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It’s a thought that occurs to her, sometime after week six of their partnership. She’s flipping through pictures from her folks, and lands on one of her mother, clearly taken in secret by her father. It’s a nice snap, candid and quick, her features largely frozen, but her hands a blur over the boxes in the stand. Nick calls it stoic, does a little wiggle with his fingers and leans back in his chair. Judy agrees, turns to him, and says the words without really thinking about them –
“What does your mom look like?”
Nick doesn’t stop rocking his chair back and forth as he signs off on a few arrests. “A fox.”
“Nicholas.”
“I’m not lying,” he says. “All foxes look the same.”
“That isn’t true!” she insists.
The legs of his chair finally all settle onto the carpet, and he turns to look at her. He’s trying to disarm her with his smile, and maybe it would have worked some other day, or after some other question, but – it doesn’t.
“Don’t worry about it, Carrots. Can I borrow a pen?”
“Ooo, you wanna dig through records?” Clawhauser scratches behind an ear, smearing pink icing along his fur. “Well, I was only in there for, like, a day. A week. Maybe. I don’t know, Judy, it was so hot down there.”
Not for the first time she feels the return of that guilty prickle, right where her stammering little heart trembles under her ribs.
“Could you get me in?”
“Well, you’re all official now and everything.” He licks one of the pads of his paw and sighs. “Sure, why not.” His brows shoot up. “Are you doing something secret?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, you should take Nick. Nick is so good at secret things—”
Judy raises her arms. “No! I mean.” She clenches her fists at her side. “No. I don’t need Nick. For this.”
Clawhauser shrugs. “Well, whatever.” He digs in a drawer and hands her a key. “Don’t tell Missy I sent you. She did not enjoy our time together.
Missy is a grumpy, ruffled, bespectacled prairie dog who already knows Clawhauser sent her because he took the only spare key.
“Not purpose,” she says. “It got caught in one of his—”
“Thank you,” Judy interrupts, giving her a jovial pat on the shoulder. “I’ll leave it with you when I go.” She chooses the terminal furthest away from Missy and logs in.
The rational thing to do would be to log out, go back upstairs, and say, “You’re my friend. I’d really like to know where your mother is.”
Judy types Nicholas Wilde.
He was right when he told her there wasn’t much she could get him on. He was busted a handful of times as a minor, landed in juvie every six months or so until he seemed to catch on around sixteen. But there’s no guardian listed in any of his documents (a little part of her whistles you know why, you know why, sly fox, slick fox, no one loves this fox) and she spends an hour reading and re-reading the pages until her eyes water.
She leaves the key with Missy and decides to go home early.
nick: you ducked out
judy: migraine
nick: you’re an actual liar, i’m literally watching you buy a sad TV dinner
Judy spins around in the frozen food section and finds her nose pressed right against Nick’s chest.
“Dumb bunny.” He takes the box from her and tosses it into the aisle behind her. “Let’s get dinner.”
“I don’t want to,” she whines, but doesn’t fight when his paw gently closes around her wrist and begins pulling her toward the doors. “I think we should talk about something,” she says carefully, once they’ve managed to escape the fluorescent innards of the Pawgreens.
“My mom, right?”
“How did—”
“Every time someone looks me up in the database, I get a little ping,” he says, not looking at her. He shows her his phone, the list of all the records she’d dug up staring right at her.
“Oh.”
“Don’t tell Bogo,” he adds.
“I wouldn’t!”
“Dunno, Carrots.” He shoulders open the door of a little noodle place. “You did go digging into my personal business without permission.”
“I was just—”
Nick puts a paw over her mouth and orders for them both.
“Don’t do that,” she snaps, pushing him away. “Look, I’m sorry, alright?”
“I know you are.” He carefully sips his water. “I’m not mad, Hopps.”
Judy falters a little at the sound of her name – her last name, but still – and sighs. “Okay.”
“If you want to know about my mother, just ask.”
“I did ask—”
“Well.” He leans back in his seat. “Ask again.”
She was, he says, the best mother in the world. She was alone, except for him, and she worked every day. She left the house at six in the morning, latest, and returned close to midnight every night. Nick sat up to wait for her, but until he was eight or so, he fell asleep, without fail, and would always find himself in bed, where he belonged. Sometimes she would be there with him, and sometimes she would already be gone.
He never resented her, and she was the only person he could remember who loved him unconditionally.
She never spoke about his father – he bore her last name, always, and there was never a part of him that wanted to find out who could have ever left the literal superhero his mother was. Because that’s what she was. Sometimes she’d come home from her job at the diner up the street with her apron over her shoulder – it looked just like a cape.
The thing about being unsavory and untrustworthy and unlikeable and unlovable is – when you lose the only person who proves you are none of those things, you lose your only advocate. It didn’t matter that his mother worked harder than everyone else, or that she was beautiful and pure and good and kind.
She still got sick. And in the end, she had to go just like anyone else would.
“You know what this city doesn’t have?”
Judy swallows. “What?”
“A good foster care system. Folks who care. Because they bounced me around until I looked old enough to make it on my own.”
“You weren’t.”
“I did, though.” He leans back as the waiter drops his bowl of noodles in front of him. “I’d say I made it pretty well.”
“I…I would agree.” Judy squirms in her seat, reaching out to pick at her bowl of veggies. “You beat the odds.”
“There were no odds,” Nick says. “There are never odds when there’s no precedent. I’m more like a…pioneer.” He slurps, and Judy pulls a face. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I disturb your delicate rabbit sensibilities?”
“Every day,” she says, relieved that they can now fall back into their usual, warmer banter.
The eat in companionable silence, until Nick reaches into his back pocket and tugs out his wallet.
“Here,” he says. He slides an old photo from the back. It’s warn around the edges with age, but it’s clearly been cared for. He hands it to her, and Judy peers closely at it.
“Oh.” A little fox, and his mother, beaming at the camera, standing on the front steps of an apartment building. “That’s you.”
“It is.”
“And that’s…that’s her.”
“Yep.” He scrapes the bottom of the bowl with his chopsticks. “Sharp looking foxes, huh?”
“You look just like her.”
Nick pauses. He sets the bowl down and reaches for the photo, turning it over in his hands. Judy worries her bottom lip.
“Well. Whaddya know?” he says quietly. “I really do.”
“I’m sorry I pried.”
“No you’re not,” Nick says, ruffling her ears. “But it’s alright. Besides, I got free noodles.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Judy digs in her pockets for her keys. “Listen,” she says. “Thank you. For sharing and opening up to me and everything. It means a lot, and as your partner—”
Nick puts a finger gently over his mouth. “Carrots. I’m gonna throw up if you say one more achingly sentimental thing.”
“Right.” She pulls back. “Well, have a good night. Catch you bright and early tomorrow, yeah?”
“Oh, always,” he says, and gives her a lazy salute.
A month later, she’s digging through someone’s yard sale back home with her mom, and she finds a frame the perfect size.
To his credit, Nick at least waits until she’s left the room to slide the old photo behind the glass and set it carefully on the corner of his little desk.