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“We’ll go see Uncle Alec’s house, isn’t that right Fred?” Ellie says, half talking to the baby and half to herself. “And tomorrow we can go on the teacups.”
It’s almost a joke, calling Hardy something he’ll surely hate, rubbing it in that he’s chosen a ridiculous place to live, only a step up from the Trader’s – it makes her chuckle to herself until she realizes that at this point he is an uncle, of sorts, or at least one of the only people willing to spend enough time with her that Fred might recognize him. The smile fades from her face, after that.
He makes no sign that he’s heard — but he’s always listening, she remembers later that night once she’s put Fred to bed.
“What reason did Lee give for going to France, again? And did you ever get any leads about this person they supposedly saw lurking across the street?” Her questions are met with silence, and she looks up to see that he’s paused, seemingly unable to tear his eyes from the tiny figure asleep on his couch.
“Uncle Alec, mm?” he murmurs, half under his breath — like he’s testing it out. Ellie’s surprised breath must catch his attention because he doesn’t quite start when he realizes he’s been caught staring, but the tips of his ears go red as he turns to her with a scowl.
Her mouth is half-open, an apology for being forward on the tip of her tongue, when she realizes that she’s not sorry, not really. And he doesn’t look all that mad, at any rate, just vaguely bemused. “Does it have to be Alec, though?”
The absurdity of the question gives her pause, if only for a moment.
“Does it have to be— it’s your name, I’ll not have my toddler going around addressing you as sir,” she says, tone more withering than she perhaps intended.
He raises an eyebrow, scrunches his entire face up in a dramatic wince. “Alright, fine, you’re right. What about—he could call me Hardy, couldn’t he? Like you.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she says, “he’ll call you Uncle Alec.”
He sighs again, put-upon, and turns back to the files spread out in front of them.
“Oh, alright then,” he says, and he sounds like he wants to toss her out but there’s something soft in his eyes, a quietly pleased smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
She falls asleep on the couch, curled around Fred, and tries not to think about how she sleeps easier than she has in weeks on Alec’s shitty furniture, in his depressing little waterfront shack, or about the way she’s started calling him Alec, in her head.
“Miller,” he rumbles the next morning with little concern for whether or not she’s awake to hear, “where’s the bread?”
“Were you not listening, when I said we’d eaten it?” she lifts her head to glare at him, only to be caught off guard at the sight of her former boss in pajamas, looking mournfully into his sparse pantry. She’s not sure why it’s such a surprise – it’s not as if she’d expected him to sleep in a suit. Well. Maybe she had, a bit. It softens him, though, the pale morning light and his rumpled sweater.
The illusion is shattered when he turns to her with a frown. “No.”
She rolls her eyes, his frown deepens.
“Well, there’s not much else – can that one eat eggs?” He gestures vaguely to Fred, although she’s fairly confident it’s just to rile her up. Still, bickering over a toddler’s breakfast is more comfortable emotional ground than staring at Hardy thinking about how he looks more peaceful in the morning, before he’s awake enough to think about things like justice and penance and old debts, so she takes the bait.
“Can that one—he’s nearly two, yes, Fred can eat eggs,” she says, elbowing him as she pushes past him to the fridge. “Can you cook eggs?”
He scoffs at her. “What kind of a—yes. I’m not completely incapable of caring for myself.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” she hums, turning away to hide her grin at the irritated noise he makes.
Hardy is sat at the table trying to feed a typically resistant Fred by the time she’s changed and washed her face in his tiny, cracked sink, redone her hair where a few messy curls had fallen loose.
“NO,” Fred shouts, throwing the spoon to the floor. He’s been fussy, lately, had never been the best eater but seems to be channeling all of his anxieties into meal times in a way Tom never had – although Tom never had Fred’s particular set of upsets to deal with, either. She doesn’t know what to do about it – she can’t very well get into a screaming match with a toddler over cheerios, but when he won’t eat—
It’s overwhelming, and breakfast yesterday had been a nightmare that had left her near tears and Fred sullen and covered in yoghurt. Ellie decides she wants no part in this particular battle, leans against the door to watch instead as Hardy picks up the spoon and hands it back to Fred, no sign of irritation in his features.
“Alright, little man,” he says softly, “if you don’t want to eat that’s your choice. But you’ll not keep me from my breakfast.”
What had he been like, Alec Hardy, family man? She wonders as he turns away from Fred, goes back to eating his own breakfast. It’s a familiar trick, although she’s not so good with the execution. But Hardy – she knows firsthand that he’s excellent at ignoring people.
It’s hard to imagine him as a father. She can’t quite reconcile the surly, stern man she knows with the image of him changing a diaper, or walking around with a wailing baby at two in the morning – had he worn his exhaustion differently, then? Been less dire and despairing, less desperate? She tries to picture him, young and still running himself ragged, but happy, happy with his family and his work and his life in a way that she’s never known him to be.
Fred’s smeared some eggs on his face, and Ellie winces as he reaches for Hardy’s shirtsleeves, makes a mess of them too. But there’s no reaction other than a single raised eyebrow, he just continues eating, turns to the next page in the paper. Fred looks confused, then vaguely put out, then sulkily takes a bite of eggs.
Hardy cracks a smile, sly and self-satisfied, and she realizes he knows she’s watching.
“Not bad, that,” she says softly, sitting beside him.
“Used to work wonders on Daisy,” he murmurs. “Figured it was worth a try with wee Fred, too.”
There’s a wistful smile on Hardy’s face as he watches Fred eat, one she suspects is mirrored on her own – both of them lost in thought.
Joe had always been wonderful with the kids in a way she never was – knew when to be firm, when to give in. She’s too soft by half most days, then loses her temper when she doesn’t mean to. She misses it, having someone to step in, to give her a break. There’s the sitter, of course, but it’s not the same as knowing that someone would be there every day, that she didn’t have to face it all alone. But she does, and despite her efforts Fred still fusses at every meal and Tom won’t be in the same room as her for more than five minutes at a time.
There’s a burning in her eyes; she blinks it away and turns to say something pithy to Hardy, something he’ll want to argue about that might distract her, but she’s caught off-guard by his expression as he watches Fred eat, soft and distant and so sad—
She wonders what he’s thinking of, if his thoughts have taken on the same melancholy hers have. She’s on the verge of asking him before she catches herself – down that path, she suspects, lies something a bit too depressing for so early in the morning.
She pulls herself together with a resolute sniff. “Right then. You’ve got egg on your shirt.”
He blinks at her, looks down to his sleeve as if he’d forgotten.
“Aye,” he says, voice rough. “Seems that way.”
By the time he comes out in a fresh but similarly rumpled shirt they’ve both collected themselves; the air is less heavy, the moment gone.
The fair is up and running whenthey leave, and Fred, who had been napping when they’d walked through the previous night, is transfixed. He twists in his stroller, reaching up to tug anxiously at Ellie’s sleeve and point urgently at the twinkling lights and the colorful rides.
“Oh?” she sing-songs, lifting him, “what’s that? You want to see the rides? Do you think Uncle Alec rides them? Is that why he’s picked a house here?”
She laughs at the thought, and at the way Hardy makes a sound in the back of his throat and shakes his head at her.
“Alright, yes, it’s not exactly prime real estate, have you got it out of your system?” he grumbles, scrubbing a hand over his eyes.
“Mm, not yet,” she says, flashing him her best cheeky smile. He opens his mouth as if to argue but before he can say anything Fred squeals in her arms, kicks his legs to be set down, and, upon gaining his freedom, promptly runs over to the gate of one of the rides – the teacups, she realizes, maybe he’d been more awake than she thought – and looks back at them pleadingly.
“Well, go on then, Miller,” Hardy says, clearing his throat and nodding in the fair’s general direction. “You’ll not win that fight.”
He sounds exasperated, but when she chances a look out of the corner of her eye he’s fighting a smile. She does something impulsive.
“Oh, no, it’ll have to be you,” she blurts, hoping she sounds apologetic. “I get terrible motion sickness on those things, and we’ve such a long drive today.”
A blatant lie. He doesn’t know enough to challenge her on it, although his eyes narrow suspiciously. She uses every ounce of her willpower to look genuine, and thinks she pulls it off, too – or, for reasons unknown, he's willing to humor her.
He huffs, rolls his eyes, and when he picks up Fred and gets in line for a ticket he fixes her with a look so plaintive she nearly loses her composure right then and there.
Fred is delighted as the ride starts, clapping and giggling and holding onto Alec’s tie with an iron grip. Alec, for his part, glowers at her with each rotation of the ride as some horrific earworm of a song echoes through the tinny speakers.
She doesn’t even try to hide the laugh that bubbles up from her chest at the contrast of him, dour and gloomy as ever among the lights and sounds of the fair. They must look properly mad, she thinks, Alec and Fred on an otherwise deserted ride at nine in the morning and her laughing herself silly from the sidelines.
He catches her, of course, and when his frown deepens she laughs even harder and feels something loosen around her chest, just a fraction.