SO HEY. It's been way too long to be acceptable since I've updated, but life happens I guess and sometimes you get busy and you run out of ideas or just a general motivation to write ... and things fall by the wayside. But I'm back with a suitcase full of new ideas and a whole lot of motivation, so if you can forgive me for my absence I'd really appreciate it. ALSO I've noticed a few things I really mucked up on - like Brumley being spelled wrong, or Two-Bit's last name which is actually spelled with only one L, not two, so I'll fix those as I write more but I don't think it's worth going back to edit. Sorry. Not that anyone has seemed bothered by it as of late. So yeah. New chapter. xoxo, Carolyn.

Don't tell her lies, cause she'll believe
boy, she's still got baby teeth

Tulsa General Hospital was cold, impersonal, and expensive. As worried as she was for her brother, who was sedated and strapped down to a hospital bed hooked up to beeping machines and bags of liquids, she couldn't help but imagine what the bill was going to look like when they got out. Dr Mercer – Dana's husband – had met them at the ambulance bay, and quickly and easily identified Joel's problem. He had been given a very high dose of LSD, and wasn't taking to it too well at all.

"But he's going to be okay?" she begged, crossing her arms nervously over her chest.

Dr Mercer could only sigh and shrug. "I really don't know, Sophie. I don't know what he'll be like when he comes down. We just have to wait."

"Do you know how he even got it?"

"I think," Dr Mercer started, then paused for a moment – contemplating – "he had the tabs in his pocket, and when he stepped out into the rain, they soaked through his jeans, onto his leg."

Stupid. What was he carrying sheets of LSD for anyway? He didn't take it. They should have packaged it if he was transporting it. Putting it just in his pocket – what had he been thinking?

"Were you thinking?" Sophie asked, her forehead resting against the slow rise and fall of Joel's chest. Every once in a while he would twitch a little, and his heartbeat didn't sound right to her, but the doctor had given him medications and all they could do now was wait it out. "What kind of idiot are you?" But she didn't mean it. "I didn't mean it." She wiped the tears away from her cheeks before they dripped onto the hospital sheet.

x x x

When Alexa Baker skipped out into the schoolyard, tugging her bookbag behind her, immediately she scanned for her mother. The white-blonde hair that stood out just about anywhere, the gunmetal grey eyes that she'd never seen on anyone else before. For a minute she perked up, excitement bubbling in her tummy – was she walking home alone today? All the way home? Walking to the clinic was nothing compared to being allowed to skip home all on her lonesome; it was a few blocks further and it crossed a street she'd never been allowed to cross on her own before, seven years old or not.

Before she could get too ahead of herself, she saw him, coming towards her with as much of a smile as a man like that could muster – scarred face, eyes just like hers, like a black cat on Halloween. He'd shaken her hand at the park. At mommy's new work. Hadn't been the one to see her cry like a baby over a stupid bench, but they looked the same, him and that one. He was tall, his hair was shiny and all pushed away from his face, and she knew that mommy liked him, so that was good enough for her.

"Hey Alexa," he said, and he felt a little awkward. Kids weren't his forte. He wasn't confident around them, didn't know how to talk to them, didn't know what they already knew and understood or didn't. How old was this kid – seven, did Sophie say? What were seven year old girls interested in? Who did seven year old girls trust?

"Curly," Alexa said formally, once again sticking out her hand for a shake. When he took her tiny hand in his calloused one, she giggled wildly and pulled away quick.

"D'you wanna come over to my house for a little bit?" Every word that came out of his mouth made him feel like a child predator, and he was only all too aware of the looks he was getting from other parents. He just wanted to yell out – I'm not abducting her, for chrissake! But he didn't. "Your mom' a little busy right now, she can't come get you."

More confidently now, Alexa grabbed his hand with hers, and started tugging him off the playground. Besides a few tugs left or right to make sure she was going in the right direction, Curly hardly had to lead her at all. She was a little girl on a mission. From the corner of his eye he noticed Angela, there to bring Joshua home, giving him a thousand-yard glare that only a Shepard could muster. But he didn't care. Angela hated anything that made him happy. Sophie made him happy. He could learn Alexa, and she could make him happy too.

"My tooth is loose," Alexa announced importantly, before poking it with her tongue so it bent forward. This time though, the little white pearl popped right out, tumbling down over her lip and onto the blacktop.

"Aah!" she screamed, both in surprise and excitement. "I lost my tooth! I lost my tooth! Curly, where's my tooth?" Frantically she spun on the spot, looking just about everywhere except for where it really was. Curly bent down on one knee and scooped the tooth up from the ground, putting it in Alexa's hand and making sure she closed her fist tight around it.

"Don't drop that 'til we get home an' we put it somewhere safe," he made her promise. "Or the tooth fairy ain't gonna give you nothin' for it."

Alexa gasped, and clutched it to her chest. "I won't, I promise!" she said, then she hugged him tight around the neck. "Thanks for finding it for me."

His brain didn't respond fast enough to hug her back. By the time it caught up with him, she was half way down the street ahead and he had to jog to catch up. He could learn kids, he decided. Just if they didn't hug him so much.

x x x

At Curly Shepard's house, there were a lot of rules. You didn't go anywhere but the kitchen and living room and bathroom – if she could go by herself anyway, which she defiantly assured him she could, and that defiance was the exact kind that Sophie showed when she'd thought that she was mature enough to get mixed up in everything that Curly Shepard had to offer. You didn't open cabinets or closets, and you didn't peek through boxes. The paint might be peeling badly off the walls but that wasn't an excuse to pick the chips off, and stay off the mushy bits of the carpet because they'd get your stockings wet and they smelled a little funny.

There were also games at Curly Shepard's house. While it was still nice enough outside – the rain hadn't lasted through the night, and the sun was peaking now – they played tag in the front yard and on the street that nobody drove down much anyway, especially not during a regular work day. Alexa won almost every time because Curly had smoker's lungs. They had a snack on the front steps of peanut butter and bananas on brown bread, then Alexa showed Curly how to do her spelling homework at the rickety kitchen table while he smoked and took sips from a bottle of beer. It bugged him a little that this kid could spell better than he could, but she clearly had a better life than he did. And she hadn't inherited her brains from the Shepard side of the family, that was for sure.

Not that she'd know that. From the ease this kid had around him, he was pretty sure she had no damn clue who her daddy was. Which was great for him, 'cause he was close enough anyway.

It was almost dinnertime when Sophie rang him. "I got your number from work," she admitted. "I wasn't even sure if you'd have a phone, but I didn't know where you lived and I just wanted you to know that I'm home now, so if you want me to pick Alexa up..."

"I can drop her off," Curly said, "it's no problem."

But really he just wanted to spend a little more time with Sophie. And if that confused Alexa, well, he'd just have to sort it all out for her. That maybe she was going to have a daddy soon. And it wouldn't be Tim-fuckin'-Shepard who was doing it.