Chapter Text
“...huh.”
“What? What is it?”
“Uh, That girl is still here.”
“Whaaaat???”
Bob kept his eyes fixed on the figure in question, partially because he knew his wife well enough to anticipate her reaction, shuffling to make room at the window seconds before she was even at his side, not that that stopped Linda from pushing him further away, taking up the majority of the viewing space (he didn’t mind, easily acquiescing to her shove.) Mostly, though, he was trying to puzzle out what he was even looking at.
In literal terms, it was obvious. Some time just after the lunch rush had cooled, a teenage girl around his eldest daughter's age had walked into their restaurant, ordered a single small fountain drink paid for with a handful of crumpled singles, and sat in the booth at the back corner. She was quiet, kept her head down, and only occasionally returned to the counter for a refill. It was a lucky day for a quiet girl, Bob was minding the shop alone, and even Teddy was out on a job and unable to stop by. Whatever she was waiting for, she wasn't going to be bothered by anyone in the meantime.
At first Bob paid her no mind. It was annoying when people were clearly just using his restaurant as a meeting place, taking up seats that actual paying customers could have used (if there had been customers that needed the space,) but at the very least she had the courtesy to buy something and even left a five dollar tip, over double what the soda had cost her. She said nothing and neither did Bob. It was zen. As the hours ticked on, however, Bob couldn’t help but cast wayward glances in her direction from his spot at the grill. She was here to meet someone, right? She kept glancing between her phone and the front door like she was expecting someone to walk in. She had to be.
But no one ever came. The afternoon sun gradually shifted to night sky, until that too was covered by a blanket of clouds. By the time he flipped the Open sign to Closed, small drops of rain began to peck at the glass. It was only then that he finally said something, awkwardly informing her that she needed to leave. The girl looked up at him and silently shuffled out of her seat, and he assumed that was the end of it. He might've even forgotten about it under normal circumstances, but it nagged at his brain, so once in bed with his wife he told her about it and hoped that would be the end of it.
So in a way he knew exactly what he was looking at. That girl from before, who he assumed was just going to walk home, sat on the curb underneath rain that only seemed to intensify as the time ticked by. But he also had no idea what he was looking at. What was she doing there?
“Oh that poor girl must be freezing!” Linda cried, “Grab some towels, Bobbie, I’m gonna go bring her in!”
Bob hummed in acknowledgement, lingering at the window for just a second more before wandering to the bathroom, a strange pit brewing in his stomach.
By the time he was coming down the stairs Linda and the girl were already through the door. She was hugging the teenager with a borrowed Equestranauts blanket thrown over her shoulders, and in his head Bob could see Linda exploding out of the door, holding up the blanket like a bird spreading it's wings, scooping the girl up into her arms and rushing her indoors. Although it probably didn’t happen exactly like that.
“Do you need to use the phone?” Linda said in that soft voice she always adopted when her mother hen instincts took over, “Where are your parents? Oh, they must be worried sick!”
The girl sniffed in a manner that almost sounded like a scoff, though it was probably just the cold.
“Uh, do you want... towels?” Bob asked, holding up the folded cloth in his arms. Of course she wants towels, look at her. God, you’re bad at this.
“I-it’s okay.” The girl finally spoke, “I just... They’ll be here soon. I just need to-” She moved to go back outside but Linda only tightened her grip on the girl.
“Are you crazy??? It’s pouring!” She cried, “You’re soaked to the bone!” Unprompted, she raised her voice, causing Bob and the girl to flinch as she shouted, “Tina! Are you up? We need a change of clothes! Stat!” She lowered her volume only slightly, turning back to the girl. “Now come on! Up, up, up!”
Linda shoved both her and Bob back to the top floor just as their daughter poked her head through her door, rubbing her eyes.
“What’s goin’ on...?” She slurred, blinking slowly as put her glasses on.
“We got a little fashion disaster, sweetie!” Linda said as pushed past her and Bob, yanking the towels from his arms, “We need warm, dry clothes!”
“I see. Say no more.” Tina nodded resolutely, as if there was more to be said in the first place. Bob rubbed the back of his neck. No doubt the other kids were about to rouse from the commotion, and he’d have to explain what was going on to them. But first he needed to figure that out for himself.
By the time Linda had stuffed the girl into their bathroom and handed her the towels and the outfit procured by Tina, Gene and Louise had wandered out of their respective rooms, watching curiously as Linda took the wet clothes handed through the crack in the door.
“I’ll take those!” Gene volunteered, grabbing a dripping pink beanie from the top of the pile and plopping it onto his own head.
“Gene, not now.” Bob sighed, pulling it off of him and opening the laundry closet, tossing the pile in the dryer and activating the child lock before his son could get any ideas. Linda rushed to the kitchen, quietly debating to herself if she should make tea or cocoa, and Gene trailed behind her. Louise, barely conscious, seemed to decide that she didn’t actually care that much and trudged back to her room, slamming the door as if to say “don’t wake me up again unless the house explodes and someone dies. If nobody dies then don’t bother.”
Bob looked back at the bathroom door, the hallway now left with the sounds of the dryer humming and the rain pattering outside, and for a moment he could convince himself that this was just another night for their family. But there was that pit again, it still hadn’t gone away. He loved Linda, but rarely did he want to be like her. Not because he disliked her, but because she was great at filling all the little gaps in himself, picking up where he can’t, noticing what he doesn’t see, and he hoped he could do the same for her. If they were more alike then that would throw off the whole balance, and besides, despite everything he had a certain contentedness with who he was.
But in this moment he really wished he had his wife’s energy, her ability to just get-up-and-go whenever things happened, and especially her adaptability. In general he didn’t like to move around excessively, but right now just standing where he was standing felt like he was sinking into quicksand. He shouldn’t just be standing here, he should be like Lin, moving, talking, doing anything really. But his brain felt like it was lagging behind and his feet were completely rooted to the ground.
When the doorknob turned it almost made Bob jump, and he unclenched the hand he didn’t even realize he had started clenching in the first place. “I hope you like the outfit I picked out.” Tina started, “Cause I wear it every day and if it turns out it’s not good that’ll kind of really change my outlook on things.”
“It’s fine, thanks...” The girl replied, and Bob realized this was the first time he was really getting a good look at her. Her brown hair was still wet, although only near the tips where her hat hadn’t guarded it. Her round glasses looked kind of bent, and as she cleaned them with her shirt Bob noticed the lens pop out, before she quickly popped it back in without even needing to look. When she slid them back on her face they were ever so slightly crooked in a way that kind of nagged at him, like a picture frame needing to be straightened out. She was about the same build as Tina but a little bit taller, so her shirt rode a little high and she was unconsciously tugging the hem of her skirt down. Above all else, though, she mostly just looked tired.
Bob sniffed, trying to think of something to say but coming up blank. Only after a minute or so did the synapses finally fire off in his brain enough for him to say “Your stuff is in the dryer. Right now.”
She opened her mouth to reply when Linda burst out from the kitchen, and Bob thanked god that she had. “I couldn’t decide if you wanted tea or cocoa so I just made both!” She smiled, a mug in each hand, one with a teabag hanging over the side and another with whipped cream rising above the rim.
“And I made water!” Gene declared, which is what he said sometimes when he got water from the sink. “You can’t have it!”
Gene was ushered to bed, thankfully able to keep his water, and the girl was brought to the living room and sat at the couch, Tina lingering behind. Context clues would normally have told her to go back to sleep too, but neither Bob nor Linda stopped her, they might need someone around the same age as the girl. Linda sat down next to her, close enough to reassure but not so close as to break any boundaries. “Okay now spill, sweetie, what’s your name? Where’s your parents?”
“I’m Meg Griffin, ma’am.” She started, “My parents said they’d meet us at your restaurant if we got separated. I guess they forgot.”
Must be talking about The Wharf, Bob thought to himself. It was pretty common for this sort of thing to happen, though why so many people came to his restaurant to wait for their parents he didn’t know. It definitely wasn’t because the restaurant across the street was always way more crowded. Nope. It had to be something else.
“No, no, I’m sure they didn’t forget!” Linda replied, a hand over her chest, “Here, give me their number, I’ve give ‘em a call!”
“I’ll do it!” Bob jumped in.
“Hey, uh, you don’t know me, but we have your kid. Not in a kidnapping way, she’s just waiting for you to pick her up. Normally. With no ransom necessary. At Bob’s Burgers, between the Morgue and the, uh- ” He leaned away, covering the receiver with his hand, “Lin, what’s next door again?”
“She-Sells-Sea-Shells at the Clam Art Store!”
“-The store with the... Clam art. Ocean’s Avenue. Guess I should have mentioned that part first. So, uh, yeah.”
“So when’re they coming?” Linda asked before Bob had even finished hanging up.
“It went to voicemail.”
“Alright, that’s okay, these things happen.” Linda nodded, sipping her tea, “What’s your Mom’s number?”
“Hi, this is Bob. From Burgers. Bob’s Burgers. Your daughter’s with me. Wait, no. Your daughter is... She's not with me she's... She’s waiting at my store. Well technically she’s in my house, cause my store is closed. And no one has come to pick her up. So I’m calling about that. We’re Bob’s Burgers, at Ocean avenue. Across from the italian place. Do not go in the italian place. Uh, cause she won’t be there, I mean. Obviously. Sorry. Okay bye.”
“So?”
“Voicemail again.”
“Well, I guess it is late...” Linda tapped her finger against the mug, “Though you’d think they’d be up...” She muttered under her breath, her smile a little more forced. “Anyone else we can call? Any brothers or sisters?”
“Hi! This is Chris Griffin! What’s up?”
“Oh thank god. Listen, your sister is here and-”
“Mhm?”
“Yeah, by ‘here’ I mean at Bob’s Burgers-”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah! So if you can get your parents and they can come pick her up-”
“Hah! Got you! I’m not on the phone at all! Please leave a message after the-”
*click*
“What’s up, did you get ahold of-”
“No, Lin, I didn’t.”
“Hello?”
“Yes! Hi! You’re real, right? You’re not voicemail?”
“...Yes? Uh, who am I talking to?”
Bob leaned away, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Bob, from Bob’s Burgers. Look, your sister’s been waiting here and-”
“Sister? I don’t have...”
“Or cousin or niece or whatever, okay? All I know is that Meg Griffin is here and nobody else is picking up the phone, so can you please come get her or tell me where to drop her off?”
“Meg? That can’t be right... Hang on...”
Sounds of movement and muffled speech. Some kind of heated discussion as two voices overlapped, the words indiscernible. The creaking of doors sliding open slowly and deliberately, and being shut just as carefully. And was that... Sniffing? Finally, he was back.
“Shit, yeah, I’ll get her parents over there tomorrow.”
“What? No, you need to come here tonight.”
“I’m sorry, they’re sleeping right now. I’d drive over there if I could but they won’t let me use the rental after... They just won’t let me use it.”
“Then wake them up!”
“That’s... Not going to happen.”
“Yes it can! Just tell them it’s their daughter!”
“Look, even if I did wake them up they aren’t really in any condition to drive. And it might be a good thing if she stays somewhere else tonight, she was supposed to sleep on the couch but before he passed out Peter, uh... Well, the hotel hasn’t sent any replacement cushions yet, so if she comes back she'll have to sleep on the floor.”
Bob’s mouth hung open, unable to parse the flood of new information. He really, desperately didn’t want to make a scene, especially with their girl still shivering in his living room, but none of the things he heard made any sense whatsoever. They drunk themselves to sleep before they even knew where their daughter was? That couldn’t be right. Because that raised a question with an answer so obvious it shouldn’t need be asked to any parent. And yet the obvious answer didn’t seem to quite fit, no matter what angle he tried to slot it in through. And so, despite his reservations, he asked.
“So, what’s the situation?”
“Huh...?” Bob hadn’t realized he’d wandered back into the living room. But there was Linda, looking up at him expectantly. And there was Meg, who was not. And he had an inkling he knew why.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah. They’re going to come pick her up tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow...?” For a moment Linda’s brows furrowed, and then like a switch she flipped back to her usual demeanor. “Awright! Did you hear that, Tina? Sleepover!”
“I’ll be the hostess with the mostest.”
“Uh, is that... Okay?” Bob looked towards Meg, quirking a brow. Technically there wasn’t really much choice, but it felt weird to not ask her.
“I guess they forgot,” she had said. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it-
“Yeah, that’s fine.” Meg sighed, setting her cocoa on the coffee table. At this point whatever whipped cream Linda had put on top had completely collapsed.
“So, ah... Tomorrow, huh?”
“Mmm.” Bob hummed, his eyes tracing the patterns on the ceiling. He felt the mattress shift and his wife’s arms trace against his. He wasn’t sure if she could see what he was looking at without her glasses on, but it’s not like he could see what she was seeing either.
She sighed. Bob wished she would say more, but he couldn’t think of anything to spur conversation. His thoughts were too busy. They’d decided to snip out a certain moment from that conversation on the phone and play it back, over and over, as if looking at it again would make any sense of it.
“...Bobbie?”
It took a moment to register. “Yeah, Lin?”
“If Tina were sleeping at some stranger’s house instead of here, would you be able to sleep?”
“Probably not.”
“Yeah...” Her fingers curled around his, and he leaned into the touch. “Yeah, me neither...”
Silence. And then it started to replay in his head again. That one question, that he was starting to deeply regret having asked.
“Were they even looking for her in the first place?”
There was a pause. And then, a deep sigh.
“...Honestly? If anyone noticed she was gone, they didn’t say anything.”
He squeezed Linda’s hand.
It just didn’t make any sense.