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“Oh, for heaven’s sake—”
Edgeworth clamps his lips shut before he can say another word and tucks one hand into his chest as pain lances up his arm. The hammer in his other hand has become dangerous. Traitorous. He glances behind himself. Not too far away, in the shadow of stage right, Trucy’s boots click as she paces. Her voice drifts to him quietly, fragments of a conversation he’s not privy to and doesn’t need to be.
“You don’t gotta apologize, Polly,” she says, voice riddled with concern. “You’re just making yourself sound worse. I told you, we’re gonna be fine! You just focus on feeling better. Uncle Miles and I already have everything sorted here at the Wonder Bar anyway; between the two of us, we’re sure to get these sets for my next show finished in no time…!”
Mercifully, it doesn’t seem as if his near-outburst has interrupted anything.
Edgeworth pulls his hand from his chest and looks at his fingers. The round crown of his thumb sports a bright, angry red. It stings, but nothing seems to be broken. Bruised, perhaps, like his ego, but everything’s in the right place. And if no one’s around to witness his blunder, then did it really happen?
Edgeworth sighs and bends to his work again. He pinches the nail, propping it against the wood plank.
He raises the hammer.
“Ack—”
He knows what the problem is before he jerks his hand away for the second time: a splinter, caught in the side of his palm from where it had been resting.
Colorful language that Edgeworth would never admit to saying, nonetheless knowing, tumbles from his mouth as he twists his arm around to get as good of a look as he can get at the far side of his palm.
“Are you sure you want to be here, Uncle Miles?”
Edgeworth jumps.
He looks to Trucy, now hovering over his shoulder instead of pacing back-and-forth in the eaves of the stage. Her brows are paradoxically furrowed above her friendly smile. Her phone is nowhere to be seen.
“You didn’t have to volunteer to help me, you know,” she continues.
Edgeworth quickly clears his throat. He doesn’t tell her that volunteer might be a strong word when one considers how persuasive Wright’s concerned father shtick had been over the phone this morning. Instead, he says, “Nonsense. Wright informed me that Mr. Justice would not be able to assist you as he usually does. And since your father is busy preparing for the bar, I thought the least I could do would be to offer my services as help.” Awkwardly, he holds up the hammer with his non-splintered hand and waves it. “Of course… I’m still rather surprised you’re letting me do this.”
Trucy giggles. “Well, I’m still surprised you actually came.”
Is it that important to her? The simple act of showing up? Trucy says it like it’s an incredible thing.
“Perhaps that makes two of us,” he mutters in a half-hearted attempt at levity.
The unavoidable truth is this: Edgeworth is uncomfortable. He does not know what he is doing, nor how he got into this mess, nor why Trucy thinks giving him a hammer, nails, and some wood is a good idea. But at the very least, he is here. At the very least, he has rolled up his sleeves and has taken off his coat and cravat, and at the very least, he is trying his best to fill a pair of shoes he has never been asked to fill before. That should account for something, right?
He does not think Trucy’s careful watch over his shoulder while he flounders helps his confidence, however.
Once he pries free the offending splinter and once more picks up the hammer and nail, he can feel Trucy’s eyes ogling his profile again. Wide. As if she’s half-mystified.
He can’t fathom why.
And then, there’s a gentle poke in the center of his back. One, and then two. The touch is so soft, he might not have noticed if he weren’t particularly and dangerously ticklish.
He restrains a sigh. “Is there something else I can do for you, Ms. Wright?”
“Oh, no! It’s just…” Trucy’s voice drifts off as she watches him narrowly avoid his thumb with the final drive of another nail into the wood. “No offense, and I know I just said this, but I’m still having a hard time believing you’re actually here. Doing this.”
Absent-mindedly, Edgeworth observes that it looks like the frame for this bush set piece is nearly finished. Thank god.
He picks up another nail and hums. “Why’s that?”
“I didn’t think you did things that you weren’t confident you could do one-hundred-percent to your satisfaction.”
Bang.
This time, the hammer completely misses both the nail and Edgeworth’s thumb. It hits way off the mark, digging into the wooden backing of the prop a few inches away.
Immediately, Trucy sucks in a breath through her teeth. Both of her gloved hands wave in front of her middle. “Oh, gee. Sorry. Why’d I—forget that, haha! I shouldn’t have—that was kinda rude, wasn’t it? Haha! Silly me!” Trucy clears her throat and straightens up, rocking her weight from the heels of her feet to her toes.
Was it silly?
Edgeworth stares at his hand and the nail still pinched between his forefinger and thumb. He falls back to his haunches, sets down the nail, and lifts his hand to look it over from the tip of his fingers to the round pad of his heel.
“Actually,” he murmurs, a little impressed with himself, “I don’t think you need to apologize. To be perfectly candid, I’m not all that offended.”
Trucy stops moving. “You’re not?”
“No.” Edgeworth fights the urge to smile as he relents to the awkward silence. “In fact, some part of me thinks you may have a point.”
“I do?”
“As you may have already guessed, all aspects of set design and construction and painting are largely outside of my comfort zone.” He clears his throat. “I cannot confess to being very handcrafty, so yes. I, too, am surprised to find myself here, attempting to do something I can’t claim to have a skill set in—especially when I most prefer to be the smartest person in the room at any given moment.” Slowly, he turns his hand over to examine it now from his wrist to his knuckles. “I do not think I’ve thought about that until now.”
A shadow passes over his side. When Edgeworth glances up, he can see Trucy stepping around the prop bush’s rounded edge to squat across from him on the other side. She rests her chin against the vee of her fists, her elbows on her knees.
Something about how she stares at him seems familiar.
“Actually,” he says, “this reminds me of something I used to do with my father when I was little.”
“Really?”
Edgeworth nods. He bows to his work again, picking up the nail once more, and can’t help the way his voice softens as he goes on. Such tenderness would normally be embarrassing if it happened in front of others, but with an audience of only Trucy, he doesn’t think he minds. “It was just my father and I those first several years before… well. Occasionally, whenever we bought a new bookshelf or bureau, I would help him put it together.”
He remembers the way his father would take his hands and show him how to strike the nail just right: firmly yet carefully. He remembers the cautionary tales his father used to tell him of the times his own thumbs had been bruised and broken from carelessness, and how he used to laugh when he said, “Don’t be like me,” when all Edgeworth wanted so much was to be just like him.
He remembers that there was once a time in his life when it was okay to not know what to do.
Edgeworth lifts his head to look at Trucy now fiddling and picking at the edges of her skirt.
He wonders if she feels the same way. Not that this in particular needs to be a learning experience for her because she clearly knows far more about set design and building than he does—but he hopes Trucy knows she doesn’t have to act omniscient and perfect in front of him. Perhaps, it’s okay for her to not know things, even. Perhaps, if he should be so lucky, he could be there to teach her.
Don’t be like me.
“Do you think he would have liked me?”
“Who?” Edgeworth hisses as he accidentally drops the hammer on his thumb. Instinctively, his hand floats to his mouth, only to sharply drop to his chest once he’s aware of how that must look.
He lifts his gaze to Trucy as she says, “Your dad. The guy you were talking about before. If he had lived to get the chance to meet me, do you think… do you think he would’ve liked me?”
That she should have to ask it, that she should not already know, makes Edgeworth’s chest pang.
“Ms. Wright—Trucy,” Edgeworth calls. He drops his aching hand and places it flat to the ground. He meets her eyes from the other side of the set piece and doesn’t look away. “My father would have adored you.”
Meekly, Trucy’s smile widens. It starts off bashful at first. Then, the more it seems to register to her that Edgeworth means this and is not just saying it, it becomes something bigger and brighter. Something supernova. Trucy ducks her face into her forearms, then jumps to her feet, spinning away towards stage left.
“You’re almost finished with this one, Uncle Miles, so I’m gonna grab the next set piece for you. Then I’ll get started painting! Okay?”
Despite himself, Edgeworth finds himself smiling, too.
“Very well,” he calls after her and readies himself to drive the final nail home.
It slips in through the wood easily and cleanly after a few loud knocks. By no means is it perfect—he can already tell he’s hammered it in at an awkward angle—but all the same he leans back and looks at his handiwork as he pulls the prop up to let it stand on its own.
“Not bad,” he tells himself, feeling oddly content for being a bumbling old fool. “Not bad at all.”
