give him a jump scare for kicks or to scale a fence to get a better a look at something that caught her eye.
‘I’m going to get some snow to melt over the fire, alright? And we can lock ourselves in for the night, get ourselves rested.’ He lifts two pots, like some sort of proof and as expected, she stares back. ‘I’ll be right back, I’m just out on the porch.’
She doesn’t move as he steps out and he works quickly to pack the snow. But when he turns back she is standing in the doorway, shivering as she watches him avidly.
‘I’m right here, baby girl. I won’t leave you.’ He nudges her back into the room and she tramples over her abandoned backpack and blanket back to the armchair. The blood on her face has dried to a dark brownish red and he realises, for the first time, that it’s not all her own. The hunger in his stomach turns to sickness and he has to choke back the noise in his throat, lest he makes her even more frightened than she already is.
Joel has heard stories about cannibals, from his dealings in the Boston QZ. Horror stories of slavers trading people for all kinds of purposes. They’d gotten so used to their own company, speaking to no one from KC until they got to Wyoming, he’d not warned her. He thought he was shielding her, protecting her, but all he’d done was put her even further on the back foot. She was a young girl, in a terrible world, filled with some of the most terrible of people and she had no goddamn idea until they were upon her. The infected were not even close to the worst thing to face.
He comes to her with a bowl of warm water and a clutch of kitchen clothes, lets out an involuntary groan as he takes to his knees at her feet. ‘I’m gonna start on your face and head, okay? Just gonna check your nose, see if it’s broken. I’ll be gentle, but you tell me if you need me to stop, okay?’
He waits a beat for a response and when he gets none, he moves to her face slowly, taking her chin in one hand to tilt her head to catch the light and examine her more thoroughly. She is soft and pliable, giving no resistance as he moves her head this way and that, even when the damp cloth touches an open cut or bruise, even as he runs his fingers along her nose, feeling what he thinks might be a small break in the bone.
Her ponytail holder is slipping to her neck, waves of brown hair, wet from snow in spots, crusted with blood in others, resting on one shoulder. Joel takes the rest free, leans forward to examine her skull, finding a lump both back and front, dampness gathered there, red on his fingers when he draws them back. Once again, he finds himself praying to a God he doesn’t believe exists, that the damage is just lumps and a headache, because he knows anything else, he has no idea how to fix.
‘Ellie, they hurt you anywhere else?’ Her breathing has been hitched, one and off, but he knows that could be adrenaline, or shock, or the cold. But anyone who beat the crap out of a kid’s face would surely have qualms about beating the rest of her.
Ellie does not respond, just meets his eyes and stares.
‘Ellie-‘
‘I thought we were dead.’ Her voice is hoarse and not much more than whisper and stops him dead.
‘We’re not dead. You saved me. You saved you.’ He brings two hands back to her face, cups her cheeks and feels the fire doing its job of warming them both up.
‘David didn’t want to eat me.’ She says it casually, with little emotion, like she was telling him David didn’t like peas, or David was late for work. Joel can’t keep his eyes on hers, feels his hands freeze on her face and he knows Ellie feels it too. ‘He said I needed a father. But he didn’t mean a dad, did he?’ It’s not a question, he knows and he finds himself lost for words, so feeling like a coward, he says nothing, just reaches for her pack, fumbling with the zipper and tugging out a red shirt and a pair of mismatched socks, one grey with little bees embroidered all over, the other a plain pale lavender, discoloured from wear and dirt. But it wasn’t blood or ash, so for now it had to do.
She lets him pull her boots free, drags the socks over the pair she is already wearing and he lifts the shirt up, signalling he wanted her to pull off her sweater.
‘He didn’t know that I didn’t need a father. ‘Cause I have a Joel who has taught me, don’t I? And David’s dead. And I saved you and I saved me.’
She twists awkwardly, pulling her dirty, bloodstained sweater up and lets out an involuntary hiss as her arms come over her head. Her thermal undershirt lifts a little and he can spot bruises, green and purple, blooming over her stomach. Like she’d been kicked or punched there.
‘Ellie, your ribs, gotta see if anything is broken there.’ Joel leans forward, takes the hand that holds her sweater and lets the dirty thing fall to her floor. ‘Can you-‘
She snatches her hand out of his, clutches the lapel of his jacket. ‘I’ve got you, right?’ Ellie sounds desperate then, almost as panicked as she was when he found her in the snow. Joel can feel the anxiety rise in his chest, the realisation that he didn’t know how to comfort her, what she needed him to say.
‘That’s right sweetheart, you have me and you saved us both. You did all the right things and we are here and we are safe.’
She nods in agreement and Joel doesn’t ask about her ribs again. He assesses that she’s breathing ok, not in so much pain she can’t move and maybe tomorrow, she’d let him check her over properly. He manages to get her arms threaded through her shirt, button her almost to her neck, trying to not to look too closely at the marks there. Once her hands are passably clean and the rag in the bowl of now tepid, pink water is tinged red, he bundles her in his coat and busies himself in getting the futon pulled out. It has no sheets on the sagging mattress, but it will do for the night, which is drawing in rapidly.
‘Do you want to eat?’
He’d barely gotten the words out and she is shaking her head rapidly in refusal. ‘No, no, no, no, no.’
He doesn’t push it. ‘Ok, time for bed, then.’
Ellie lets him scoop her up, no mean feat as his side protests tightly at the extra weight of her, but he gets her onto the nest of patchwork quilts and ratty home made blankets, tucks the edges around her until she resembles some absurd burrito with just her pink and purple, wind-burned and bruised face exposed and gingerly sets himself on the edge of the mattress at her feet.
‘Rest now. I’ll take watch. Tomorrow will be better.’ One hand comes up to stroke her cheek and she blinks at him twice before closing her eyes.
He expects her to remain awake for hours to come, but within just a couple of minutes, her body slackens and her breathing deepens, leaving him in no doubt that she was out cold.
It occurred to him then, he had no idea how many days he’d been out of action. He remembers her voice, drifting in and out as she narrated what she was doing, remembers once feeling the weight of her head on his shoulder, hand on his chest. She’s probably not slept for days and trauma be damned, her body had just collapsed under the weight of it all.
She’s David’s newest pet. The words creep back into his memory and bile rises up in his throat. If David were still alive, killing him would not have been enough for Joel. He thinks he’s normally good at compartmentalising feelings. Stuffing away what he feels to deal with the problem at hand without letting his emotions take over. When they argued, Tess frequently used to call him cold. Every bit of violence he’d inflicted since the day the world collapsed, since his whole world collapsed, right up until when they had left Boston, had been carried out with complete control. But now, he isn’t so sure he can do that anymore. Not when it comes to this kid.
He waits a few more moments, lets himself take a few deep breaths before he pulls his body upright. He needs to clean up, to eat and to rest, but there are things to take care of first. He walks round each of the windows, drawing all the curtains closed, there’s an elephant foot shaped umbrella stand made of china, heavy and awkward, but he moves it against the door slowly, inch by inch, careful to not disturb Ellie. He’d prefer something bigger, something that would stop someone getting in entirely, but he’s pretty sure he’d collapse if attempted it.
The mezzanine had a sharp, steep staircase leading up to it and he makes for the chest of drawers and wardrobe at the back. There’s very little in the closet, just a few knitted sweaters meant for a man much bigger than him, a couple of pairs of slacks but he tosses them to the bed anyway. The drawers hold some socks and t-shirts, a couple of pairs of worn jeans, but the very bottom one clangs as he jerks it free, and inside, a fully loaded first aid box.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you’ He mutters again. His wound is congealing now, and he surveys it in the dusty mirror hanging on the wall. Ellie’s stitching is jagged, clearly done with a trembling, inexperienced hand, but he’s never been more grateful, because for the most part, the stitches have held well. The skin of his stomach is not as red or hot as he’d expected as he cleans it with the antiseptic wipe.
He’d live to see another day, he thinks. He hopes. However long he needs to keep Ellie safe, to get her to a place called home. Surely the kid deserved that, as a bare minimum, after all this.
She deserved so much more than this.
The vegetable soup is salty, not particularly pleasant after 20 years in a packet, but it does the job, makes his nausea recede a little and silences his stomach a bit and he pushes the empty mug onto the coffee table and settles back to watch Ellie sleep from his spot on the floral armchair.
It’s several hours later when he wakes with a start, blood pounding in his ears as he blinks the sleep from his eyes and finds the futon empty.
‘Ellie.’ He calls out before he can stop himself, before he feels the warm weight against his feet. Ellie is curled up like a cat in a quilt on the floor, fingers curled tightly under the criss crossing laces of his boot. ‘Ellie, sweetheart, what are you doing down there?’ She stiffens a little as he bends over to pick her up, to put his hand under her shoulders and gather her up into his lap, just like he did when Sarah was a toddler and wanted comfort from him.
‘Don’t leave me there.’ She’s groggy with sleep, one arm gesturing loosely to the futon before falling against his chest, burying her head under his chin. Joel clasps her tight, lets one hand cradle her head.
‘I won’t baby girl, you can stay right here, as long as you want.’
It hurts to hold her like a child, like his child, to know that she wants comfort from him. Because she is not Sarah. She could never be Sarah. But he realises, as her body slackens again with sleep, that it feels good too. It feels right, to give her this and he can’t believe it took something so desperately terrible to happen to her for him to give it. He owes her so much more.
As he drifts back to sleep, his final thought is that he had to be better. Had to do better. He needed her and she needed him and he couldn’t fail her ever again.
+1
She is not with him when he wakes but he can hear her footsteps, the wood floor of the mezzanine creaking, and he stifles a groan as his stiff joints stretch as he takes the steps.
Ellie stands in front of the mirror, thermal vest hiked up under her chest and she’s winding a strip of cloth around her body, obscuring the expanse of blackened skin on her stomach. He can tell instantly that she’s calmer, more aware.
‘I think one’s broken. Maybe.’ She ties the fabric off and turns to look at him. Her hair is still loose, wild and frizzy where blood has dried in as she slept on it.
‘Can I check you?’ He takes a seat at the edge of the bed and watches her root through the bundles of socks he’d tossed there the night before.
‘No.’ Her voice rises a little and she looks at him and shakes her head. ‘I know how to check broken ribs. FEDRA school.’ The sweater she pulls over her is comically large, grazing the tops of her knees and slipping off one shoulder and if this had been any other day, Joel was sure he’d be cracking a joke at her expense. But today, when she sits beside him, he just tugs at the collar, pulls it up over her shoulder.
‘Ellie, you hurt anywhere else?’ He tries to meet her eyes as he says it, to show he is not afraid of whatever she may respond with. If David - if that happened, he would find a way to take care of it. Get her back to Jackson, find somewhere, anywhere to make sure that there were no physical consequences.
She looks at him for a beat and he can tell she’s considering whether she wants to answer or not.
‘You can tell me anything, you know that right?’
Ellie leans in at that, rests her head on his shoulder. ‘I know.’ She mutters. ‘He was going to. To - to do that. I screamed and I screamed and he liked it. He didn’t even care that we would’ve burned up in there. But I got the - I don’t know what it’s called? One of those knives to cut meat -‘ Her hands poke out of the too-long sleeves to draw an outline of the knife in mid-air with her pointer fingers.
‘A cleaver?’
‘Yeah, a cleaver. He’d dropped it when I stabbed him with the steak knife. It was by my head and I just stabbed him and stabbed him, over and over and I couldn’t stop, even when he had no face left, I just kept going and going - ‘ She’s stumbling over words now, choked with emotion. ‘I didn’t want to stop, I just wanted to make him die over and over.’
His mouth feels like it has filled with acid and he has to blink hard to stop himself welling up as he puts his chin on her head, takes one of her hands, her knuckles scabbed and raw looking, in both of his.
‘You did the right thing. You stopped him. You saved you. He deserved nothing better than that.’ He is firm as as he tells her, squeezes her hand lightly to emphasise his point.
‘I saved me.’ She recites back, like a mantra.
‘And I am so, so, sorry I wasn’t there.’ Joel takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. ‘I should have been there and it shouldn’t have been on you to kill him.’
Ellie brings up the sleeve over her free hand, drags it over her cheeks quickly, sniffs hard and nods under his chin. ‘You were in my head. Helped me know what to do, how to get the medicine. Is it enough? Do we need to go back for more?’
‘No. No, I think it’s done the job. You saved me. Gonna have one badass scar there though, nice stitchin’.’
Ellie laughs lightly. ‘I hear that chicks dig scars.’
He can’t help but laugh back at that, making her snorts turn into quiet giggles. ‘Well, you be sure to remind the ladies of Jackson, when we get back there eventually, yeah?’
+5
They’ve finally gotten enough strength between them to get further than a couple of miles a day and to get some resources together. The snow has eased off almost entirely, although the temperatures haven’t risen enough for it to melt.
Ellie had gotten real quiet since they’d left the A-frame house. Joel didn’t realise how much he’d gotten used to her chatter. Back when they’d first met, he found her irritating beyond belief, not only for how much she talked, but for how she didn’t give a damn that he did not want to hear her, let alone answer her numerous questions. Somehow, sometime over the last few months, her conversation became less a nuisance and more endearing and he’d more than once caught himself wondering how on earth she came up with some of the things she did, the weird and wonderful questions she’d want him to answer.
And now, nothing. Nothing except the basics. That, and sticking so closely it was all he could do to get a minute to take a piss.
He thinks she thinks he’s going to disappear on her. Or drop dead from his stab wound, maybe. More than once, he’d caught her checking on him as he slept, waking up just the day before to her hand, a hair away from his nose and mouth, feeling his breath exhale onto her palm.
And where she’d always stubbornly climbed over turnstiles or fences alone, jumped on stones to cross rivers with no fear of falling in, now she waited for him and took his hand as they did it together, keeping one mitten clad palm in his, long after help was no longer required.
Whatever she needed. He didn’t have much, but he could give her all of that.
+19
‘Are you gonna take me back to Jackson with you? When the Fireflies get the cure out of me?’ She’s picking at a piece of roasted rabbit, with little enthusiasm, like most meals she eats these days.
Joel is taken aback by that. First, a question that didn’t correlate to whatever they were doing at that moment. Second, the doubt that laced her voice. They hadn’t discussed it, of course not, because neither of them were the best at talking about feelings and wants. But he’d not considered an alternative, not in a long, long time. He’d stay with her in Salt Lake, if the Fireflies were there, of course. Sit by her side til it was time to go and then take her back to Jackson. Where she would be safe and get to be a kid.
‘You don’t want to?’
Ellie glances up at him, then looks down at her food.
‘I want to. I don’t want -‘. She stops herself, takes a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to live with some strangers or whatever when we get there.’
‘Well I’m hoping we’d get to go back to that house we stayed in before. Feels like the right size for us, right? No strangers, just me and you, kid.’
‘Me and you?’ She repeats but she looks back up at him and a small smile is creeping over face.
‘I was kinda thinking you were stuck with me now. I’m gonna need someone to do my laundry and get me my coffee when I get old.’
The joke is weak, the perfect set up for a ribbing about his age and Joel knows it. Ellie snorts loudly and he can’t help but laugh with her.
‘When? Dude, that time has been and gone.’
‘Yeah, yeah, well I’ll hold off til you get through school and then it’s a life of looking after your old man.’ He’s deliberate with his words. He knows he’s not going to say dad, or father. He can’t bring himself to even think in that context, even though he knows damn well that’s what it is. He’ll let her say it, if she wants to and take it from there.
The smile on Ellie’s face becomes a full grin at that but then her jaw drops when the first part of his answer sinks in.
‘School?’
It’s Joel’s turn to snort out loud.
+42
Ellie has endured more needles poking in her in two days than Joel had in his entire life. She’d been so graceful about it, barely letting out a sound as they jabbed and prodded, listened to endless questions that she couldn’t answer about genetic history and childhood illnesses, never once grumbling as they woke her every hour to observe her vitals.
Unlike him. Joel had no such patience for the insensitive quacks and almost manhandled the last one out of the room after he asked for fourth time that session, if Ellie knew if her biological father had any family history of heart disease. The day before, he’d almost floored the orderly that held Ellie in place for a lumbar puncture in a way that made her freeze up in fear, bring back memories still unknown to him that brought tears to her eyes before the needle even came near her skin.
She’s groggy now, a round of sedation wearing off and she’s got one arm hanging off the bed, reaching for him to come lean on the mattress.
‘Joel?’
‘Yeah, baby girl?’ He adjusts the tube that runs up her nose, pushes it back into position.
‘Do you think I could paint my bedroom in Jackson?’ Her voice is serious, like she’d asked him to build her a house from scratch. Even if she had, he thinks he’d do it for her, brick by brick.
‘Yeah, I think we can manage that. What colour are you thinking?’
‘I thought black might be cool. But then I realised that would be such a cliche, you know? Troubled teen from the outside expresses herself through the medium of wall paint.’
Joel chuckles. ‘You might be right there, gotta keep those other kids guessing.’
‘I agree, never let them know what you’re thinking, right? So maybe like, green. Not shitty vomit green, or that grass colour. What about forest green?’
He has no idea if Jackson has paint, if there would even be that perfect shade of forest green available, but damn, he’s gonna scour every Home Depot in the country to make sure she gets what she wants.
‘Sure, baby, sounds great.’
+76
They’ve been at Jackson for a few weeks. Ellie had finally, after much cajoling, started school and Joel was pleased to have found himself with a construction job and the odd patrol of the Jackson perimeter. With work to be done on the house he and Ellie lived in, his days had a routine, which felt oddly comforting most of the time. He hadn’t realised how good it could feel, to not have something to worry about the minute he woke up.
‘I’m not going back, you can teach me how to be a contractor.’ Ellie slams the front door behind her, stomps through to the kitchen where he sits at the old Formica dining table, plans for the house down on Lime Tree Ave in front of him and a pencil behind his ear. She tugs her hoodie over her head, tosses it on the table almost sending his glass of water flying.
‘Hey!’ He chides gently, picking it off the paper stack and tucking it on the chair behind him. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s stupid there. She’s so boring, who cares about fucking Edgar Allan Poe? Man’s been dead a million years. I also don’t care about how to sew a hem on goddamn dress pants. I have literally sewn you back together again, who does Mrs Johnson think is going to give a crap about too long pants?’
Her rant continues for a few minutes and Joel has learned the hard way, it’s sometimes best to just let her continue until she runs out of steam. He knows there’s more to this than frustration over the school syllabus and eventually it would work its way out into the open.
‘So?’ She asks impatiently. ‘Can I quit?’
Joel looks at her for a beat and can see her glassy eyes, the way her fists clench and unclench.
‘No, baby girl. You know its not up to me. We stay here, we gotta follow the rules. School until you’re 16 is yours.’ He is sympathetic. He gets it. She spent her whole life railroaded into submission by FEDRA until they left Boston and then she lived the best part of a year that no other kid in Jackson could even begin to imagine, taking responsibility for more than even the most competent adult here could manage. He finds it hard too. Trying to rub along with so many people, people who didn’t ever face the hardships of a QZ, or being on the road, was hard some days. More than once he’d found himself taking a breathe before stepping back, where only a year or so ago, it would’ve been a step forward, fists raised.
‘I hate it, Joel.’ There’s no venom in her words, Ellie sounds resigned to her fate and steps into his orbit, where he puts one arm around her waist, tugs her into his side. ‘There’s this thing…’. She fishes out a scrap of folded paper from her back pocket and Joel drops his arm to unfold it on the table and read it.
‘Parent/teacher conference?’ It’s a slip that he needs to fill out and he sees, under the spot where he selects which day he wants to attend, the next requirement, ‘name of parent’ and when he looks up at Ellie and he realises, this is it, the heart of the issue.
Joel pulls the pencil from behind his ear, scrawls his name on the dotted line, circles the option for ‘father’ and the day he knows he’s not on patrol. The instant he drops the pencil down on the table, he feels the tension drop out of Ellie’s shoulders and he puts his arm back round her waist and he sees her head turn away from him and he knows she won’t want to talk about it.
‘I don’t care what she says about how much Edgar Allan Poe you know, you know that right? I know you better than she ever will and I know what you are capable of. That’s all that matters.’
Ellie swallows a hiccup and lets her weight fall against him.
‘Ok, but just so you know, I would still rather be a contractor.’
+121
The baby, Sadie, is so tiny and perfect, that Joel can hardly believe she is real. Dark curls halo around her head and she blinks up at him with surprising alertness. For a split second, he is taken back to being twenty three, shit scared at the prospect of being a dad and trembling as he takes Sarah in his arms for the first time.
‘I can see that she gets her good looks from Maria.’ Ellie jibes at Tommy, gives him a gentle nudge in the ribs and he lets out a laugh and ruffles her hair good-naturedly.
‘Damn straight.’ Maria voices from her spot on the couch and she gives Ellie a grin. ‘There’s hope for the poor girl, after all.’
Joel and Tommy both roll their eyes but say nothing, just turn back to stare at the youngest Miller, burbling softly in Joel’s arms.
Ellie is antsy, he can see out of the corner of his eye. She’d told him, late last night after she’d raced to get the nurse when Maria’s waters broke, that she’d never seen a baby up close before. Her voice had been a mixture of trepidation and enthusiasm, caught between wanting to feel childlike excitement of a new arrival and anxiety, uncertain of her place in the baby’s life.
‘You want to hold her?’ It’s Tommy who asks her, like he can sense her nervousness. Joel feels a rush of love for his brother. For being so accepting of this kid, who rocks up out of nowhere, swearing like a sailor and sometimes behaving like a feral cat. It’s taken him so long to accept that he loves Ellie and to see others start to love her too quells so much of the anxiety that sometimes finds him in the small hours, worrying about who will take care of her if something happens to him.
‘I don’t know - I’ve never - ‘
Tommy cuts her off with a wave of his hand. ‘Go sit down, you’ll be fine.’
She takes a seat next to Maria, sinking into the couch carefully, mindful not to jostle the woman, who Joel knew was sporting several stitches. He steps up slowly, takes his time to get across the room so that Sadie doesn’t get upset at the movement and lowers gently her into to Ellie’s arms.
‘Got her head?’ He murmurs before adjusting Ellie’s arms slightly, finding a position that’s both comfortable for her and Sadie.
Ellie is silent and Joel thinks for the first time ever, it might be for the right reason. Maybe silent isn’t the right word. In awe. The three adults all watch her for a moment, the only sound the gentle smacking of Sadie’s mouth.
‘She’s so cool.’ Ellie finally announces with a whisper.
‘So cool.’ Joel agrees with a smile.
And just like that, the silence is broken, Ellie has a million questions for Maria. How long until Sadie can eat real food? When do babies walk? What does she think her first word is going to be? Joel and Tommy leave them to it, step across the sitting room to the kitchen to move the crib up the stairs to the master bedroom. Tommy has made it himself and Joel was pretty impressed. He takes a second to admire the curve of the headboard, he doesn’t think he could have done any better himself, it was clear it was made with love.
‘You’re gonna be a great dad, you know.’
Tommy swallows hard, nods once. ‘God, I hope so.’
‘I get it, you know. About life going on. I get it, now.’ He claps one hand on his brother’s shoulder, moves to take one end of the crib.
As Joel backs slowly towards the stairs, bracing himself to lift the frame of the cot over the first step, he listens to Maria laugh out loud.
‘Ellie, if your cousin’s first word ends up being ‘dick’, I am gonna lose it.’
He turns to catch Ellie’s face and he can’t help but grin wide as her face runs the gamut, confusion turning to pleasure and then a smile as bright as the sun.
+165
It’s the last big project on the house, slotted in around patrols and other construction work in the community. Ellie’s been sitting on Tommy and Maria’s porch for the last hour, Sadie on her lap, cooing away at Ellie’s waggling fingers. Every time he had dipped his brush in the can, he couldn’t help but steal a glance across the way at the pair, to watch the kid be so gentle with the baby, something he’d never thought she would be capable of.
He wipes his hands on an old rag, admiring the final coat of paint on the porch railings.
The sun has just about gone in and he remembers that today is taco night in the canteen, his and Ellie’s favourite. He’d heard rumours too, about a new batch of home brew that was up for trade. It was shaping up to be a good day.
Maria steps out on to her porch and presses a kiss on Ellie’s head as she trades a book for her daughter. She’d taken to doing that lately, giving Ellie little things, a book, a pack of hair ties, and once, a bottle of deep purple nail polish that had not only ended up on Ellie’s toes, but his too.
‘Joel, I’m heading down to meet Tommy, you coming?’ Her voice has warmth, he notes. She’d taken to Ellie immediately, even when Ellie was difficult as hell, right back at the beginning of their permanent move. But she had remained standoffish with him for a long time and he strongly suspected that if it hadn’t been for the fact that he came back with the kid, looking in rough shape, he’d have not been let in. Since Sadie arrived though, he felt her change, little by little. He thinks maybe, she gets it a bit more now, the things you do for family.
‘We’ll follow you down, just cleaning up.’
She gives him a wave as she heads off and Ellie skips over to him, lets out a low whistle. He’d finally been able to teach her that one only a couple of weeks ago, and she liked to use it at every opportunity.
‘Not a bad paint job. Think we might be the envy of the street at this rate.’
‘Damn straight.’ He gathers up his tools, tosses them inside the house. ‘Ready for taco night?’
‘Fuck yes, I love taco night.’ She pumps her fist in the air and he slings one arm over her shoulder as they head down the street, taking the road at a leisurely pace. It’s nice now, he thinks. Even if it will feel weird for a long time, to be able to go out with his kid for dinner, to give a wave to his neighbour and not worry that they might kill you to take your share of food.
‘Hey Joel?’
‘Yeah, baby girl?’
‘Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon?’ Ellie pauses for a beat and bites back a laugh in anticipation of her own punchline. ‘The food was good but there was no atmosphere!’
Joel throws back his head and laughs all the way down the street.