Chapter Text
The first sign of things being incredibly strange is that Bill phones him. Joel and Bill don’t talk on the phone. Joel talks to Frank sometimes, because Frank still worries about him, but his communication history with Bill can be summed up in text messages shorter than ten words, and the occasional chain email about some kind of conspiracy Bill sends him that he deletes without opening.
“Need you to take a kid,” Bill says as soon as he picks up. One thing about Bill, he cuts straight to the chase.
Unfortunately for him, Joel’s the same way.
“No.”
“I’m not asking.”
“Still a no. I’m not in Massachusetts anymore anyways.”
“We know,” Bill says. “But you’re licensed in Wyoming, too, aren’t you?”
Something about Bill’s voice makes him pause.
“Yeah.” Joel pinches the bridge of his nose. “Why the hell are you askin’ me?”
“Kid’s in trouble. She’s gonna run one way or another. Only way her caseworker makes this work is if we have somewhere safe for her to land. Not exactly on the books, if you know what I mean.”
He’s saying no. He only agreed to get licensed to foster in the first place for Tess, when Bill and Frank’s son was younger and they worried about losing him when Frank first got sick. Getting re-licensed when they moved to Wyoming was for her, something for her to look forward to when she was well again. That never happened and he’s only still licensed by virtue of time not having run out yet.
He’s saying no.
“Let me talk to Frank.”
Bill and Frank drive the kid up to Wyoming, further cementing how strange this situation is. Frank doesn’t travel much anymore, since he was diagnosed, and that is a long drive. It would have made more sense to put the kid on a bus.
The third strange part, probably, is that Bill helps her out of the van. Joel ain’t sure he’s seen Bill be nice… ever.
The kid is small, probably barely topping five feet if she’s a day. She mutters something at Bill that makes him scoff, offended, but he keeps his hand out and the kid takes it as she steps out of the van. She snatches it back as soon as she’s on steady ground.
Joel jogs over to grab her bags and she looks at him like he’s about to steal them, snatching a battered green backpack away before he can touch it. He picks up the suitcase she has, which weighs almost nothing anyways, but he’s not gonna make Bill carry it in. Bill’s got a good ten years on him and he’s not moving around as easy as he used to.
Not that the stubborn old bastard would admit it.
They stay for a while, drinking awkward coffee in Joel’s living room. He puts a glass of milk in front of the kid and she glares at him like she’d like nothing more than to upend it over his head. Bill and him have never felt the need to talk much and the girl’s barely talking at all, so it’s mostly on Frank to carry the conversation. He tries, but Joel can tell he’s already worn out before they make their excuses to leave.
“Remember, we’re getting a hotel room for the night,” Frank tells the kid before they go. “Call if you need anything, okay?”
She nods.
“And the social worker Marlene’s been talking to will be here tomorrow.” Frank holds his hands out and she lets him take hers. “You call me. I want to know how you settle in. We can always stop by before we leave if you need us to.”
Another nod.
Frank squeezes her hands, then lets go as he turns towards Joel. “Marlene told me to give you a message.”
Joel raises an eyebrow. This’ll be rich. Marlene was never a big fan of his. Just his luck that the kid’s social worker is one of the few people he still knows from Boston, though he hasn’t heard from her since Tess’s funeral.
Frank stays serious. “Don’t fuck this up, Joel.”
And with that, Joel’s alone with the girl.
“I’m going upstairs,” she says almost the moment the door closes, like she’s daring him to stop her.
Joel shrugs. “Alright.”
He doesn’t care what she does. He’s not here to be her friend. He’s offering her a bed to sleep in until Bill and Frank and her social worker figure out what the fuck to do with her. She is not his goddamn problem.
She gets to the stairs before he curses himself and stops her.
“Did you eat?” he asks. If he let her go to bed hungry on the first night she’s under his roof, Bill would never forgive him. That man’s never met a stray he didn’t feed and this one’s particularly pathetic looking.
She stops partway on the stairs. For a moment, she looks like she wants to ignore him, but she eventually nods. “Yeah, we had dinner… at like four.”
Joel snorts. Between the time difference and Bill and Frank already eating early, he’s shocked they made it that late. “You want a sandwich or somethin’?”
It takes her a moment to follow him into the kitchen and she keeps her distance. He watches it and keeps the table between them when he brings over her sandwich, makes sure not to box her in. She doesn’t know him from Jesus and he knows almost nothing about her, but he’s not an idiot about these things — he’s not gonna get too close.
But he is gonna put another glass of milk in front of her.
“Drink that,” he says.
She makes a face.
“Growin’ bones need calcium.”
Ellie’s hand comes to rest on the small, barely visible swell of her stomach under her baggy sweatshirt. She drinks the milk.
The kid is awake early the next morning. Joel realizes this because he hears her puking her guts out in the upstairs bathroom.
When she finally makes it downstairs, she looks more than a little wan, still green around the edges.
She’s plenty old enough to take care of herself, clearly, and he’d had no plans to interact with her more than necessary. She got herself into this situation. She can deal with it. Except… he just sighs. Except she looks like absolutely shit, and he’s responsible for her now.
God help him.
“If I make you some toast, do you think it’d stay down?”
She presses her hand over her mouth and shakes her head.
“It’s easier if you got somethin’ in your stomach if you keep gettin’ sick. C’mon, what sounds tolerable at all?”
She moves over to the kitchen table and sinks into a chair. “Uh. Something… potato?”
“Potato?”
“I dunno, man, it’s just what stays down. Sometimes.”
Fair enough, he supposes.
He digs around in the freezer and pulls out a bag of frozen hashbrown patties. He holds them up, and waits for her to nod.
“I can feed myself,” the kid says.
He waves her off, putting a few of the patties into the air fryer. “I don’t need you pukin’ in my fridge.”
It’s not gonna be a thing. It’s just that she looks particularly pathetic and he’s getting ready anyways. He took the day off, since he’s going to have to talk to her new social worker and everything to get her settled, but he woke up at his usual time and he has nothing better to do. He can’t see her staying for more than a week, maybe two, so it’s not like this’ll become a habit.
“Any kinda drink stay down when you’re sick like that?” he asks. “Juice, milk, water?”
Ellie exhales slowly, her knuckles white around the edge of the table. “Ginger ale, sometimes.”
“Alright, I’ll pick some up next time I’m at the store.”
He stops pushing it before he makes the kid throw up again. She’s small enough as it is. The last thing she needs is to lose weight.
When the hash browns are almost done, he gets out a pan and cracks a few eggs into once it’s hot. He fries two for himself and scrambles two for her, then plates everything and brings it over to the table.
She frowns and he holds a hand up before she can protest. “You don’t gotta eat ‘em if you can’t. I ain’t gonna argue about it.”
She sighs, grabbing the salt shaker and heavily salting everything. “God, I miss fried eggs. With like the perfect runny yolk. So fucking good.”
Considering that’s exactly how he’s currently eating his eggs, he happens to agree.
Ellie pokes at her food with her fork, then lets out another, louder sigh. “Okay, this is weird, but can I just fucking… smell your coffee?”
He’s tempted to say no for the sake of it, but, well. She really is pathetic looking, all pale and those big eyes taking up half her damn face. And it’s hardly the strangest thing he’s done, so he passes the mug over. She takes a couple deep whiffs before pushing it back and taking a bite of her food.
“That help?”
She shrugs. “Sometimes.”
“You want your own? You’re allowed a half cup or whatever it is.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Hate the shit,” she says, mouth full and still shoveling in more.
He ain’t even asking.
Eventually, she clears her plate and looks significantly less green by the end of it. She gets up without prompting and sticks her plate in the dishwasher, then skirts around him and goes back towards the stairs.
“Hold up,” Joel says and she freezes. He stands and crosses to the cupboard he keeps all the meds in. And then he struggles with the child lock for a moment until he manages to get it open. He shakes the vitamin bottle at her like he’s shaking a bag of treats to attract a cat. “Frank gave me these and said you keep tryin’a weasel out of takin’ ‘em.”
She huffs and crosses over to him. “They taste weird.”
For a moment, he has the strangest sense of deja vu. He remembers switching to the gummy Flintstones vitamins because she hated the chalky hard ones, even though the gummy ones cost more.
Except he’s passing Ellie two gummy prenatal vitamins that she makes a face at before chewing.
“Alright,” he says, putting the bottle and fumbling with the child lock until it finally closes. “Ground rules.”
Ellie takes a couple steps back. “Is this like the part where you tell me you’re gonna make me go to church until I repent for being all…” She waves vaguely at her midriff. “Teen pregnant, or whatever?”
He snorts. “Hardly. I’d say don’t drink my beer, but you don’t seem stupid. You don’t ask about my backstory and I won’t ask about yours. You can eat anything you want, but if you finish somethin’, write it on the grocery list. No wanderin’ til you talk to your social worker, but then I don’t care where you go as long as you’re back by ten and you don’t bring trouble home.”
“Define trouble.”
He gives her a look. “No cops. Use your judgement for the rest. You stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of your way. Got it?”
“Got it,” she says.
He hesitates. It feels like there should be more. “Are you… what did Bill and Frank plan for you to do about school?”
She fidgets with her fingers. “Uh, I kinda missed a bunch this year. But I’m gonna be sixteen in June, so I can get a job then instead.”
It’s barely April.
“Is that the plan?” he asks skeptically. “Drop out of school, work a dead end job for the rest of your life? What are you gonna do with the kid, put him in some shit daycare for twenty bucks a day that’ll plop him in front of the TV and let him rot in a dirty diaper all day?”
“Hey, fuck you, man!” She crosses her arms over her stomach defensively. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“Well, what the fuck do you think happens when I turn eighteen?” she snaps. “Whoever I’m with will just kick my ass out and I’ll have to figure all this shit out on my own and I can’t live in my car with a baby.”
“You’re too young to drive,” he says automatically. When he does, it sinks in, maybe for the first time, that he’s looking at a very, very scared fifteen year old who’s trying to pretend she isn’t. He should probably stop throwing his own, long-buried insecurities in her face. It’s not his business anyways what she does. Probably he won’t even see her kid. She’ll be gone by then and better off for it.
“That too,” she agrees.
He sighs, rubbing his forehead. “What grade are you even in?”
“Sophomore.”
Christ.
“Look,” he says. “Just talk to your caseworker. At least until school ends for the year, you gotta figure somethin’ out ‘cause I ain’t getting arrested for truancy. Deal?”
Not that she’ll be staying that long. But still.
“Whatever,” she says. “Can I go now?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“Fine,” she mutters and takes off.
Apparently the amount of school Ellie missed isn’t several weeks like he thought. It’s several months.
“If we get you enrolled in the local school now, you could catch up enough to be on track for your junior year,” the social worker says brightly. She’s young, a little too young in his opinion, and perky.
Joel has decided he’s very over the perkiness.
“Okay,” Ellie says. She has her knees pulled up in front of her and her sweatshirt stretched over them. Her cheeks are red and her eyes are a little too bright. She looks… defeated. Embarrassed. The way her fists are clenched against her knees, so tight her knuckles are turning white, makes him think if she was in any other situation, she’d already be fighting.
It’s not his problem. She’s just stopping here until they find her somewhere else, somewhere long-term. This is a favour to Bill and Frank. Mostly Frank, at that. This little girl is not his problem. She is not his to fight for.
He looks at the woman. “No, that’s ridiculous.”
“Excuse me?”
“She’s gonna be showin’ by the end of the school year. And — when are you due?” he interrupts himself to ask Ellie.
“September.”
“Right, so she’s not exactly gonna have the baby and go back the same week,” he says. “How soon are you gonna be able to find her another place? You gonna send her to a brand new school to sit on an ice pack in class?”
Ellie winces and curls a little tighter into herself. “Thanks for that image.”
He ignores her. She might not like it, but it’s true. He rubs his hand over his jaw. “Schools are still doin’ those virtual classes, right? Put her in those.”
“Ellie doesn’t exactly have a history of being particularly motivated to attend school,” the social worker points out. “How would this be different?”
“She’s got motivation now, don’t she?” He turns to the kid. “Do you want to go to the school here til the end of the year?”
She shakes her head.
“Besides, she can’t ditch school if school is where she lives.”
Ellie glares at him. But it does seem to convince the social worker, and she agrees to look into it.
It might not be his problem, but he seems about the only one in this room seeing sense. Kid’s got enough to deal with right now without being both the new kid and the pregnant teenager at school, especially in a town like Jackson that ain’t particularly large. There comes a point where that’s just cruel.
And he doesn’t know exactly why she missed so much school, but it’s not like she got a bad flu and just needs to stay late a few days and do a bit of extra homework to get caught up. Things are gonna get harder for her and she’s going to need more grace. Better if her social worker realizes that sooner rather than later.
The rest of the visit is about as pleasant, but at least other things aren’t so fraught. It’s mostly boring, practical stuff, like getting her enrolled in Medicaid in Wyoming.
“How long’s that gonna take?” Ellie asks.
“Four, maybe five weeks, probably,” the social worker says, and then goes back to grilling Joel about his smoke detectors.
He grits his teeth and tries not to be insulted. He’s only been doing his damn job probably longer than this woman’s been alive. Maybe these days the house isn’t something he keeps up with as a point of pride, but keeping it in shape keeps him busy. His goddamn smoke detectors are up to date.
By the time the woman leaves, he has a blinding headache. He goes into the kitchen and fumbles with the child lock on the medicine cabinet.
“Here,” Ellie says and nudges around him to unlock it in one go.
“Thanks,” he mutters, and grabs the Tylenol bottle.
When he’s taken some and relocked the cabinet, Ellie’s sitting at the kitchen table, chewing on her cuticle while staring out the window.
“You alright?”
“Huh? Oh.” She glances at him. “Do you really think it’ll take four weeks until my Medicaid works again?”
“Probably. Bureaucracy is slow as hell.”
“Damn it,” she mutters.
“Why? Somethin’ wrong?”
“No, no.” She rests her arm across her stomach. “Just I’m supposed to get a scan soon? How much do you think that’d cost?”
“More than you have.” He grabs another glass of water and sets it in front of her, then sits at the table across from her. “How far along are you?”
Ellie gives him a dark look. “It’s in my file.”
“I ain’t got time to read all that,” he says. He gave it a glance, but it seemed like a bunch of crap that he didn’t care enough to read. Bill said she was fifteen, pregnant, and knew better than to cause trouble. The rest didn’t matter to him.
“Seriously? Okay.” She glances at him, an odd expression on her face, but lets it go. “Uh, like eighteen weeks? I’m supposed to get the big one at twenty. Make sure it doesn’t have like two heads or something.”
“I know.” He remembers. “Look, you’ll be approved. You’re a foster kid. Y’all always are. Medicaid will back cover it, most likely.”
She leans back in the chair. Her sweatshirt settles enough that the shape of her stomach shows just a little. If he didn’t know, though, he wouldn’t be able to tell. She’s such a small kid. “But what if it doesn’t?”
“Wouldn’t be your problem either way. You’re a kid. Either I end up paying for it, or the state does, but that ain’t your job. Do you need help bookin’ an appointment?”
“No, I can handle it.” She stands up, picking up the glass. “I’m gonna go upstairs. Uh… thanks. For helping.”
He waves her off. He ain’t done nothing.
Every morning he notices Ellie’s awake by the dulcet tones of her puking her guts out in the bathroom. He makes her breakfast before leaving for work solely because the sound of someone throwing up nothing but their own stomach acid is an awful noise. Not because he’s worried about how much she eats.
She’s not his to worry about. She’s just here until they find her somewhere else, because Bill and Frank think she’s a runner and they want to keep her off the street.
Really, he’s just cooking for the kid to avoid pissing Bill off.
The only reason he’s making dinner for her is because he keeps finding her asleep on the couch when he comes home from work. And considering he’s coming home earlier, usually around four, that’s just pathetic. He got things she can cook, macaroni and ramen and frozen meals, and plenty for her to make herself lunches, but if she’s that tired, making her make all her own meals just seems mean. He might not want her here, but he has no reason to be cruel to a kid.
Besides, he’s making himself food anyways. Sure, maybe he hasn’t cooked this much real food in years, but it’s not complicated stuff. Just pasta, or rice and chicken, the occasional tray of pre-cut vegetables he roasts in the oven, but he’s still just cooking for himself. Not a big deal to feed her, too.
Ellie mostly avoids him that first week. He knows she hangs out downstairs during the day because she dozes on the couch in the afternoon, but after they eat, she disappears to her room. He runs into her coming out of the bathroom on his way to bed one night and she skirts around him with a suspicious look. A moment later, he hears the lock on her door thunk into place.
Frank calls him every single evening before he and Bill head to bed to check on her.
He doesn’t think Ellie is leaving the house while he’s at work.
It’s not until she’s been in his house for over a week that she seems to relax a little. The snacks he bought start to disappear at a faster rate, and she actually leaves her toothpaste in the bathroom instead of carrying it in and out every time she brushes her teeth. She seems to realize he’s not going to yell at her for… existing or something.
Not that he’s exactly happy about this situation, but he’s not gonna take out on the kid.
“What’s your job again?” she asks one day at dinner, surprising him. She’s been so quiet at meals, eating too fast and rushing away after putting her plate in the dishwasher.
He looks up from the newspaper he’s been idly skimming to see her stuffing food into her face so fast it’s a little alarming. “Slow down.”
“This is slow,” she says.
“Slow down before you choke.” For a second, it leaves a horrible mental image in his head and he shakes it off as best he can. “I’m a contractor. I own a construction company, got a few crews that work for me.”
“So you… build stuff?”
“That’s right.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Houses and businesses mostly.”
She nods. “Where are you from?”
“Texas.”
“Why’d you move away?”
“Pass.”
“What do you mean, pass?” she counters.
He exhales slowly. “I mean, pass. Move on or you’re done.”
Ellie rolls her eyes. “Do you have family here?”
“Pass.”
“Do you have any stupid tattoos?”
Despite himself, he bites back a smile. “No. You ask a lot of goddamn question.”
Ellie looks almost proud of herself. “I do.”
He shakes his head. “Eat your food,” he says. She hasn’t taken a bite for a few questions now.
She pokes miserably at her plate with her fork. “The chicken tastes too much like chicken.”
Joel knows better than to ask. She’s not being a brat or anything. It’s happened a couple times now. Whatever she’s eating apparently can start tasting too much like itself and she hits a wall. If she keeps eating it, she’ll just get sick. No point in forcing it.
He stands up and crosses over to the stove. “There’s still a piece of garlic bread. You want that instead?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
He grabs it and brings it to her, waving away the apology. “Not your fault, kid.”
She eats half of the slice in one bite, looking relieved.
“Here. I’m gettin’ full,” he says and slides the garlic bread off his plate onto hers. “Eat that so it don’t go to waste.”
Bill would personally drive back from Boston to kick his ass if Joel let her go to bed with an empty belly, especially in her condition. Even if her meal is mostly bread, at least it’s something.
Fed is best. He doesn’t remember how many times he heard that. Strange he’s thinking it now, but he supposes it applies.
After that, Ellie talks to him more at meals, but they still don’t hang out or anything. He goes about his normal routine, and she spends the evenings in her room. All he’s doing is making sure she eats. Once the paperwork is finished, that is officially his job as assigned by the state of Wyoming.
So he’s really not sure how he ends up taking off work to drive Ellie to the doctor for her anatomy scan.
She’s twitchy in the car, fiddling with her fingers and the visor and his radio.
“Nervous?”
“No. Kinda. Okay so the thing is you have to come in with me,” Ellie says, so fast he nearly misses it with his bad ear turned towards her and the radio a little too loud.
He reaches over and turns it down. “Pardon?”
Ellie slumps back and he aches to tell her to sit still. “The fine state of Wyoming does not consider me old enough to consent to medical treatment. You probably have to fill out a form.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Yeah, you know what’s extra fucking stupid? I’ll be the one filling out the form for this kid, but I won’t be able to fill it out for myself. I can’t even get emancipated til I’m seventeen.”
He shrugs. “Don’t get pregnant at fifteen, I guess.”
She sighs. “Yeah, yeah.”
Not only does he have to fill out a form at the doctor, it takes two different people to find the right one to print, long enough that other people start looking at them, clearly wondering why they’ve been standing at the reception desk for so long.
“Alright, you fill this one out and your dad fills this one out,” the receptionist finally says, holding out two clipboards.
“I’m not her dad,” he says.
“He’s not my dad,” Ellie says at the same moment.
“O-oh,” the receptionist says.
“Foster kid,” Joel says and grabs the hood of Ellie’s sweatshirt. “Go sit down.”
Goddamn menace.
She’s giggling a little too hard when they sit down. “Her mind went all the places,” she says, not exactly quietly. “What a fucking weirdo.”
Great. Now everyone’s looking at them because she’s cursing in the waiting room. Especially a very pregnant woman with a toddler who does not look particularly happy about the new word Ellie just taught her child.
Ellie elbows him, leaning in. This time, at least, she manages a whisper. “Do you think they’re judging you ‘cause they think you’re getting me birth control or ‘cause they think I’m knocked up? Which do you think they think is worse?”
“Most people can’t tell,” he says, distracted batting her pointy little elbow away from his side and by the form he’s still trying to fill out. It’s true, though. With how small she is and the baggy clothes, it’s not even visible most of the time, not just yet. He only sees it because he’s looking for it.
“I know, but there’s only a couple things you go to this kind of doctor for,” she says. “Baby or lady parts. Or I guess those are kinda related.”
“Sweet Jesus,” he mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fill out your damn form.”
“Oh, I’m done. Except I don’t remember your address,” she says. “Got no family history so these fuckers go quick.”
He sort of suspects she’s only half-filled it out, but that’s their problem, not his, and she darts away from the desk after handing them in before they can say anything to her.
When they call her name, Ellie shoots to her feet, but hesitates, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. “Wish me luck?”
“Luck,” he echoes.
It’s a long scan and Ellie comes out it looking tired.
He bites back an instinctive reaction to ask if she’s alright, waiting until they’re in the truck again. If something is wrong, he has no desire to make her talk about it in the waiting room.
God, don’t let anything be wrong. She’s too young to deal with that.
Though the last twenty years of his life would suggest there’s no good age to deal with it. But fifteen… fifteen is too young. Fifteen is only a year older than…
He doesn’t look at her as he puts the key in the engine. “Everything good?”
“Oh, yeah. Ten fingers, ten toes, two kidneys, all the good stuff,” she says. She’s still a little quieter than usual.
“Seatbelt,” he reminds her. And he’s leaving it at that. Ellie’s mood is not his responsibility. “And you?”
Damn it.
She buckles up, carefully arranging the lap belt so it doesn’t press on her stomach. “Uh. They asked me some stuff and some of it was kinda shitty.”
“Like what?”
She’s quiet for a long moment, quiet enough that he actually glances at her. Something looks wrong with her face — she’s so damn expressive most of the time, but her face has shut down, tight and closed off.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” she says.
“Alright. You don’t have to.”
Not his problem, he reminds himself.
Ellie stays quiet right until he hits the first red light, then seems to remember something. “Oh, hey, look.”
She pulls something out of her pocket and shoves it in front of the steering wheel.
“Ellie, don’t—” He cuts himself off when he actually sees what she’s showing him.
An ultrasound.
“That’s her nose,” Ellie says, pointing at it. She bites the cuticle on the side of her thumb. “I think. Or her chin. I don’t really know how you’re supposed to tell.”
“It’s a girl?”
She nods. “Yeah.”
A car honks behind them, making Ellie jump and him realize the light’s green.
“Sit in your own seat,” he reminds her, nudging her away from his shoulder and waiting until she’s sat to go, honking or no.
She flips him off, but she doesn’t take her eyes off the ultrasound photo.
Joel realizes he’s fucked when Ellie decides she likes him. He isn’t sure exactly what does it, considering he ain’t exactly nice to her. But, slowly, she stops hiding in her bedroom all day and starts invading his space.
At first, it’s finding her at the kitchen table doing schoolwork when he gets home from work.
“Still alive, I see,” he says. “Wasn’t sure yesterday when you didn’t come to dinner.”
He left a plate for her in the fridge and found it in the dishwasher this morning, so she must have emerged at some point, but he never saw her. She might spend a lot of time in her room, but she still usually makes an appearance at least once a day.
“That’s because I was asleep,” Ellie says, writing something in her notebook.
“Through dinner?”
“Till I woke up at midnight so hungry I puked and then scarfed down the pasta you left me and an entire family sized bag of barbecue chips,” she says, then looks up. “You’re out of chips, by the way.”
“Put it on the list.”
“I will not remember that,” she says cheerfully.
At least she’s honest.
“Next time I’ll try to wake you.” He opens the fridge and stares for a moment. “Any chance you’re feelin’ sick and can only stand the idea of takeout?”
“Rough day?”
“Long one.” He gets out a beer and one of the sparkling waters she likes when she’s not too queasy. “Lotta bullshit you don’t care about. How’s your homework comin’ along?”
“I am so behind and I fell asleep for like an hour in the middle of a biology assignment.” She sits back, rolling her neck. “At my desk. On my textbook. Pizza?”
He passes over his phone. “Put a vegetable on it and get it delivered.”
Ellie raises an eyebrow. “You’re putting a lot of trust in me.”
“I’m so tired I don’t give a shit if you order some monstrosity.”
And she’s been here long enough that if she was planning on stealing his credit cards and running away in the middle of the night, she already would have done so. He has cash in his top dresser drawer that has not once moved since she’s been here. She’s just not that kind of kid. He’s not worried about her fooling around in his phone for a moment. Worst case scenario, she changes his ringtone to something stupid.
When she gives his phone back, he heads upstairs to take a shower. He’s covered in drywall dust and God even knows what else at this point. He’s getting too fucking old for this shit.
By the time he’s finished, Ellie’s moved both their drinks and her textbook into the living room. She even got out plates and napkins.
“Thought I told you no eatin’ on the couch.”
“Pizza doesn’t count.”
“Oh, it don’t?” He glances at the clock. “Alright, wrap it up.”
She keeps frowning at her textbook. “I’m almost done.”
He takes the textbook out of her hands and closes it, setting it on the coffee table. “You’ve been at it since this mornin’. You’re done. You’re not makin’ yourself sick over homework.”
He doesn’t know exactly the reasons Ellie hasn’t gone to school since last November, but considering it’s April, she’s not going to catch up in a couple weeks and he doesn’t think anyone should be expecting that. He’s not even sure anyone is except for Ellie herself.
He’s saved from the argument by the pizza showing up. Only half of it is a monstrosity, turns out. She kept it to sausage and onions on his side, the way he likes, but her side has pepperoni, two kinds of spicy peppers, and pineapple.
“You’re gonna get awful heartburn.”
“Worth it,” Ellie mumbles around a mouthful of pizza. “So fucking worth it.”
She graciously lets him try a bite of it and it’s not as bad as he expects, but he’s content to let her eat as much of it as she wants.
After dinner, he sees her eyeing her textbook, so he grabs it and puts it on top of the fridge, shoving it back far enough she won’t be able to reach.
“I would have climbed that before I got knocked up,” she informs him.
“Go put a movie on or somethin’,” he tells her, grabbing a container for the leftover pizza. “Rot your brain for a while.”
She lights up. “How do you feel about Star Wars?”
He feels like he didn’t actually have Disney+ when he woke up this morning, and he’s not sure how she’s managed to make an account by the time he sits down again, but she’s settled in, so he doesn’t ask questions.
It’s the first time they’ve really spent time together in the evening — one of the first times she hasn’t disappeared to her room. He tells himself it’s not a big deal. She is, technically, a guest in his house. First one he’s had in a long time, but still, a guest. This is a normal thing to do with a guest, watch a movie before bed.
Besides, she’s relaxing. She’s been working so hard since she started school. Too hard. She needs to remember to rest. Even as young as she is, it won’t do any good if she runs herself ragged.
After a while, he notices her wiggling around.
“Rolaids are in the medicine cabinet,” he says. At this point, they’re not even pretending she can’t get into the child locks better than he can.
“No, it’s not heartburn,” she says. “My stomach feels kinda weird. It’s probably just the pizza.”
His chest aches. “Is it — it kinda this fluttery feeling?”
“Yeah, what is that?” She rolls her head on the back of the sofa to look at him, grinning. “Is it like an old people thing? Like you get super gassy?”
He shakes his head. “S’the baby movin’. You felt it before?”
“Oh, fuck.” She looks down, presses a hand against her stomach. “No. That’s what it feels like?”
“From what I’ve heard. She’s, ah. She’s little. You don’t feel kicks til later.”
Ellie nods. “No one else can feel it yet, right? I can’t feel anything with my hand.”
“Not for a bit, usually.”
“It’s like a secret.” She looks so damn young, he can hardly stand it. She glances up at him, grinning. “Hey, how do you know so much about this shit?”
And the ache in his chest turns into a knife. He turns back to the movie, staring at it without seeing it. “Pass.”
“Right, no backstory.” She’s quiet for a moment, then shifts some more. “I’m just… I’m just asking because it’s confusing. There’s all this shit online and trust me, my google history has never been weirder, but sometimes I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking up.”
He sighs. “How about I take you to the library and you can take some books out?”
“Okay. Thanks.” She settles down again, folding her legs under her like a pretzel. She’s not really watching the movie anymore, staring down at her stomach. “This is so weird.”
It’s practically a whisper.
So then he’s taking her to the library and he’s signing her up for a library card.
It’s the first time he’s taken her anywhere besides the doctor. The other day, he told her where the corner store was and left some cash in the pen cup in the hall where his dusty landline still is, made sure she knew about it. She’s never touched it.
He’s starting to realize that he needs to make the kid get out of the house more. At least to take her grocery shopping or something. Just ‘cause she ain’t going to school don’t mean he meant she had to lock herself up in the house.
It’s early afternoon on a Sunday, so the library’s not exactly busy. He choose Sunday on purpose. Once he helps Ellie find the section she’s needs — barely resisting the urge to mutter about kids these days not knowing the damn Dewey decimal system — he finds a nearby chair and a vaguely interesting magazine and leaves her to browse. He wants to stay somewhat close, just in case she has questions or anything.
Eventually, she sets a stack of books on the table next to him. “Okay, I’m done.”
Joel flips a page in his magazine. “I ain’t got anywhere urgent to be. Why don’t you go on and get a few books to keep you busy? Do you know where the teen room is?”
She hesitates. “I — yeah, I saw it when we walked by.”
“Go on, then.”
She glances back at him a couple times as she walks away.
He keeps an eye on her over the magazine to make sure she gets where she’s supposed to. He’s gone through a few more magazines and nearly an hour has passed before he decides to check on her, finding her halfway through a graphic novel with a stack of comic books next to the chair she’s curled up in.
“I’ll put them back,” she says immediately, scrambling to her feet.
“You don’t want ‘em?” he asks, confused.
She hovers next to the chair. “I do…”
Then why… he looks a little closer at her, noticing she won’t meet his eyes. Her cheeks are red and she looks almost embarrassed, like he caught her doing something wrong. Like she’s expecting him to…
Ah, shit.
When he realizes what’s going on, he pulls her gently over to the side where no one will hear them.
“You’re not bein’ punished here,” he says, keeping his voice low. “It — there ain’t no point in that. You’re takin’ responsibility and dealin’ with the consequences. Groundin’ you now ain’t gonna help things.”
She fidgets with her fingers. “Kinda… feels like that’s what’s supposed to happen.”
God. Joel’s pretty sure Bill and Frank wouldn’t treat her like that, but it’s gotten in her head somehow. Not exactly hard for that to happen, he knows, but also just fucking pointless as far as he’s concerned. She’s the one who’s gonna have to figure out how to be responsible for another human life at sixteen. It’s a little late to layer on the shame.
“I do not have the time or energy for that,” he says bluntly. “You plannin’ on doin’ this again three months after this one is born?”
She makes a face. “Fuck no. That factory is immediately closing for business.”
“Then we’re good, alright? I’m not gonna treat you like you’re stupid because you got unlucky doin’ things most of your little friends are also probably doin’. Can we move on?”
Ellie looks at him for a long moment, like she’s expecting him to be playing a trick on her. Eventually, she nods. “Moving on.”
And then, on the drive home, her backpack stuffed full of library books, Ellie decides to tell him puns.
He’s fucked. Well and truly.
The thing is, he doesn’t hate having her in the house. It’s been… it’s been quiet, since he lost Tess. And Ellie is anything but quiet, not now that she’s settled in. She sings anything that pops into her head, talks to herself constantly, curses whenever she walks into something which seems to be at least a daily occurrence. Whenever she’s in a room with him, she’s constantly asking questions or forcing him to listen to a terrible pun or just rambling about something she finds interesting.
He finds himself doing a lot less drinking in the evenings and a lot more watching movies in the living room. And then that turns into him being dragged outside every evening after dinner first because she wants to go for a walk and she doesn’t like going alone, although she won’t admit it.
It’s entirely too easy to say yes to her for things like that. Really, it’s entirely too easy to say yes to her in general, but especially when it comes to taking care of her.
She’s an independent kid. He leaves her during the day and she gets her schoolwork done. More often than not, he’s the one telling her to take a break, to stop for the day, to rest. She cleans up after herself as much as he expects a fifteen year old to and she makes herself lunch while he’s gone, but it’s easy to do things for her.
He starts doing her laundry when he walks into the laundry room to see her nearly in the washing machine and realizes she’s too short and her stomach’s getting too big for her to reach the bottom. He’s actually cooking for the first time in years just to get a vegetable into the kid now and then. She doesn’t exactly have a bedtime, but he nudges her in that direction when it gets late and she starts yawning.
Or she falls asleep on the couch, especially if they’re watching a movie. And he’s halfway to picking her up to take her to bed before catching himself and just pulling a blanket over her instead.
It’s all too familiar. It’s too easy.
The knock on his door wakes him out of a dead sleep. He’s disoriented for a moment — he hasn’t slept this deeply in years. That’s been happening more these last few weeks. Means more dreams, since he’s actually sleeping, but he’s sleeping more and deeper than he has in a long time.
“Joel?”
Ellie. Right.
“Whasgoinon?” he mumbles, trying to find his lamp.
“Something’s wrong with the baby.”
That wakes him up like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head. He nearly knocks the lamp over turning it on. Ellie’s standing at his doorway, looking entirely too young and terrified.
“She’s not moving,” she says, her voice shaking.
Joel stumbles to his dresser and grabs a T-shirt, pulling it over his head. “Okay. C’mon, let’s go downstairs.”
She clings so close going down the stairs she nearly trips him, her fingers catching in the side of his shirt and holding tight. He can feel her hands shaking as he leads her into the kitchen, lit up by the light he leaves on at night because Ellie’s clumsy enough in the daylight.
He sits her at the kitchen table and pours her a glass of juice. “Drink that. How long since the last time you felt her move?”
“A couple hours. But she normally moves around a lot at night.” She gnaws on her cuticle, her knee bouncing. “Something’s wrong.”
Joel pulls a chair over in front of her. “Ellie, drink. It can help.”
“Oh. Okay.” She chugs the juice like a champ.
“What were you doin’ up?” he asks, glancing at the clock on the stove and wincing a little. He has no issues with her waking him this late, not if she’s scared something is wrong, but it’s late for her to be awake.
Ellie presses her hand against her stomach. She’s in clothes he never sees her in. Normally when she comes downstairs, she’s already in jeans, though he has no idea how she’s still making those work, and a giant sweatshirt, even with the weather getting warm. He’s already turned the air conditioning on, as much as it kills him, because otherwise he’s pretty sure she’d actually melt.
Right now, though, she must be in what she sleeps in, a pair of elastic-waisted athletic shorts and a tank top with a flannel shirt over it. He could tell she was showing more, but he’s never seen the shape of her belly this much. She’s small, but far enough along that it’s obvious she’s pregnant when she’s not hiding under a sweatshirt.
“Uh, pacing, mostly,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep.”
He nods, and they sit together in silence until Ellie jumps.
“She’s moving.” She rubs her hands over her face. “Fuck, sorry.”
Relieved, Joel chuckles, sitting back. “So, let me guess. Normally she’s quiet during the day and then movin’ around all night?”
“Yeah, how the fuck did you know that?”
“She fell asleep,” he says gently. “They sleep a lot at this point. You were pacin’ and it soothed her. Somethin’ sugary will sometimes wake ‘em up.”
She nods. “Right. Right, I think I read that. Sorry, I was kind of… already not great and it freaked me out. Sorry for waking you up.”
He waves her off. “If you’re worried, you wake me up.”
“Hm. Wanna feel?” Without waiting for an answer, she leans over and grabs his hand, pressing it again her stomach. “It’s totally fucking bizarre.”
Despite this, she’s smiling without seeming to notice.
He goes entirely still, not capable of focusing on anything but the soft flutter under his palm. It’s been a few weeks since the first time she felt the baby moving and she’s told him the movement’s gotten stronger, but feeling it himself is…
“Cool, right?” she asks softly.
He clears his throat. “Yeah.” He pulls his hand away reluctantly when the flutter moves away. Part of him wants to chase it and feel it a little longer. “Think you could get some sleep?”
She shrugs. “Probably not for a while. I’m supposed to be on Adderall and without it my brain is kinda loud all the time instead of just some of the time.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
She gets up and gets a banana off the counter. “Uh. It’s a long story.”
“Then do you wanna talk about it in the living room so my ass don’t go numb sittin’ here?”
By the time they settle there, Ellie’s added a bottle of water and a cheese stick to her late night snack.
“I’m just… I know this is gonna be hard,” she says, peeling a strip off her cheese. “And I worry that I’m gonna totally fuck her up trying to do this on my own.”
Joel remembers that feeling.
He hesitates. She hasn’t said anything and he hasn’t really wanted to ask, but it’s getting to the point where he probably should know. “Is the father…”
“Oh, he’s cool,” Ellie says. She wraps a piece of string cheese around a bite of banana and eats it, which is vaguely horrifying, honestly. “Uh, he’s my best friend. We’re not… you’re friends with Bill and Frank, right?”
It is way too late for Joel to follow this conversation leap. She does that, jumps from one subject to another with no real transition between. At first, he thought it was his shitty hearing making him miss parts of the conversation, but no, she’s just like that.
“Yeah?” he manages.
“Like real friends, not just politely putting up with them?”
“With Frank at least,” he says. “Bill… well, he’s Bill. But yeah, I’ve known them for over a decade.”
“So, uh.” Ellie shrinks into herself slightly. “So the thing is I’m a lesbian.”
He blanks for a second. Then he looks at the curve of her stomach, pressing out against the tank top she’s wearing as pajamas and feels sick. “Ellie…”
“No, no!” She waves her hands. “I, uh. I wanted to. We’re friends. And we were… experimenting?” She makes a face. “Maybe not that exact word. It — it’s complicated, but it was fine. But the condom broke.”
This is really more than he ever needed to know, truly, and from the blush on her cheeks, more than Ellie ever wanted to tell him.
“And then Plan B fucking let me down,” she mutters, rolling her eyes. “The thing is just… Henry’s got a little brother to take care of and he just turned eighteen like last month.”
“Henry, Bill and Frank’s foster kid?”
She nods. “He was, yeah. Him and Sam, their parents died a few years ago. He offered to help me pay for an abortion, but I…” She looks down. “I want her. He keeps offering to send me money, but he’s barely paying rent and they’re gonna let Sam come live with him soon. And he’s in Boston still. So I’m on my own.”
“Well… I ain’t kickin’ you out until you have somewhere permanent,” he says. “And you’ve already figured out the first part of parenting. Worryin’.”
She snorts. “Great.”
God help him, this is a mistake.
“What’s the social worker say?”
Ellie’s been talking to her, he knows, but she hasn’t told him much. From the way she rolls her eyes, it doesn’t seem like there was anything good to say.
“She offered me a group home while I was pregnant.” Ellie shifts, turning sideways on the couch so she can look at him. After a moment of struggle, she gets her legs folded under her. “She says there aren’t a lot of foster families who want girls and their babies. And I just — all the books talk about all the stuff you’re supposed to get for the baby, right?”
God, he remembers that. He nods.
“Bottles and a crib and a carseat and I don’t have any of that and I don’t know if I’m supposed to buy it or what,” she says, her fingers twisting together anxiously. “Okay, and say she finds a place and I get there with the baby and they don’t have anything? Is that gonna be something they get in trouble for or I get in trouble for? Because she won’t technically be their foster kid, right?”
“Right.” He asked the social worker — he was curious, not worried, he told himself — and Ellie will be the legal parent to her baby. She doesn’t lose her parenting rights just because she’s in foster care. He’ll admit he was glad to hear that. Seems shitty to him to punish her for things she had no control over.
“But what if they think I don’t give a shit because I didn’t buy anything for her?” She hesitates. “And also I’m kinda broke. I could try to get a job but who’s gonna hire me looking like this?”
Honestly, she just looks kinda pathetic to him, especially right now, but he sees her point.
“Alright.” He sits up. “When are you due again?”
“September.”
Fucking of course it is.
He breathes through the ache in his chest. “Okay. Let’s say that if they ain’t found you somewhere to stay by August, I’ll take you to the store and you can pick out the big stuff. Carseat, crib, that stuff. And until then, I’ll shove you down the baby aisle at Target once in a while and you buy anything that you want. I don’t think anyone’s gonna care if you bring your own diaper bag and onsies.”
“Are you sure?” she asks. “I don’t know when I’d be able to pay you back.”
“Ellie, I don’t care about the money.” He nudges her knee. “I’m responsible for you. Don’t worry about it.”
She snorts. “I think you just told me that all I’m doing from now on is worrying, didn’t you?”
“Well, not about this.” He stifles a yawn. “Put somethin’ on. Maybe it’ll help you sleep.”
Maybe it’s the fifth time watching Star Wars since he’s known her or maybe it’s just having talked through things, but Ellie’s out not half an hour later.
He turns the TV off and stands to grab the blanket off the back of the couch. He lays it gently over her, then, without thinking, brushes the hair off her face.
Thankfully she stays asleep.
But once he goes back to bed, it takes him a long time to fall asleep again.