Archive of Our Own ^beta

Taking Ellie Williams home from the hospital after being approved as her emergency guardian proved to be much more complicated than Joel Miller had planned. This complication was mainly because Ellie was having trouble with everything they did or said to her, and she was ready to run back to the streets at the slightest provocation.

“Ellie, come on out of there, please?” Joel called through the locked bathroom door while giving Liv, Ellie’s primary nurse, a wincing look. Ellie had gone in there to change into some clothes that she was borrowing from Sarah, which were not Ellie’s style. The clothes Sarah brought were the most muted things his pink-loving daughter owned, but it was still a dark purple top, and the sweatpants had roses on a grey background. 

“NO! I look stupid, and I would rather be naked!” Ellie shouted from inside the bathroom.

Joel appreciated the drama and sass because it meant she was feeling a little better, “Come on, Ellie-girl. Once we get you settled at the house, I can send Tommy out to find you some different clothes, and you’ll never have to wear roses and purple again.”

“I’m not going, you’re not going to keep me, just leave me to Marlene, she’ll find me another shitty group home and I won’t ruin your life.”

He’d been hearing different versions of the same sentiment off and on for the past two days that she’d been in the hospital. Nothing was going to change the fact that she’d been in the system or living on the street when they found her. It was going to take time to work through those fears, but they were never going to get the chance if she didn’t leave the bathroom or the hospital.

Joel would use Sarah to get her out, not caring how manipulative it was for both girls. Ellie doesn’t seem capable of letting Sarah down, but his elder child was at school. She’d missed several days this week already because Ellie was missing from the weekend fair, and they’d all been a mess looking for her. Then all of them stayed at the hospital with Ellie after they were approved as guardians.

Sarah couldn’t afford to lose more days this month, so he sent her off with the promise that Ellie would be home by the time her school day ended. The clock was currently counting down to turning him into a liar. Tommy left a little while ago because they hoped fewer men in the room might help Ellie come out, but that hasn’t helped either. 

“Ellie, can you just trust that we’re excited about you coming home with us today? Just a little? Sarah has been workin’ on your room for the last couple of days.”

There was movement at that, and when Ellie spoke again, she was pressed against the door. "I have a room?”

“Yes, of course, sweet girl. Did you think we would drop you in the living room like a lump on the couch?” Ellie had never been to their home, so it's more than probable that she didn’t know she was going to have her own room. 

Before he could move away from the door, it bounced open, and he stumbled forward a little as Ellie smirked at him, proving she did it to be an ass. Ellie sobered after a second, hobbling over to the bed on her crutches and flopping down. The clothes were big on her, and Joel could see how uncomfortable she was in them. The sweats were big enough to pull on around the cast, and the shirt was large, but as soon as she was sitting on the bed, she wrapped her arms around her stomach, trying to make herself smaller now that she was back in his eyeline. Joel nodded to Liv, who smiled at them and walked out the door, though he figured she hadn’t gone far because she was going to wheel Ellie out of here so she didn’t kill all of her energy on getting to the door of the truck.

Joel pulled one of his spare hoodies out of the backpack he had on his shoulder and held it out to her. It was gray, with the name of their business stitched onto the front left, as if it would be over a chest pocket, and a decal of their logo on the back.

Ellie caught sight of it and, with a little squeak, she grabbed it and quickly crawled into it, and he watched as she visibly relaxed. Something about the heavy fabric and the voluminous way it lay on her, turning her into a shapeless blob of a person, comforted her in a way that the other clothes didn’t. He clocked it for later; they have plenty of hoodies and sweaters between him and Tommy, she could dress in them every day and not run out for about a week and a half. He would buy some for her if she wanted. And now that she was a little calmer, maybe he would be able to talk her into leaving like they had planned. 

She was fighting with the sleeves because they were longer than her arms, so he moved over and knelt in front of her, causing his knee to crack. She snickered as he grunted, and he smiled back, glad to see a little of her humor return even though it was at his expense. Then he held a hand out, and she put hers in his so he could help her roll back the sleeve. He then traded so he could do the same to the other one. Once done with the sleeves, Joel keeps hold of her hand until she looks up, meeting his gaze with a small, discomfited smile. 

“Trust that we care about you, huh? Please, sweet girl?”

She nodded, though he could still see the trepidation in her gaze, and Joel turned back to the door just in time for Liv to come back in with the wheelchair. He helped Ellie into it, then grabbed her crutches and backpack—everything she’d owned while on the street. He had his bag on one shoulder with hers layered over the top as they walked out to the front, where his truck drove up with Tommy in the driver's seat. Joel frowned at his brother, wondering where he had left his vehicle to play the role of driver.

Tommy put the truck in park and rushed around to help Ellie into the backseat, with Joel beside her. Ellie allowed Tommy to open the door, but not touch her, so he backed off amicably. Meanwhile, Joel picked her up and settled her into the backseat. Then, he handed her the backpack and closed the door.

“Where’s your truck, Tommy?” Joel asked with a frown.

“I returned it to the office and had Kelly drop me off when she had lunch. I just used your spare so I would be ready when she came out.”

Joel was about to speak when Ellie slapped her palm against the closed window next to their face, bringing their attention to her, abruptly killing the conversation. She gave them both a significant look that said ‘let’s get this show on the road’, so they rolled their eyes and entered the front seat of the truck. Joel let Tommy drive so he could focus on Ellie, who was still dealing with nausea because of her concussion, so he checked on her every thirty seconds or so until she scoffed, “Just look at me and talk to me, or stop being a weirdo. I don’t think I am going to puke.”

Tommy snickered, “Darlin’, you are in for a lot of coddlin’. Joel here is a worrier. You’re ours to worry about now, so you are in for it.”

Joel rolled his eyes where Ellie could see them, and she snickered. 

“I have a room?” she asked, trying to distract them from worrying about her barfing.

“Yeah, it’s not very fancy right now because we didn’t think things were going to change so fast, but it's got a bed with fresh bedsheets, a little lamp on a bedside table, and a new big sister right next door.”

Ellie stared at him for a long time. “You met me less than a month ago for the first time. Why do all this? I spent more than a year with one of my past placements, and they didn’t even have a bed for me. I slept on an air mattress in the den, and they barely knew my name.”

Joel was going to start asking for trigger warnings on these little anecdotes from Ellie’s past life because they were going to make him barf, or maybe hunt down these fuckers who thought that they could treat such a sweet kid so poorly.

“We’re doing this because we care about you and have the space,” Joel answered before she got shy about the silence. Anytime they talked about liking her, it made her feel weird, but he thought she should know.

“Am I going to have to go to school? With Sarah?” Ellie asked.

“Eventually, but I don’t want you to worry about that. You will likely need to catch up on what you’ve missed. That’s not my priority. Your health is.”

Ellie wiggled in her seat and then looked out the window. Joel turned back to the front, and Tommy pulled into the driveway of Joel’s side of the duplex and pushed the truck into the park. Joel unbuckled and stepped out of the truck, while Tommy retrieved the crutches and packs from the back. As Joel closed his door, he moved to open the back door. At the same time, Ellie unhooked her buckle and reached out readily for him to pull her out of the truck, set her unbroken foot on the ground, and helped to support her while Tommy handed over the crutches, then they walked up to the door together, slowly. Tommy pulled out his copy of Joel’s house key and opened the door just in time for Ellie to shuffle in while Joel huddled at her back, ensuring she could make it to the couch off to the left of the door. She flopped down and looked around at her new home, wondering whether she believed it was.

Joel smiled as he sat on the arm of the couch close to her while Tommy took off straight for the fridge to find something to eat, making Joel roll his eyes. “So you can see that this is the living room, we eat in the dining area over there most of the time, and the kitchen is beyond that. Down the hall are the bedrooms, mine is to the left, and you and Sarah are on the right. You share a bathroom with her, located to the left of my bedroom, and laundry facilities are at the end of the hall. Suddenly glad that we happened to pick one that was only one level, so you won’t have to climb any stairs.”

“Tommy lives on the other side,” Ellie said, though they didn’t know if either of them told her that.

“Yeah, he houses our home office for the business, and he has extra beds over there for both you and Sarah if there are times that you need to be over there instead of here for whatever reason. It doesn’t happen very often, but just in case.”

Ellie stared at him with a little frown of confusion. He reached out and pressed his thumb to her forehead to smooth it out, and she shook him off with a little smile. She sobered quickly, though, saying, “Now I have two rooms, this is too much. I can’t deal with this. Can I go to my room here and be alone for a little while?”

“Of course, Ellie-girl, up you get,” he commanded gently as she stood up, fumbling a little with her crutches. They walked down the hallway and stopped at the second door, which would now be Ellie’s room. He pushed the door open, and she stopped just inside, looking around at the desk with a chair in front of it, the closet with a few things inside for her, but the bed felt like the most important thing. They found a bed set with solar systems on a dark blue sky. Ellie made a little noise in the back of her throat and hobbled over to the bed, threw down her crutches, and flopped onto the top of the bed, making Joel wince just before she grunted in pain, but she didn’t move, just tried to hug the bedding to her chest, making Joel smile.

“I’ll leave you to it, kiddo. Let me know if you need anything. Sarah will be home about 4 PM; I know she wants to see proof of life. Okay?”

“Hey, Joel?” she called, and he paused at the edge of her doorway.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never had space sheets before, thank you.”

Joel smiled again, pressing his hand to his sternum as it warmed at the simple joy of this beautiful child, “Sure, kiddo, we’re going to find you all sorts of cool things for your room, but Sarah saw that and knew that you would need them. I just brought the credit card.”

Ellie snickered, “Good to know what you’re good for.”

“Watch it, brat,” Joel responded, letting his affection for her soak in through his words so she would know that he wasn’t mad. She got up enough to shove back the comforter and climb back into the bed, with her casted foot sticking out a little.

He wanted to hug her, maybe tuck her in, maybe press a kiss to her head, but for now, he closed the door to give her some privacy to decompress and rejoined Tommy in the kitchen. He swiped one of the granola bars from the counter and unwrapped it.

They would need to buy more snacks if Tommy and Joel ate them all; he didn’t want Ellie’s food insecurity to have a legitimate reason to continue, now that she was off the streets. 

“Are we going to the fair this weekend?” Tommy asked, which he’d been asking for the past three days, and Joel hadn’t answered yet. He still didn’t have an answer, hoping that by the time Sarah came home this afternoon, they could have a family discussion with Ellie and see what they thought would be best. They had the spot and paid the fee for the whole summer, but the people who ran the fair would just fill the space with someone else if they didn't want to show up. It happened all the time.

Since Ellie had been beat up by people who were known to go to the street fair, he was worried that would feel like a good time for her to hobble away again and he didn’t want to make her feel trapped by this house and this family but at the same time, she’d proven to be a flight risk. 

“If you keep her here and don’t let her leave, then she isn’t going to feel safe,” Tommy continued after a minute of silence, “She’s going to feel caged.”

Joel knew Tommy had a point, but Ellie had just gotten out of the hospital, and he wanted to keep her safe and still for a little while.

“Joel,” Tommy said again, “I know you want to keep her safe, but keeping her sane is just as important.”

“Yeah,” Joel sighed, rubbing his eyes with his fingers, then pinching his nose, more than a little annoyed at the mind-reading brother in his house, “I don’t like that you have a point and know me well enough to call me out on it. You're rude, little brother.”

Tommy grinned, “I care about her, too. We’ll get her through, but the street fair may represent how she first met us instead of where she came from.”

“We’ll talk about it with her at dinner. I want to let her rest for a while, and then Sarah will want to bug her beforehand. I want her to know that we will discuss things like this as a family and that she has a part in the decisions.”

“Okay, I think if we don’t go, we should at least take a trip over to Bill and Frank’s sometime soon to show them that Ellie is with us. They know she’s out of the hospital, but you know how they are about kids who need help.”

Joel nodded. Both men had become attached to Ellie over the past couple of weekends as well, and they were already pseudo-grandparents to Sarah, something she didn’t have from either side of her family. Ellie would get grandfathers in the deal if they had their way.

“Why don’t you grab the work laptop and some of the files so we can get some work done without having to leave. Kelly would’ve called if there was anything to worry about.”

Tommy nodded and pushed away from the counter, throwing away his garbage before heading towards the door. Joel tossed his trash as well before walking back to the closed bedroom door, where Ellie was behind and listening intently for a moment in the silence. There wasn’t any sound, so he knocked lightly, but she didn’t speak. He silently cracked the door open to find Ellie tucked under the comforter, curled tightly on her side, and sleeping. The little bedside lamp was still on, so he turned off the upper light and closed the door again.

Tommy rejoined him, and they set up on the couch and got to work.

Ellie woke up to the slight knock on the closed door of her room at the Miller house. She stood up and marveled at the fact that she had a bedroom and a door for a moment before she said, “Come in.”

The door opened and Sarah peeked into the room with a bright smile, “Hey! I’m so glad you’re here!”

Ellie smiled at her, and Sarah walked over to the bed and settled on the end of it, careful not to bump her. Ellie rubbed a hand over the comforter. “Thank you for the bed sheets. I love them.”

Sarah nodded and reached out to press a hand over Ellie’s. “I’m glad you like it. I saw it at the store and knew you would love it. I wanted you to have something you would love here. I can never know what it’s like not to have a home, but maybe you can have one now.”

Ellie smiled again, turning her hand over to squeeze Sarah’s fingers. “I don’t know if I’m there yet, but I want to trust this.”

Sarah leaned in and kissed Ellie’s cheek before she scooched back and pulled her legs up to cross them on the bed. “Do you wanna do something? Like, read comics or something?”

Ellie watched as she wiggled excitedly and nodded graciously, so Sarah jumped off the bed again and went to her bedroom, where she grabbed something. She returned quickly with an armful of comics and spread them out on top of the comforter before reclaiming her spot and giving Ellie free rein of what to pick first, so she did. Sitting there with someone else was weird, doing something in quiet safety and peace. Sarah hadn’t been calm since she met the girl, but this was nice, too.

“Girls?” Joel called out sometime later, and Sarah looked up immediately in response to her father’s voice. “Come, have something to eat.”

“Coming!” Sarah called out and put the comic down on the bed again, as if they were going to do this after dinner. Ellie put down her comic as well, then turned to put her feet on the floor, only to find Sarah holding the crutches for her. Ellie smiled her thanks, and they walked out of the bedroom and down the hallway. They turned into the dining area, where Joel and Tommy sat at the table. It was an oval table, and Joel was sitting on one side with Tommy across from him on the other, leaving an empty chair next to each brother. Sarah gestured to the seat next to Joel for Ellie, who nodded her thanks and settled in to eat. She knew Tommy wasn’t going to hurt her, but there was a big difference between knowing that and letting herself trust that. Sarah swiped her crutches as soon as she was sitting again and leaned them against the wall before sitting beside her uncle. Tommy immediately booped Sarah on the nose while she batted his hands away.

Ellie looked at the food before her, then glanced at Joel, who was watching her.

“Thank you,” she said quietly before grabbing the fork beside her plate. It wasn’t anything fancy—meatloaf, potatoes, and salad—but it looked fresh. She took a bite and started chewing, then went for another bite before finishing the first one. Then another, making her cheeks puff out a little. 

“Slow down, kiddo, you’re gonna choke.”

“This is slow,” Ellie responded, but she worked on chewing through and swallowing what was in her mouth, emptying it, then showing her clear, open mouth at Joel, who chuckled at her with a roll of his eyes.

“Dad, are we going to the street fair tomorrow?” Sarah paused eating to ask.

Ellie looked at each of them at that. She hadn’t thought about the street fair since Monday when she stumbled into Frank’s Cafe. She hadn’t been attacked at the fair, but she knew that there was a good chance the other gang would be there. 

“We were going to discuss that now, as usual, though my smart girl is always ahead of the game. We have the space for the rest of the summer, and we can use the business coming in from being there, but I don’t know if Ellie needs to be there, which will change whether all of us can go.”

“Why shouldn’t I be there?” Ellie asked, feeling like she was already ruining parts of their lives; she didn’t need to ruin this one, either.

“Not ‘shouldn’t’, Ellie girl, you need to rest still, and though the fair is only about six hours and you can sleep in tomorrow morning, it's also a place where you were attacked more than once, and we don’t know if those kids are still going to be around. We made the lie that you belonged to us into the truth, but that doesn’t mean they won’t still be there. Also…”

Ellie glared at him, “Also? What?”

“I don’t want you to think you need to run off every time we go to a place you know well enough to become a runaway again.”

Ellie looked back down at her food because she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been thinking about that. Maybe not now because of the crutches and access to snacks, but a part of her recognized that running away again was an option. It was something she’d considered more than once in the hospital, even after she’d been told she was going home with the Millers. It felt easier to have no one at all than possibly hurt the first people she might trust in a long time. And hurting them felt inevitable.

She looked around, “I’m not going to run if my backpack is here, that’s everything I own and need to survive on the street. What if I leave it here, maybe?”

Joel smiled, “I don’t want you to think you need to run, but if that’s a good way for you to feel like this is home at the end of the day, then we can do that. We need to ensure you are sitting down most of the time there, since you are still healin’.”

“Are you going to teach me the sales pitch?” Ellie asked, perking up a little.

Joel rolled his eyes. “Maybe next weekend, give your scrambled brain some time to heal.”

Ellie snorted, “It was scrambled long before this.”

Sarah and Tommy snickered across from them, and Ellie smiled back at them, wondering what they would think of pun master Will Livingston.

“Does Tommy always eat here?” Ellie asked.

“Not always,” Tommy responded, even though she had been asking Joel, “Usually my big brother is willing to feed me about half of the week, and I pay him back by doing the grocery shopping for this house every two weeks.”

“Speaking of, it’s still early enough. We could go to the store and get a couple of outfits for you, and then we can do a bigger shopping trip in a couple of weeks. I think we are going to have to stick to sweats and loose clothing for the time being until the cast comes off.”

Ellie looked down at the sweater from Joel she was still wearing and considered the purple underneath and the sweatpants with hearts on them, wincing. So she nodded, “Can Sarah come with?”

Joel frowned, “Yeah, of course.”

Once they were done and the table cleared off, Joel got them both loaded into the truck, Sarah in the back and Ellie up front. Tommy wasn’t tagging along for now, making Ellie heave a breath of relief at not being surrounded, even by men she mostly trusted. They drove to a nearby big box store, and Joel helped her out of the truck before they walked into the brightly lit building.

Ellie was semi-familiar with the layout because she’d shoplifted here more than a few times when she’d been starving. Ellie glanced at the cameras, then paused just off the side of the entrance, “Are you sure I’m allowed to be here?”

Joel and Sarah frowned at her, “What?” Joel asked. 

Ellie motioned for Joel to lean down, and she whispered close to his head, “I used to use a discount here. You know the kind where it's free. They have cameras.”

Joel looked up, then back at her, pressing a gentle hand to her shoulder, “Well, we’re not going to do that again, so if they have any issues, they can discuss it with me.”

Ellie nodded and stayed close to Joel as they headed to the juniors' section. She headed straight for the boys' section, but Joel gestured to the girls. Ellie shook her head, “I don’t like them.”

“Just for the pants, Ellie, most sweats for boys have a tight bottom, with the cast you are going to need something closer to yoga bottoms, which are mostly girls' bottoms.”

Ellie frowned at him, “Why do you know that?”

Sarah snickered, and Joel rolled his eyes affectionately at his daughter, “I’m a dyed-in-the-wool girl-dad, Ellie. Now you can pick some shirts as soon as we find what you need in the pants and undergarments section.”

Ellie groaned at that, “Don’t say undergarments, it's weird.”

Joel chuckled, “What would you like me to call them, Kiddo?”

“Nothing, just never refer to them ever again,” Ellie determined, and Sarah snorted, sounding a little painful before she led Ellie to a rack where she was able to pull three pairs of soft and loose pants, black, dark blue, and dark grey with no hearts. Then they picked up a couple of packs of underwear, socks, and some sports bras before finally putting Ellie out of her misery and walking over to the boys' section so she could grab about five different short-sleeved shirts in various dark colors and dump them in the cart Sarah was pushing. Joel led them to a nearby section where sweaters and hoodies were displayed, and Ellie looked at him in surprise.

It is evident that donning the sweater was a significant reason why she felt more comfortable in the hospital, but she didn’t expect it to lead to anything. 

“I get a new hoodie? It’s summer, there’s no reason for me to have it.”

“Would you feel more comfortable in layers?” Joel asked her.

Ellie looked away but nodded.

“Get something that would be comfortable for you.”

Ellie turned back and looked at the simple options, primarily black, blue, or grey, with nothing on the front that worked for her. The less descriptive clothes she owned, the easier it would be to disappear if she needed to. She grabbed the dark grey and the black and added them to the pile of clothing that was more than she’d owned in a long time.

They walked away from the clothing section, heading to the electronics, and Joel picked up a couple of things that Ellie wasn’t paying attention to. Before they grabbed a couple of items from the food section, they headed back to get in line to pay for everything. They were slowly moving through the last-minute shoppers when several people in the store uniform walked over to them, and Ellie huddled against Joel’s back and tried to make herself as small as possible.

“You need to get out of here,” one of them snapped directly to Ellie even as Joel reached out and stopped them from coming any closer to her, using an outstretched hand to keep them away. Sarah moved close to Ellie, like she was going to come to blows with a store employee over a shoplifter they adopted at a street fair.

“She’s going to leave with me in a few minutes, when I have completed my purchase. What’s the problem?”

“She’s a thief!” the manager insisted, and Ellie flinched. She knew she was a thief; she’d just told Joel that she stole from this place in particular, but Joel just laughed. 

“No, she isn’t. We’ve been together the whole time we’ve been here, and she hasn’t touched anything that isn’t in this cart. Just let us pay for everything and we’ll head out.”

Something about Joel’s attitude and claim made the men in front of them deflate, and with one last warning for her not to come back without Joel, they headed away. Still, they stayed close enough to watch as Joel spent a ridiculous amount of money on her before they piled it back into the cart and walked out together. Joel waved jovially at the manager watching them while Ellie gimped along next to the cart and Sarah kept pushing it. Joel got her loaded into the front seat again, pressed a gentle hand to her cheek before he pulled the crutches away and stowed them in the back. Once the bags and the other two people were back inside the truck, Ellie forced her shaky hands to lock in her seatbelt. The others listened to music as they made the short trip back to the house.

Somehow, Tommy knew they were on the way, and he immediately started helping Sarah bring everything inside, while Joel stayed in the truck and Ellie stared down at her hands in her lap. Joel waited until Tommy and Sarah went inside Joel’s side of the house before he reached out and tucked a hand into hers and shook them a little.

“Hey? Look at me, please?” Joel asked. 

Ellie’s eyes flicked up and over to Joel, and he smiled a little.

“Listen to me, Ellie, you were living on the streets because you were in countless bad situations for your life until now. You did what you had to do to survive, and I’m not going to let you get punished for something you have no control over. I’m not going to leave you to deal with any of this on your own. Okay?”

Ellie swallowed hard. It was more difficult to pretend that he wasn’t going to help her when he’d stood up to people who had every reason to kick her out of the store, and not only did Joel not let them kick her out but stuck up for her. He didn’t lie to the manager either, because she’d been with them the whole time, and she hadn’t pocketed anything, knowing the man was going to pay for what she put in the cart just because she needed it. And maybe even if she just wanted it.

Joel squeezed her hand again, and she nodded, realizing that she didn’t answer.

“You’re not alone anymore, Ellie, you can trust that a little more now than you could an hour ago. We got time to build that trust, okay Ellie-girl?”

She nodded again, sniffling as moisture gathered in her eyes and choked her slightly, and he released her hand, walking around to help her with her crutches so they could have a snack before getting ready for bed.

They decided to work the street fair that weekend, so Joel woke up and made breakfast a little later than he usually would during the week, when Sarah was going to school and had it on the table before Sarah and Ellie stumbled out of their rooms. Usually, Sarah beats him to make breakfast, but he let them stay up reading together way too late last night, and he had to move a sleeping Sarah out of Ellie’s bed at midnight because she was using a semi-freaked-out Ellie as a teddy bear. 

Once she was in her bed, Joel went back to Ellie’s room and pressed a hand to her forehead and tucked her in.

Now, watching both of these girls, who looked so different yet almost the same, with that over-tired yet hungry teenager look, made him feel overwhelmed by affection for them. One as old as holding Sarah for the first time after she was born, and the other one new but no less intense. Ellie’s hair was ratty and barely still in her ponytail, and she was still wearing his sweater, but she’d changed into some of her new pants, at least, and he was sure that she had changed the shirt too. Sarah was still in her pajamas, pink with giraffes on the pants and a musical band shirt that she liked.

She loved going thrift shopping to find band shirts, regardless of whether the music they represented was to her liking or not. He figured it came from Tommy having a lot of band shirts when she was growing up and getting hand-me-downs from him. As she got older, he thought that there was a part of her that liked when douchey guys demanded that she tell them her favorite songs to prove she was a fan, only for her to turn it back on them.

“Morning to my sweet girls, I’ve got some breakfast for you, then we can get ready for the street fair. We will still only have three chairs in the booth due to space constraints, so we will take turns, ensuring that Ellie is usually seated. She can wear one of the hoodies and walk around a little if one of us, me or Tommy, is with you. Just in case the teens try to screw with you.”

“Frank and Bill are gonna want to see her,” Sarah said as she kept eating. Ellie was eating as well, shoveling bites into her mouth at a concerningly fast clip. Joel wanted to tell her to slow down, but figured she wouldn’t listen, so he just plated food for himself and Tommy just as his brother walked into the house. One of the first things he did in the morning was unlock the door because Tommy usually ate here before they went to the fair.

“Morning, family,” Tommy said as he walked behind the girls and pressed a kiss to Sarah’s head before squeezing Ellie’s shoulder and sitting down with his food, “Thanks, big brother.”

“Did you talk to Kelly yesterday? Did she finish out the day well?”

Tommy nodded, “Yeah, she made a couple more appointments for next week. We are starting construction on that building next week. Do you want me to be on site, and we can hire another guy so you can be in the office?”

“I can do that, at least for the next couple of weeks while Ellie is getting back on her feet. I can attend many of the meetings, and you can serve as the main foreman. I can stop by intermittently to make sure that the guys are doing what they need to do, and we can teach Ellie to be a foreman until we get her back in school.”

Ellie looked up at the sound of her name and smiled a little before she went back to her empty plate, looking for more food. Joel got up and came back with the leftover eggs and poured them onto her plate, and she smiled again with a quiet ‘thank you’ before she started eating again.

He would let her eat them out of house and home to get a little meat on her bones but he was also worried about the doctor telling him that if he let her binge then she could get more sick and start puking so for now, a little bit of seconds was better than nothing but it wasn’t so much that she was going to get sick.

Tommy and Joel kept chatting about work until the kids were done eating, then Sarah shoved away from the table and put her and Ellie’s empty dishes in the sink before heading back to her room to get changed.

“Are you wearing that to the street fair?” Joel asked Ellie, and she nodded in response.

“I changed into them this morning; they’re clean.”

“That’s fine, there’s no need to dress up. Do you wanna take some comics with you today? Sarah has a bunch.”

Ellie shrugged, so he left her alone, then realized that she would probably need to do something with her hair.

“Do you wanna grab the brush we got for you last night? It looks like a mess.”

Ellie nodded and headed for the bathroom without another word while Sarah came out with her weekend backpack that she liked to bring to the fair. After seeing Ellie’s backpack, he felt uneasy about her having two, but maybe he would just make sure that Ellie could get a couple of backpacks instead of worrying about taking one away from Sarah.

“Did she wanna read some comics? I grabbed some of mine that she hasn’t read yet,” Sarah said in answer to Joel’s other question. 

“Thanks, baby, can you check on her please?”

Sarah nodded; her hair was already in a ponytail at the base of her head, so she was ready for the day.

“Take it easy, Ellie!” Sarah exclaimed after walking into the bathroom, so he rushed back to the open bathroom door, where Ellie was pulling a brush through her thin hair roughly, and Sarah was trying to take it away from her. There were already small clumps that had been pulled out, so he reached out and grabbed the brush, pulling it away completely since it wasn’t currently in her hair. Ellie’s eyes were red and wet. 

“Ellie-girl, what’s going on?” he asked as he pressed a hand around her back and walked her back to the chair at the table, fumbling a little around the crutches. “Sarah, can you bring me your leave-in conditioner, please?”

Ellie put her arms on the table and pressed her forehead to the crossed arms as she sniffled. Joel pressed a hand to her head, finding the bump that was still present, although it was beginning to subside. Then he caught sight of the reddened skin where she had pulled out some of her hair. Sarah brought the conditioner to him, and he spritzed her reddish-brown hair. Then, he started brushing out the ends of Ellie’s hair and moved up to the rest of her hair. Something that he learned about from their mother, Sarah’s mom, and Sarah: knots in longer hair isn’t something that should be forced from the top. 

“Baby, do you have an extra hair tie?”

Sarah took off and came back with a couple of her smaller bands, so Joel split Ellie’s hair in two, then braided it down the back of her head, shifting her head a little to one side and then the other as needed. He didn’t braid it tightly so Ellie’s head wouldn’t have undue pressure on the bump or the red spots, then pressed a hand to Ellie’s shoulder.

“You wanna go right?” he asked her gently. 

Ellie nodded as she sat up straight. Sarah brought over Ellie’s shoe and helped her put it on, then grabbed one of their logo’d hoodies from the couch and got it over Ellie’s head and pulled her arms through the sleeves. This one was a little smaller, possibly one of Tommy’s. However, it was still overly large on Ellie, and having it on made her take another deep breath in comfort before Joel and the rest of the Millers got ready for the day, before they hustled Ellie into the truck. At the same time, they loaded the tent stuff into the back of Tommy’s truck. Sarah jumped into her uncle’s truck and waved at Joel and Ellie as she buckled up.

“Is Sarah mad at me?” Ellie muttered as they took off across town to where they had parked their trucks close to their spot.

“What? No, of course not, Ellie-girl. Why do you think that she is?”

Ellie shrugged, messing with the sleeves of the sweater, “She is riding with Tommy.”

“Oh, Ellie, she does that every other day. She loves spending as much time as possible with her uncle. She’s not mad, I swear.”

Ellie nodded, and he heard the deep breath she took, and he hoped it was one of relief.

“Were you trying to hurt yourself? With the brush?” he asked her gently. 

“It felt like a relief. I don’t know if this is real, the pain helps.”

Joel was going to have to look into therapy because that didn’t sound good at all. “It’s real. You don’t need the pain to prove it. It’s going to be okay.”

“Let’s just get through the day,” Ellie stated with a sigh. Joel couldn’t help but hear the exhaustion already in her voice. Joel reached out and pressed a hand to her shoulder for a second before they got to their location and parked.

“Just stay in the car while we get things set up, and then you can boss Uncle Tommy around about setting up the tables, okay?”

Ellie smiled and nodded. 

Joel exited the truck and started helping his brother and daughter with everything while Ellie watched them. They were well-practiced at this by now, so it didn’t take long to get everything out of the vehicle, set up the tent, and then he helped Ellie out of the truck so she wouldn’t feel left out. He helped her hobble over to one of their chairs, and she took great pleasure in telling Tommy that the tables weren’t perfectly centered under the tent, just to be a shit, and Joel grinned at her. Sarah helped unload the rest of the items from the truck and finished placing all the brochures and price lists on the table while Joel and Tommy moved their trucks to the nearby parking area and then walked back.

They returned to their spot just as Frank and Bill came up to the booth with a to-go bag, Frank smiling at Ellie, who was staring at the bag as if they were going to steal it back before she had a chance to eat whatever was inside. Bill was standing beside his husband, looking grumpy, as usual, when Joel and Tommy came up beside them.

“Frank, Bill, nice to see you again,” Tommy said and reached out to shake each of their hands. The second Frank took his hand off the bag, Ellie swiped it away from him.

“Ellie!” Joel scolded, but she was too busy opening the bag to see what kinds of treats were in there and hummed happily at whatever she found. He shook Frank’s hand and then Bill’s before apologizing for Ellie, “We have apparently adopted a feral raccoon. Please excuse her complete lack of manners.”

“Thank you!” Ellie shouted around a mouthful of muffin, making everyone chuckle.

“We can bring some drinks later if you want,” Frank said, still smiling at Ellie. “We’ve already spotted those kids, so we alerted the cops around here, but we’ll see if they do anything about them. Now that Ellie is legitimate, they might see it as a threat to the fair instead of just something they don’t have to do anything about.”

Joel nodded gratefully. It was good to know that Ellie had someone else looking out for her, even if they couldn’t do much. He’d learned a lot about how the system was ill-equipped to deal with the homeless in the area, and those people being younger probably meant it was even more difficult unless they broke actual laws and were put into juvie. That had been something that Ellie was still worried about — ending up in juvie — which made him wonder how bad it was out there.

At least with them, she was less likely to get into trouble.

Frank and Bill left a few minutes later, and then they were left to share in the spoils of Ellie’s forgivable thievery before the area started to fill with people wandering through. The street fair booths was an interesting mixture of businesses offering services, people selling products and food vendors so Sarah had already spent quite a bit of time wandering the booths, usually with either Joel or Tommy with her and as much as Joel wanted to give Ellie the same opportunity, he didn’t like the idea of her hobbling through the space filled with people, especially since most of those people would recognize her as a homeless teen from the area. She seemed happy enough to stay in the booth for now, as long as she had something to read and something to snack on every once in a while. They had packed more than half of their bags with snacks, so once she’d been permitted to go snooping in any of their bags for food, she did so with abandon, having Sarah throw away her garbage when it got to be a problem. Sarah took this with aplomb that he’d never really considered. His oldest was far too good at taking care of him and Tommy a lot of the time, often skipping over being a child, so this should have made sense in translating into being an older sister. However, because he’d never considered or wanted other kids, he’dn’t thought about it. 

Now that she’d basically ‘adopted’ Ellie before Joel even had time to think about what they were doing here, it made sense that there was a part of Sarah who’d been waiting for a little sister.

Especially after watching Joel having a younger brother for her whole life. 

Ellie’s sass seemed to wear off after a while, though. They were just getting their lunch from Frank’s when she started getting snappy when Tommy tried to bop her on the nose like he did with Sarah all the time. Joel wanted to curb it a little bit with a quick, “Tone.”

Ellie rolled her eyes, and he watched as her eyes glanced around the crowd like she was preparing for someone to come out of the busy sea of people for her. He reached into the side pocket of his bag and took out her pain medication, shaking one out into her hand. He watched as she took it before Ellie went back to eating her sandwich. He was a little delayed in getting her pill to her, so it's possible that she was feeling the pain from her various healing injuries. 

After lunch, Sarah wanted to take a walk, so Tommy went with her, claiming he needed to stretch his legs and use the port-a-potties down the road. Hence, Ellie went back to a book she was reading, something about space or astronauts that Sarah had found in their bookcase at home and shoved in her bag along with the comics they were reading together. 

He was about to ask her about it when someone stopped in front of the booth, so he stood up instead and looked over the table to see a familiar face he wasn’t expecting, “Tess? What are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too, Texas,” she said with a grin, and he had to force himself not to reach out to her. The last time he’d seen Tess Servopoulus was back in Texas (hence the nickname); she’d been traveling for something, in town for a couple of weeks, and they fell into a mutual gratification situation, but he’d never expected to see her again. That was about five years ago, and though he’d thought of her more than once in the time since then, he’d never sought her out again. Then they moved, and he put it behind him.

Ellie humphed behind him, “You might wanna say something, old man, gonna seem senile to the pretty lady.”

Joel turned and gave her a look which hopefully communicated the ‘shut up, kid!’ without having to say anything. She snickered at him in response. He turned back to Tess, who was also watching Ellie with a frown, so he responded, “Don’t mind Ellie, she’s feral.”

Ellie snorted, “You wish.” 

Tess laughed at both of them, her laugh still throaty and sexy as the last time he’d heard it. “Look, I had no idea I was going to see you here. If you'd like to grab a coffee sometime, feel free to give me a call. Just a coffee. No pressure.” With that, she handed Joel a card with her name and the title ‘Security Analyst’ on it, along with a phone number. He didn’t think they had ever discussed what she did for a living, but somehow the thought of this woman being in charge of security and threat assessments made sense. 

He looked up and smiled at her, “I will. Coffee sounds good.”

Tess nodded to them again, still looking at Ellie with open curiosity. Joel wanted to answer, but not here and not in front of Ellie herself, so he figured he could discuss it with her when he wasn’t caring for a pre-teen who was supposed to be resting.

“Old girlfriend?” Ellie asked as soon as Tess was far enough away not to hear.

“Not really,” he responded, “We fooled around with each other for a couple of weeks, but she never came home, never met Sarah, then we moved, and it wasn’t a thing.”

“You don’t date?”

Joel shrugged, “Not much, not at all since we moved, mostly because between the business and spending time with Sarah, I don’t have a lot of spare time for a romantic relationship.”

“Not even just sex?” Ellie asked, and Joel shot her a look, “What!? I know about sex, I was living on the streets, bro.”

Joel wanted to ask more about that out of a morbid need to know what else might crop up in those future counseling sessions. Still, Tommy and Sarah came back, so he didn’t continue the conversation as Ellie threw him directly under the bus and informed them about Tess visiting the booth, which made Sarah and Tommy start begging for details. He was only allowed to skim over them because people walked up to the booth. 

“I’m going to get you later, you little stinker,” Joel said to Ellie, who winked at him before she went back to her space book. 

Ellie should have wondered what was going to happen on Monday before it did, but she’d proven to be ill-equipped to think ahead about anything these days. She’s choosing to blame the pain meds that Joel keeps giving her; they make her floaty and stupid, but she didn’t want to deal with the pain of all her breaks and bruises, so she would suffer through. Pain meds were a luxury she’d rarely ever had, even though this wasn’t her first broken bone.

Sarah and Joel were up and moving around at the ass crack of dawn, dragging her out of sleep, and once she limped over to the bathroom, she used her crutches to carry herself out of the living room, seeing Joel and Sarah in the kitchen. Sarah was cooking something at the stove, and Joel was standing in front of the coffee machine like it was the cross in a confessional. They both turned when they heard her, sharing twin smiles that shouldn’t have looked so silly and sincere at the same time.

“Did we wake you, kiddo? Sorry about that, I would have let you sleep a little longer before we headed to the office, but Sarah and I aren’t used to doing before-school time with another person here yet.”

Ellie frowned at them. That was so many words for Joel first thing in the morning, and she was too tired to wonder why he was talking so much.

“He’s already had a cup of coffee; otherwise, he wouldn’t be so chatty,” Sarah explained, and Joel chuckled at his daughter before filling his travel mug with coffee, before he started pulling some things from the cabinet.

“Do you want something to eat before we head to the office? We can pick up something at Frank’s if nothing sounds good.”

“I want Frank’s for breakfast!” Sarah whined even as she plated what looked like sausage and eggs onto two plates.

“Is there more of that?” Ellie asked, gesturing to the food in front of them instead of asking for anything special. Sarah nodded and poured the remainders of the pan onto another plate while Ellie pulled herself up off the couch and over to the table. Joel got up and grabbed a cup, filling it with milk and putting it next to her plate as well. 

Ellie smiled in thanks before eating the food they had made for her. Sarah told Joel a little about what she was doing today at school, and Ellie wondered if she would stay long enough to go to school again. She struggled with school because she was being transferred in and out of schools so often that they could barely teach her anything of lasting value. She’d never really had a chance to see if she liked school; she did what she had to at each house and learned what she could, then after she’d run away, Ellie had gone to the library as often as she could so she could continue her ‘education’ as best she could without a school involved.

“Ellie, do you wanna visit the school later this week?” Joel asked her.

She looked at him in confusion, “I thought you said I wasn’t going to school right away?”

“We are going to have to see what we can find of your school records, then try to get you caught up, but maybe you would like to see the school. Since we live in a relatively small town, students are grouped by grade from sixth through twelfth grade in the same school, so no matter what grade you are in, you’ll be in the same school as Sarah. Might be comforting to know your way around before we get you enrolled.”

Ellie shrugged, figuring that saying she didn’t think she was going to be here that long would just make them sad. Joel took it in stride, moving to finish getting ready for work by packing a backpack with items from the kitchen, as well as a few things from the living room. She didn’t ask what he was doing; it didn’t matter to her. Sarah had finished her food and was getting ready for school in her room. Ellie finished her food and then moved her empty dishes to the sink, using one crutch to stay on her feet. She turned on the water to start rinsing the remains off the plates.

“You don’t gotta do that, Ellie, we can take care of the dishes later, you shouldn’t be on that ankle, especially without your crutches,” Joel said.

Ellie gestured to the one crutch she was holding under her armpit and continued what she was doing, loading the dishes into the half-full dishwasher before hobbling back to the kitchen table.

“Do you wanna change? You’re going to be parked in my office, so no need to be fancy or anything, but if you need to change, you can do that now before we take Sarah to school.”

Ellie looked down at the clothes she was wearing and decided to change just because she could so she hobbled back to her bedroom and quickly changed into clean pants, a top and one of her sweaters, she picked one that was two sizes to big so it would hang down to her thighs and it was comforting once again to be formless.

She walked back out to the couch with the space book tucked into one hand against the crutch handle and wondered if she would be allowed to take anything with her to the office. Then Joel dropped the backpack that he’d been filling with things down in front of her, “That’s for you. I know the other one is important to you, but it’s in rough shape; maybe this one will make a good stand-in for a little while?”

Ellie frowned, taking in the assortment of snacks, including a sandwich in a bag, chips, and water bottles, as well as the books and a notebook with pencils and pens. She shoved the space book into the bag and nodded to Joel, who pressed a hand to her shoulder in recognition as he finished doing whatever the hell he was doing. 

The door opened without any warning, and Ellie squeaked, “It’s just Tommy.” Joel called out from his room, and it was indeed Tommy who came in and walked over to the fridge and started rummaging around for something to eat while Ellie stared at him.

“Hey, kiddo, are you ready to go to work? Break some child labor laws?” Tommy asked with a grin.

Ellie shrugged, “I guess, but only if there are power tools involved.”

“No!” Joel commanded as he returned to the central part of the house. Sarah followed behind, wearing her jacket and backpack, ready for the day.

Ellie recognized the flow of a routine and had seen it in other houses she’d been in, but this time it hurt to watch it from the outside, more than it had hurt in a long time. She forced the feelings down as Joel walked over with her pain pill and a glass of water, which she accepted gratefully before they all got into vehicles and took off. Tommy was heading to a job site first thing this morning while Joel, Ellie, and Sarah got into the other truck and headed for the school. Sarah chatted about her friends a little, but Ellie didn’t catch most of what she was saying. Joel asked questions when he needed to or wanted extra information, and then they were pulling into the line of cars dropping off their children at the school. Once that part was done, Joel and Ellie fell into silence in the vehicle as they headed to the office.

Once they arrived and parked the truck in one of the spaces at the back, Joel walked her through the back door and let her into his office, where she sat on the small couch. He then attended to a couple of things. He turned on the lights and unlocked the front door just as he spoke up, and she realized that Kelly must’ve come into the building as well. She passed by the office door a second later.

“Hey there, Ellie, glad to see you again,” Kelly said as she moved to the front of the building and started doing whatever she did as a part of her job in the morning. Joel came back into the office, booted up his computer, and did something to his phone before turning towards her.

“I’m going to be on the phone off and on with a couple of clients for a little while this morning, but then it should be relatively quiet again about mid-morning while I work on other things, if you wanna take a nap later.”

“That’s fine, I’m not tired,” Ellie insisted, then settled back against the couch cushions, dragging her space book out of the backpack so she didn’t have to focus on whatever Joel would be doing. He picked up the phone's handset, listened to something, and made notes in a notebook before dialing the first number. 

Ellie settled back onto the couch, pulling her feet up before dropping them back down, thinking that he was going to be mad about it.

“Ellie,” Joel whispered, and she looked over to see him holding the phone with his hand over the mouthpiece. Once she looked at him, he gestured towards her feet, then to the couch, and said, “It’s okay.”

Ellie smiled a little and curled up on the couch, then went back to reading, letting Joel’s soothing voice wash over her. Without her permission, Ellie’s eyes drifted closed, and she fell back to sleep.

“Shh, she’s out,” she could hear Joel saying sometime later, and snuggled down into the couch a little deeper, pulling something over her shoulder. A blanket, maybe? She could barely hear whoever Joel was talking to, but Joel was between them and Ellie, so she felt safe enough to keep snoozing while they spoke.

Ellie faded out completely again to sleep until Joel pressed a hand to her head, “Ellie? Can I get some lunch into you?”

She muttered but turned over to look up at the man, “Food?”

Joel smiled, “Yeah, I brought some food for you.”

Ellie struggled to sit up, feeling the pain in her side, head, and ankle since her pain meds were fading. She was used to the ache, but the opportunity to rest felt like it was leading her to feeling the pain even more than she usually would. Maybe that was just because she’d never been hurt this badly.

Joel took a half step back, holding the crutches as she struggled to her feet, and then he moved to put a hand on her back as she struggled out of the room and into the conference room, where he placed a sandwich, chips, and a drink. Tommy was already sitting across and a seat further down the table with his lunch. Ellie nodded to him as she sat down and started eating. Joel pressed a gentle hand to her shoulder, then walked around to sit down, after tucking the crutches close to the table for Ellie. 

“You need some more pain meds?” Joel asked her when she was done with the first half of her sandwich.

She tried just to shake her head, figuring that she should try not to use something that only Joel could give her, and if she weaned off of the meds sooner rather than later, then if she ended up alone, she would be able to deal with the pain better.

“Are you thinking of lyin’ right now?” Tommy asked from down the table. 

Ellie glared at him, “No.”

Joel snorted but asked, “Why don’t you wanna take the pain meds, Ellie?”

There was no reason to do so, but she blurted out the truth, “I can’t take the chance that you’ll stop giving them to me. I need to be able to deal with the pain. Plus, they make me feel stupid.”

Joel frowned, sharing a look with Tommy before turning back to Ellie. “You think I’m going to stop giving them to you?”

“Drugs are good money,” Ellie shrugged and kept eating as Joel stared at her in shock. The poor guy doesn’t know anything about how shitty the world is. Or maybe it was how shitty the world could be for children in the foster care system.

“I’m not going to sell your pain meds, and you aren’t getting kicked out. You don’t have to run again.”

Ellie nodded and continued eating, neither agreeing nor arguing. It would only upset them if she told them how many times her fosters had gotten her pain meds with the specific reason of selling them or taking them from her. It wasn’t worth the time or energy.

Joel put another pain med next to her drink and Ellie took it and swallowed it quickly and raised her eyebrow at him, “I know you don’t believe me,” he said, “I swear I am going to keep proving it to you that we’re not here to hurt you or make life harder for you.”

Ellie nodded and finished her lunch while Joel and Tommy started discussing the job Tommy would be heading back to after lunch. From the barbs traded back and forth, it seems like Tommy is usually the one who handles most of the client conversations and meetings, and Joel is generally on site, so Ellie’s arrival in their lives had swapped their roles for the time being. She wanted to be able to say that she could stay with Tommy in the office, while Joel could go, but she didn’t trust Tommy as much as she did Joel. And even then, she barely trusted Joel, and it was only because of what he was like with Sarah. Though even that shouldn’t have told her anything because a lot of parents are good to their bio kids, it didn't mean anything for foster children. It was just Joel, for some reason, that she trusted a little.

Without saying anything to them, she reached for the crutches and thanked Joel when he moved to hand them to her without stopping the conversation he was in. She headed back to Joel’s office, plopping down on the couch and rolling over with Joel’s jacket, which had been over her earlier. She faced away from the door and grabbed her book to read a little more, though she could feel the exhaustion, a full belly, and the working medication in her system were going to drag her down into sleep again, whether she wanted to or not.

Ellie didn’t wake again until Sarah arrived and came into the office, shouting for her and startling her awake with the chiding tone of “ Sarah , she was sleeping.”

“Sorry, little sis,” Sarah said as she walked over to the couch and sat on the arm while Ellie rubbed sleep from her eyes and took the water bottle that Joel held out to her. She sat up and shared a smile with Sarah, who plopped down next to her as soon as Ellie’s feet were back on the floor and made room for her.

“How was school?” Joel added, in standard parental fashion.

Sarah launched into a retelling of the highlights of her day while Joel listened intently and Ellie settled back to listen as well. There was something about Sarah’s chatter that had become comforting for Ellie, so she let herself be comforted. Joel asked questions about friends or projects that were coming due, but other than that, he let Sarah talk.

They spent a couple more hours at the office before everyone got into the vehicles to head back to the Miller duplex. Ellie was in the truck with Joel, and Sarah stowed away with Tommy.

“Are you feeling any better? Seemed like you got a lot of sleep today,” Joel asked after she settled on one of the radio stations with a mix of 80s and 90s music.

Ellie hummed an affirmative, “I hate it, but I’ve never had a head injury or broken bones before. Would not recommend."

“Zero out of ten, huh?” Joel asked with a smile, and Ellie snickered.

“Definitely.”

Ellie looked out the window, still smiling a little as they arrived at the house, and she hobbled inside while Joel carried the backpack behind her, taking Sarah’s backpack as well when she ran by to unlock the door first. Ellie went into the house and kicked off one of her shoes before sitting down on the couch to watch as Joel, Tommy, and Sarah moved around the room. Joel brought over a snack for her, and she opened it, starting to munch while Tommy and Joel discussed whatever had happened at the jobsite. Sarah settled down on the couch next to Ellie, her backpack at her side.

She turned on the television and handed the remote to Ellie, “Dad is going to be working for at least another hour, you wanna pick something?”

Ellie shrugged and surfed through the channels until she found the History Channel, letting it play in the background while she read her book, and Sarah worked on her homework. It was weird not having anything to do outside of running for her life or stealing food to survive. 

She closed her book with an audible snap, and Sarah turned to her with a frown, “You okay?”

“What are you working on for school?” Ellie asked, instead of answering. 

“Math, science, and I am reading ‘Lord of the Flies’ and have to write a response for every couple of chapters until we are done.”

Sarah handed over the book, and Ellie flipped it open, starting to read. Maybe she could help Sarah with her homework if she couldn’t get any for herself.

Joel pulled out the chair for Tess at the table before he moved around to the other side and sat down, smiling a little at her. She was beautiful, just as she had been back in Texas. Her dark blonde hair was pulled back into a braid down her back, with some wisps framing her face. She wore a nice blouse and jeans to match Joel’s, and a sweater. It was something he appreciated about her when they were together before. Tess never cared about dressing up, but she also never allowed him to be a bum about it. She might not be as dressed up as some women, but that wasn’t an excuse to treat her poorly.

“You look great, Tess,” he said.

“Thanks, Tex, you look great too. It’s been a long time.”

Joel nodded, “Are you traveling for work again? Like last time?”

“Actually, no,” Tess said, leaning back a little as the waiter came to fill their water glasses and then took their drink orders. Once the man was gone again, she smiled, “I moved here about three months ago, with my son.”

Joel’s eyebrows rose in surprise; they had never really talked about their lives before, so she had never mentioned having a child. He might have noticed stretch marks when they got all their clothes off, but women can have stretch marks for other reasons. It hadn’t been any of his business, but she was making it his business now.

“I figured since I saw your daughter, we should at least be on even footing. Charlie is fourteen, and his father was a boyfriend at the time who didn’t want to be a dad. He took off as soon as I had him sign away his parental rights. I don’t get out very much, and I don’t do what we did often, but I happened to hit it off with a cowboy in Texas, but it wasn’t ever supposed to be enough that you would hear about my son.”

Joel frowned, then realized that Tess was referring to Ellie, momentarily happy that from the outside looking in, they had seemed like they were family even when it wasn’t biological. It wasn’t the truth, though, and Tess was willing to share Charlie with him, so he owed her something at least. “Ellie, the girl you saw me with last weekend is my foster daughter, and I haven’t had her for very long, and it took a lot of work to get her off the streets. I have another daughter, just to be transparent. Sarah is fourteen too, and she lost her mother from complications of childbirth.”

“So neither of us are cheaters,” Tess said, and Joel couldn’t stop the expression that showed her how gross that thought was.

“Could never cheat, even when I was young and all my friends were telling me I could get any girl in school.”

Tess smiled a little, “Except for my little dalliance with you, my whole life is my work and my kid. I didn’t care enough to date, especially since I had to work twice as hard to keep up with my classmates and then my coworkers. People don’t respect single mothers.”

Joel nodded and watched as she kept frowning at him, “Are you goin’ to ask or just wait for me to say somethin’?”

Tess opened her mouth to do just that when the waiter came back with their drinks, and he took their order for dinner and walked away again before she turned back to him again, “Ellie, the girl you took in, she was on the streets? She looked like a baby.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that, she knows more ways to cuss than a sailor,” Joel grinned, “She is twelve and it's hard to know for sure at this point but I think she’d been on the street for at least six months before we met her at the street fair you saw me workin’.”

“How did you meet her there?”

Joel smiled a little at the thought, “Sarah saw her getting cornered by a group of street kids, like six of them. They forced her into an alley where she wouldn’t have a way out. I yelled at them to leave ‘my kid’ alone. The next weekend, Sarah told us all, including Ellie, that she was now part of the family, so we would keep an eye on her on weekends when we were at the fair. Give her some food and keep her from getting beaten up during the day. I think she came to the fair because it was easier to get food from the trash there, something I do not want to think too much about.”

“Why was she on the streets in the first place?” Tess asked. 

“She doesn’t talk to us very much, but from what she’s said, I think she’s just ended up in a lot of bad placements, and she was in a group home before she bolted, and the place wasn’t good for her. They can be worse than many placements, and they are frequently used to house children that no one will take. I am still trying to obtain her file so I can learn more about her, but I can’t see what everyone had such a hard time with. She’s a hurt kid who is defensive because the system and people failed her over and over again. She pulled a switchblade on those kids, so we called her Switch for the few weeks we knew her before he took her in.”

“Weeks!? Joel! Are you sure this is a good idea? She’s in the same house as your daughter. Is she still armed?”

“She has her blade, if that’s what you're asking. It’s in her belongings, though I don’t think she’s been carrying it around when we are at the house, just when we leave the house. It seems more like a security blanket than a weapon.”

“Except it is a weapon, Joel,” Tess reiterated.

“It is, but she’s a kid who hasn’t done anything to harm my kid. She spends most of her time waiting to get kicked or kicked out.”

Their food was delivered, so thankfully, the conversation died out, and Joel was left staring at the woman, who also had a child. He couldn’t help feeling incredibly defensive of Ellie, even though he’d had all the same concerns about her before they took her in. However, since watching her in the hospital and seeing her at the office, he had become even more protective of her. Frank’s place, everything about Ellie said, ‘you could hurt me and I might fight back, but it won’t matter.’ He didn’t want his family to become another group of people who gave up on her too early and missed out on a fantastic kid. It was so easy to see the great kid just begging to be seen by anyone.

Tess watched him for about five minutes of stilted silent eating before she put her utensils down and touched one of his hands so he would focus on her, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have questioned your parenting choices or assumed the worst of her. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in the situation she’s in, and maybe she deserves more grace, especially since I don’t know her.”

Joel smiled at her, “I wish I could say I knew her much better, and this is going to sound stupid, but all I see when I look at her is a little girl that needs someone just to love her long enough for her to believe it. Maybe I am being stupid, putting my baby in harm’s way, but both Sarah and Tommy wanted me to take her in before I even considered it.”

“Tommy?” Tess asked.

“Younger brother,” Joel informed her, smiling, “He was walking around the fair with Sarah when you found our booth, but we own the business together. We own a duplex, so he lives on one side and I live on the other with the girls.”

“You moved your whole family here?” Tess asked with a raised brow. 

“Yes, ma’am, we three Millers are the only ones left, and when we moved, we made the decision together, based on good intel about this area and work that would be available. We’ve been doing well here. What about you?”

“Better paying and better working situations opened up here, so Charlie and I packed up and moved away. We didn’t have much extended family there, so it was easy for us to walk away; we were both ready for something new. I’ve been at the new job for a while now, and Charlie is settling into his school well.”

“I’m glad you came over to the booth to say hey,” Joel said.

Tess smiled and gave him a wink before returning to her food. “Me too, Tex.”

They finished their dinner and stayed at the restaurant for another hour after dessert to talk before Joel paid the tab and walked her out to her car. They decided to meet at the restaurant instead of Joel picking her up, something that he could respect since they were just getting to know each other again, and he had kids that might call for him. 

He watched as she unlocked her driver's door and opened it before turning back to him. “I had a great time, Joel,” she said, leaning in close to his body. Joel smiled at her forwardness.

“I had a great time too, Tess,” he whispered against her lips, then pressed a firm kiss to them, keeping his lips closed until she pressed closer and he opened to her gentle pressure. Joel let her guide the kiss, pressing a hand into the side of her neck, and his other hand went around to her lower back, making her moan before she pulled back.

“Maybe another time, I gotta get back to my kid.”

Joel grinned, “Me too. Ellie doesn’t like Tommy as much as she likes me, so who knows what trouble they’ve gotten into.”

“I’m sure you’ll handle it with expertise, Tex, good night,” she pressed another closed-mouth kiss to him and then got into her car. He closed the door for her and watched as she started the car and drove away. Then, he got into his truck and drove thirty minutes back to the house, letting himself into his side of the house, where the loud, very loud music was pounding from one of the rooms. He was going to guess Ellie’s since it wasn’t the normal pop music that Sarah loved, but he also didn’t know where she got that kind of amp. Tommy was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands when Joel reached out and touched his shoulder.

“Oh shit, Joel, I didn’t hear you!” he said loudly enough to be heard over the music.

“What’s with the bleedin’ ears anthem?” Joel asked, also speaking loudly, wondering how they hadn’t gotten a noise complaint from one of their neighbors.

Tommy motioned to the back of the house, so Joel figured that getting the girls to turn it down first was the best course of action. He walked back to Ellie’s closed door, where the music was coming from, and he knocked as loudly as he could, “Ellie! You need to turn that down.”

The door swung open aggressively to Sarah, looking wild-eyed and like she’d seen a ghost as she rushed past him. Joel reached out for her, “Sarah, what’s wrong? What happened?”

She tugged away from his grip and rushed over to her uncle, so he turned back to Ellie’s room, where she was lying on the bed, looking at the ceiling with red and puffy eyes. She wasn’t moving except her lips, and it took him a second to realize that she must be singing along with the music, which he went over to the boombox and turned down to a more manageable level before he turned back to Ellie.

“Ellie, you can’t have your music up that loud, okay? It’s not good for your ears, and we’re going to get noise complaints.”

“Then send me back and stop pretending! ” she snapped and then turned over so she was facing away from him and the door. The open door meant that he could hear Tommy shushing Sarah out on the couch.

After what Tess said at dinner and recognizing that he didn’t want to give up on Ellie even though bringing her here was a little crazy to do, he stepped over to the desk, pulled the chair over to the bed, and sat down. “Ellie? What’s going on?”

“Fuck off!” she snapped and turned over as quickly as she could, with pain undoubtedly slowing her down significantly.

He stayed where he was and didn’t scold her for the language. It was probably the only thing she felt like was in her control right now. She’d lived a hard life, and if cursing made her feel a little better about it, then he wouldn’t stop her. Maybe that would change a little by the time he sends her back to school, but not here and not now. One of the things he’d been doing when they were looking for Ellie was reading up on foster kids and what they might be like if they’d been in bad situations, not enough to know anything of what he was doing here but enough to know that Ellie needed a safe place where she could be angry and act out and not get kicked out. He was going to have to tell Sarah that she didn’t prepare him for her younger sister, with her need to be such a good kid all the time.

“Do you know why Sarah rushed out of here lookin’ spooked?” he asked instead.

Ellie flopped to her back again and glared at him, “Because I told her about one placement, I told her about what can happen to girls who don’t have parents who give a fuck about them.”

Joel nodded, “Is there a reason you did that?” he asked gently.

“Why am I here, Joel?” she asked instead. “You just want another little girl? What for, Joel?”

Joel flinched hard at the unspoken implication but kept his eyes on her, noticing that when he didn’t respond in whatever way she was expecting, she turned away from him again. He opened his mouth to speak, but it took him a minute before he could say anything, “I would never do anything like that to you. I would rather die than do that to anyone.”

Ellie scoffed, though she didn’t say anything else.

“I’m going to go check on Sarah. I’ll be back with your last dose of pain meds, moving around like that must be hurting somethin’ fierce.”

With that, he unplugged and took the radio with him so they wouldn’t be given another concert before he left Ellie’s room, closing the door. She didn’t move a bit except to watch him, but he couldn’t help but press a hard fist into his chest when he heard her shuddering sigh right before the door closed, the sound ending on a little sob. It made him desperate to comfort her the same way he would Sarah, but Ellie would need something different, and right now, it seemed like she needed privacy more than comfort.

Sarah was sitting on the couch with her uncle, crying while he pressed her close to his side. Joel put the radio on the floor next to the wall leading into the rest of the house and walked over to press a hand to Sarah’s back. His beautiful child turned immediately towards him and tucked in under his chin. Joel kept the arm around Tommy while the other came to curve around the back of Sarah’s head in comfort.

“I’m here, baby girl, you’re okay.”

“Of course I’m okay,” she snapped, her tone sharper than he’d ever heard it before.

“Hey, little miss, tone please,” Joel scolded, keeping his voice gentle but not letting it slide. 

“Sorry, Daddy, sorry,” she whispered against his chest, the ‘daddy’ hadn’t been a part of their life outside of a few drugged doctors’ visits for a long time. Joel looked up and locked eyes with Tommy, who was looking just as haunted as everyone else in his house looked. 

“I just went to a dinner, what the hell happened?” he asked the room at large, though he didn’t know if he was going to get a straight answer from any of them. Sarah cried for a while longer, Tommy clung to his niece, and Joel held them both until Sarah tucked her head across his leg and fell into a fitful sleep. As soon as she was settled enough, Joel moved his arm to rub at her back as he turned to look at his little brother. 

“It was fine after you left, I swear to god, Joel. We ate dinner, and Ellie got to choose a movie, which turned out to be Jurassic Park. She loves that movie so much. I think she has a thing for that pretty lady. We were having some popcorn, and I was tossing it into Sarah’s mouth, and she was doing the same. Ellie was watching us but not taking part. I wasn’t worried about it, though; she’s standoffish with me, and it's been like that since the beginning. She was watching us, concerned when we started wrestlin’ like we normally do. You know how we get,” Tommy said, looking down at his niece with an adoration-soaked look, and Joel nodded. Tommy was always a little more like a big brother to Sarah, and they were never shy about play-fighting. Sarah loved it.

“Somethin’ I did scared Ellie,” Tommy continued, looking back to where Ellie was in her room. “I grabbed Sarah and flopped her back on the couch, I swear, Joel, I wasn’t hurting her. I swear.”

Joel reached out and pressed a hand to his brother’s shoulder, “Breathe in, little brother. Another one.” He coached Tommy through some of the breathing exercises that they learned when they were young, first to help Joel with anxiety attacks, especially after Sarah was born, and then they were used to help Tommy work through triggers he came back from the war with. Tommy was well-rehearsed in listening to his older brother, breathing in and out a few times to a count that Joel kept under his breath before he was calm again. 

“I have watched you wrestle with my daughter for most of her life. I don’t think you hurt her. I know you would rather chop off your arm than hurt her. Okay?”

Tommy nodded.

“Ellie thought you were hurtin’ her though?”

Tommy nodded again, pressing his head into his hand, “She hit me with one of her crutches, right here.” Tommy gestured to the side of his head just behind his ear on his right side. Joel frowned and reached out to press into his brother’s scalp, finding the goose egg there under his hair, causing him to wince. No blood, and it didn’t feel like the skin broke at all. 

“D’you need a doctor?” Joel asked.

Tommy shook his head, “Had concussions before, it’s fine. She got me good, though, and we all froze. Ellie muttered something like ‘get off her’ over and over, and Sarah was trying to figure out if she should call an ambulance or the cops. Poor thing wanted to help us both and didn’t know what to do. Ellie made this sound like a dying animal, never heard such a thing from a little girl, and she hobbled back to her bedroom. Sarah made sure I was okay and then rushed after Ellie. I have been holding an ice pack to my head and listening to that damn music ever since.”

Joel gripped his brother’s shoulder in comfort, then looked down at Sarah, “Did she say what Ellie told her? Ellie told me that she told Sarah something bad about one of the placements she was in, and then asked why we wanted another little girl who was broken. Kinda made it sound like it was for molestation purposes.”

Tommy made a face, “Does she think that?”

Joel shook his head, “I don’t know, but I’m guessing that she wouldn’t be acting like this unless she had a damn good reason.”

“She does,” Sarah whispered from his lap, apparently faking sleep for at least a few minutes.

“Hey, baby girl, why don’t you go get ready for bed, and I’ll be there in a minute,” Joel told her. She didn’t need to be a part of this conversation right now.

Sarah sat up and leaned back against the back of the couch, facing Joel and pressing her back into Tommy’s arm so she was connected to both of them, “No. I need to tell you. You have to understand why she did it. Ellie told me about one place, Dad, and it was like listening to one of those true crime shows where they list all the crimes someone committed. However, this person committed all the crimes against a bunch of kids, and they were never arrested. Those people probably still have kids in their care!”

 “Baby,” Joel tried again, hoping he wasn’t going to have to talk her down from a panic attack, too.

“Dad, she was like six, and she watched one of her foster fathers rape one of the other girls staying in the same house. She watched the same man do it to other kids in the house, then he would threaten them if they said anything about it; he would kill them. The wife didn’t do anything about it; she was the reason he was able to foster and hurt these girls. Ellie thought that Tommy was going to hurt me and then threaten her the same way this other man did. She said that it was one place, and it wasn’t even the worst! What’s worse than that?” Sarah whispered, and Joel pulled her close again, closing his eyes against the tears attempting to fall from his eyes. Ellie told Sarah this because she was scared for Sarah. She wanted to warn Sarah about how bad the world was, all the while acting as if it were true, because she was trying to hurt Sarah. 

What the hell was he going to do?

Ellie sat on her borrowed bed, her bag in front of her, having stuffed an extra set of clothes into it, and wore one of the sweaters Joel had bought her. And wearing her jacket over top of it, wondering where Joel was going to take her. Back to Marlene? Back to the streets? There was no way he would let her stay here after she attacked his brother for no reason and then told Sarah the truth to hurt her, to scare her. It would be easier if they could just stop trying to do whatever they were trying to do. 

Ellie knew that Joel and Tommy weren’t going to rape her; she’d been around enough of them to know most of the time when the men were a danger to her in that way. She’d accused Joel of it to finalize the trio of hurts. So these three people would all be against her, and she could finally kill the spark of hope in her chest once and for all.

Maybe the next place would keep her long enough so she could get the damn cast off because if she were back on the streets in the damn thing, those teens were going to kill her. After all, she wouldn’t be able to run. She would have to deal without pain meds because Joel had been giving them to her, but she couldn’t guarantee it would happen at the next place. 

It would be easier at the next place because they wouldn’t be acting like she was anything except some extra money. The Millers were too dangerous because they pretended to care.

About two hours had passed since Joel left her room when there was a knock at the door, and she murmured, “Come in.”

Joel opened the door, holding something in his hand and a bottle of water tucked under one arm. His eyes locked onto her clothes, then traveled down to the backpack at her feet. But he walked over and held out his hand; she shook her head.

“It’s your last pain dose for the day, you gotta be feeling all those aches, you don’t need to be in pain, kiddo.”

She shook her head again, “I can’t be fuzzy, not going to a place in the middle of the night. I won’t be able to fight back if I’m stupid from the pills. Sell the rest, you’ll get a pretty penny for it.”

Joel sat down next to her on the bed, pulling her hand out and pressing the pill into her palm, “You’re not going anywhere tonight. You’re not leaving this house unless you want that. Now, please take the pill so you can get some real rest tonight.”

Ellie couldn’t argue; she didn’t have any power, so she swallowed the pill and then showed him her mouth to prove she did it. Joel frowned at her for that and put the water bottle on the bedside table for her, then leaned away from her, and she didn’t know what they were doing here, so she said nothing.

“I know you think that what happened with Tommy and Sarah, then what you said to me was reason enough for us to kick you out. I know that you’ve probably been sent away for less in the past, and you’ve lived with worse more than once, but unless you want to leave this house because you don’t feel safe here, we’re not kicking you out. You have a home here.”

Ellie stared at him, open-mouthed and struck dumb, “Huh?”

“Do you think that Tommy or I would hurt you like that? Do you think we could do that to you? To anyone?”

Ellie thought about that before she shook her head, “I said it to hurt you. To make you get rid of me. Please send me away, I can’t do this anymore.”

She could see the relief seconds before the pain and sadness settled in around his eyes. She didn’t know why she knew what that looked like on Joel, but she could feel it, under her skin and pushing her to get out. To run away from here as fast as she could on crutches.

But it was too late when he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close for a hug, and she gripped his shirt in her fist, suddenly sobbing without permission. 

He just whispered, “It’s okay, I’m here,” over and over again while she soaked his shirt in a dark bedroom that could maybe be hers if she could trust the Millers for more than a second.

Once she was cried out and exhausted, Joel helped her stand up, pulled back her comforter and sheet, then sat her back down and helped her out of her jacket, removing her knife and placing it on the bedside table before hanging the coat on the back of her bedroom door. He walked back to help Ellie lie back down and tucked the blanket around her before unpacking the clothes from her backpack and setting them back inside on the floor. He then walked back over and pressed a warm hand to her head before heading to the door. 

“Joel?” she whispered, and he turned back.

“Ellie?” he asked with a little smile.

“I’m sorry for hurting Tommy, Sarah, and you,” she said.

“Sometimes that just comes with the territory, kiddo.”

“With a fucked up head case?” she filled in.

Joel shook his head, “No, with family.”

With that, Joel closed the door, and she pulled the blankets close again and tried to sleep. About five minutes passed before the door opened and closed again, and she looked over to see Sarah sneaking into her room and shoved Ellie over enough to tuck herself into bed next to Ellie.

“What are you doing, Sarah?” Ellie whispered, not wanting to get her in trouble.

“I’m having a sleepover with my little sister. I don’t wanna sleep alone tonight,” she whispered back as she turned so she was lying on her side facing Ellie. 

“This is weird,” Ellie decides eventually.

Sarah shrugged, “Get over it.”

Ellie closed her eyes and found that the warmth flowing off of Sarah’s body did help her fall asleep faster, and she wasn’t talking, so at least this wasn’t like the sleepovers that she’d seen on teen movies where they stay up all night doing stupid things like talking about boys.

When Joel woke up the next morning to his alarm, he used the bathroom quickly before going out to see if Sarah was already awake, but no one was in the kitchen, and she wasn’t in her room. Before he had a chance to panic, Joel quietly opened Ellie’s bedroom door and found both the girls curled up on Ellie’s bed. Ellie’s back was to Sarah’s front, and his eldest had wrapped a comforting arm around Ellie’s waist. 

He walked over to the bed and rubbed a hand over Sarah’s arm gently, and she startled awake, “Sorry, baby girl, it's me. Can you get up without waking her?”

Sarah yawned but nodded, pulling away from Ellie, and they both walked out, after Joel tucked the blanket more securely around the younger child and closed the door on her again. Sarah walked into the bathroom, and Joel headed to the kitchen to start his coffee and retrieve items from the fridge for hot cereal. It wasn’t fancy, but Sarah loved to put brown sugar and butter into the cereal, and he still felt so cold after last night, and he was worried that Ellie wasn’t going to get better here. He needed to figure something out for her and fast.

Sarah came out in time to take the bowl of hot cereal from Joel and sat down with her additions and the toast he made for her as well.

“I’m going to have Uncle Tommy take you to school and bring you home from the office afterwards today. I need to let Ellie sleep for a bit, and then I am going to upset her a lot, I think, and she isn’t going to need an audience for that.”

“You can’t send her away, Dad,” Sarah whispered hotly, but he just pressed a hand over one of hers.

“We’re not sending her away, baby girl. I am trying to get her some help, some support.”

“You mean like therapy?” Sarah asked as he let go of her hand, and she went back to eating.

Joel nodded, “I called Marlene, Ellie’s caseworker, last night about who I could speak to about some emotional support for Ellie. She sent me a name and said they would be here at about twelve. I am going to let her sleep in as much as she wants, feed her, and then break it to her that she’s going to have to speak to someone about her assumptive need to be removed from this house. I will probably also try to get some extra training and help. I don’t want her to feel like she has no choices, but we also can’t take the chance that she’s going to be triggered every time you and Uncle Tommy wrestle. His head is only going to take so many cracks to the skull before it does damage.”

“Yeah, honestly surprised it hadn’t happened before last night,” Sarah said with a nod.

Joel rolled his eyes. He would be worried about his little girl being raised by only men if it wasn’t for the fact that she spends most of her time with other girls who get along with her very well, and she spends time with Kelly outside of the office. Their office admin was an honorary aunt at this point. Maybe she’s just a scrappy kid, after all, she did love her soccer. He didn’t want people making fun of her for not having any women in her life, as many people liked to point out to him when they were trying to set him up with their daughters or single friends. It was one of the reasons he stopped signing up for PTA and other school events; he was sick of people having a problem with how he was raising his daughter.

“You’re not going to feel abandoned by any of this, right, Sarah?” Joel asked her outright. 

Sarah frowned at him, “Am I going to feel abandoned because you are making sure that Ellie is getting the care that she needs? Is that what you’re asking?”

Joel nodded, “Don’t give me a look that says I’m bein’ crazy about this, kiddo. I read a lot of books about what happens to older siblings and what happens when someone needs more attention, when the only child is used to having all the attention. I don’t want you to think I am ignoring you for Ellie’s sake.”

Sarah does roll her eyes at him, but she’s smiling around a bite of toast, so he forgives her as she chews on the toast before answering, “What did I ask for for my fourth through ninth birthday?”

Joel tried to recall what she’d asked for, the toys or events she wanted to attend, but didn’t remember anything specific, especially anything that had to do with Ellie. He shook his head, not knowing what she was saying.

“I asked for a younger sibling every time I blew out those candles, and now I have one. It would be selfish to whine and cry now because she happens to need something different from you as a parent.”

“How was I supposed to know that, baby? You never told me what you wished for.”

Sarah grinned again, “I told you a lot of other times.”

“You’re a good kid, Sarah,” Joel said, standing up and pressing a kiss to her forehead before he walked over to the front door and opened it just before Tommy was about to pull out his key.

Tommy looked surprised, “Aren’t you usually too busy eating to open the door for me?” 

Joel grinned, “Not today, keep it down though because Ellie is still sleeping and I am trying to give her as much time to sleep as I can get away with.”

“Did you call Marlene about the therapy?” Tommy asked; they’d talked briefly about his plan before Tommy went off to bed. Joel was happy to see he didn't have any long-lasting symptoms from getting bonked on the head by Ellie the night before.

“Yeah, I was just telling Sarah the plan for today, though it might be lengthened into the next couple of days, depending on how far we get today.”

“Got it, drop off the girl at the place of education, then head off to do your job and my job, then make sure the girl gets home again,” Tommy said with a wink to both of them. Joel and Sarah responded with matching eye rolls before Tommy sat down with Joel’s food, which he wasn’t sad about losing. The anxiety that was living in his gut over what he would be able to do to help Ellie was making it difficult to eat. Plus, he was used to Tommy stealing his food; the little shit had been doing it for most of his life.

Joel helped Sarah and Tommy get ready to go, taking some notes for Tommy and ensuring that Sarah had her lunch and money for the day. He hugged his daughter and watched as they headed out, leaving Joel in a quiet house. He sat down on the couch for a moment to take it in, understanding that this could break what he was trying to do with Ellie, but it could also break through to her, and he had to take the chance. He didn’t like the things that he’d seen in her since she came into their lives, the fact that she feels like she had to hurt herself to know things are real, that she believes that she deserves to be on the streets and than they aren’t going to care about her if she’s honest about what she’s gone through and what she’s really like.

He didn’t have long to worry about it, though, because Ellie screamed and he jumped up and ran into her room to see her throwing herself to the floor, and he reached out, attempting to stop her from hitting the ground, but he wasn’t fast enough. Joel came down on his knees hard as he pulled Ellie up a little, trying to be gentle as she pushed against him, muttering but not loud enough that he could understand.

“Ellie! Ellie, it’s me! It’s Joel! Look at me!” he commanded, and something broke through, and she looked at him, and the fear cleared from her face and eyes, and she pressed into his chest. Joel pulled her close, hand at the back of her head, and her back as he continued talking to her quietly. 

It took her a couple of minutes to calm down, and when he felt her release all the tension in her body, he patted her back one more time before he helped her sit up more fully before he stood and reached out to help her to the side of the bed. She grunted in pain, and Joel winced, figuring that the fall probably pulled at every single one of her aches. 

“I’ll get you some pain meds as soon as we get some food into you,” Joel assured her, then sat down next to her. “Bad dream?”

Ellie rubbed a hand across her stomach and nodded, “Just history. It’s fine.”

“Sure didn’t sound fine,” Joel responded, rubbing his hand across her back again.

“Same shit, different day, man,” she muttered, then looked around the room, seeing something on the desk before looking back in surprise, “Why aren’t you at work? Aren’t you late?”

“We have some things to do around here today. If you wanna come out and have some breakfast when you’re ready, we can talk about it.”

Joel hugged her to his side a little before he got up and headed back to the kitchen, cooking another serving of hot cereal and making more toast before putting another pill next to the spot and a cup of milk. Ellie walked into the bathroom, and a little bit later, she came out, hobbling out into the kitchen and sitting down in front of her food. 

“Thanks,” she whispered about the food, taking the pill with a quick drink of milk, then adding some to her bowl, and adding brown sugar as well before she started eating. Joel swiped one of the buttered pieces of toast from the pile between them and chewed on it. He was trying not to stare at her while she ate.

“So what’s the deal?” Ellie asked, mouth full of food.

“Close your mouth, weirdo,” Joel scolded, but looked at her to answer, “With everything you’ve gone through, you need some support, and I wanted to give you more time to settle in, but yesterday tells me that you need this so you can settle in.”

Ellie was frozen, frowning at him, “Need what?”

“A therapist is coming over in about,” he looked down at his watch, “an hour.”

“Fuck that,” Ellie snorted.

“I know Ellie, but you need something, otherwise we are going to be fighting forever, and I don’t know how to help you without someone else. Please, Ellie, you need the help.”

She stared at him, “Some grown-up who isn’t going to listen and doesn’t fucking care about me isn’t going to help this situation. I barely trust you to care about me.”

Joel figured that was going to come up, “Well, even though they are coming here in conjunction with the foster care system, I will make sure they care about you. I’m not going to let you fall through the cracks anymore. Not when I can do something about it.”

“They only cover so much, you know,” Ellie snapped before going back to her food. 

“Whaddya mean?” he asked. 

“If you decide to bring in someone else, they won’t cover it. They don’t give you enough money to cover that kind of thing.”

Joel shrugged, “You don’t need to worry about that. The only thing you need to worry about is discussing your concerns with the therapist and finding a way to work through them. This family isn’t going to give up on ya, but at some point, if you are living under a constant state of anxiety, is staying here with us really what’s best for you?”

Ellie snorted, “You still don’t get it.”

Joel nodded, “You’re right, that’s why this is about more than just you. It’s about making sure we’re the best option for you.”

“Joel,” Ellie said, looking up from her food.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up,” she said, and he figured he should cut his losses and grabbed his laptop and started working on some plans for one of their upcoming projects. At the same time, Ellie finished several servings of food before she hobbled over to the couch and turned on the television to watch something. He didn’t tell her to moderate the sound, figuring that she needed to rebel in as many ways as she could right now, even if she was trying to make him mad.

She didn’t speak to him at all. Joel tried not to hold it against her and kept to himself since her telling him to shut up was a boundary, maybe a shitty one, but he was desperately trying to show her that she was safe here, especially after a triggered event, and it wasn’t easy. Especially because everything Sarah had taught him about child rearing didn’t seem to work with Ellie. 

It was almost a relief when he opened the door to a young black woman dressed in a gray suit, who introduced herself as ‘Natasha Tembo’ before walking into the house and taking a seat in one of the armchairs in the living room. At the same time, Ellie slumped into the couch and ignored Joel while he turned off the television.

“Ellie Williams, it's nice to meet you. You can call me Nat or Ms. Tembo, if you like,” the therapist said as Joel walked over to the kitchen to clean up from breakfast, not knowing if he was supposed to depart his own home for the sake of privacy, especially since this was new for him as much as it was for Ellie.

Ellie said something low enough that he couldn’t hear before she got up from the couch and hobbled into her bedroom and closed the door with a slam. Joel turned around to look at Ms. Tembo in surprise.

She just smiled before walking over to sit down at the table. “We may as well speak first since Ellie doesn’t seem like she wants to chat.”

Joel nodded then sat down across from her, “I think I am definitely in over my head here, and I am trying to do right by her and my other daughter.”

“Has Ellie told you much about what her life has been like up to this point?” Ms. Tembo asked, and Joel had to shake his head.

“I want her to be able to open up, but I am tryin’ not to force her hand, it seems like she’s had a lot of that in her life.”

Ms. Tembo opened a file in front of her on the table, then paused when Ellie’s door opened. Joel turned to look as she grabbed the boombox from the floor again, and he called out to her, “Not too loud, Ellie, otherwise I am going to take it away again.”

“Uh huh,” Ellie said and disappeared back into her room and turned it on at a much lower decibel than it was the previous night.

“She knows we’re talking about her and she’s trying to pretend it's not happening,” Ms Tembo said, and Joel nodded. The woman spoke when he turned back to look at her, “People talking about foster children like they aren’t there or sending them away is a very normal part of their lives, and as you can see, Ellie has come up with ways of dealing with that.”

“Happens to kids who aren’t in the system, too,” Joel responded, trying to normalize any small part of Ellie’s life in some way. Plus, it would remind this woman, whom he’s never met, that he has a child and is not trying to hurt Ellie.

Ms. Tembo hummed an affirmative, “You have a daughter, fourteen years old?”

“Yes, Sarah, she’s at school at the moment.”

“Well, I think maybe giving you a little bit of context about Ellie’s situation might be helpful overall for you and your family.”

“I did ask for her file, so I could familiarize myself with some of what she’s gone through, but Marlene wasn’t willing to hand it over until Ellie was more settled. I was willing to wait, but now I am wondering if not knowing what to watch for is causing her more concern.”

“Well, let's start with an overview of sorts. She was born into the foster system, her mother died, and she had no knowledge of the father, and Marlene knew Ellie’s mother.”

“Why the hell didn’t she raise her then?” Joel demanded harshly, and Ms. Tembo raised an imperious brow at him, “Sorry, please continue.”

“She has been in and out of foster care houses for most of her life. She was only ever close to being adopted a couple of times when she was very young, but they all fell through for one reason or another, though it was never Ellie’s fault.”

“Of course it wasn’t, she was a baby,” Joel put in, annoyed that the woman felt like she had to say it in the first place.

“She started getting into a lot of trouble around five, getting into fights or stealing, which led to her being passed around a lot more, which became a cycle of more acting out, which led to faster turnarounds and being sent back. Then she landed in a group home, and it seemed like things were going much better. She made a friend there, and for the first time in a while, she was in one place for more than a year.”

“But something happened? To the friend?” Joel asked, already knowing the answer.

“Nothing bad, she was adopted out, and from the notes in Ellie’s file, it looks like they parted on bad terms, and she was at the group home for a couple of months before she ran and we lost track of her until someone at the hospital called about her. As far as we can tell, she was unaccounted for up to about nine months before she was in that hospital. Before that, there were a lot of notes about her, that she’d been told she wouldn’t be placed again. It was the group home or nothing; we’d gone through so many of the foster homes in the area. She’s been moved all over the state.”

The idea that she was running while she was here instead of in another part of Massachusetts, where they would have never met, has Joel choking on air for a second before he considered the story Ellie told Sarah the night before, “A lot of those places were hurting her or the kids she lived with. She told us about one when she was pretty young, where the foster father was molesting several of the other girls in the house in front of the ones he didn’t rape, and he would threaten all of them. How is it that her file is full of reasons not to take her, but doesn’t take into consideration the reasons why she was misbehaving?”

Ms. Tembo looked down at her notes for a long moment before she looked up again, “We are always overworked, and we never have enough foster families. We do the best we can for these kids, but if they don’t report, then there is only so much we can do.”

Joel nodded. He couldn’t do anything about Ellie’s past or the system that allowed her to be hurt in countless ways. All he could do now was give her the best life he could offer. “She thinks that if she does the wrong thing or says the wrong thing, then she is just going to get dropped off in the middle of the night. She goes through these moods where I think she’s trying to get me to kick her out, and then she has times when she is trying to be the most well-behaved child for the sake of staying here. I don’t know what to do, and I don’t want her to leave, which has just left me wondering if being here with a single father isn’t the best place for her because she’s been so hurt by men.”

Ms. Tembo shrugged, “She’s had just as many issues with women. I don’t think she would be doing any better with a woman, but that doesn’t matter right now, Mr. Miller.”

“Please, call me Joel.”

“Please call me Nat then, it’s only fair. Joel, you and your family want her. You went through the right channels to get her off the street and to be approved as her emergency guardian, which means that, although you may not have all the training that most foster parents undergo, you have something specifically valuable to offer Ellie or other kids like her. You want to help her, to keep her. She’s not replaceable to you. That’s more than she’s ever had. That’s more than some foster kids ever get.”

Joel took a deep breath and glanced back to where Ellie was behind her bedroom door, listening to some rock music meant to make the sanest person bang their head along to the beat. “So what do we do here? How do I help her?”

“I will set up a schedule, I can meet with her a couple of times a week to start with, she needs boundaries and rules and encouragement. She needs stability, not just the promise of it, but you and your family providing her with some. Are you planning on getting her back in school?”

Joel nodded, “As soon as I can get a hold of her transcripts, I will probably have to get her tested to see if we have to put her in the last grade she was in before she disappeared. She’s a smart kid, helping Sarah with her homework a lot of the time, and from what I understand, she went to the library a lot when she was on the streets.”

“Take her back to the library, give her the chance to go someplace she feels safe. Get her a library card and help her search for things she likes. Give her things to do as a kid.”

Joel nodded. He’d been wanting to give her some good things to think about, but he’d been trying to get her through each day without fighting with her about her pills and everything else. He considered everything that happened the night before and thought about Sarah and Tommy and the ‘cycle of violence’ and let it spit out the question before he lost his nerve, “Did Ellie… Did she ever hurt any of the kids that she lived with?”

Nat checked something in her file, frowning as she looked through some of the notes on several different pages, then looked at him, “It looks like the only times she ever fought with other kids, there was usually a claim of self-defense, and despite her hefty file, I don’t think she’s violent. Even when that guy in the church attacked her, she didn’t kill him; she subdued him. I know that a lot of people have thought a lot of things about her, but I don’t think she’s a danger to your daughter.”

Joel smiled, “I didn’t think she was either, but a friend of mine called me out, saying that I was putting my baby in danger by bringing Ellie here. I disagreed, but I have to consider Sarah, too.”

Nat nodded, “I think that’s completely understandable, Joel. It says here that she’s had a switchblade in her possession for a while, something from her mother which has never been taken away from her for very long. I’m assuming she still has it.”

Joel nodded, “She’s only ever threatened a group of kids on the street with it since I’ve known her, she usually carries it with her, but she’s never threatened any of us with it. Outside of the first time we met her, we used to call her ‘Switch’ because she refused to tell us her name.”

Nat smiled, “Marlene is the reason that she’s been able to retain it all this time. Perhaps it was something she discussed with many of the placements after she received it. The only reason it's in her file is that a couple of foster parents mentioned her having it when she left those houses.”

Joel didn’t like Marlene, so he wasn’t planning on giving her any credit for letting this kid keep one thing from her mother, but never making sure that she was well cared for. It made him wonder how well the other kids under her purview were doing. 

“I found Sarah sleeping in Ellie’s bed this morning,” Joel shared quietly, “She always wanted to have siblings, and she was the first person in our family to determine that Ellie was ours. I don’t want to question the feeling that all of us had about her from the beginning, that she belonged to us, but I feel like it's my job to ask the questions that could be hurtful even when I don’t want them to be.”

Nat nodded, “Like I said, Joel, you have everything she needs, you are just going to need to use all those parental instincts a little differently with Ellie than you’ve used with Sarah all these years.”

“I have been reading some books about how to help kids who have gone through traumatic things, so hopefully that will help.”

“We have some classes and training that I will make available to you as well. Can I ask about what happened last night?”

“I went to dinner with a friend, so it happened when I was gone. My brother, Tommy, was wrestlin’ with my daughter. They've been doing that since she was a toddler, climbing all over him. Tommy tossed Sarah onto the couch, close to where Ellie was, and she thought he was hurting her. Or maybe what she saw was close to a past event, in which she assumed he was hurting her. She hit him in the head with one of her crutches and ran to her room. She told Sarah a story about one of her foster homes, which freaked her out a little, and then, because of all that, she was packed up and ready to be kicked out of the house. She said something to me about the only reason I wanted a little girl in my house was that maybe it was similar to some of her past foster parents. She said afterward that she said it to hurt me, to make me turn her out.”

Nat made some notes, and Joel hated the idea that there would be another ‘incident’ in her file, that he wasn’t able to stop it from happening for all of them. “Is your brother and daughter okay? Do any of you need to see someone as well? Did Tommy go to the hospital for treatment?”

Joel shook his head, “My brother has been banged around a lot in his life, he says it's nothing, and I trust him to know one way or another. I will talk to Sarah about whether she needs some help with what Ellie told her. I think she’s just worried that someone’s going to hold it against Ellie and take her away.”

“Well, let her know that I can touch base with her about anything that Ellie told her or what happened. She might need some extra support while she gets used to having a foster in the house, just with all of you. We don’t want Ellie to lose this chance.”

Joel nodded, then looked back just as the music stopped and he stood up as he heard the door open and Ellie hobbled back out into the living room, and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling at her, “Hey kiddo, did you wanna sit at the table with Ms. Tembo? I can go to my room or even next door to give you some real privacy?”

Ellie shook her head and walked over to the couch and looked at them both, “I think I would like for Joel to be here for this. I don’t trust you,” she said then crossed her arms over her chest and Joel turned to apologize for her but Nat was just chuckling as she walked back over to the chair and sat down again. Joel went and grabbed a bottle of water for each of them before handing one to Nat, who nodded her thanks. He then sat at the other end of the couch and put the other water bottles between him and Ellie. She turned to him and nodded in recognition before turning back to Nat. “What do you want to know?”

With that opening, Joel knew that they were going to figure out the rest.