Archive of Our Own ^beta

So it turns out the rest of the third grade isn’t so bad.

Joel kind of insists Ellie finish out the year and if she really hates her school, he said they’ll “try something else.” Which Ellie has a feeling just means going to a different school. It’s not like she wants to go hang out in that work trailer with a collection of workbooks every single day anyway. Might as well make the most of this whole going-to-school thing.

Some of the kids who sit near her aren’t so bad. Aiden laughs at the jokes Ellie mumbles under her breath, and Lily is always talking to Ellie even if Ellie isn’t always the nicest in return. She starts making a point to be a little bit nicer.

Sure, Mrs. Winchester’s breath still smells like the fish sticks and tartar sauce she eats at lunch every day, and Mr. Appleby keeps making that annoying sound in the back of his throat between every sentence, but it’s not the worst.

Joel helps her with her homework, so she’s not the stupid kid in class and sometimes he even drives her to and from school which pretty much makes her elite. Art class is cool and music class isn’t bad and science is primitive, a word she learned from Maria, at best, but still interesting. Lunch always has her opening her Savage Starlight lunchbox to a sandwich, fruit, chips, snacks, almost always a juicebox! Sometimes the whole table makes trades and everyone’s always envious of Ellie’s offerings. A fact which quickly helps her gain rank amongst her third grade class. 

Recess is the one that takes her by surprise the most.

Historically speaking, she wasn’t the kid anyone wanted to play with. She was known for being too loud and saying too many cuss words. At the end of the day, moms pull their kids along by their wrists and whisper-yell at them not to talk to her.

Like her misfortune was catching.

But it’s a little better here. 

She’d started school right around when the weather turned and would occupy herself by twisting in the seat of a swing or scooping mounds of snow together to create a variety of creatures. She got pretty decent at it, could do way more than just a boring old snowman. One kid was amazed by Ellie’s snow-dino even though it only kind of looked like a dinosaur, and asked her to make him a turtle.

Ellie made a damn good snow-turtle. 

After that, she gained popularity in no time. Quickly becoming a kid who was not avoided like the plague.

Once the weather warmed, it turned into her joining in on rounds of freeze tag, the mulch is lava, and illegal tree climbing on the edge of the property. She’d gone the second highest, only beat out by Caroline Laurens who wasn’t afraid of heights because she goes rock climbing, as she made sure the whole class knew every single time she opened her stupid fucking mouth. 

But still. It gave Ellie street cred.

It’s just a boring old Wednesday at the end of April when Ellie’s out playing with Tyler and Aiden. Angelina is kind of playing with them but she and Tyler keep getting into fights so she stomps away, looking to Ellie to follow her because of some “girl code” Ellie neither signed nor consented to. 

So whatever, recess is over soon anyway. Ellie is just going to mind her own business, not at all paying attention to Angelina’s pouting or Tyler’s eye rolls and definitely not at all looking at Caroline’s showing off over on the jungle gym.

So what if she decides to go over to the jungle gym too? Who cares if she watches Caroline flip herself around on the red-painted bars, listening to the squeak and slap of metal slipping through palms and being grabbed back ahold of? It had rained earlier in the morning and the smell of worms and wet wood tingle in the back of Ellie’s nose as the sun pokes from behind a cloud, just bright enough to make her squint as she analyzes Caroline’s movements.

She could definitely do that. There was like, a mere second that her hands weren’t touching the bars. As long as Ellie flipped fast enough and tucked her knees tight enough…yeah. Yeah, she could totally do that.

“Ms. Laurens! If I catch you doing that again you’re missing all of recess tomorrow, young lady!” 

And see, Ms. Shields kind of made a mistake with that one. Because she hadn’t said anyone else couldn’t flip around seven feet from the ground on monkey bars that might just be the slightest bit slick from a morning rain. No siree, only Caroline isn’t allowed to do it. Which makes sense. Because she’s a show off. And nobody likes a show off. 

Joel agreed, for the record. It wasn’t just Ellie’s interpretation here.

Either way, Caroline and her friends scurry away, reassembling over at the game of Four Square that was clearly heating up with more than half the class getting involved. Angelina and Tyler had put their differences aside to go play, apparently.

For a minute, Ellie watches. She listens to the cheering and squeals and chanting and considers forgetting the whole flip routine to go join in. But this is the best opportunity to try it out! That way if she makes a fool of herself, no one will be around to witness it.

Decision made, Ellie scurries into position, wanting to complete the trick before Ms. Shields catches on. She climbs to the very top of the monkey bars, limbs shaking when she looks straight down at the darkened, damp mulch that seemed a whole further away than it did when she was dangling from the monkey bars the way you’re supposed to.

She swallows hard, imagines that she’s choking down fear along with her desire to wuss out. 

The trick is staying tucked up small, so that she doesn’t hit her head, and moving fast. Momentum is your friend. Joel had taught her that with a few of their games. Use your body to help, not hinder. Ellie can do that. Ellie can do this. 

Knees locking tight and hands gripped so firm her knuckles have gone white, she refuses to back down now. And see, the other trick Joel had taught her was not to start something if she didn’t feel certain she could finish it. He said it was about confidence, that your mind controls your body more than any other part of you, and maybe she hasn’t got the most confidence when she pushes herself off. Maybe her fists had been squeezing the metal bar so tight that they don’t let go when they’re supposed to, instead snagging her movement, catching her momentum right at its peak, and not giving her the chance to grab ahold.

In her surprise, her knees aren’t snuggly wrapped enough and all at once the ground is rushing to meet her. The scream comes past her lips without her giving it the right to.

“Ellie!”

Ah, shit. She was so gonna miss recess tomorrow.

Thankfully instead of hitting the ground head first, she hits it hand first. Which hurts like a fuckton, but she’s pretty sure diving into mulch would have been super not good.

She’s embarrassed and the wind’s been knocked out of her and that kind-of pain in her arm is real quickly turning into big-time pain in her arm so she just stays crumpled on the ground there until Ms. Shields’ hands are on her and she’s asking, “Oh my god. Ellie. Ellie! Are you okay, Ellie?”

“I’m fine,” she mumbles pitifully, hoping that no one actually saw what happened so she can just lie through her teeth about it. Maybe they’ll let her go to the nurse’s office and put an ice pack on her wrist. When you go to the nurse’s office because you got hurt, they let you call your parent or guardian. Which means Ellie could call Joel and maybe if she puts a little sniffle in her voice he’ll come pick her up early and give her dino bandaids and ice cream until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

“Did you hit your head? What happened? What hurts? Oh, don’t move. I don’t think you should move.”

But Ellie’s already moving. She goes to push herself from where she’s all frumpled and face down on the ground. She shoves her weight into her hand and there’s not a chance she’s holding back the cry of pain as stars overtake her vision. “Ow! Fuck, fuck, fuck. Ow!”

When she looks at her arm, Ellie almost blacks out. 

This might take more than a dino bandaid.

From there, everything is kind of a blur. An ambulance shows up, lights and sirens and everything. All the kids are exclaiming about how cool it is, and Ellie would think it’s cool, too, except her arm hurts too bad, and her eyes keep going all blurry and dark, and Ms. Shields is absolutely freaking the fuck out. 

“I need to call her dad!” is what she keeps telling Mr. Bowman, the vice principal, when he comes out to the scene. “I still need to call her dad!”

And yeah, maybe Ellie should remind everyone that Joel isn’t really her dad, but she’s kind of in too much pain for that right now. 

It’s Mr. Bowman who gets in the back of the ambulance even though if anyone had bothered to ask Ellie she would’ve picked Ms. Shields, but a female EMT is the one who buckles Ellie onto a backboard and puts a funny, uncomfortable collar on her neck before they move her to the stretcher. “This is just for a little while, don’t worry.”

And then Ellie’s stuck laying totally straight and still, staring up at the metal ceiling and listening to the adults ramble off her details into the dispatch phone. The ambulance bounces like crazy and all the equipment clacks into each other with every bump and pothole they trample over. 

The hospital isn’t far which is good because Ellie’s arm hurts, and it’s not getting any better and now she’s strapped down which makes her squirm, and she just wants Joel already. Did anyone even call Joel?

He’s gonna be so mad at her. But first he’s going to make it better. Joel always makes it better. When her ear was infected or when she got all cut up from falling off her bike or when she slipped off the countertop and whacked her chin open on the corner. 

So she wants to ask, but she kind of can’t stop crying and then she’s being wheeled inside and everyone is touching her and turning her and asking “Does this hurt?” “How about here?” “Did you lose consciousness?”

Which does eventually get her the freedom to sit up and take off the painful plastic brace, but it doesn’t give her Joel. 

Mr. Bowman is pacing at the foot of the stretcher Ellie’s been sequestered into in the pediatric unit. This time she’s in D is for Dog.

“We need to X-ray your arm.” 

Someone comes rolling in with a big machine and this hard board they keep trying to make Ellie put her arm onto. Except it hurts even more when they twist it that direction so she doesn’t want to do it. She wants Joel first. But she can’t stop crying to ask for him beyond. “I-I-I w-w-w-w” and then everyone else just says, “We know, sweetie. We know,” but she doesn’t actually feel certain that they do know.

It hurts really bad. The X-ray tech keeps arguing with her. Ellie just keeps snatching her arm back and protecting it by tucking it close against her body. 

“Your dad’s on his way,” Mr. Bowman finally tells her when she’s in a tearful staredown with the hard-board X-ray man. “He should be here soon. Okay, Ellie? Don’t you want to be a good girl and take the pictures for your daddy?”

“I-I w-want-” a hiccupping sob slips past her lips even as she tries to force herself to say words instead of just cries. And maybe she meant to say “I want to wait” or “I want pain medicine” or even “ I want Joel.” But they’re in the hospital, and it’s what everyone keeps calling him so, instead, Ellie just ends up crying, “I want my dad!” At nearly top volume, salty tears and snot commingling on her upper lip.

“I’m here! Ellie! Baby. I’m here. It’s okay, baby girl.”

In moments, she’s wrapped in his arms, her right arm carefully left out of the mix as he scoops her up and presses her against him. “Jesus, baby. You’re shaking. It’s okay. I’m here, honey. Shh, it’s okay.”

And then he’s putting her down even when Ellie starts to whine in protest, reaching out with his bare hand to wipe her face clean from an hour’s worth of snot and tears that never dry before more is just added to the mix over and over. 

Joel’s breathing really quick like he’d run here the whole way from the job site, and his face is red as his hands make quick work of the mess on her face before holding her cheeks between them and saying, “Are you okay?”

To which she pitifully mumbles, “Hurts,” and trusts he’ll know what to do with it.

“Did anyone give her some goddamn pain medicine?”

And then the nurse and the hard-board man and Mr. Bowman all just exchange looks.

“Well Jesus Christ, people. Her arm is goddamn three times its normal size!” And when he yells it sends everyone scurrying except for Ellie who just wants to burrow herself further into him.

All at once everyone leaves, and then it’s just Ellie cradled on Joel’s lap. He’s whispering in her ear and promising it’s going to be okay and saying over and over, “I’m here, baby girl. It’s okay. I’m here,” so that Ellie closes her eyes and feels some of those bubbling sobs finally die down even though the pain isn’t really any better.

To give her pain medicine, they have put a needle in her good arm. That hurts, too, but Joel talks her through until the painful part is all over and then they’re plunging a syringe into the little plastic bit that sticks out of her forearm.

It hits her in a wave and makes the world go fuzzy at once. “Whoa.”

Joel laughs, the vibrations rumbling in her ear as his hand makes steady work of brushing stray strands from her face. “Just close your eyes and let it help, baby.”

She does. She closes her eyes and lets it help all through the pictures of her arm on the hard board and the doctor coming in and talking to them and being told she had to get a cast put on for the next six to eight weeks. Which doesn’t sound very long but is an eternity when the weather’s just getting warm and your sort-of-dad has been talking about going to the beach and playing catch outside and there’s a brand new spankin’ box of chalk just waiting for her artistic creations that would now sit unused because this was her coloring arm. And her writing arm. Fuck. They had a geography test on Friday.

“We’re s’posed to learn about deserts today,” Ellie murmurs from where Joel’s holding her. Her arm’s all wrapped up now. She thinks maybe she slept through them putting it on. Her cast is a pretty blue at least. So that’s kind of cool. 

“They're hot and dry,” Joel answers her, a kiss pressed to her hairline. “Ain’t much else to know.”

Um, there’s way more to know. Ellie already knows more than that. Because deserts have oasises…oases? With palm trees and bright blue water and lush green grasses. And aaaallll the animals come there to drink and cool off. But sometimes they aren’t real! Sometimes they’re mirages. So when you get up close, it disappears. Yeah, mirages. The desert has mirages.

“There’s way more to know about deserts.”

“Well,” Joel tucks her closer up against him. “It’s a good thing I ain’t still homeschoolin’ ya then.”

His accent is really thick right now. The whole world feels kind of thick, syrupy. Her blood runs slow in her veins. Her blinks are long and weary. “I wish I went to a mirage school,” is what Ellie says next. 

Joel laughs again. “Honey, go to sleep.”

“No, no. It makes sense,” she argues, knowing he thinks she’s just talking silly but it makes sense. This makes sooo much sense. “Because like then it’s there, but it can also be gone. Mirage.”

Joel gives her another kiss. Ellie doesn’t really know why they’re still fucking here instead of going home where he can wrap her up on the couch and get her favorite blue raspberry freezer pops and put on a Lord of the Rings DVD for her to fall asleep to. That’d be better than this place.

“You’re right. It makes perfect sense.”

Somehow she thinks he’s messing with her. She’ll have to wait until she wakes up to double check. “I’m onto you, Joel,” she mutters. Her eyes fall closed when she says it and don’t open back up.

“I’d ‘spect nothin’ less, baby girl.”

And she falls asleep as his hand smooths back her hair and blocks the light shining down into her face. Her arm is bulky and weighed down with a bright blue cast. The pain in her wrist is dull and the hands holding her body are steady, certain. 

Maybe some things aren’t as real up close as they seem from far away. But Joel? Joel was the same. 

“Thanks for not being a mirage,” Ellie mumbles, words muffled against his shirt. It’s nice being held like this, comforted. It almost makes up for all of the pain. “You’re always really there.”

And it’s hard to know for sure, because sleep is catching up to Ellie pretty quickly, but she’s pretty sure she hears a single quiet, “Always,” coming from Joel in response.

//

True to his word all those months ago, once the cast comes off, Ellie gets to ride a horse.

And then she gets to go again and again and again. Joel says she gets to keep going, too. If she really wants to. Ellie really wants to.

They fit a special riding helmet to her head on the very first day, and Joel comes over during the selection process to test it out to make sure it met his standards, rattling it side to side and ensuring it kept her noggin thoroughly encased.

He knocks on the top of it and the hard, hollow plastic sound thuds in her skull as she giggles. 

It all makes her think of an October afternoon with a bright red helmet and the sun beating down on her exposed arms.

“No scrambled eggs,” Ellie says to Joel when it’s all said and done before she’s climbing on to the back of a beautiful bay mare by the name of Debbie. Which is the goofiest name Ellie’s ever heard of for a horse. 

First, she rides Debbie every week. And then it’s every two weeks. And sometimes she rides Dollop and other times Ringo and once even Violet, though she was stubborn and full of attitude, and Ellie definitely almost fell off because the horse wouldn’t listen, and then Joel got all pale and panicky. So no more Violet until Ellie’s a little older.

“When I grow up,” Ellie announces at the end of her horseback riding lesson one Thursday in June, “I’m going to live on a horse.”

It’s that time of summer where the sun stays out until practically bedtime, when they walk out of the barn and the air is still warm and the sky is only just beginning to get the slightest hint of orange promised with the setting sun. It’s tacos night, and Joel said Ellie could help slice up the peppers even though he always gets all weird and hover-y whenever she’s near a knife.

When she pulls her helmet off of her head, the top layer of hair stands on end, staticky and alive with electricity as the rest of her hair is plastered against her scalp, dampened with sweat. Joel runs a palm along the top of her head, smoothing everything into place. 

“You can’t live on a horse,” he argues with her as she slips from her riding boots, the one with the just right square heel in their pretty brown leather, and back into her muddied sneakers. 

“I can do whatever I want when I’m a grown up,” Ellie reminds him with an upward tilt of her chin. It was a point of contention at times, Joel bossing her around and telling her what to do. So now she likes to remind him that when she’s an adult, she’ll stay up as late as she wants and eat four Cuties before dinner and procrastinate on her homework and live on a horse if she damn well pleases. Just try and stop her! 

Joel starts to laugh but cuts it off with a cough. “Don’t think you can cook a meal on the back of a damn horse.”

“Built in horse microwave.”

“Hm, they didn’t make horses like that back in my day,” Joel retorts, as they exit from the yawning wide doors of the barn into the picturesque summer evening. Tonight is Facetime night with Tommy and Maria. They live in a really pretty part of Wyoming now. Sometimes they go for a walk while on the call and show Ellie all of the scenery along the way. The wildflowers are vibrant, lush. Joel said he’ll pick her a bouquet when they go out there to visit. “How’re you gonna shit on the horse?”

Ellie giggles. She likes when Joel does this, talks about her crazy, silly ideas like they have legitimate logistical concerns to figure out. They’d spent a week and a half working out the kinks in her time-traveling to the dinosaur's plan. She’d just have to come back three times a day for food, it was decided. No way was she eating roasted pterodactyl. 

“Special invention. I’ll draw up the blueprints.”

“I expect them on my desk by Monday,” he answers, eyes watching her from the rearview mirror as she buckles herself in.

There’s a quiet familiarity to this life between them, one that Ellie’s found herself settling into more and more with each passing day.

It becomes something of a routine, the teasing and the bedtime stories and the horseback lessons and the discussing of the future. They talk about Mondays and summers and Christmases like the rest of them are guaranteed forever, like Ellie doesn’t even have to think about the next placement or the next family or the next home that won’t be her home.

Joel says this is forever. That they’re forever. And it’s not that Ellie thinks he’s lying or something. She’s just…she’s never had a forever before. She isn’t quite sure she knows what she’s supposed to do with it.

On Saturday, Joel’s doing boring grown up stuff, so Ellie’s stuck trailing along needing to entertain herself as they go from place to place. Just to mess with him, she mocks up a sketch on how exactly one could live on a horse. It’s a hightech horse, all the latest horsey updates, and things get a little silly when she’s creating the fold-out outhouse and devising an electric system that’s charged through horsepower (it’s hilarious, okay?).

Sunday morning she wakes up first. 

Some Sundays they go out and try new things, especially now that the weather’s warmed and the days stretch long and endless. They’ve gone fishing, which was lame, and hiking and kite flying. They have a picnic and go to a waterpark and into the city for museums and planetariums. 

Hanging off of the fridge is a calendar. Joel always writes the plan for the day in his chicken scratch, squeezing it into the little square of space that’s allotted. Ellie likes it because then she can look right over and see exactly what the plan is going to be.

She gets out of bed to go check and see if she should be getting ready for anything in particular, only to be greeted with a blank square. That just means she gets to decide what they’re doing today. As long as Joel doesn’t have more boring adult chores to drag her along on.

There is a small bit of text on the calendar, though. Typed at the very bottom of the date in a teeny, tiny font. Ellie stands on her tiptoes to get nice and close in order to read it. 

Their calendar has the phases of the moon on it, so maybe tonight will be a new moon and with the sky extra dark, they could go stare up at the stars for a little while. Maybe it’ll be one of those nights she can trick Joel into letting her stay up later considering it’s summer anyway, and he can go into work late tomorrow if he needs to so that the two of them could…

Oh.

What’s typed on the calendar has nothing to do with the phases of the moon. 

It’s a holiday. 

Father’s Day.

Ellie falls back onto flat feet, tongue darting out to run along her lips. 

Well then, this was a bit of a pickle.

Mother’s Day had barely even been a blip on the radar, even though they made crafts in school to take home to their moms. Ellie just made one for Joel and skipped writing any sort of message on it. Because she didn’t have a mom. Her mom was dead, had been pretty much since the day Ellie was born. 

And, technically speaking, Ellie doesn’t have a father either except…she has a Joel. 

Would Joel want a Father’s Day celebration? Or would it just remind him about how his real daughter is dead? Do you celebrate foster dads on Father’s Day? Does she call him her foster dad? Pretty much all of the time, Ellie just calls him Joel. That’s what he is. Her Joel. It’s a simple enough sort of thing. Until it’s not. Until it’s complicated and fuzzy and uncertain and the calendar says “Father’s Day” and Ellie doesn’t know what to fucking do about that!

Should she make him a card? Prepare breakfast? Go like…mow the lawn or something for him? Should she pretend it’s not happening?

It feels impossible to know what the right answer is, and it’s too early in the morning in Wyoming to call Tommy and ask him what she should do, and it’s too late in the day to go crawling back beneath her covers without Joel thinking she’s sick or something and making him all worried. Which doesn’t seem like the thing to do for Father’s Day. 

What did Sarah do? Would Joel want something the same or totally different? Would he be mad at Ellie for celebrating? Is she allowed to even though he hasn’t mentioned adopting her in months, and she’s just his foster kid, and he says this is forever but what if he’s changed his mind and is thinking about getting rid of her and her making some sort of present would just make everything worse and bring bad memories and-

“Morning, kiddo.”

“Fuck.” She jumps, heart pounding in her chest as her hands ball into fists at her sides. She hadn’t even heard his footsteps coming down the hall. 

“Ellie? You okay, baby?” He’s pressing the heel of his hand to her forehead before reaching down and placing a kiss on the top of her head and opening up the fridge. “I was thinkin’ french toast for breakfast. What says you?”

And Ellie’s just frozen there, mouth opening and closing without any words coming out. “Okay,” is what she eventually whispers before wandering from the kitchen and going through the first door on the left, into her bedroom. 

She lets the door click all the way shut before starting to pace the floor, trying to figure out what to do. This holiday hasn’t ever mattered before. She doesn’t really know if it matters now. And if it’s better to avoid it altogether or acknowledge it or…

Ellie looks over at the butterfly suncatcher. The sun shines through in the evenings, so there’s no grand prismatic display to feel like it can guide her answer, but she stops pacing and just…stares at it. 

It was more often now that Joel talked about Sarah. He talked about how she had played soccer and liked to bake even though she was kinda bad at it. She listened to music way too loud and watched the same movies over and over again and liked to order Chinese food from the place that doesn’t deliver, so Joel would have to go back out and get it even if he was bone-dead tired. He always would, too. He didn’t say that part, but Ellie knows. 

So there’s the ghost of a girl that Ellie doesn’t know at all but feels like she’s starting to know a little. “Well, what would you fucking do?” Ellie mutters, feeling kind of dumb for talking to someone who’s fucking dead. It’s weird. She knows it’s weird, but a little piece of her sometimes thinks of Sarah as something almost like a sister. Even though she’s never met her, never would. 

There’s no need to ask her, though. Ellie already knows the answer. Sarah would do something for her dad for Father’s Day. And maybe it’s different because he’s not really Ellie’s dad, and she doesn’t know how to give gifts

But not that long ago she didn’t know how to ride a bike or make fractions or put lights on a Christmas tree or ride a horse.

The idea sparks then. It’d practically been dangling in her face this whole time. 

There was an easy solution here. It didn’t have to be a whole thing. 

Over at her desk, Ellie scans over her very official blueprint to “live on a horse” which was extremely practical and not at all logistically unsound. There’s a few finishing touches that she adds on, wishing she’d known it was going to serve an actual purpose back on Thursday night when she’d started the thing so she could have put forth a more concentrated effort from the get go, but she adds in some extra colors and a few little additional doodles. 

Joel calls for her, saying breakfast is ready.

Ellie writes the title of her blueprint in big, block letters, and then at the very bottom scribbles in her tiniest print “Happy Father’s Day or whatever.”  

She swipes the page off of her desk and darts from her room back to the kitchen, eager to hand the dumb thing over and be done with it for good.

“The hell you doin’?” Joel asks, syrup and juice and silverware already laid out on their kitchen table. Those were usually her breakfast jobs.

Ellie clears her throat. “I just…had to finish something,” she offers lamely. “I know you said Monday but here. I’m done early.” She shoves the paper against his chest from where he sits at the table before climbing up into her own chair and reaching for the syrup, intentionally not looking in Joel’s direction as he takes in her creation.

“Gunning for a promotion, huh?” he jokes before going silent and analyzing her creation.

It’s quiet for several beats, and Ellie squirms in her seat, mashing the side of her fork into her french toast to cut off a bite-sized piece. She drags it through a line of syrup and chomps the slightly chewy bread for longer than any single bite should require. It’s hard to even taste the sweetness that ought to be coating her tongue right now, instead only able to notice the glue-like consistency of the glob that refuses to be swallowed down.

Across from her, Joel’s still staring at what is actually a kind of preposterous drawing and the stupidest Father’s Day card that’s probably ever been made. But he just clears his throat and blinks a few times extra and says, “Those are some damn fine schematics you worked out there,” without saying anything else.

It’d be better if he picked on her unrealistic sidearms attached to the saddle or groaned at her pun or brought up some basic function she probably forgot, but instead they just go back to eating french toast.

She’s on her second bite of what she’s starting to believe is just straight paste at this point when Joel says, “Thank you, baby girl.” Metal hits the ceramic edge of a plate, there’s the squelch of doused french toast being lifted out of a river of syrup, the muffled sounds of chewing. “Been a long time since someone…” Joel clears his throat for like the third time in two minutes. “Imma keep this someplace safe.”

“Whatever, man,” Ellie manages to find her way back to flippant, feeling the twisting, twining thing within her stomach finally beginning to settle, finding that the sugary sweetness is bright and tacky on her tongue. “It’s just some blueprints.”

Joel chews like he’s thinking. Somewhere along the way, Ellie’s learned what it looks like when he’s thinking.

Eventually, he says, “No, it ain’t.”

And Ellie doesn’t bother to correct him.

//

It’s a week before Ellie’s birthday when their flights are booked. 

They’re going to Wyoming for three whole weeks. Which feels like a really long time, but Tommy says they have room for the both of them, and Joel’s already talking about Snake River and hiking within the passes and the chance to show her how wildflowers span and grow within the valleys and amongst mountain bases.

It had been weird at first, when Tommy and Maria moved away. She didn’t understand why they were going, but it seemed like something that had been in the works since before Ellie was getting dino bandaids plastered against oozing elbows. 

It seems an awful lot like Joel was supposed to be going, too. Then things started changing when Ellie crashed onto the scene. He hasn’t said as much, but she’s getting pretty good at reading between the lines. 

It’s tricky, moving states with a foster kid. So maybe Joel doesn’t want to put in all that effort if he’s not sure he’s going to keep her yet. Ellie doesn’t think that’s what it is, but he doesn’t bring up moving to Wyoming, so neither does she.

The vacation, though, that he talks about before Tommy even moves.

Ellie wishes he and Maria had just stayed here in Boston. She misses when they all played pretend games together and family dinners where she and him could gang up on Joel. She misses how Tommy always just called himself “Uncle Tommy” even though she’s never called him that a day in her life.

It made her feel like this life she lives with Joel is bigger than just the two of them. Like there was more to hold them together, more to sustain this state of permanence that Joel swore by and Ellie believed in, but that always had this lingering concept of tenuousness. 

For now, though, Joel buys her a suitcase with wheels and one of those handles that can extend and retract with the push of a button. It has planets and stars on it and has space for everything she might need.

Joel helps her pack, even when she points out that she obviously knows how to pack a bag at this stage of her life. Although usually it’s a trash bag; she refrains from mentioning that part. 

Even still he helps pull things out of her drawers and gets a little container for her toothbrush to travel in. They pack her shampoo and conditioner in little reusable bottles and place them all in a quart-sized zipper bag so the airport will let her through security. 

He does remember things she otherwise would’ve forgotten. Like books and Armstrong and coloring supplies. So in his defense, maybe he’s a little bit necessary to the operation. 

Their things get loaded into the truck, and it’s bright and early when they wind their way to the airport. It’s so early that the sun is barely up and there’s not a whole bunch of other people on the road. Joel’s mumbling something about “beating the traffic” which Ellie is largely ignoring.

“I can’t wait!” Ellie’s bouncing on her toes as she and Joel stand in the TSA line. He passed her a ticket with her name printed on it along with their destination and told her to hand it to the lady when they approached the booth. “We’re going to be in the sky, Joel.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, yeah, enjoy it while you’re small enough that your knees ain’t smushed into your chest.”

Joel doesn’t seem all that excited about riding on a plane, which is fucking stupid if you ask Ellie, but he’s willing to humor her. She’d asked him half a dozen questions, and he’d even found her a book at the library that explains how planes actually stay up in the air. 

Security is funny as she toes off her shoes and stands with her arms over her head while they scan her for bombs or whatever. Joel told her not to joke about that or she’d get taken to airport jail. Ellie keeps her mouth shut.

“Can I get a juice?” she asks, bag trailing smoothly behind her and backpack hanging off of one shoulder on her back.

“For three times the cost,” Joel mutters, but leads the two of them over to a McDonald’s anyway. 

Ellie gets an orange juice. Which is a little hard to balance along with her suitcase and her backpack that’s all getting tangled and kind of tripping her up. Joel keeps telling her to put her backpack on properly to which she responds, “Yeah, yeah,” without actually doing it. 

He keeps pausing and waiting for her to resituate before rolling his eyes and just taking her suitcase for her. 

Ellie smiles happily up at him as she sips through the straw on her juice. “Are there supposed to be a lot of clouds today? Do you think we’ll be able to see stuff way up in the air?” She’d been making him check the weather report for over a week. Last night, the two of them had sat and watched the radar all the way from Boston to northern Wyoming. 

Joel’s leading them to their gate, pausing to read the boards overhead that show all of the flights coming and going. There’s so many. And at the store right across there’s books—coloring ones and kids ones and boring grown-up ones—and Ellie just wants to take a quick look. 

Knowing Joel, he’ll be standing there for at least another couple of minutes, so Ellie just takes a few steps away into the store. The dregs of her juice slurp up through her straw as she stands in the entryway, flipping open a book of Mad-Libs. At one of her foster homes, some of her older siblings had books of Mad-Libs that they never shared with her. The group of them sat up late and laughed their butts off as they whispered from the top bunk and left Ellie just laying down there, staring up into the darkness and feeling so completely alone. 

Joel would play Mad-Libs with her. He played almost every game with her. It was even his idea to have a stupid tea party. Ellie made him wear a baseball hat backwards on his head and these tacky Christmas socks she’d found in his drawer. And the two of them drank tea that was mostly cold and ate finger sandwiches which were really just peanut butter and jellies with the crust cut off. It was kind of dumb, but pretty funny when Joel kept talking to Armstrong like he was a business associate instead of a stuffed giraffe. 

She turns around, hustling back to Joel to ask if they can get the book for something to do on the plane only to find him…gone. 

At once, Ellie pans the area, trying to see if Joel was waiting for her somewhere. Because he wouldn’t have just left her. That was the whole deal here. Joel didn’t leave her. Joel swore over and over again that he would never leave her.

He bought her a nice new bag with stars and planets! He had made reservations for them to go ride horses at a Dude Ranch! Just last night, Ellie had talked to Uncle Tommy and he was saying how excited he was to see her.

There’s no way Joel would go through all of this and then just…leave her. 

Which means he hadn’t realized that she’d wandered away. Or he realized it and went in search of her. 

But she’d been so close! Except maybe she’d gone on the other side of the rack of books. And she hadn’t had her suitcase trailing behind her. And she hadn’t told him she was walking away…

Fuck! He was going to be so fucking mad at her when he found her. Ellie’s almost nine years old. She knows better than to walk away without alerting the adult she’s with where she was going.

But she had, and now it was too late. Joel was gone, probably making that scrunched forehead expression as he hurriedly scanned the masses in hopes of spotting her.

This place was huge! All those different flights, coming and going and all of these people rolling their suitcases and walking around with neck pillows wrapped around their throats. And none of them were Joel. Not one of them had slightly faded bootcut jeans and an old soft flannel that Ellie likes to press her face against and let it soothe her whenever things get to be a little too much.

She could really use that right about now.

Breath coming fast, Ellie just keeps circling, eyes cast upward to catch faces that pass by without so much as glancing in her direction.

She puts her backpack on correctly, like doing what Joel said to do twenty minutes ago could somehow help her now. It was a little too late for that. 

Why didn’t she remember that number to their gate thingy? Why hadn’t she just stood there and read the board with him! Joel doesn’t want to play Mad-Libs. Ellie should’ve known better, just stuck by his side and not allowed him to go after her because she’d been right there. 

“Are you okay, sweetie?”

The woman who asks the question isn’t someone who works there or like a cop or anything, just another traveler with a deep purple suitcase beside her and hair so light it was almost white in color. She has some wrinkles on her face, probably old enough to be a grandmother. And Ellie’s not supposed to talk to strangers, but if anyone’s going to kidnap her and sell her into child slavery it probably isn’t some grandma lady who crochets and bakes cookies in her free time, right?

Ellie narrows her eyes, trying to suss out intentions. “Are you a grandma?” she asks, just to cover her bases.

The woman laughs. “I’m afraid not, dear.” She kneels down to Ellie’s height. “Did you lose your mommy?”

“N-no,” Ellie answers and clears her throat. “My…dad.” It’s the easiest explanation, the safest option to go with. People don’t know what a Joel is, what it means. So it’s just for the sake of simplicity. It’s not like Ellie doesn’t know the difference. It’s not like Joel’s even here to witness her calling him that. 

“I bet that’s scary, huh?”

“No,” Ellie snipes back without taking a single pause. 

The woman hums. “Well, I bet it’s scary for him.”

Joel does get pretty scared sometimes. Ellie thinks about the day she’d gotten detention and he hadn’t known, how he’d come hustling down the Cimino’s hallway all freaked out and panicked.

Ellie shrugs. “I guess so.” She’s kind of looking at the woman, kind of looking around for Joel. If he just came back to where he left her, he’d know she hasn’t wandered at all! Maybe then he won’t be mad at her…

“We can go find someone who might be able to help us.” The woman offers, her knees cracking when she pushes back up to standing. Ellie doesn’t giggle at her like she might’ve Joel. “What do you say?”

There’s a hand extended in Ellie’s direction, an offering. “I shouldn’t go with a stranger,” she parrots back from a few dozen school assemblies, and Joel’s own frequent reminders to never, ever go anywhere with someone she doesn’t know.

“I’m Terry,” she says, smiling. “But you’re right. Do you know your daddy’s cell phone number?”

That she knows. Joel had sat her down and made her recite it back to him until it was pretty much ingrained in her head. She was surprised he didn’t just tattoo it on her arm and call it a day. 

She recites it and watches the woman wait with the phone pressed against her ear. “Hm.” She types something next. “I told him I’m waiting here with you. I’m sure your dad will be here really soon.”

Ellie looks up at the three big, long boards that are constantly flipping and changing, trying to find the one that was theirs. Maybe she should just go find him. Maybe he hadn’t realized she was gone. What if…he noticed and didn’t care? Maybe he just walked right on the plane, leaving her suitcase behind for her to find. Off to enjoy three weeks without her. Take a break, probably.

It’s not like she couldn’t figure it out for a little while. She’s smart. Joel knows she’s smart.

But he wouldn’t leave her. She knows that. It’s just…everyone else has always left her. Even the other people who said they wouldn’t.

“Ah! He texted me back.”

Ellie’s palms are sweating, the stretch of her lungs tight and unrelenting as she tries to suck in another breath, afraid that what this woman says next will be that he’s not coming. Will the woman make Ellie go with her then? Would Joel be super mad at her for talking to this lady in the first place?

Goddammit, why did she get distracted by a stupid game book?

Ellie clenches her hands around the straps of her backpack, fingernails digging into the flesh of her palms she squeezes so tight. There’s the bite of pain, but it’s not enough to get her to stop. 

Taking a stuttering inhale through her nose, Ellie’s trying not to cry which is dumb. Eyes casting around again, Ellie waits to see a safe face amongst the sea of new and unfamiliar. There’s a heavy thumping in her chest and her throat’s all clogged and aching and the Terry lady drops a palm to the top of Ellie’s head, but Ellie shrugs it off. She didn’t want someone else touching her. She didn’t want anyone but Joel.

“Ellie!”

She hears him before she sees him. His voice frantic and booming and the squeaking of shoes on the waxed linoleum floors as he comes running down the hallway, dodging fellow travelers with two suitcases trailing behind him.

Ellie’s mouth is opened, primed and ready for an apology or an explanation or whatever it is she can say to make this better. But all that comes out is a squeak of surprise as the bags clatter to the ground and Joel scoops her up in one single, frantic motion.

An empty plastic cup of orange juice clatters on the floor.

Pressed there against his chest, Ellie’s eyes close and her lungs accept a long, grateful inhale of homey scented oxygen. She presses her face there, right against his shirt and ignores the stinging behind her eyes. There’s no point in crying. She’s not, not really. Just relieved that he’s here. That he’s not yelling at her. That he came back.

“Baby, you scared me so bad,” he mumbles in her ear, pulling away and propping her on a hip to frame her face with his free hand. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Shaking her head and swallowing down the blob in her throat, Ellie eventually gets out, “No.”

Joel looks like he has a lot more to say but instead just crushes her back against his chest and begins to talk to Terry. “Thank you kindly, ma’am. I don’t know what happened. One second she was right by my side and the next I’m talkin’ to nobody but my damn self.” He squeezes her tighter for a beat. “‘Bout stopped my heart when I saw she wasn’t next to me.”

“We’ve all been there a time or two,” Terry answers. “I remember my oldest wandering away in Disney World of all places! Can you imagine?”

A heavy, hot palm presses the back of Ellie’s head, securing her in place. From where she’s situated, she can hear the pounding of Joel’s racing heart in her ear and feel the ragged, hurried rise and fall of his chest. There’s a slight tackiness to his hands—sweat mixed with the tears that had dripped down her cheeks. 

“Can I buy you a meal or something as a thank you?” Joel offers even though he’d just been grumbling about inflated airport costs only moments prior. 

But Terry declines and pats Joel’s shoulder. “No need. You just hold your daughter close another minute or two. Takes some time for that panic to fade, doesn’t it?”

A whoosh of an exhale comes from Joel. “Ain’t that the truth.”

The grown ups share a few more pieces of conversation before Terry bids them both goodbye.

When it’s just Ellie and Joel and the entirety of Boston Logan International Airport, his face smushes into the top of her head and he draws a long inhale through his nose. “What were you thinking?”

“I’m s-s-sorry,” she cries, voice muffled against his chest. “I didn’t m-mean to. I just wanted to look at Mad Libs!” It was important that Joel knew she hadn’t just wandered away from him on purpose. She’d been right there.

He sighs one of his big sighs, swaying them side to side. “Okay, Ellie. It’s okay. We’re okay.”

Putting her down to stand on her own, Joel kneels in front of her and wipes the tears from her face. “But you’re holdin’ my hand out in public for the next fifteen years. And we’ll talk more about this later.”

Ah, fuck. Ellie hates when they talk about it later. Joel likes to talk about a lot of stuff later. He says it’s easier than doing it in the moment. Wants to let her work through her feelings or something dumb like that. “I’m sorry,” she says again for good measure.

“I know, honey.” Joel’s shoulders drop. “Me too.”

“But-”

“Come on now. Get your bag and let’s get movin’,” he says instead of letting Ellie demand why he was apologizing. 

She does as she’s supposed to, taking the handle for her suitcase from Joel and then grabbing ahold of his proffered palm. It’ll probably bother her soon. But right now, she can’t quite manage to mind holding him close. She doesn’t have it in her to be upset at knowing exactly where he is and that the answer is still right beside her.

//

Wyoming is fun as fuck. Joel told her to stop saying that. So she said it more, just for good measure.

They go trail riding! And all four of them visit Grand Teton National Park which Ellie thinks is going to be pretty dumb but then they get to take a boat ride across the bluest lake she’s ever seen. Maria holds Ellie on her lap during the ride, arms wrapped tight and snug around her to protect her from the cold bite of the morning breeze. 

Heat rises in lazy drifts of fog from the surface of the water as the mountainous, snow-capped peaks tower over them. It’s a little hard to wrap her head around, how’s there’s snow way up there even with the hot afternoon sun making an appearance almost every day since they’d landed. 

They hike their way up a trail on the other side of the water, and Ellie scampers on the rocks as Uncle Tommy spots her with wide, careful palms.

Some random stranger takes a picture of all four of them at the look out and then they take another just of Joel and Ellie. He makes her laugh right before they snap the picture so her smile feels like it’s almost stinging her cheeks with how wide it is. 

For dinner, Tommy grills them steak and fresh sweet corn boils on the stove and almost every night is spent with sweet watermelon juice running down Ellie’s chin and Joel groaning about how sticky she’s making herself. 

Some days the adults are boring, but that’s okay. It just makes for prime opportunity to hunt and gather all the cool shit in Tommy and Maria’s house.

At night, Ellie’s so tired she can barely keep her eyes open, skin sun-kissed and tight with the remnants of a light burn. Her stomach is full and limbs are heavy as Joel sets her down on the air mattress blown up at the end of the bed in the guest room. It’s nice sleeping with him in the same room. The best mornings are when she wakes up first and gets to wake him up by shoving her feet in his face or jumping on top of him.

He always groans. Sometimes wallops her in the head with a pillow or reaches out and tickles her while telling her to “Quiet on down now, kiddo.” 

The days are long, stretching out like soft taffy in their endlessness. They spend mornings eating waffles and bacon around the kitchen table and afternoons having tuna sandwiches on a blanket in the backyard. Ellie smashes potato chips beneath the top layer of bread and crunches grapes between her teeth and when she’s done eating gets up and runs and plays in the backyard and picks flowers that are technically weeds and puts them in Maria’s hair and, once Maria has to go inside, Joel’s. 

Tommy and Maria live in a two-story home in a neighborhood that’s bursting with kids and families. There’s always dogs trotting by on their leashes and babies in strollers. Just down the sidewalk, there’s a playground with swings and a jungle gym and one of those twisty slides that always leaves her hair all staticky as the heels of her sneakers drag along the dark green plastic despite Ellie’s best efforts.

Being the middle of summer vacation, the playground is almost always overrun. She makes Joel take her late in the evenings when no one else is there, and it can just be the two of them. He pushes her on the swing even though she learned how to pump her legs back when she was five. 

By the time they’re there, the sky has faded to light pinks with deep purples on the horizon, the moon a sliver in the sky that Ellie catches sight of between the full, leafy green tree branches. Fireflies descend, the crickets sing their songs. If it rained earlier in the day, earthworms and toads linger along the pavement. 

One evening, they arrive and it’s not empty.

On approach, Ellie freezes, stopping in her tracks and already turning herself to head the way back to the house. Fuck it. She’ll just watch Jeopardy! with Maria tonight.

“Come on, kiddo,” Joel says with a loose hand curling around Ellie’s shoulder to keep her from about-facing and heading the other direction. “Why don’t you go and play with them.”

Ellie’s spine stiffens at once. “I don’t need to play with them,” she insists at once. “You play with me.”

There’s a lot of things that Ellie loves about Joel. His hugs and his voice when it’s soothing her and the way he smirks at her jokes right before he groans and the loud sigh he makes after his first sip of coffee in the mornings. She loves that his hands are only ever gentle and his arms are always secure but never restricting. She loves that he DVRs all of the best dinosaur documentaries and takes her to do things like go to the aquarium and a cookie baking class and a butterfly sanctuary where they just sat together, Ellie cradled on his lap, and let the multi-colored winged creatures come to them. Which they did, tickling Ellie’s bare arms and even the tip of her nose a time or two. 

But something Ellie really fucking loves about Joel? He’s always game to play with her. He never tells her to cut it out or grow up or stop distracting him. And sure, sometimes he pretends to be grouchy or annoyed, but he always goes along with whatever game she wants to play even if that means they end up army crawling on the kitchen floor to avoid the laser beams on their way into the super secret villain lair. 

Why would Ellie bother playing with anyone else? She has Joel. And when they’re here in Wyoming, she has Tommy and Maria, too! She doesn’t need some random kids.

“It’s good to play with kids your own age, ya know.”

That’s the sort of thing they’re just going to have to disagree on. Because it’s not. Other kids are mean. Or they don’t like her because she’s not girly enough or nice enough or quiet enough. Joel doesn’t ever tell her she isn’t enough . 

“Fuck them kids,” she mumbles under her breath.

Not quiet enough for Joel to not hear her, apparently, because he looks down with raised eyebrows and a look on his face that just reads unimpressed. 

“Do I have to?” she asks him next, alarmed that when she looks back over towards the playground, the boy has made his way down the slide and is jogging towards her.

Out of instinct, Ellie takes a step back, angling herself slightly behind Joel as a shield. 

He hums. “Don’t s’pose you gotta. But I think you oughta.”

The kid comes to a halt a few feet back from them, breathing heavy from his hard playtime. There are grass stains on his knees and a skinned elbow that’s a few days through the healing process, clotted scabs dotted along the exposed skin. “I’m Jesse!” He points behind him. “And that’s my friend Dina! Do you want to play with us?”

He’s older than her. Taller and bigger and quite possibly a total asshole. 

Ellie looks up at Joel with wide eyes, not sure what it is she wants him to do even.

“If it’s okay with your dad, I mean.”

“Fine by me,” Joel says, not even batting an eye at the term. 

Well shit, the only way she’s getting out of this now is if she’s the asshole.  

“I guess so,” she hedges, taking a step away from Joel. 

That’s all it takes to excite Jesse who darts forward at once, his sweaty hand grabbing ahold of her to drag her out towards the playground, the one that was supposed to be just for her and Joel to swing on the swings and play Fire Breathing Dragons and just have fun. As the distance between them grows, Ellie looks frantically over her shoulder and finds Joel standing right where she left him. He nods at her, and even though she’s still kind of mad at him, there’s a small bit of solace that she gains from it. 

Dina smiles bright as Ellie and Jesse trip their way onto the squishy, mashed down mulch. 

“I’m Dina.”

“I know,” Ellie shoots back before she flushes and draws a deep breath in. “I’m Ellie.”

It’s a pretty shitty peace offering, but one they seem willing to take. “Want to play tag?”

And well, she and Joel never get to play tag. “Yeah, okay.”

Ellie loses first. They declare it a practice round and let her join right back in. The rules are fast and loose and no one really cares all that much about following them. What they do care about is scampering all over the playground equipment and sliding down the fireman’s pole and running faster than everyone else. 

At some point in the rush of it all, Ellie finds herself laughing. She finds herself having fun even when she hadn’t consented to allowing herself to feel that way. 

And in the moments she’s not so sure for a second, she looks over her shoulder and finds Joel right there waiting for her. 

It becomes something of a routine after that, there’s only a week that they’re left in Wyoming, but every evening they walk down to the playground and Ellie joins in on whatever games Dina and Jesse are playing while Joel watches on from his bench. He starts bringing a magazine to read. He doesn’t make any smug “I told you so” comments. Just asks if she had fun each and every time.

“Would your dad let you hang out tomorrow afternoon?” Jesse asks one night when the three of them are perched on top of the monkey bars. Joel still gets a little squirrely over Ellie climbing, but she was the one who broke her arm before, so she’s not really sure what he’s so worried about.

They’ve called Joel that a few times now. Her dad. And normally Ellie would correct them. She’s had to her whole life. Explain that the grown ups around her aren’t her parents and the places she lives aren’t her home. But this feels…different. 

Besides, after this week Ellie won’t ever see Jesse and Dina again.

“I can ask him.” She shrugs before shouting at the top of her lungs from her vantage point. “Can I hang out with Jesse and Dina during the day tomorrow?”

Joel gives her a thumbs up, and Ellie swivels back around to face her friends. Jesse holds a hand up for a high five. Ellie moves to reciprocate and slips, almost sliding before she grips the bar hard again to keep herself in place and offering a sheepish, “Oops.”

But then she gets to tell her friends about her broken arm and her super cool cast and how she didn’t have to do any homework for almost a month. They’re both super jealous. 

At the end of each night, Ellie and Joel walk home hand in hand. Dinner’s always ready when they walk through the door, the whole house scented with herbs and spices and roasted meat, and Uncle Tommy kissing the top of her head and telling her she smells like the outdoors as Maria makes Ellie wash her hands and set the table.

It’s a nice little life. Ellie likes it. She likes having all of her people together again, likes to think of it a little bit like having her family together again.

The night before they leave, Ellie is nestled on her air mattress, bundled under the quilt as the ceiling fan spins overhead. From up on the big bed, Joel asks, “You sad to go back tomorrow, kiddo?”

It makes Ellie freeze, muscles locked and lungs stuck half-inflated with air. “N-no.”

The blankets rustle above her. “You okay?”

Ellie doesn’t know how to answer him. How to explain she knows that what they have now, this life with the two of them, is built upon a rock of permanency but that she’s never known certainty in her life before, and she’s not sure if she can trust in it now. That Joel suggests going back, and it feels like a reminder that what is hers has no guarantee of staying that way. At any time she could just…go back. Back to before. Back to alone.

Families decide they don’t want her all the time. But that’s not Joel. She knows that. She just…doesn’t know how to make herself know it for good. 

“C’mere, baby.”

It’s all she needs, that little invitation. She clambers her way on top of the mattress, crawling her way to the middle of the giant bed with Armstrong tucked beneath her arm. 

“What’s going on in that head?”

And it makes Joel sad when she talks about her past. Or when she asks him for the millionth time if he stills wants her around. But Ellie’s got to say something to explain the hitch in her breath and fat tears trailing down her cheeks. “I-I told my friends your m-my dad!” Is what she ends up sobbing in explanation.

Joel’s propped up against the headboard, mouth opening and closing as he reaches a hand and settles it on Ellie’s knee. “That’s what’s got you all worked up?”

Ellie shrugs.

“Honey…” Joel pauses and runs a hand down his face. “That’s okay. You know that’s okay, right?”

Another shrug. 

Joel’s arm loops around her shoulders, pulls her beside him so she’s all snuggled up against his chest. It’s warm, comforting. Ellie presses her face against his chest and lets his T-shirt mop up the moisture on her face. 

“Alright, well then I’m gonna tell you that it’s okay.” His voice rumbles in her skull. His arms circle around her back. She’s held. She’s warm. She’s safe. “Is that all that’s got you upset?”

Ellie sniffs, grateful for the darkness and the closeness and the steady tick of the fan with each rotation. “Nothing changes when we go home, right?”

Because that’s what it is, what they have. It’s a home, not a house. It’s a family, not a placement. 

Joel’s hand is running along her back, big looping circles. “Well, some things might change. That’s part of life, kiddo.”

That is not what she was hoping to hear. Ellie holds her breath and digs her teeth into her bottom lip hard enough that she’s sure to leave indentations. When she swallows, it sounds like a gulp, loud enough for Joel to hear for sure.

“But you know what ain’t ever gonna change?”

Ellie hopes she does. She hopes she’s getting this right. She hopes that Joel saying things like it’s okay if she calls him “Dad” to her friends and talking about home means she’s got the right idea. There’s supposed to be certainty here, that was something they’d talked about. It was just so hard to believe it, to trust it.

“You and me?” Ellie whispers, fisting Joel’s shirt between her hands as if she could keep him in place even if she’d gone and said the wrong thing.

“You got it, baby girl.” He kisses the top of her head. “And even when things change like they always do, when you get older and don’t need me so much, it won’t change that I’m right here with you. No matter what. Forever.”

With a sniff, Ellie pushes herself up and looks into Joel’s eyes, mostly seeing the whites of them in the dark of the room. “Because we’re family?”

He taps the tip of her nose. “‘Cause we’re family.”

And that’s a word that carries weight; it holds permanence. It feels a little less like it could all slip right through the gaps between her fingers. “Can I sleep here tonight?” She asks the question as her head settles against Joel’s shoulder and her eyes slip closed, one hand still clasping the thin cotton in a loose fist. 

“S’pose one night ain’t gonna hurt anything,” Joel whispers in response, settling in deeper from where he sits against the headboard. The back rubs start up again. Her eyes grow heavy. 

“I really like Jesse and Dina,” she admits with a wide yawn. “They’re fun.”

“I’m glad you like playing with them.”

Sleep is trying to pull her under, but Ellie fights it off one minute more just to make sure Joel knows, “You’re more fun, though.”

With a huff of a laugh, Joel answers, “Go to sleep.”

It’s all the encouragement she needs. Ellie falls asleep with a dry face, a light heart, and a fistful of T-shirt.

//

Fourth grade starts off with a bang. Ellie gets all new supplies and clothes and shoes. 

Her teacher is kind of cool as fuck and they get into Geology in science class in the first week. She doesn’t feel lost when math starts and actually scores an A on her spelling test. It’s going to be a good fucking year.

She does get in trouble for her mouth and kind of sort of gets in a fight on the playground (but no one catches them so it doesn’t count) and makes unintentional enemies with the popular girls. But whatever. She doesn’t need them anyway. Some other kid sits next to Ellie at lunch and reads a book while eating her cucumber sandwiches. 

Everything’s going along, normal and not complicated until a Monday in October when the teacher passes around a neon pink flyer highlighting the Father/Daughter Dance being held in two weeks. “The fuck…” Ellie mumbles to herself as she stares down at it. Melanie shoots her a nasty look but doesn’t tattle. 

What is she supposed to do with this? Joel isn’t her father. She isn’t his daughter. He probably did those sorts of things with Sarah when she was still alive. He wouldn’t want to feel like Ellie’s forcing him into doing it all over again. And she doesn’t even like dancing. You’re supposed to wear dumb dresses to this shit. Ellie hates dresses. And those shoes with the square heels and all that other shit Mrs. Cimino made her do. 

So Ellie does the most logical thing. She crumpled the paper up and tossed it in the trash can on her way out the door for lunch that day. Problem solved.

Of course the other girls talk about it a lot leading up to it. Anne Marie has two mom’s, so she’s coming with one of them, and Lyla is bringing her grandfather, and Brianna is actually taking her mom’s ex-boyfriend. So clearly they were pretty loose on the whole “father” requirement here. 

Maybe Ellie shouldn’t have just tossed the paper…If she’d left it in her backpack, Joel would have found it without her having to say anything. Then he could figure out what he wanted to do. Now if she decided she wanted to go, she’d have to make it a whole thing. And it was already too easy, envisioning that awkward expression he got when he didn’t quite know what to say as he attempted to wrangle the right words to let her down easy.

Nope. She’d already made her bed. Time to lie in it. 

Besides, just because lots of kids aren’t taking their dads doesn’t mean there aren’t any of the other issues. Ellie still doesn’t want to wear a dress. And she doesn’t really want to dance with Joel to the soundtrack of various Kidz Bop CDs. They would have more fun together on a Friday night at home, anyway. 

All in all, the whole thing is largely put out of her head when the morning of the dance Joel asks her, “So are we going to this shindig or what?”

Ellie looks up from her toaster waffle with eyes wide in surprise. Her unbrushed hair falling in her face with the sudden motion. “What?”

Joel sips his coffee. He’s leaning back in his chair, still looking tired. “The dance thing tonight. Did you want to go?”

How the fuck did he know about that? She threw the flyer away! “Who told you about that?” Her words are insistent, demanding. She shifts in her seat and runs the pad of the thumb back and forth over the rounded edge of her fork handle. 

“The school calendar we got hangin’ on our fridge, girl.”

Oh. Shit. Ellie forgot about that. 

“I don’t want to go,” she says in a rush. 

Joel’s eyes are a little more open and his expression a little more discerning as he looks at her now. “That’s alright,” he answers. The next sip of coffee feels intentional. “Can I ask why?”

The syrup in her mouth just about glues her mouth shut. They had to stop having difficult conversations over breakfast. “I don’t want to wear a dress.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep. That’s all.”

More coffee sipping. More waffle munching. 

That seems to be all there is to be said on the matter, though. Ellie gets ready for her day and is on the bus before Joel ever brings it up again. 

A lot of the other girls at school are excitedly chatting about the dance, but whatever, Ellie doesn’t hang out with them anyway. Instead she and Tyler talk about the new Savage Starlight issue and speculate how the hell they’re going to get away from the asteroid that is heading straight towards the space ship! Ellie votes laser beam. Tyler thinks another asteroid is gonna come and make the first one explode. Aiden chimes in with the idea of a shrink ray.

She has a school day and then she goes home, that same giddy excitement bubbling in her stomach that accompanies every weekend these days. It’s funny, just last year she spent every weekend entirely alone. Now her weekends were filled with fun plans and movie nights and good meals. Joel didn’t ever let her be alone. He said she wasn’t old enough yet. Which sometimes meant she got dragged along to boring places with him, but hey, even the bank gives lollipops. 

When she gets home, Ellie dumps her backpack by the door, kicking off her shoes and all but bouncing her way through to the kitchen to tell Joel about the volcano experiment they’re doing in science class next week. They’re going to have to wear safety goggles! Which sounds to Ellie like there’s at least a moderate chance of explosion. No way she isn’t going to be fucking pumped about the possibility of an explosion.

Except Joel’s not in the kitchen. 

“Joel?” She calls his name with a thin air of hesitation, even knowing she saw his truck in the driveway and that he doesn’t ever, ever leave her alone. It doesn’t quite quell the rising panic, eyes casting around the space like she’s just missed him somewhere. “J-Joel?”

He comes around the corner, dressed all weird. “Right here.” His words are casual, but his eyes are assessing her for something.

It’s not like she’s afraid to be home alone or anything. She’s nine years old. She’s big enough. It’s just…she’d want some heads up. That’s all. 

“What are you wearing?”

“Go on and look on your bed.”

Which is not an answer, thank you very much, but Ellie goes into her room anyway. 

Spread out along her comforter, that was definitely made up way nicer than how Ellie had done it this morning, is a proper cowgirl’s outfit. The boots and the hat and the funny little thing they wear around their necks. No spurs, though. Lame.

Ellie looks up in confusion towards Joel. “What’s this for?”

“That’s up to you, kiddo.” This man can’t seem to answer a question with a straightforward answer today.

“Horseback riding?” Her voice is tinged with hope even as he chuckles in response. 

“Probably not today, but some other time. Sure.”

Looking back down at the clothes now, considering the looming event that had been tethered to this very date, Ellie knows what these clothes are for. She’s pretty sure they aren’t the right clothes, that the other girls will be wearing swishy skirts and clacking heels. 

Joel clears his throat. “Just figured if it was really just ‘bout wearing a dress…Well, ain’t no reason that should stop ya if you wanted to go.”

Ellie reaches out and fingers the fringe of the vest. 

“You see, kiddo, maybe we’ll look a little different than the other people there tonight, maybe we’ll stick out a bit, but that doesn’t mean you don’t get to join in.”

As grown ups often do, Ellie’s pretty sure Joel’s talking about more than just clothes right now. Double meanings and all that. 

“It’s kind of stupid, don’t you think?” 

A hand drops to her shoulder as Joel says, “Well if it’s stupid, we can make fun of it and then get the hell out.” He sits on the edge of her bed, constellation-themed comforter crumpling beneath him. “Only if you want to go, though. Okay? We don’t gotta.”

Ellie swallows and licks her lips. “Did…you and Sarah go to something like this?”

A flash of hurt crosses Joel’s face. He didn’t do it as often these days, or at least hid it better if he did. Sometimes he talked about Sarah without Ellie even asking. Sometimes she’d be settled beneath the covers of her bed with the lights turned out and the blankets nestled around her body, and she would stop him on his way out, when there’s still the ghost of a kiss lingering against her hairline. She’ll ask him something about her, something small and silly and unimportant. 

It all feels important to Ellie. She thinks it’s probably important to Joel, too. 

A couple of times, Joel had dug out a picture or two and shown Ellie. A girl with light brown skin and a curly poof of hair. A girl who was a couple years younger than Ellie and then a couple years older. One who always posed for the camera with a bright smile and warm, cheerful eyes.

The picture was always put back away, though. Ellie held it for a moment or two, Joel told his story, and then it was tucked out of sight. A part of her wanted him to leave it out, but she was afraid of how that would make him feel.

“We did.” Joel’s lips twist to the side before a brief smile breaks across his face. “Line-dancing, actually. She was terrible.”

Ellie giggles without meaning to. She cuts it off halfway through, afraid she’ll offend Joel. But he’s laughing too. It makes her feel better, settled. She laughs with him.

“If it’s super lame, we can leave?”

The soft arrangement of his expression now is exclusively for her. “Of course.”

So Ellie agrees. 

She puts on her outfit, loving the sound of her boots against the hardwood floors as she walks down the hallway. The fringe of her vest twists around her fingers on the car ride over to the school. The parking lot has a fraction of the cars that are there in the middle of a school day, but Ellie sees various kids filtering in hand-in-hand with their fathers. Or their grandpa’s. Or their mom’s ex-boyfriend. 

It helps, remembering the only one who might be here with someone a little different. It helps that Joel knew about this dumb thing and assumed they would go together. 

Inside of Joel’s room, there was a fire-proof safe. Ellie figured it had mostly stuff of Sarah’s. But one day when she found him putting stuff in it, he explained he was keeping all of the paperwork needed for her adoption in there, sorted and contained and protected. She didn’t know why, but it felt like something important. It felt like maybe he thought of her as something closer to daughter than not. 

“Hello, Ellie,” Mrs. Hampton greets them at the front door. She’s smiling wide with her hair all curled and her face made up much nicer than she bothers with during the day.

“You look better than usual.”

“Ellie!” Joel scolds her in a harsh whisper, but it doesn’t make her shrink back in the slightest.

Mrs. Hampton laughs, though her cheeks do turn a bit red. Ellie offers a sheepish apology even though she hadn’t meant it as an insult. “This must be your dad. Nice to meet you, Mr. Williams.”

“Miller, actually,” Joel corrects, his hand pressed between Ellie’s shoulder blades. “You as well. Apologies for my child’s lack of manners.”

Now Mrs. Hampton laughs more like she means it. Her cheeks are still a bit flushed. Ellie presses her back a little more firmly against Joel’s palm. “She certainly is precocious.” They’re both handed a ticket. Which seems kind of stupid since they aren’t paying for it or anything. “Enjoy the dance, Mr. Miller.”

Inside, Ellie can hear the not-as-shitty-as-she-expected music coming from the auditorium, the hall cluttered with a coat rack and a few more teachers. Mr. Ricardo is at the door to the gym collecting the unnecessary tickets. 

“Now here’s a kid with some style,” he comments as they approach. “Knew you were my favorite student for a reason.” He gives her a cheesy wink. Ellie knows he’s probably said the same thing to every single student so far. “Good to see you again, Mr. Miller.”

Joel shakes hands. “Likewise.”

“You two have fun now.”

The inside of the gym still smells like feet and the faint rubber of dodgeballs. There are swirling multi-colored lights projected across the whole space and pop music pouring through the speakers. A Maroon Five song is playing. Ellie doesn’t like Maroon Five. 

A punchbowl sits on one table, the drink a deep red in a crystal clear bowl that’s most certainly made of plastic. Kids walk around with pink paper cups and little plates of chips and brownie squares. 

Ellie recognizes her classmates and makes eye contact with one of them on accident. Her heart races as she looks away but glances back to find them waving at her. She offers a small wave back.

The dance is for kids from third through fifth grade, so the space is decently full. Last year when Ellie had seen the flyer, it hadn’t even existed in her mind as something worth considering. Who was she going to ask to go with her? Mr. Cimino? Fat chance. 

Joel ladles her a cup of punch and cuts her off when she goes to add a third brownie to her plate. They’re arguing over how many brownies are an appropriate amount to eat when Sasha comes over, tugging her dad along behind her. “Hi, Ellie!” she says like they actually talk to each other in class or something.

“Hi.” Ellie licks Cheeto dust off of her fingers. 

“Your outfit is so cool!” The compliment seems sincere, enough so that Ellie has to bite her lip to contain a smile. “My mom picked this dress out for me when I wasn’t even shopping with her. So not fair.”

Joel’s talking to Sasha’s dad so Ellie makes the most of this conversation they’re apparently in now. “I hate when people do that,” she says, remembering Christmas parties with scratchy tags and staticky panty hose. 

“Did your mom take you with her?” Sasha inquires as she clearly sneaks a brownie off of the tray in front of them. Ellie was starting to think this was all a ploy. “I like going to Macy’s with my mom, but she always wants to go to Walmart.”

“I, um,” Ellie glances up towards Joel. He seems distracted enough. “My dad picked them out, actually.”

Sasha’s eyes grow comically wide. “My daddy can’t even dress himself. At least that’s what my mom says.” She shrugs. “I like his rubber ducky suit, though.”

For a brief moment Ellie envisions Joel in a rubber ducky suit. It’s enough to make her laugh.

Not long after, Sasha wanders away with her dad, Ellie finishes her plate of snacks, and she and Joel are still just hanging out in the gym listening to Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb.”

“Guess we oughta dance,” Joel remarks, eyes panning around the room.

Ellie groans. “Do we have to?” It was one thing to come to the dance. To put on their outfits and talk to her teachers and keep letting her classmates assume Ellie was just a normal kid with a normal family. 

“These things got a checklist, I’m afraid. Let’s cross off another.”

They filter out onto the dance floor which is really just the overly waxed gymnasium with it’s painted on basketball lines. Shoes scuff audibly along the surface as the dads and daughters dance together. 

“I hate this song,” Ellie grumbles for the sake of grumbling. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Joel takes her hands which is a little awkward with the height difference, and Ellie doesn’t actually know what the fuck they’re supposed to be doing so they just sorta sway. A lot of the other kids are standing on their dad’s feet. Joel catches her staring. “Oh, yeah. I think we’re doing it wrong.” He moves like he’s going to stand on her feet, and it’s dumb enough to make her laugh. 

The flash of a camera goes off then. Ellie’s head swivels around to find her gym teacher with an old school camera in his hand. “That was a good one. See?” She peers at the square little screen he holds out. “I like to get some candid shots along with posed. You two want another?”

Ellie squirms at the question while Joel says yes without hesitation. He scoops her up, and she levels her cheek right beside his. She smiles wide even though she’d lost a tooth last week and there’s a big old gap on the right side of her mouth. Joel said it was cute. Ellie said he was fucking crazy.

Then Joel’s talking to the gym teacher, but he kind of goes back to swaying with Ellie still held in his arms. “It’s real nice how all in you guys go for events like this.”

Joel wasn’t wrong. Almost every teacher was here. Even the second grade sub was refilling the chip bowls. It was kind of nice, her school putting in this much effort for something kinda dumb. 

Once he leaves Ellie’s back on her feet. They dance through a few more songs until another boring slow one comes on, and Ellie stops, reaching an arm across herself to grab ahold of her bicep. “Thanks for bringing me or whatever,” she kind of mumbles despite the chattering conversation surrounding them. “I guess it was kind of fun.”

Joel’s staring down at her with that look he gives. The one that’s not a smile or a frown or a concerned furrowed brow. It’s just this expression of ease, of fondness. It’s one that makes her feel aglow with comfort. “I’m glad you chose to come. But, ya know, next time you could always just ask me.”

That’s the thing about Joel with this sort of stuff. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t seem to understand how weird it is to do things like give a handmade Father’s Day card or let all of the people around her just assume he’s her dad. Because he’s not. But he feels like something close to it. It feels like something she could almost have, could almost claim with the confidence that it won’t be taken away. 

“You can ask me for just about anything and I’d give it to you, kiddo.”

Ellie feels her heart trip over itself, not really sure what she’s supposed to do with a statement like that. “Help me kidnap Bill’s cat and rename it something better than Mr. Muffins.” She mock gags, breaking the tension.

“You and I both know that’s Frank’s cat and if anyone laid a hand on it, Bill wouldn’t treat them none too kindly.”

They were her favorite neighbors, moved in just a couple of months ago. There was a garden that Frank was always tending to. Bill joined him often. And there was a fluffy white cat that walked around with a blue jangly collar, never daring to leave the yard and instead spending days lounging in the sun and grooming itself. 

“You said anything!” She protests, hands going to her hips in mock indignation.

Joel rolls his eyes. “I do reckon I said ‘just about.’”

Lame. She tells him as much.

All in all, it’s a nice sort of night that once it’s all said and done, Ellie will think about it and feel only warm and happy and good. None of the awkward jumbled mess that led up to it all.

Life goes on the way it always does. Ellie doesn’t get a cat, but Joel does buy her a stuffed one that looks just like Frank’s and goes through the trouble of getting it a collar that actually reads “Mr. Muffins.” It’s stupid, but it makes her laugh as the pad of her index finger traces the etched name. 

A few weeks after the dance, Ellie’s surprised to come home one day and find something new sitting on the mantle in the living room. There were a few knick knacks up there. A tiny pumpkin she’d picked out at the patch last week, the Father’s Day card Ellie had made all those months ago, and the rocketship Christmas tree topper Ellie had asked to keep out. 

Now there are two framed photos resting there as well. One of Ellie and Joel at the dance, the posed one where she has her cheek pressed to Joel’s and is smiling big enough to display the gap in her teeth. They look a little silly in their cowboy get-up, but Ellie likes that they match.

And up there, beside the photograph of Ellie and Joel, is one of a younger Joel and a beaming Sarah.

She’s wearing a dress with cowboy boots peeking out from beneath it. Joel’s dressed like a cowboy in this one, too. Hat and all. She thinks it’s the father-daughter line dance he’d told Ellie about when she’d asked. 

It’s the sort of thing that takes her by surprise, that leaves her silent and standing and staring. 

“They don’t look too bad up there together, do they?” Joel asks, causing Ellie to jump in surprise. 

She’d had a hand extended, reaching towards the picture with Sarah. There’s very little similarity between the two pictures. Ellie can’t help but think of them as mirror images. 

“You want this one up here too?” She points to the one of her and Joel.

There’s the slow approach of his footsteps before a hand drops to Ellie’s shoulder from behind. “Of course I do.” There’s a heaviness to his voice. “That’s…” Joel clears his throat. “I want both my girls up there. Those are good memories. Seems like a shame not to remember them.”

The heaviness of the moment feels like it could be choking, oxygen-sucking, but instead Ellie breathes easy through it. She leans back against the palm on her shoulder. Her head tips and rests against Joel’s side as they stand there staring at the pictures. “I wish I could remember her,” Ellie finds herself saying without bothering to spend the time making the statement something that could be easily understood.

Joel picks her up, props her on his hip and holds her to him. He’s not crying, but she can feel the emotions rolling off of him in waves. “It ain’t always easy talkin’ ‘bout her,” he says into Ellie’s hair, “but I’ll tell you more stories. You deserve to know her better after all.”

It doesn’t seem like a fair statement. What right does Ellie have to Sarah? Why would she deserve any part of her? “I do?” she asks instead of letting the confusion linger. That was another good thing about Joel. She was never afraid to ask him questions.

“‘Course you do.” His voice is lighter. “She’s your big sister after all.”

There’s a long moment where Ellie doesn’t say anything. “I guess so,” she finally whispers. 

It doesn’t seem real. Being here, even after all this time. It was technically over a year ago now, a year since she’d wiped out on a bicycle that didn’t fit her properly and got her wounds wiped with soapy washcloths and bandaged over. A year since spaghetti and meatballs and opening the wrong door to wash her hands and finding Savage Starlight gummies waiting on the railing of a porch. A year of knowing there was someone in her corner, someone who wanted her to be warm and safe and fed. 

“Because you were her dad,” Ellie tacks on unnecessarily. 

She doesn’t know why she does it. She doesn’t know what she expects Joel to say in response. “Still am,” he amends gently. “Even with her gone…it ain’t ever been a part of me that’s gone away.”

And Ellie thinks about how her mother has been gone Ellie’s entire life, but she almost understands. Because she still felt like a daughter, even if there was no one around to make her one. Until now. “Because you’re…still a dad.”

He drops another kiss to her head. “That’s right, baby.”

Ellie doesn’t ask for any more clarification.

Instead, they stay just like that. Her held in his arms as they stare at the framed photos in front of them and think of what was before, what is now, and all they still have to come.

//

They get a snow day on Valentine’s.

Joel buys her a stuffed frog and a chocolate rose and a heart-shaped pancake mold. 

With her free morning, the two of them build a pillow fort and play card games and FaceTime Uncle Tommy and Maria. They visited again over Christmas. Joel mentioned maybe moving there once the adoption was finalized and they didn’t have to contend with the government anymore. 

Joel tells Ellie about one of Sarah’s Valentine’s Days. How she’d gotten stood up at eighth grade lunch of all things and came home in tears. It seemed kind of silly to Ellie, letting a dumb boy make you feel that way, but then Joel said he and Sarah created homemade pizzas and watched cheesy rom-coms and when that same boy called later that night, Sarah told him off and hung up the phone when he was mid-sentence. It makes Ellie a little proud of the big sister she’ll never get to meet. She thinks she maybe wants to be like Sarah when she grows up.

When the sun is out and shining Joel bundles the both of them up to go out to play. 

Ellie creates a game like always, delving into character work and plot developments and different settings. As the wind blusters around them, Ellie declares that they’re out in the Russian tundra on a secret spy mission. They were spy astronauts! Their spaceship crashed! Nobody knows there were survivors!

Quickly, they create some snow people for the sake of beating them up to escape a hostage situation. Joel mumbles something about this game being “awfully violent,” but Ellie ignores him as she uses a snapped off stick to detach a snow-head. “If we don’t run now, Agent Doo-Doo Head, we’ll never escape!”

“I did not agree to that being my formal title,” Joel argues, but allows Ellie to grab his hand and drag him around from the backyard to the front where there was another snow-person waiting for them.

“Oh no!” Ellie cries in mock horror. Bill is outside shoveling his driveway and briefly looks in their direction before waving them off in mock annoyance. “Why it’s…it’s…” Ellie wracks her brain. She hadn’t come up with names before playing. “Alan!”

“Alan?” Joel deadpans, clearly unimpressed. 

“Alan…the Czar of Russia! He’s going to kidnap us for our espion-massaging.”

“Espionage.”

“Right. That. We can’t let him take us alive!”

Joel gets into it, even when he does remark that he “doesn’t know if he can subscribe to a super villain being named Alan.”

Either way they run, and they play, and they create a snow fortress to hide behind and throw armloads of snowballs at the Czar. It’s not very effective. Ellie’s sword-fighting was much more impactful. 

By late afternoon the sun is down, Alan Czar has been usurped, and Ellie is the new ruler of Russia. Agent Doo-Doo Head was elected as her official bodyguard and Vice President. 

The cold is settling into Ellie’s bones. She lets Joel fuss over her blue-tinged lips and rub her aching, freezing hands between his own. They’re gathering up all of her props to head inside when Frank and Bill come walking by, arm in arm.

“You having fun playing with your dad?” Frank calls to Ellie.

And maybe not too long ago she would have been frozen in place, stuck and scared and uncertain. But now she just smiles and chirps back a “Yep! We infiltrated Russia.”

“Atta girl,” Bill gruffs in her direction. “You’ve got yourself a wise daughter there, Joel.”

“That I do,” he responds without any hesitation. 

Inside she gets to drink hot cocoa while Joel makes dinner, and she thinks about adoptions that are almost finalized and father/daughter dances and making cookies over Christmas break, and a snowman named Alan Czar. 

It’s a life, Ellie realizes, what she and Joel have. It’s a whole life that they’ve created from the ground up. It’s layered and complicated and different, but theirs. 

“I like it, you know,” Ellie tells him while burgers sizzle on in the frying pan. Joel knows she likes hers with cheddar cheese, lettuce, and ketchup. No icky tomatoes or mayo allowed. 

Joel’s looking at her, assessing something. There’s a magnet from Grand Teton National Park on their fridge, a picture of Sarah at about the same age Ellie is now with a guitar held awkwardly in her hands, smiling up at the camera. There were a couple pictures of Ellie, too. Including one from this Christmas where she’s still in her pajamas, mouth agape in awe of the present she’d just unwrapped. Her own telescope.

Bravery suddenly vanishing, Ellie’s focused on chasing marshmallows in her mug when she says, “When people call you that.”

There’s a beat of silence. “Your dad?” Joel finally clarifies.

Ellie looks up out of instinct, feeling heat rise to her face. She shrugs. 

The stove clicks off. Now is normally when Joel sets her on a few missions. Getting out the buns and putting forks on the table. Instead he just keeps standing there, regarding her. “I like it too.”

Shit. Ellie wasn’t prepared for that. She doesn’t know what she expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. “You don’t mind?” she whispers.

Joel’s leaning across the island, bent over so they’re at equal height and he can stare right into her eyes. “Honey, being your dad is one of the greatest privileges of my life.”

Her gaze jumps to the fridge. “Me and Sarah?”

“Exactly.”

The two of them eat dinner and watch a movie, and Joel makes Ellie go to bed on time since she has school in the morning. He tucks her beneath the covers surrounded by Armstrong and the stuffed Mr. Muffins who she hadn’t ever bothered to rename. Just like every night he kisses the top of her head after reading a chapter from their book and saying, “Goodnight, baby girl.”

And completely not like every night Ellie’s heart is about to burst out of her chest and her mouth is dry and her throat feels like it’s threatening to swell up and cut off her airway as she answers back, “Night, Dad.”

Joel pauses, his fingertips resting on the lightswitch. 

Ellie spares a thought to another time, more years ago than she’s been alive for, that Joel switched off this same light in this same room after hearing those same words. Maybe it’s hard, hearing them again. Maybe she shouldn’t have said it. Maybe they could just forget this happened, that Ellie tried to make it a thing. She could turn it into a game. Make it a part of the Alan Czar multiverse.  

She’s already opened her mouth to call it off, retract the ridiculous statement and never dare wander down this path again. It was stupid. She was stupid. Joel wouldn’t want-

“Been a long time since I heard that one,” he says, voice wet and warbling. 

“Is it…okay?” Ellie ends up asking instead of apologizing. She finds that her heart is still beating out of sync, tripping over itself as she awaits the final call here.

Joel leaves the lightswitch to return to her bedside. “It is more than okay, Ellie.” His hand reaches out and flutters the pages of her comic book that rests on her bedside table and resituates the cup of water she has in case she wakes up thirsty after a nightmare. “I…I didn’t think I’d ever hear those words again.”

It makes her think of his reaction to her Father’s Day card, how it’s still sitting out to this day even though it’s kind of absurd with her drawing on the front and how it’s slumped over from resting against the wall for so long. Maybe this year she could make Joel a proper Father’s Day card, not one that’s mostly an afterthought that she was afraid to give. 

“I love you, Ellie,” he offers before she can ask if that was a good or bad thing.

And like it’s not as if he doesn’t say that all the time. It’s not like he doesn’t show it with his hugs and his playing games with her and his buying her a special outfit to go to a dance or drawing a little mock stick figure of her on her cast and scribbling his name beneath or holding her hand tighter whenever they entered a busy location. That was one thing Ellie never had to question anymore. She knew she was loved. 

“I know,” she answers with ease.

“You’re my kid,” Joel says with a hand running along his chin. “Even if you do make up the weirdest games.”

Ellie smiles up at him. “I think you mean best.”

“My mistake.” She gets an extra kiss tonight along with another, “Now go to sleep,” that’s delivered with an especially soft smile that leads to all these crinkles in the corner of Joel’s eyes. 

It’s hard to be tired when your heart just about imploded in your chest, but Ellie curls up on her side and lets Joel tuck the covers up snug around her shoulders. “See ya in the morning, baby.”

It’s hardly some grand statement; it doesn’t quite hold the weight of a nearly finished adoption certificate or even a foster license that reads: Approved on a laptop screen. It might not have the same connotation as “Night, Dad” or “Greatest privilege of my life,” but it’s a promise all on its own. It’s the sort that reminds Ellie of how this life was continual. How it was maybe going to keep changing but there were a few elements that would stay the same. How she was going to get older, but she wouldn’t ever have to stop being somebody’s kid.

As sure as the sun would rise come morning, Joel would be there waiting for her with a freshmade breakfast, a check-over of her homework, and the assurance that he’d see her after school. 

There are some things that Ellie knows. There’s a few she can’t quite convince herself of.

Tonight, she closes her eyes and allows the certainty to lull her somewhere that only the good dreams can find her. But at least she knows, if the nightmares dare to appear, she’s got a dad to protect, to hold her, to comfort her. 

He’s right down the hall. He’s right where he’d been for the last year, right where she knows she’ll continue to find him. Forever. That’s how families work. Ellie would know. After all, she’s got the best one.