When Maude leaves Ezra on his porch, Chris coming home to his nephew scared and cold and alone, acting like none of it bothers him in a way the boy should not be capable of, he already knows before the thought ever forms in his head that Ezra will not be going back to her.
It is dark and wet and he had nearly gone to the lake with Vin for the weekend. Nearly not gone home at all. Chris isn't sure later if the thought will ever quit leaving a cold knot in his stomach.
He wonders if Maude has gone crazy. Wonders if she is on drugs. She was always flighty, calculating, always grasping after some too good to be true opportunity that blew up in her face, but Chris has never known her to be so cruel, so thoughtless.
Nine years old. Nine years old, and Chris feels a deep, dark anger pulse inside of him, even as he cranks up the heat and thinks about what he has to feed the kid. Ezra hates hotdogs as much as Adam lo-
No. No hotdogs.
He wonders as he coaxes a quiet, sullen, stiff little boy to change into pajamas he stuck in the dryer, wanting to remove the last of the still clinging October chill from his skin, if Maude is in some kind of trouble. More than the kind she usually only has to bat her eyelashes and weave some convincing tale to get out of. If leaving a small boy, leaving a child that Chris had seen her rock to sleep and painstakingly, patiently, teach to write every letter of his name, without a word seems like the answer, he can only imagine that she is in over her head in a serious way. A dangerous way. He has never liked his wife's cousin much, tolerated her for Sarah's sake before, but could never understand how two women who'd been raised practically as sisters could be so different.
Well, Hank, explains some of that, Chris knows. Sending the teenager to live with her grandparents less than a year after his wife died, whatever trouble he had controlling her, or influence he thought Maude was having on Sarah...it makes the fact that the man only seemed to regret never visiting his tiny grandson after the child died seem entirely in character, really. A nauseous feeling invades his throat as he realizes that you could say Maude was just following the example that had been set for her.
Chris still can't imagine she would have done this unless she was in real danger and almost against his will, against the anger pulsing tight in his chest, feels a frisson of fear for her.
Of course, it's been three years. Maybe Maude is simply the sort of person who does things like this now. Someone who treats her real, whole, living child like he is disposable.
Chris sucks in a deep, angry breath, because there is no excuse, none, not to have even called-and then realizes Ezra is done changing, standing there staring at him and he does his best to put a gentle expression on his face.
It is not an expression he has used in a long while and the way Ezra tries to hide a nervous swallow kills him. He'll do better.
But opening one arm out to his side, inviting a child who would have trusted the invitation implicitly a lifetime ago in for a hug is not the fix he automatically expects it to be. Chris leaves his arm out, hanging in the air for a long moment. It is only when he goes to drop it that Ezra moves, a sturdy weight-thank God-slamming into his side as the little boy finally breaks, clinging to Chris with fingers so tight and tense that he's murmuring that he's here, he's not going anywhere, without ever planning to, fingers running through wavy locks of hair as Ezra shudders and cries so silently that it is somehow much worse than loud sobs would be.
Chris picks him up after a minute, slowly, carefully, and moves to his recliner, feeling Ezra start to sag with exhaustion.
Something in his heart twists at how easy and how foreign it is to do so, how similar it will always feel to picking up another little boy. But Chris forces that down, because he has to, because Ezra is clinging to his shirt and Chris should, will, feed him soon, but for now he just holds him close, and is so, so glad he came home.
Ezra shivers and Chris pulls the old quilt off the back of the chair and shakes it out one handed, doing his best to tuck it around them without letting go of the kid. He's rewarded with a small, almost content sigh when he's done and squeezes his nephew even closer. They just sit, probably for too long, as the furnace pumps away steadily in the background, house getting warm. Chris will drill himself later, over and over, about how he should've checked on the boy, even during those years he knows he wouldn't have been any good for him, call Travis and arrange to take the rest of the week off, text Buck and let him tell the rest of the team, and a million other things he's not thinking of now. For now he just holds Ezra close and breathes.
"Uncle Chris?" Ezra's voice is quiet, raw from crying and Chris rubs his back as he answers.
"Yeah, Ez?"
"Ah missed you."
Chris almost chokes, keeping his composure and forcing the words out at the same time, so true they hurt. "I missed you too."
*.*.*.*.*
The next week is a whirlwind, medical checks, and lawyers, and eventually filling out a missing person's report for Maude, since she seems to have disappeared off the planet. Chris keeps Ezra close whenever he can, tries not to worry about how quiet he's being, how different it is from the kid he remembers.
He doesn't want the boy to think he has to change, that if this is who he is now, a quiet, watchful kid, that it isn't good enough. Ezra is here and warm and clings to his hand when they leave the house, and that is more than enough. Still, the first time he rolls his eyes and gives Buck an unimpressed look at one of his cheesy jokes Chris wants to cheer, the first time he mutters a sarcastic comment instead of just doing what he's told Chris has to bite his lip to keep the smile from spreading across his face.
Things settle into a routine. The guest room slowly becomes a boy's room, Ezra's room, children's clothes in the closet and sometimes spilling out of the hamper, card collection arranged neatly on his desk and comics piled under the bed.
The other room, with the yellow sign Chris can't bear to touch on the door he keeps finding Ezra staring at, stays closed and the bunk beds in it empty. He hopes his nephew understands. He just can't.
They play board games and build puzzles, and go on long walks in the new snow, sometimes with Chris's old collie mix, Cricket, bounding around them, sometimes just the two of them. Ezra starts talking more and more, about the books he's reading and his many opinions about the characters, about 'adventures' he's had that range from typical boyhood exaggerations to tales that make Chris cringe even as they ring with too much truth to be false, to his opinion that peas are the worst of all vegetables and that putting them in macaroni and cheese is clearly a sign of declining mental facilities. Chris listens to it all with a smile playing about his lips, interjecting here and there with little comments, reminders about safety, and agreement about the peas. Some vegetables belong in macaroni, but peas aren't one of them.
Broccoli on the other hand, "is a most acceptable addition, if roasted first," the meaningful look Ezra gives him at that deciding what they have for dinner that night, Chris chuckling as he rubs his nephew's head through his knit cap.
*.*.*.*.*
It was late October when Ezra arrived, and by the time Chris goes back to work, only going in for a single half day in what winds up being two weeks off, it seems too late to put him in school just to have first Thanksgiving break and then Christmas right around the corner. It seems wrong, with the boy still so quiet and wary sometimes, to stick him in the middle of a crowded classroom and hope for the best. Sometimes he brings Ezra in to work with him, on days it's just paperwork, or Mrs. Potter or Miz Nettie watch him. Ezra tells him about mixing cookie dough and the results of baking soda experiments, recites facts about goats and plants and asks his opinion on chicken names as they eat dinner, and Chris works a lot of half days. They get by okay. Better than okay.
Maybe it's selfish. Nathan gives him the side eye once or twice after he hears Chris is waiting until the new year to enroll Ezra anywhere, and starts suggesting museums Chris could take him to on weekends, talking up things like Bill Nye the Science Guy where Ezra can hear and teaching him to name all the bones in his hand. Josiah has a different book for Ezra every time he sees him, an eclectic variety that makes Chris pause from time to time, even though Ezra is scared-"somewhat intimidated" he eventually admits-of the large man for almost a month after meeting him. Buck calculates football and hockey statistics out loud and randomly tells Ezra if he can figure out how many nickels or dimes a drink or candy costs he'll buy it for him, and even JD keeps loading Ezra down with comics and magazines, wanting to know his favorites and why he picks them. Vin asks the boy if he'll read his notes aloud to him while he types one day, and after an initial skeptical look, Ezra clearly doubting his seriousness, he puffs up with importance and takes to his duty with gusto.
It is only then that Chris realizes they aren't trying to make up for any lack on his part, aren't filling in the gaps because they think he's stumbling or failing. They're just being there, doing what they can, because that's what they do, just being the team he's come to rely on mostly in spite of himself...just being their family.
They keep getting by, better than okay, good even. Chris hadn't been sure 'good' was something he could have again.
Only, it's nearly Christmas now, and they still have heard nothing from Maude or about her. Ezra doesn't ask at all at first, not knowing if he can or should, maybe, and then he asks every few days, like a cycle, shoulders drooping and fingers tightening more every time Chris has no answer for him, no reassurance.
When Chris notices that the layer of dust on the door, Adam's door, around the handle has been disturbed, the tell-tale fingermarks brushed away, but no way for a small boy to reapply dust, he feels a tightness in his chest, a knot in his belly, but says nothing. None of it will come out right, he knows, and Ezra...Ezra isn't going in out of curiosity or defiance or any of the things that would infuriate Chris.
He's going in for the same reasons Chris never does. Because he misses his cousin. He misses Adam.
Chris doesn't often look at pictures from before. Of his wife and son. His Sarah and Adam. Not unless he's been drinking, and then there was the morning where he woke up and one of the precious, priceless pages had whiskey spilled on it. Two pictures bloated and swollen with it. Ruined. After that Chris locks up most of them, keeps them safe.
With Ezra here he hardly drinks at all, and one night, not too far off from it being morning, Chris finds himself pulling one out. The grief has been more of a throbbing, penetrating ache instead of shards piercing right through him for a while now and tonight he wants, he needs them in a way he can never have. It usually hurts more to look, to remember, but tonight it hurts not to.
He wants to see their faces. He wants to see Sarah and Adam.
He stares at the pages for a long time. Tracing smiles protected by smooth plastic and swallowing down tears that don't help anything anyway.
Chris doesn't say anything at first when he notices Ezra in the doorway of his bedroom, the small pillow he cuddles at night like it's the teddy bear he insists he's too old for tucked into his arms, watching him. He's not sure what to say, doesn't know if he wants the boy to come in.
Only, when Ezra takes a step back, drawing himself into the shadows of the hallway, he knows after all. "Hey, Pard. Couldn't sleep?" A nod he can barely see is his reward, then quiet, stilted words.
"Mah dreams were unpleasant." Chris shifts the album to one side and opens his arms so his lap is free, Ezra accepting the silent invitation after a second of hesitation, padding slowly across the carpet and clambering up.
"You want to talk about it?" The answer is always the same, but Chris still asks.
"No, thank you." It is mumbled into his shoulder and followed by a yawn, and Chris jostles him a little as he shifts the boy so he has a more secure hold on him. Ezra's eyes move to the album and rest there, heavy lidded, but he doesn't say anything else, doesn't ask even though it's clear he wants to. So Chris pulls it over and shows it to him.
So many pictures. So many memories. They linger on ones that have Ezra in them too, Adam's third birthday, a camping trip from a summer he stayed with them, happy memories. Ezra talks occasionally, remembering things, asking questions that he only half seems to expect an answer to, though Chris tries, when his throat isn't too tight. Mostly they are silent.
They fall asleep there, in the old chair in the corner of his bedroom, and when Chris wakes the album is clutched to Ezra's chest, so tight.
*.*.*.*.*
The 'Christmas Carnival' is Buck's idea. Chris wants to be annoyed, because Buck, who definitely knows better, brings it up when Ezra is right there, ears perked up for every detail he can glean.
But he can't be, not really, with Ezra's eyes shining, and the big goofball that is Buck looking so pleased with himself he could burst. He's telling some tall tale to the boy now, about carnival barkers and magic tricks, Ezra's nose wrinkling as he points out a detail that doesn't make sense, and Chris watches them, content. It's something the two have in common, that ability to make a story out of anything, and for all Ezra will likely never act the fool just to get a laugh the way Buck does, he soaks up the tricks and affectations the older man uses just as much as the story. Better, Chris thinks, for him to imitate that then the tricks he would've learned from his mother.
For the rest of the week Chris can't come around a corner without a reminder of some type, a flyer placed exactly in the center of the fridge, though a little below Chris's eye height, Ezra wearing what he claims is a ringmaster's hat and trying to put Cricket and Molly, the barn cat, through their paces. It mostly seems to involve getting them to jump up for treats when he tells them to, but Ezra insists he is making progress and will soon have a show 'that would rival any traveling act in the country and dazzle the world', throwing his hands out with a flourish at the end of every claim. Chris finds himself using the tiny, bad quality camera on his phone more than he ever thought he would, even if the subject tends to either glare or preen when he sees it pointed his way. Finds himself thinking that he needs to dig through a couple closets and figure out where the real camera ended up.
In the end, the closets remain untouched and Chris buys a new camera. But he thought about it, and as much as Chris has never been the type to pat himself on the back, he won't lie to himself either. Even that little bit is progress.
He buys a new photo album, too. Sometimes, it still hurts too much to look at the old ones. Is just too much. But it makes him smile, thinking of filling it up with new pictures. He's never been the one to do it, to pick which ones went where, Sarah did that, adding captions and small mementos from days out to each page, and it's a bittersweet excitement, tinged with memories that never quite lose their sting, but that's enough.
The future is in front of him, and it might not be anything like he once imagined it, and there might be some days where that knowledge makes him want to grab a bottle and curl up into oblivion, but he can't. He won't. Because it's so full now. It's filled with bake sales and poker games, barbecues and drug busts, and two tickets for a 'Charming Christmas Carnival' tucked into the top of a stocking hanging from his mantle.
And it, all of it, is more than enough.