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30
“Happy birthday, Daddy!”
It’s the first thing Joel hears, followed immediately by an exuberant pillow to the face. The sun’s barely up, but she’s wide awake already, beaming down at him, all crooked smile and missing teeth and untamed curls.
“Happy birthday!” she squeals again when she sees his eyes are open, and Joel bites back a groan. He’d been hoping for a little more sleep - he hadn’t gotten home until almost midnight last night, arms and back aching - but it fades after a moment as his baby girl smiles down at him. She’s so excited to celebrate him, and Joel doesn’t have the heart to tell her that it’s just another day to him. He might be thirty, but he feels fifty, and the best present she could have gotten him would be another hour of rest.
He doesn’t say that though, because Sarah looks so excited, Lisa Frank pajamas mussed. So Joel stretches and smiles up at her. “Thanks, baby.”
“Uncle Tommy’s here,” she announces, and Joel just barely swallows a discontented grunt. Sarah’s energy in the morning is one thing - but Tommy here too? He cranes his neck to peer over at the alarm clock that hadn’t gotten the chance to go off yet - it’s not even eight-thirty.
“Aren’t you happy it’s your birthday?” Sarah asks him seriously, kneeling over him and poking him in the side. She’s eight - all she knows of birthdays at this point is parties and gifts and friends. She hasn’t yet learned the almost existential dread that comes with getting older, turning thirty and thinking every day about how you’re gonna get the bills paid and have enough left over for fun things, how to balance needing a new refrigerator with your kid’s increased interest in soccer, and all the associated costs that come with it.
But Joel has never been able to disappoint his girl when he can help it, so he gives her a tired smile and says “I am” around a yawn.
Sarah bounces, shifting closer to him until she can lean forward and flop across his chest in a messy imitation of a hug. “Good,” she says happily. “Because you’re the best dad and you deserve the best birthday ever.”
Joel wraps his arms around her and inhales, breathing in the scent of his little girl, the vanilla at her scalp from yesterday’s wash, the mint of her toothpaste, the lavender still clinging to her skin from her body wash. She says some version of that every birthday and Christmas and Father’s Day - you’re the best dad ever - so it should be expected by now. Expected and old and something he’s used to.
But she always says it so certainly, has ever since she was old enough to speak and know what the words really meant. She always says it like she means it with her whole heart.
And every time it brings the sting of tears to Joel’s eyes and reassures him that even if he can’t quite afford to get her the best cleats like the rest of her league has, he’s still doing a good job in some way.
“This is already the best birthday, because you were the first thing I got to see today.” He presses a kiss to the side of her head. “Can’t possibly be a bad one when I get to spend it with my favorite girl.”
Sarah giggles, the sound vibrating into his neck and straight down to his heart. “I’m your only girl, Daddy.”
“That you are,” he agrees. “That you are.”
–-
Tommy’s managed to scramble eggs by the time Sarah drags Joel out of bed and they get changed. It’s a Friday, one that Sarah demanded he take off work since it’s a teacher workday at her school, and as far as Joel knows they have no plans today. But he lets her pick out his shirt and jeans anyways, emerging from her own room in a Jasmine shirt and shorts and trailing him downstairs to the kitchen.
“What would you like to do today, birthday boy?” Tommy asks, scooping some decently fluffy eggs onto three plates and parceling them out.
“Sleep,” Joel grunts, though he gives Sarah a wink. She giggles, always delighted when her dad and uncle start poking at each other. One of many reasons she’d asked him over and over again for a little sister, and Joel hadn’t had the heart yet to sit her down and tell her it wasn’t gonna happen.
“Boring,” Tommy says around a mouthful of eggs, promptly snapping his jaw shut and swallowing when Joel arches a brow at him. “We oughta go get dinner or somethin’. Go see a movie.”
“Ooh!” Sarah claps her hands delightedly. “Yes, let’s go see a movie, Daddy!”
Joel shoots Tommy a look - thanks for that - before giving his daughter a soft smile. “We’ll see, baby girl.”
His brother knows Joel ain’t got the extra forty bucks for the tickets and snacks for the three of them to go see a movie, at least not now. Once his current job is done - a strip of shops out on the west side of town, coming in on time and slightly under budget - Joel’s looking at a promotion and a raise. And then finally, finally, he’ll be able to breathe a little.
–-
They end up in the backyard later, the hose and sprinkler on for Sarah to run through. Neighborhood pool closes first of September, but it’s still warm enough out in the sunlight for Sarah to have declared it an outside day.
“Daddy look!” She calls for the fourth time, demonstrating another cartwheel through the water.
“Very nice, baby,” he calls back, smiling at her as she repeats the trick again. She’d done three months of gymnastics classes last year - paid for by Joel doing repairs and odd jobs around the academy - but once they moved past round-offs and handstand-forward-rolls, Sarah had chickened out. She loved watching gymnasts on TV, stared with her jaw agape at the older gymnasts practicing after her as they did tumbling passes.
But, it turned out, she didn’t much like flying through the air herself.
Tommy emerges from the house with two beers in hand, tops already twisted off, and he offers one to Joel.
“Ain’t even one o’clock,” Joel says, even as he reaches out and hooks his fingers around the neck of the bottle.
“Yeah.” Tommy settles into the chair next to him. “But it’s a Friday and it’s your birthday. You can have one now and one later, once Sarah goes to bed.”
Joel snorts, lifting the beer to his lips and taking a small swallow. “‘M I that predictable?”
Tommy just shrugs, reaching over with his own beer to clink them together. “Nah, I just know you that well.”
They sit together in silence, sipping their beers and watching Sarah dart back and forth through the arcs of water made by the sprinkler, crystalline drops lifting and falling and decorating her skin. It’s a cloudless day, sun bright and beaming, and Joel feels the tension slip out of his shoulders for the first time in ages.
“So how’s it feel?” Tommy asks quietly, turning his head to look at Joel. “Thirty, I mean.”
His thumb finds the label on the bottle, picks at it as he tilts his head to rest on the back of the chair. “Not any different, really. Same as twenty-nine, though maybe my back hurts a little more.” They both laugh a bit, though Joel’s is tinged with a hint of sadness. “I’ll admit, life ain’t what I thought it would be at thirty.”
Tommy frowns, gaze flicking to his niece before he shifts in his seat to look at Joel directly. “How do you mean?”
Joel swallows more of his beer, hoping it’ll push down some of the guilt that had risen up just by uttering the sentence. “Well y’know how when you’re ten and everyone’s like ‘what do you wanna be when you grow up?’ and you say a doctor or a teacher or a singer or whatever?” Tommy nods, and Joel presses on, careful to keep his voice low and his face neutral as Sarah cartwheels past them, smiling when she looks their way. “Always thought by thirty that I’d have a wife, couple of kids, a job I liked, enough money to set aside for their college and my retirement.”
In front of them, Sarah hops back and forth over the sprinkler, giggling when the water hits her face. Joel can’t help but smile.
Tommy follows his gaze, a soft smile pulling at his own cheeks as he watches his niece. “And you’re at thirty with one kid, no wife, and a job that whoops your ass on a daily basis.”
“Don’t forget the pitiful savings account that’ll be wiped out by one problem with the house,” Joel tacks on. It’s hard to not feel like a failure, honestly.
Except that Sarah chooses that moment to come barreling his way, launching herself into his lap with a force that has Tommy snatching the beer bottle from his hand before he can drop it. She’s soaking wet from head to toe, curls clinging to her round cheeks as she beams up at him, and it’s like a sunburst has erupted in his chest, warmth gathering and spreading out as he wraps his arms around her and presses his lips to the crown of her head. She smells like the grass and sunlight, and she digs her head into the spot under his chin.
The feeling of failure fades like it had been no more than a blip, because how could he possibly feel like a failure at anything with his little girl in his arms? Maybe he doesn’t have a wife, or savings, or a reliable car. Maybe his only real friend is his brother and his hips and back ache every day when he gets off work.
But he gets off work and comes home to Sarah, who has been the center of his world since the day she was set in his arms. And there ain’t a damn thing he’d change about his life if it meant having her.
–-
Sarah insists on ending his birthday with a movie before cake, and she’s even gracious enough to let him pick. Joel’s no fool though, so he pops Space Jam into the VCR and lets her do the honors of rewinding it back to the beginning.
“Pay attention,” she tells him sternly as she wiggles into her spot in the middle of the couch, right between him and Tommy. The remote is clutched in her hand, and she eyes each of them seriously for a moment before pushing play.
Joel shares a look at Tommy over her head, both of them trying to suppress smiles. Pay attention, like they haven’t watched this movie approximately four times a week since it came out on VHS because Sarah loves it so much. And predictably, she’s passed out before Bugs and friends even abduct Michael Jordan, curls splayed across Joel’s thigh and her feet in Tommy’s lap. They let the movie play on anyways, content to enjoy a little bit of mindless entertainment for a bit. Joel’s fingers run mindlessly through Sarah’s hair, carefully working out any knots he finds.
He hopes - even as he knows it’s not realistic - that she’s always like this. Always willing to sit and watch a silly movie with him and fall asleep with her head on his leg. Always determined to celebrate his birthday even when doesn’t want to, demanding he get himself a cake and blow out his candles to make a wish. Never quite understanding that he’s got nothing to wish for as long as he has her and his idiot baby brother.
–-
Sarah wakes when the movie’s over and Joel’s lifting her up to carry her to bed, arms hooked under her back and her knees, head nestled over his heartbeat. She squirms, face crinkled in displeasure. “We haven’t had cake yet, Daddy.”
“We can do cake tomorrow,” Joel assures her, squatting to put her down when she wiggles even more determinedly.
“But tomorrow’s not your birthday,” she informs him with a pout. “So you have to do it tonight, so you can make your wish. It doesn’t count if you don’t do it on your birthday.”
Who, Joel wonders, has been telling her all this? Some little kid at school, he imagines, or else something she saw on a TV show. And he thinks for a brief moment about being more insistent about her going to bed, putting his foot down.
But Sarah’s damn near as stubborn as he is most days, and she’s practically glaring up at him with her face set. There’ll be no getting her to sleep without a fight now, and even though he knows it’s setting a bad precedent, Joel acquiesces. “Alright then, let’s go get the cake. But,” he raises his voice when Sarah starts to cheer, “you’re goin’ to bed after. You can have a small slice tonight and then a bigger one with dinner tomorrow, alright?”
She doesn’t look happy about it - Joel has a feeling she was angling for a corner piece with maximum icing - but he arches his brows and she nods. They’re good at these little trade-offs, the two of them.
Sarah leads the way to the kitchen, Tommy on Joel’s heels. The cake’s nothing fancy - a small chocolate cake from HEB that, per his daughter’s instructions, he’d had them ice Happy Birthday Daddy! on. If it was up to him, he’d have a red velvet cake - and Tommy knows it, judging by the look he’s shooting at Joel as he digs out the candles - but they all know who the cake is really for.
Tommy jokingly tries to put thirty candles around the cake, but when Joel starts plucking them off because he likes his house not on fire, they compromise on three of them in the middle.
“Happy birthday to you,” Sarah starts singing as Tommy lights them, “happy birthday to you!”
Tommy joins in, dropping an arm over his niece’s shoulder. “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to Joel…”
“Happy birthday to you!” Sarah claps her hands happily, eyes flicking between Joel’s face and the candles. “Make your wish, Daddy!”
He stares at the candles for a long moment, small orange flames flickering in the white light of the kitchen. There’s small drips of wax already tracking down towards the icing, but he just…can’t think of a wish. He remembers all the silly ones he made when he was Sarah’s age and younger. Superpowers. A billion dollars. A horse.
A billion dollars would still be nice now, but other than that…Joel doesn’t know what to wish for.
But Sarah and Tommy are staring at him with increasingly confused looks, Sarah shifting with impatience, the wax is slowly dripping to the top of the cake, so Joel closes his eyes and wishes for his little girl to always be happy and healthy, and he blows out the candles.
35
“Dad!”
Joel’s head jerks up from his pillow, a thin trickle of drool smearing down his chin. “Huh?”
He can hear Sarah’s huff, can practically see her rolling her eyes through the thin layer of wood separating them. “Get up ,” she hollers, rapping the side of her fist on the door before her footsteps retreat.
Joel rolls over and blinks at his alarm clock. The alarm clock, he realizes belatedly, that is loudly beeping at him - probably what had his daughter pounding on his door annoyed out of her mind to begin with - and he reaches over to smack it clumsily until it shuts up.
Shower, quick shave, teeth brushed, and he’s downstairs in another twenty minutes. Sarah’s got her back to him, hands working something at the stove, and Joel drops a quick kiss on her head as he passes her to the coffee machine. It’s on and full, thank God, and Joel pours some into the mug that’s ready and waiting for him.
“You really oughta drink orange juice or something else besides coffee in the morning.” Sarah shoots him a smile, eyes crinkling ever so slightly in the corners. “You’re getting old.”
Joel just stares at her with a blank face. Lifts the mug and slurps loudly from it, even as it singes the roof of his mouth. Sarah just rolls her eyes, a move she’s perfected in the last year now that she’s officially a teenager, and turns her attention back to the stove. She wedges the spatula into the pan carefully, lifts, and flips, and it clicks with Joel what she’s doing.
“You makin’ pancakes?” He asks her, taking another swallow of his coffee.
“Makin’ pancakes,” Sarah confirms, stepping back and opening the oven to show him the plateful already waiting inside. “Grab the butter?”
Between the two of them they get the table set with plates and silverware, Joel snagging a half-used stick of butter from the fridge along with the syrup. He notes the third plate she’s set on the table at the same time that the cranking of the garage door opening filters through.
“You make enough for Uncle Tommy?” Joel asks, refilling his mug and grabbing another from the cabinet. She nods, focused on flipping the final pancake. “What’s all this for, anyways?”
Sarah turns from the stove to stare at him disbelievingly, pancake forgotten in front of her. “You’re kidding right?”
“No, I –”
The door behind him opens and shuts, Tommy’s voice calling across, “Happy birthday, you old shit!”
Oh right - his birthday. Honestly, he’d forgotten altogether. The days have been blurred lately, running over hours at the site, Sarah’s soccer training and track practice eating up what remained of his free hours.
But damn. He’s thirty-five.
Tommy claps him on the shoulder on the way to the coffee pot, pressing a kiss to Sarah’s temple. “Gonna need to see about gettin’ you one of those motor scooter things soon.”
Joel flips him the middle finger.
They settle into their seats around the table, Sarah’s rather impressive stack of pancakes in the middle. They look pretty damn good, better than anything Joel would have managed. Golden brown, fluffy, at least fifteen or twenty of them waiting to be devoured. How long, he wonders, had she been up and worked on them while he slept through his alarm - again? There’s that all-too-familiar prick of shame in his chest, guilt that yet again his thirteen-year-old is doing better at raising herself than he is. Up early, making breakfast for the both of them, getting herself to and from school sometimes. She’s home before him most nights, making her own dinner and doing her own laundry, and maintaining her grades and extracurriculars on top of it.
Joel watches her pick out the fluffiest pancakes and stack them on his plate with a pleased smile, and thinks for probably the hundredth time that he’s doing a shit job of being the adult in their household.
“Something wrong?” Sarah asks, and Joel snaps from his thoughts. “You’re not eating.”
Tommy’s already halfway through his own stack, plate damn near drowned in syrup, a bit of unmelted butter sticking to his lip. “‘S really good,” he mumbles to his niece, but Sarah doesn’t look at him. She’s worrying her bottom lip, eyes darting between the pancakes and his face.
“Just thinkin’ about how nice this is,” Joel assures her, half-rising from his seat to lean over and press a kiss to her forehead. “You doin’ this for me, I really appreciate it, baby girl.” He slathers a bit of butter over his own stack and drizzles significantly less syrup than his brother had. Man’s gotta be damn near diabetic at this point, with a sweet tooth like he has.
Sarah shrugs like it’s nothing, cutting up her own pancakes into small chunks. “Wanted to make sure you started your birthday off right.”
“This is perfect,” Joel tells her honestly, meaning every word. He still has yet to figure out what he did to deserve a kid like her - thoughtful, considerate, smart as hell. No idea where she got any of that from anyways, certainly couldn’t be him.
He’s gotta make a change, Joel decides, watching her copy her uncle and douse her remaining pancake bits in more syrup than any one human should ingest. He needs to start being home more, less late nights, less working weekends. They’ve got some disposable income now, his savings are much more comfortable than they’d been five years ago. He oughta take a week off, take them on a vacation, a nice trip out of state or something. Either way - Sarah’s headed to college in a few years. Joel needs to make the most of the time he’s got with her now.
–-
Sarah’s at the dining table doing her homework when Joel gets home, a little after seven. They’d finished late - again - with their lumber arriving cut the wrong size, and most of the day had been spent trimming down what they could. Then when they’d finally finished, the guys onsite had surprised him with a six pack of beer for his birthday, nudged on, no doubt, by his brother.
He’d drank one as fast as he could without being rude before making his excuses and heading home. Even so, his resolution from only that morning already felt like it was withering away.
Sarah gives him a smile when he walks in, hugging him around the middle when he stops by to brush a kiss over the crown of her head. “Good birthday?”
“Wrong size lumber,” Joel replies tiredly, toeing off his boots by the garage door. “But otherwise not a bad day. How was school?”
She shuffles the papers in front of her, tapping the bottom of them on the table to even them out. “Jenny and Tay got into a fight between fifth and sixth period, because apparently Marco Romero asked them both to Homecoming and they each think the other should have said no because apparently each of them knew the other liked him.”
“Uh huh,” Joel says slowly, barely following all that. “And you…”
Sarah smiles at him knowingly. “I am not going to Homecoming, I have a game the next morning. So I walked past the fight and went to class, and then got an earful from each of them later about why the other is a bitch.”
“Sarah,” he chastises automatically, and she raises her hands as if to say just repeating what I heard, I didn’t actually say it. “And your classes?”
“They were fine.” She shrugs, laying her pencil down. “Algebra, ending of World War I, memorizing countries of Oceania, mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”
Joel snorts. “Alright, well I’m gonna head up and get changed. You hungry?”
“I ordered pizza about twenty minutes ago,” Sarah tells him, tucking her papers into her backpack and zipping it shut. “So it should be here soon.”
“Pepp –”
“Pepperoni with jalapeños, yes Dad.” There’s a mischievous spark in her eyes as she says it, a teasing look that makes him grin and ruffle her hair as he stands. “And I’ll pay with the cash in the junk drawer. It’s almost…” she pauses, eyes comically wide, “like I’ve done this before.”
Joel tugs on a curl. “Smartass. Pick out a movie too, if you want, we can eat on the couch.”
She pokes him in the stomach. “Deal.”
Except when he comes back down in his pajamas, already fighting back a yawn, there’s no movie playing on the TV in the living room. There’s pizza on the table, plates ready to go, and Sarah holding an oversized cupcake with a candle in it. As soon as she sees him she starts singing, grinning like a madwoman as she gets louder and louder until the end.
“Time to make a wish!” She proffers the cupcake at him, solitary candle lit and flickering.
Joel eyes it. “‘S that red velvet?”
Sarah huffs a little. “Of course it’s red velvet, do you think I don’t know you? Now make a wish before the whole candle burns down.”
Joel blows it out easily, taking the cupcake from her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She’s damn near as tall as him now, a far cry from the little girl who barely reached his hip, chubby hands straining upwards until he caved and hoisted her into the air. He can still carry her now - has done it many times when she’s passed out on the couch - but it gets a little harder each time, the ache in his arms a little deeper.
One day he won’t be able to carry her up to bed at all, and for his own sake Joel’s hoping that day’s at least another year or two off.
“What did you wish for?” Sarah asks, reaching up to swipe some of the cream cheese frosting from the side of the cupcake and pop her finger in her mouth.
“You know I can’t tell you that,” Joel replies with a gentle shake of her shoulders. “Won’t come true then.”
He gets a mocking Booo in response, as she ducks out from under his arm to open the pizza box. Never mind that she never shares her birthday wishes with him either, born from the same superstitious inclination to safeguard it. Keep it locked tightly inside so that it’ll come true; hasn’t failed him yet.
Maybe one day when she’s older, he’ll tell her. When she has a kid of her own to blow out their candles, Joel’ll give her a hug and tell her all his birthday wishes were spent wishing her healthy and happy and safe.
58
Ellie’s staring at him when he wakes up. Cross-legged on the end of the bed, back resting against the footboard, mug of tea cupped in her palms. The air outside has already started to bite, their ancient heater not doing quite enough to fight it off, so in addition to her pajama pants she has on one of his sweatshirts. Faded lettering over her stomach reads New York Giants, something that feels blasphemous to have in his home as a lifelong Cowboys fan, and it swallows her to the point that all he can see of her hands on the mugs is her fingertips.
She doesn’t blink when she notices he’s awake, only shifts a little, and Joel wishes she would stop staring. Or that she would have at least brought coffee up for him.
Like Ellie can read his mind, she unfurls from the end of the bed. “Be right back,” and then her and her mug of tea are slipping out the door and padding down the stairs to the kitchen. Joel’s left by himself, to roll onto his back and stare at the ceiling. Scrape his hands over his face and sigh.
Fifty-eight. He’s fifty-eight fuckin’ years old. And God, does he feel it every day.
Ellie returns with two mugs in hand, hot coffee for him and freshly poured tea for her. She hands him his and then curls up again in the same spot as before, eyes still wide and watchful.
“What?” Joel asks tiredly, even as he knows exactly what. He’d been a mess on his fifty-seventh birthday a year ago, forcing Ellie over to Maria and Tommy’s for three days while he locked himself in the house and fell apart. Tommy hadn’t let him have any booze, and the Tipsy Bison locked their doors and secured their stash this time of year, so he’d been horrendously sober. Sober, miserable, wallowing in memories of his thirty-sixth birthday, of his daughter and her eggshells and his watch and her blood. His entire being shredded apart in a way it hadn’t been since the night it had happened.
Ellie had been skittish around him for a month after. Quiet when she spoke to him, rarely home if she didn’t have to be, as unobtrusive as he’d ever known her. Joel had hated every minute of it.
She doesn’t look skittish now, just observant. Older than her sixteen years, something that doesn’t happen often considering how baby-faced she still is.
“What’s your plan for today?” She asks him, sipping slowly and deliberately on her tea like she’s not hanging on whatever his answer is gonna be. It’s a soft question but it still reverberates around the room with all the subtlety of a bomb blast.
Not drown, Joel wants to say, but he doesn’t think that answer will fly with her today. “Ain’t got one,” he offers instead. The coffee’s warm as he drinks some of it down, but he keeps his attention on Ellie. Looking down at the mug in his hands is a one-way ticket to pancake mix and vitamin C and Jakarta’s the capital of Indonesia and then he’ll be done for before he can even get out of bed.
Twenty-two years he’s been without Sarah, and yet these past two have hurt worse than anything. It’s the safety, Maria had told him. Being in a stable place where your daily survival isn’t threatened, where you’re not living under a military regime or just trying to stay alive on the world’s longest cross-country trip…it lets your brain finally unwind and begin to unpack everything. And at this point, Joel’s got an Austin airport worth of baggage.
His sister-in-law’s no idiot - except maybe for marrying his brother - so Joel figures she’s gotta be right about this. She’s been through it too, and she’s really the only person he trusts who has any inkling of what he’s going through.
But right now Ellie’s looking at him like she’s waiting for him to fall apart at the slightest provocation, so he drinks more coffee and stays quiet.
“Wanna keep me company today?” She asks, and for all the quietness in her tone Joel knows it’s more a request than an offer. “I have some stuff to do around town and I’d like you to come with me.”
“Ellie, I don’t –”
“Joel.” She cuts him off firmly, grasp tightening on her mug. “You’re not…you’re not sitting in here again. I know all the ways today and tomorrow are fucking awful for you, and I’m not asking you to –” Ellie stops, her voice catching. “I can’t fucking do a repeat of last year, okay? So you have to come with me today.” The firmness in her tone wavers at the end, even as she’s more or less trying to order him around, and the fear finally pokes through, shining like a beacon from her eyes.
Tommy had told him last year, when Ellie had returned home, how she’d hardly slept the whole time. How she barely left the room she was staying in, one that faced their house across the street, how she’d kept her window cracked despite the chill so she could hear any noise that might come her way. Tommy thinks she’d been listening for a gunshot, and neither of them had known how to tell her that the house had been cleared of guns weeks prior.
Miserable as he had been, Joel wouldn’t have gone and tried to hurt himself again. He wouldn’t have done that to Tommy or Maria or TJ, and nothing in the world would have made him leave Ellie behind.
But she’s still afraid, Joel can see that now, and she probably will be for every single one of his birthdays for the rest of his life.
So he doesn’t try to argue again, just reaches over to squeeze her knee. “Alright, baby.”
–-
They head first to the greenhouses. Ellie practically lives there most days, soaking up anything and everything Callie teaches her, happily lost among her plants with soil under her nails.
Callie’s not there now - nobody is. There hadn’t been anyone out in Jackson on their way through either, sky gray and air crisp. There was a muted feeling to the town Joel didn’t think he’d ever experienced, and he’d half expected a tumbleweed to roll down the deserted street in front of the swap. The door there had been open, Oscar offering them a half-hearted wave from his usual perch behind the counter.
Ellie sends him to greenhouse six to rotate the compost bins there while she tugs down a logbook from a shelf, brow already furrowed in concentration. Joel leaves her to whatever it is she’s planning to work on, sucking in another breath of mountain air. There’s a bracing feeling to it every time the temperature starts to drop, one that feels like it could purge everything rotten from inside him if he just breathed deep enough.
Only one of the compost bins has a functioning handle to rotate it; the others have to be done by hand with the long pole leaning against the wall by the door. Joel can always tell when Ellie’s spent her shift in here rotating it. She comes home sweaty and streaked with dirt, beaming, cheeks flushed with exertion and the smell of earth emanating from her pores. The earthy smell, as she has repeatedly told him, means the compost is breaking down right, so that’s how she should smell.
There’s buckets in the middle of the room with contributions from townsfolk waiting to be added in, and by the time he’s done with the first two bins, Joel’s sweating. His jackets and flannel get stripped off and draped over the shelf by the door, shirt sticking to his back in the damp heat.
It’s mindless, physical work, turning each of the bins over well enough, and it empties his mind for a short while. There’s no dead daughter, no blood on his hands, no fungus monsters. Only the strain of his muscles mixing compost, knowing he’ll be sore tomorrow, the scent of it permeating his nostrils.
But then he’s done and the chasm in his chest yawns wide again, and it takes everything he has to step back outside and shove the door shut behind him. He plunges his arms into the rainwater barrel outside the door almost without thought, cold water sluicing through the sweat and grime.
Ellie’s still in greenhouse three, forehead scrunched as she carefully prunes a plant he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of identifying. She’s shed her jacket as well, a bit of dirt somehow smeared on her cheek. She seems so…natural here, in a way that had surprised Joel. He’d thought she’d be up his ass to hunt or go on patrol, pestering Tommy to let her work in the stables. Not up to her elbows in dirt daily, talking to plants and bugging him to let her expand the garden she's put in their backyard.
He’s glad to see it, more than he could begin to express. Ellie’s hard edges smoothing out the longer they’re here, her laugh coming a little louder and more freely, the disappointment over finding the hospital empty and the Fireflies gone without a trace dissipating a little more each day.
Even on a day as heavy and tainted as this one, seeing his kid in her element lightens the weight on his chest, just a fraction.
Sarah would have adored her.
Ellie finishes collecting whatever it is she needs to, adding it to a tray already laden with jars and bags. For the apothecary, Joel can only assume, and he hefts it into his arms when Ellie reaches for it. “I’ll carry, you lead the way.”
Clouds have rolled in while they were working, and Joel passes the tray to her for a quick moment to shrug back into his jacket. The temperature’s dropped a few degrees, breeze picking up ever so slightly.
“Looks like rain,” Ellie remarks, setting off down the path between the greenhouses and the fence. She’s still in her pilfered sweatshirt, the hem of it hanging to mid-thigh, hands disappearing into the sleeves. Her neck cranes upwards to study the clouds, thick and gray, heavy with the promise of a fall storm.
“We could use it.”
Ellie’s quiet next to him as they pass through town again, and Joel wants to beg her to talk. Beg her to be her usual chatty self, because in the quiet there’s nothing for him to do but think about what day it is. The twenty-sixth has always been worse for him than the twenty-seventh, even with all the forced half-assed remembrance ceremonies FEDRA put together every year.
The twenty-sixth was the last full day of Sarah’s life, and he’d overslept. He’d overslept and worked late, forgot the pancake mix and the birthday cake, had just –
“Joel?”
Ellie’s standing right in front of him, brows pulled together. He’s stopped walking, it seems, right in front of the swap. The apothecary’s just a few doors down, and yet it feels like miles, his legs like lead.
Carefully she extracts the tray from his hands, setting it on the stoop of the trading post. Inside, Joel can see Oscar moving - his head poking forward like he’s examining the scene, and then his form retreating to the back of the building, ostensibly to give them privacy.
“Joel?” Ellie says again, soft and gentle like she’s coaxing a wounded animal.
“I –” His throat closes, head bowing until he’s staring at the ground instead of her worried face. “‘S just…the day, y’know.”
One small hand reaches forward and wraps around his, squeezing and then just holding. She doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t try to pry it out of him, which he appreciates. He doesn’t think he would know how to give voice to the guilt that’s eating him alive. It’s there every day, gnawing on his desiccated bones and worming into his thoughts and dreams, but today…
Today is the day first he came alive into the world, and the last day he really lived in it.
At least, Joel thinks with a squeeze of Ellie’s hand, at least until some little hellion flew out of a room with a knife in her hand, launching herself at him with a scream.
“Thank you, baby,” Joel whispers finally. Not quite sure what he’s thanking her for - the pause, not prying, the sheer miracle of her existence in his life - but he means it more than he’s meant just about anything in the last twenty-two years. “Where to next?”
–-
After the apothecary, where Ellie drops off all her plant trimmings and picks up four jars that she slips carefully into a sack, they head out toward the west side of town, where the other stretch of houses is. One jar gets left with Nigel in exchange for a knitted scarf - he arches his brows at Joel like daring him to say something about it - while two more are set on Carol’s front porch. Ellie picks up the two bouquets of flowers that are there waiting for her, and meets Joel back on the street.
“What’re those for?” Joel asks, indicating the bouquets with his chin.
“Well Carol can’t make it out to the cemetery very regularly, especially when the temperature starts to drop, so I take the flowers she grows out there every so often. For her husband and her brother’s graves.” She doesn’t quite meet his eyes as she says it.
Joel tries not to think about Jackson’s cemetery if he can help it. It’s a decent-sized plot, fenced off with a small gate on the north edge of town. Jeremiah’s handy with a chisel, so he makes small headstones when someone passes, no trade required. It’s not full, not by a longshot, but it’s still there. A constant, unceasing reminder that he’d buried his daughter in loamy Texas soil and left her unmarked in a ditch. No headstone, nobody to bring flowers. Even if he went back, Joel doesn’t know that he could find the place they buried her, and that digs the failure in deeper. Because he should know, right? He should be able to walk through what’s surely overgrown grass by now and be able to stop and point and say She’s here. My little girl’s here.
And he can’t.
Ellie’s face swims before him, unsure for the first time. “I wasn’t gonna ask you to come with me for that,” she whispers. “I was gonna maybe do it tonight or tomorrow.”
He’d like to tell her it’s fine, that he can wait nearby - but Ellie knows him too well at this point, so there’s nothing to be achieved by lying and toughing his way through it. Instead he just nods tightly, hands clenched in his pockets.
–-
Joel trails her through town for another two hours. She picks up clothes at the swap and takes them to Sadie, who broke her leg on patrol two weeks ago; she drops off a book at the library along with the last jar from the apothecary; she picks up plates of food from the dining hall and deposits them on the porches of houses on either side of theirs.
And then finally, they’re home again and Joel toes his boots off at the door.
“You always do this much stuff around town?” He doesn’t know how he wouldn’t have noticed.
Ellie shrugs, cheeks tingeing pink. “Some days. This was more than usual, but I also knew that a lot of people weren’t gonna want to go out and do things this week. And I didn’t want to sit here and go stir crazy, so when I heard people mentioning stuff they needed done, I just thought…” She shrugs again, chin tucking to her chest.
Again, Joel wonders how he wound up with a kid so thoughtful and compassionate, caring of others and willing to go out of her way to help.
And again, he knows none of the credit is his.
–-
Ellie makes him eat something. Same as she’d made him get out of the house and trail her through town and help her with busywork that made this godforsaken day go faster. Now they’re sitting on the back porch, side by side on the bench Joel had crafted their first summer here, and he can see her periodically turning to look at him. Gauging the progress he’s made on his plate of chicken and potatoes, if he knows her at all.
The sun dips lower and lower in the sky, streaking everything around them with orange and indigo, an inky darkness gradually overtaking their yard. Next to him, Ellie’s quiet and still. She moves once - scooting closer to lay her head on his shoulder and wrap a hand around his wrist - but otherwise leaves him be.
In the end, Joel’s the one that breaks the silence, after darkness has truly fallen around them. He’s been trapped in silence, his own thoughts swirling and his throat dry, but there’s at least one thing he needs to make sure to say.
“Thank you.” Ellie’s hand tightens on his wrist. The inside of his mouth feels drier than the Sahara. “I really needed today, not bein’ in the house. So I appreciate you makin’ me go out, baby.”
Ellie just shrugs, shoulder brushing Joel’s arm. “I did it for me, too. I know that…that this day isn’t for me what it is for you, and what tomorrow is for everyone. But if I sit and think about it too long it leads back to my mom and Riley and the fact that there’s no cure, and…” She clears her throat. “I just thought maybe today would suck a little less if we could spend it together.” Her head tilts up, chin resting on his arm as she peers at him worriedly. “Did I do okay?”
Joel cups the back of her head, pulls her close so he can lay a firm kiss at her hairline. “You did perfect, kiddo.”
65
Joel’s birthday is October first now. Nobody said it officially, really. But for his sixtieth they’d baked him a surprisingly delicious cake and had a family dinner at Tommy and Maria’s on the first. And when someone in town had asked the next day, Ellie’d answered for him. “His birthday,” she’d said, and they’d wished him a happy one and a good year. In the way that information does, it sort of trickled through Jackson that his birthday was the first, and while he got the occasional pitying look for it being so close to the end of the world…well, it’s a helluva lot better than the way he imagines they’d look if he knew the truth.
But he likes it, Joel’d told Tommy on his sixty-third after a little too much of the good stuff from the Bison. It’s nice to be able to celebrate getting old, a goddamn miracle in their world, and leave September twenty-sixth as a day to remember Sarah instead.
And in the way that information in their family does, his words had - of course - made their way to his kid. Ellie had - of course - taken it upon herself to then make October first a birthday occasion for him every year since, even when her own life had gotten a bit…complicated.
But damn, Joel thinks as he opens his door and steps out into the yard, sixty-five. Sixty-five years old, with the gray hair and aching bones to prove it.
The air’s bitingly crisp as he crosses the yard to the back porch, like Wyoming issuing a reminder that it’s officially fall, it’s officially October, it’s time for apples and pumpkins and whatever fall shenanigans Jackson’s council has cooked up this year.
And of course - Joel raps his knuckles on the door before opening it and sticking his head in - it’s nearly time for someone else’s birthday as well.
A shriek is the only warning he gets before a forty-pound tornado careens his way, and it’s only years of practice that have Joel bending and catching it before it takes him out at the knees.
“Now I know, young man,” Joel says mock-sternly, bouncing the delightful little terror, “that your mamas have told you you ain’t supposed to be runnin’ in the house like that.”
JJ doesn’t care though, laughing delightedly into Joel’s neck.
“JJ!”
“Oh, you’re in trouble now,” Joel whispers, bouncing the boy carefully.
Ellie enters the kitchen with her hands on her hips, eyebrow arched as she takes in the scene in front of her. “Hiding behind Peepaw, huh Potato?”
Joel rolls his eyes, but he’s given up on getting her to drop the Peepaw thing ever since JJ latched onto it a year ago. Tommy says it constantly, TJ and Maria too. Bout the only damn people in his family who don’t are Jesse and Dina; they’re his favorites, he likes to tell Ellie.
None of them believe it.
“Not hiding,” JJ says mulishly, the words muffled into Joel’s neck. “Hugging.”
“Mmhmm,” Ellie says, though she sounds like she’s stifling a laugh. “Well make sure it’s a good hug, at least.”
Little arms tighten around Joel’s neck until he coughs ever so slightly. Judging by the twinkle in his kid’s eye, she’d known that was gonna happen. “Not so tight, buddy.”
JJ lets go, leaning back to look at him for a long second before he sticks his tongue out and giggles. Joel sticks his own right back out, and Ellie throws her hands dramatically into the air. “Surrounded by silly, silly goofballs.”
“Oh you ain’t one to talk, missy.” Joel readjusts JJ on his hip, walking over to the table by the window to sit. “I remember you bein’ pretty darn silly when you were younger.” Ellie sticks her own tongue out at him, and JJ giggles again. “Where’s Dina?”
“Overnight patrol.” Ellie fills the kettle and sets it on the stove, reaching up to pull down their mugs. “She got back about an hour or so ago, so she’s asleep now, and me and your little buddy are hanging out down here quietly –” She arches a brow at JJ and obediently he puts a finger to his lips “– so she can get some sleep.”
It’s still a little strange sometimes, watching Ellie move around what’s now her kitchen in the home she shares with her partner and their kid. The night she’d come to him and told him Dina was pregnant, and that Ellie was planning to help her raise the baby…well, they’d had a helluva knockdown drag-out. Hadn’t spoken for nearly a week after either, until Ellie had come crying to him in the middle of the night because she was scared.
And it wasn’t that he thought she wouldn’t be a great mom, or that she should leave Dina or anything like that. It was more…their relationship was so new, so barely planted and still growing, and he’d been afraid of what a baby would do to such a tender thing.
He’d seen his own history repeating in her, but in a much smaller circumference. If it didn’t work out between them, there was no option to get out of dodge like his ex had done after Sarah’s birth.
But when she’d convinced him she was sure - scared shitless but sure - Joel had gotten Tommy to help him do some renovating on what had previously been his woodshop. Add in plumbing, heat, move some furniture in, and then he’d left the house to the girls. Ellie had damn near burst into tears when he’d told her - Dina had definitely burst into tears, though she’d blamed the hormones - and hugged him tight enough to shove the air from his lungs. His knees were getting too worn out to have to keep going up and down the stairs, anyways.
And he’d tried to offer the garage house to Jesse, so that he could be near his kid, but the boy had waved him off. He was only a couple streets over anyways, he’d said, and his mom needed help around the house more often nowadays.
So the garage was Joel’s.
JJ fidgets in his lap, leaning over precariously until Joel gives in and sets him down on the ground. He makes an immediate beeline for where Ellie stands preparing coffee for him and tea for her. “Mama,” he says demandingly when she doesn’t turn immediately.
“One sec, buddy.”
Little fists find their way to hips, and even from across the kitchen Joel can see the way JJ’s chin has started to wobble. His lips open - Joel’s already pushing to his feet to save Ellie and a sleeping Dina the tantrum - and then Ellie turns and squats in front of her son.
“JJ,” she says calmly, making sure he’s looking at her, “what did we talk about?”
He sniffs, and Joel lowers himself back to his chair. “Pay-shins,” he mumbles, chin wobbling.
“That’s right,” Ellie replies, “patience. It means when I say one sec, you gotta wait just a little bit, okay? Right now I’m making drinks for me and your Peepaw that are very hot, and if you distract me then I could burn myself or spill on you. So can you give me just a little bit longer to finish them?”
JJ sniffs again. “Okay.”
Joel hides his grin behind his hand when Ellie looks his way. He can’t help it though - any time he sees Ellie with JJ it just…warms him. She’s such a natural with him, in a way he honestly wouldn’t have expected. Maybe he should have, after the amount of time she’s spent caring for TJ over the years, but it was entirely different watching his kid with her own.
It made him wonder, as so many things did, what Sarah would have been like with her own children. It’s not the same sharp, brutalizing thought it used to be; rather it’s faded into something more like an ache, a wish for what neither of them got the chance to have. But Joel has no doubt that she would have been as amazing a mother as Ellie is.
The coffee mug lands in front of him with a soft thud, and then his lap is full of toddler again as Ellie settles into the seat across from him with her tea. He’d never gotten her to learn to like coffee - which worked out well for him because it meant he didn’t have to share - and this morning coffee for him, tea for her routine had developed within just a few months of their return to Jackson. It had held, even through bad days and fights and his moving out. Not every morning now, but most.
It’s Joel’s favorite part of the day.
–-
He stays there all day, in that house with his kid and hers, with Dina when she wakes and makes her way downstairs. Jesse comes by to swing JJ in the air before he heads off for his own patrol; Tommy and Maria and TJ come by at lunch.
But through the whole day, Joel’s with Ellie. Maybe it’s the milestone of this birthday - sixty-five is a pretty big one - maybe it’s the fact that it’s been nearly thirty years since the world ended and somewhere around nine since they made it here. Either way, he’s feeling more sentimental today than he’s accustomed to, like he just needs to be around his kid as much as possible.
Ain’t helped by the fact that everyone makes their way back over for dinner, cramming together around a table they outgrew two family members ago but have never seen fit to change. It’s loud and it’s bumping elbows and reaching over plates and shifting JJ between laps, but it’s all…his. Theirs. A life and a family Joel could never even have imagined having when he was fifty-five.
He has no idea where on the face of the planet Marlene might be - if she’s even still on it - but Joel can’t help but be oddly grateful to her. Her convincing him and Tess to take Ellie led him here. To his brother, to Jackson, to his daughter.
An entire fucking miracle.
–-
Everyone’s moved to the living room by the time the sun’s gone down, JJ dozing in Jesse’s arms. Ellie nudges Joel in the side.
“Wanna sneak out and have a drink?” She asks teasingly, tilting her head towards the cabinet over the stove where he knows she keeps a small stash of Jackson’s whiskey.
Joel nudges her back. “Ain’t really sneakin’ out if everyone else is makin’ their way out.”
Sure enough, Tommy and Maria are headed their way, each enveloping him in a quick hug. TJ squeezes him tightly around the middle before trailing after his parents. Dina and Jesse stay on the couch with JJ, each of them giving Joel a quiet happy birthday before he leaves Ellie to get the drinks and heads out the back door.
With the sun gone, there’s a snap to the air that has Joel tugging his jacket more tightly around him, breath fogging ever so slightly. The backyard is bathed in faint silver, shadows flickering as Joel makes his way across to the bench that sits outside his front door. He’d built it not long after moving into the garage, wanting somewhere to sit outside without feeling like he was encroaching on Ellie and Dina’s space. No matter how many times they told him he was welcome to the porch and the bench there.
He settles into it now, stretching out his aching knee, and waits for his kid to join him.
Ellie’s only behind him by a couple of minutes, picking her way down the porch stairs and across the yard with two glasses in her hands. She passes one to him before curling up on the bench next to him, shivering slightly in the cooler air.
“Cheers.” Ellie clinks her glass against his. “Happy sixty-fifth, you old shit.”
Joel snorts, lifting it to his lips and downing the whiskey in one go. Ellie mimics him, grimacing as she swallows. “Still gross.”
She says that every time, Joel thinks fondly, taking her empty glass and setting it with his on the ground next to the bench. And yet heaven forbid he have a glass without her, she takes it as a personal affront. If he had to guess - and he doesn’t have to, knowing Ellie as well as he does - he’d say it has something to do with Riley, with their last night together at the mall. The burn of the whiskey bringing back memories of the girl she’d lost, the one who had set her on the path that wound her up here.
“So how does it feel?” Ellie props her elbow on the back of the bench, head resting in her hand as she looks at him. “Sixty-five, I mean.”
Joel thinks back to another birthday a lifetime ago, where his brother had asked him the same question while his daughter played in the sprinkler. And he probably could give the same answer - same as sixty-four but with more back pain, and life ain’t what he’d thought it would be by this time.
But he learned the hard way many, many years ago that there’s no predicting what could happen at any given moment, no way to know what turn your life might take. So instead he meets her gaze and gives the most honest answer he can - “‘M glad to be alive.”
It’s obvious the way his answer surprises her, lips parting and eyes going wide. But Joel means it, more than he ever would have thought possible, and he finds more words spilling out. Aided, no doubt, by the glass of whiskey. “I thought…y’know, I thought my life was over at thirty-six. I wanted it to be over.” Even now he can still hear the gunshot, feel the heat of it grazing over his skin, Tommy’s yelling and cursing.
A pained noise escapes Ellie, and Joel reaches over to squeeze her knee gently. “Tommy made me keep goin’, and I hated him for it for a long time. But now I’m…” He swallows against the growing lump in his throat. “I’m so glad he did. Now I got him and Maria and TJ, Dina and Jesse and JJ, and most importantly, I got you.”
Ellie chuckles, a wet and slightly garbled sound, swiping a hand under her eyes. “Was wondering where I was gonna come in on that list.”
Joel tightens the hand on her knee, shaking it slightly. “Always at the top, Ellie. You’re always at the top.” She nods jerkily, gaze dropping down to where her hands are wrapping around his forearm. “I miss Sarah every day.” Even now, uttering her name fans to life that deep-seated ached in his chest, the hole where his eldest should be gaping momentarily wider. “But I am still so damn lucky to have everything I do.”
Ellie laughs again, leaning forward until her forehead is pressed to his bicep. “Fuck, dude, you weren’t supposed to get all sappy on me, you were just supposed to say sixty-five feels older than dirt and leave it at that.”
Joel laughs a little too. “Sixty-five feels older’n dirt,” he tells her, and the two of them giggle. Ellie swipes at her cheeks with the back of her hand, tear tracks glistening like diamonds in the moonlight.
She’s quiet for a long moment and Joel leaves her be, content simply to be ending the day here with her. Tommy teases him - regularly - for the fact that his best friend is his kid, but Joel honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. He missed the first fourteen years of her life, was an asshole to her for months, and he’s no idiot about the life expectancy in the apocalypse. So he’ll take every minute Ellie is willing to give him, simply grateful that even as she gets older she still wants to hang out with her parent.
“You know we’re the lucky ones though, right?” Ellie peers up at him, chin resting on his arm. “Me, and the whole family, and even all of fucking Jackson. We’re the lucky ones to have you.”
“Nah.” Joel brushes her words off even as they warm him from the inside out. “Think you’d all be just fine without me.”
Ellie scoffs. “No we wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even be here without you. I wouldn’t have our whole family, I wouldn’t have JJ . And he, I mean…he’s the luckiest one of us all. To get to have you from the day he was born, I mean…” She gives him a watery smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, a hint of shame shining through. “Makes me jealous of my own kid, you know?”
Oh. Joel doesn’t really know what to say to that, even if he’d kind of had an inkling of her feelings. Shares them a little, even, that stupid pointless longing to have been there when Ellie was born, to have held her as a baby and soothed her cries and watched her first steps. It was horrendously poetic when he thought about it - which he tried very hard not to - the way he got all those things with Sarah but not Ellie. How he’s now getting Ellie in her twenties, in a relationship and with a kid of her own, things he never got with Sarah. Half of each of his girl’s lives.
“‘M just happy to be in his life,” Joel manages, eyes burning. “His and yours.”
The corners of Ellie’s lips tug up, her smile finally blooming properly. “You are the best Peepaw, you know that, right?”
She’d first given him that title teasingly, holding a day-old JJ. Peepaw. And for as much as Joel pretended to be annoyed by it, secretly he’d cherished it. It was the closest he figured he could get to Grandpa, he’d thought, because for all he and Ellie had been through, all their years together, they’d always been very… loose with titles.
“And I think,” Ellie presses on, a note to her voice that Joel doesn’t think he’s heard before, “I think I can speak for myself and for…for S-Sarah when I say that you are the best father either of us could ever have had.”
The f word lands on his chest with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer; Joel doesn’t think he’s ever heard her use it before. Just about everyone else in Jackson had - Dina calls him her father-in-law pretty regularly - but Ellie hadn’t said it, and Joel had followed her lead. It wipes his brain clean, his vision blurring rapidly until Ellie’s no more than a dark smudge in front of him. “You girls made it easy.”
“I did not.” Ellie sounds almost affronted, the weight of the air around them lightening, and he manages a weak chuckle. “I was an asshole to you, when you deserved it and when you didn’t. And the fact that you took me in and loved me anyways says…so fucking much about the man that you are. And that man is incredible, and I thank whatever higher fucking power there is out there that they put us in the same QZ, in that building when Marlene needed someone to take me.”
It’s a faint echo of his own thoughts from earlier that evening, gratitude for the collision course their paths had been set on. He reaches forward, tugging her against him until her head’s tucked into the join of his shoulder and neck and he can press a kiss to her hair. “I do too baby, I do too.”
He can still remember - with a vividness he sometimes wishes would fade - the first time he hugged her. That traumatized girl outside a burning steakhouse, spattered in blood and practically mute, flinging herself at him for all she was worth. The gradual reorienting his world had been doing over the past three months had snapped into sharp focus in that moment.
It still feels like that with every hug, even nearly nine years later. Feels like that when he sees his increasingly-gray brother with his son, when he sees Ellie with JJ, when they manage to get their whole mismatched family around the table for dinner and he’s got his grandson in his lap. Everything feels like it’s fallen into place, this life he never could have conceived of twenty-nine years ago in a Texas field. Even if there will always be a hole in it in the shape of Sarah.
Ellie stays curled up against him, the air around them gradually becoming even chillier as the moon rises higher. One by one the lights in the main house flick off as Dina puts JJ to bed and then presumably crawls in bed herself, until all that’s left is the faint light over the kitchen sink. It’s quiet around them, nothing to be heard but the occasional croak of a frog or rustle of the leaves above them. Neither of them budges, content to sit there in the still of the night, one of the rare moments they get together. Nobody else, just a father and his kid, two souls that had bounced around uselessly before landing with each other and stitching together in a way that could never be undone.
Ellie breaks the silence, her words faint under the swift gust of air rustling his hair and curling its fingers under the collar of his jacket.
“Happy birthday, Dad.”