Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 42nd cycle. Now cycle 43!
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** UPDATED WITH CYCLE 43 CHEAT SHEET ** Check it out to find out about shift days!
This is a shift day [see above]. There will be another upload this afternoon: The Cautionary Tale of Lucy Collins, chapter 5.
"There's That Smile"
Beiste & Ewan (OC; Damian McGinty)
Ewan series #6 (following Flying Solo & Walks Along the Shore)
She had noticed the change in him. It was little by little, but living with him she could see it. And she couldn't have been happier. To see the boy, so broken up when he'd arrived, and now after the time he had been here he was starting not so much to forget but at least to rebuild, to start moving forward. And what she saw was that her nephew was learning to be happy again.
The biggest reward was getting to see him smile, really smile. The first time she had seen it, she knew she would remember. It sent her rushing back to Ireland eleven years ago, the last time she'd seen him before Kathleen and Glenn died, when he was just a small boy with eyes that sparkled as much as his smile, who loved dogs and running around…
They had both needed time to adjust to this new life, living together. One of them had gone from living on her own to acting as a parent figure to a teenage boy, and the other had lost so much and had to start anew in a place he didn't know. But at least they weren't alone in their being unsteady on their feet, so with someone to hang on to, it was less likely that they should fall.
One morning she had woken up and she'd realized they had found their rhythm. They would sit to breakfast, where Shannon had deemed her nephew as somewhere halfway between a morning person and not a morning person. He would sit there and it would be hard to tell whether he was awake if she didn't see him moving, eating, talking… As she should have imagined though, a still half-asleep Ewan was even harder to understand than a fully awake one. They would get ready, drive to school together and then head out on their separate ways. They would meet again at the end of the day to head home, unless he was off at Glee Club, or with friends, Mike and Tina most of all, although she'd been seeing him more and more with Sugar Motta.
Then there was his request. He wanted to go back to Ireland, to the place where he'd grown, to his home, for a visit, the next summer. She was more than supportive on that. When he'd wanted to just leave, not to return, she had gone along with it, but she still felt like he shouldn't write off that part of his life because he had to leave it. She could understand, knowing it would be so far away, it would probably feel unreachable, so he might as well just let it go. For certain, they couldn't visit there all that often, but she was more than happy to make sure he could go back, every year or other year.
One weekend, Ewan had asked his aunt if he could get some new things for his room. The last time they'd gone to the mall, during the summer, he hadn't gotten anything to make the room his own, only buying his sketchbook and pencils. So they were bound for the mall.
"Are you looking for something specific?" she asked as she drove.
"I don't know," he shrugged. "I'd like to put some things on the walls, maybe get a book shelf…"
"I thought you were happy with your stacking 'system,'" she smirked and he laughed.
"I was, until I had to restack them from knocking them over three times the other day," he explained.
"Yeah, that would do it," she agreed. After a moment, not hearing a word out of him, she looked over. He had this look on his face then, and she could have sworn she was looking at her little sister at his age. Shannon knew that face, and she knew what it meant – he wanted something, but he didn't know how to ask. "Something else you want to get?" she asked and he looked over. He hesitated to talk, and she shrugged. "The worst I'll say is no, but you won't know until you try…"
"I was just thinking about Sally…" he started, and it took her a moment to place the name.
"That was your dog's name, wasn't it? When I came to visit you when you were little," she went on, and he nodded.
"We had to put her down two years ago, she was old, and sick," he explained. "I had her for most of my life, and I could never replace her, but…" Now she understood where he was headed, and she thought about it. He had grown up with dogs, cared for them without a doubt, so the question didn't even need to be asked as to whether he could look after one. Her landlord wouldn't mind, there were a few of them in the building. And she loved dogs, too… more than that, she loved her nephew.
"Is this why you really want the book shelf?" she asked, and he nodded. "Okay, well if we get everything else done early enough, we can stop at the shelter and see what we have to do."
They had done quick work of getting through their other tasks, choosing a number of posters for his walls, buying a book shelf, also stopping by the book store to get 'a few new things for the shelf.' They'd had lunch, and then they were on their way to the shelter.
They wouldn't be able to just pick one and take him or her with them that very day, needing to go through a screening first, but they were allowed to go ahead and see the dogs. Seeing him stop and look in on each of them, it was hard not to remember him running in his yard with his old dog Sally and his neighbor's dogs. All of them would respond to him, to the point where she was wondering if he would end up wanting to take them all home.
But then he'd found them. The woman from the shelter had said the pair of them were brother and sister, almost three months old. Bonnie and Clyde, they were called, a pair of white labs. Already Shannon knew he was falling for them, and with that she knew he wouldn't want to split them up. Gloria, the woman from the shelter, could see it as well and she warned that it would be a potentially difficult task, taking in the pair of them, training them, but Ewan wasn't shying away. Shannon had to think about it, to consider whether she would be saying yes out of some need to keep him happy, or out of the knowledge that he could do this, that they could both do this. But even in telling herself this, she knew if there was anyone who could give these puppies a loving home, it could well be the two of them. So whatever needed to happen next for Bonnie and Clyde to come home to them, she was in.
THE END
A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!