Thank you for everyone who reviewed the last chapter! Sorry the wait was a little longer than usual but I hope you enjoy this new chapter.
A lot of people made the mistake of underestimating Laura Hardy. They presumed that a man like Fenton would have his pick of beautiful women and had picked the prettiest girl in the neighbourhood to marry. Police thought it. Criminals thought it. The guy who owned the local grocery store thought it.
The truth was that Fenton had fallen for Laura first. And he had fallen hard. She hadn't been at all interested in him until she had seen him staying late one night to begin studying for his exams. And Fenton, while willingly acknowledging his wife was beautiful, hadn't fallen for her because of her looks. He loved her mind and her heart and her stubbornness. Everyone estimated just how intelligent Laura was and more than once her ability to give the great Fenton Hardy a new perspective had led to a dangerous criminal ending up behind bars.
That was why Frank was so intrigued to be called down by his mother one evening to find she had draped a tablecloth over the table and the bowls that rested on it. Frank stared at the covered table. He could make out a cluster of bowls in the centre and smaller shapes concealed in front of four of the seats. He briefly wondered if they were placemats but his mother only ever got the placemats about for special occasions and they weren't expecting any guests. Frank glanced up toward his parents, an eyebrow raised. They smiled at each other, Fenton's arm around his wife's waist.
Joe entered the dining room a moment later, frowning as he took in the scene.
Frank could sense his anxiety immediately skyrocketing. It was as if Joe expected that the tablecloth would be whipped away and Fenton and Laura would reveal they were giving him back to his foster family or had accepted some bribe to hand him over to one of the New York gangs who wanted revenge. Turning to him, Frank tried to catch his eye. He wanted to offer him all the reassurance he could.
"I have come up with a game I want us all to try," Laura said, swiftly explaining herself before Joe could begin to react. "It's an ice breaker game, help us all get to know each other better."
Pulling back the tablecloth, she revealed four places had been set out. What Frank had thought were placemats turned out to be four small whiteboards, black pens alongside. In the centre of the table were four bowls containing popcorn, M and Ms, candy corns and Skittles.
As the boys studied the set-up, Laura produced a set of handmade, laminated cards from her pocket, explaining on the cards were a set of easy questions about a person.
"We're going to take it in turn picking a card. Then we read it aloud and everyone has to answer that question for that person and write it down on the whiteboard. Anyone who gets the same answer as the person who read the question gets to take a sweet. Because this game is going to be harder for Joe, I think he should be allowed to take two sweets if he gets a question right. How does that sound?"
Frank loved the idea and rushed to show his enthusiasm, hoping it would convince Joe to give it a go. After all, they need to get to know Joe and it felt like a good way to do it without him feeling like he was being interrogated.
It took all of Frank's strength not to stare as Joe pulled out one of the chairs at the table and sunk into a space. He picked up the whiteboard, uncapped the pen and looked at them all expectantly.
"Who first?"
"Okay, Joe, it's your go," Laura said.
They'd been around the four of them a few times. Joe, understandably, wasn't doing as well as the rest of the family. They were a little bit more lenient on him with his answers. They'd let him get away with putting lion down instead of tiger for Fenton's favourite zoo animal because they were both big cats and accepted his answer that Frank had wanted to be a detective when he was a child even if the specific answer was forensic entomologist because he had started wanting to be a detective aged seven and that had meant he was still a child.
Joe picked up a card.
"Favourite sport," he read aloud.
He glanced around him as if trying to anticipate the answers he was going to be given. And then he began to write his own out. Frank turned down to his board, brow furrowing. He had been in Joe's bedroom in New York. He was sure he had seen some sports equipment in there. And then he remembered the baseball bat he had seen. Grinning triumphantly, he wrote baseball.
"Everyone got an answer?" Fenton asked as he finished writing his own guess.
The question was met by hums of agreement and the detective turned his board around.
"Basketball," he suggested.
"At my height?" Joe questioned.
"You're a Hardy, we all grow tall," Fenton said.
Joe shook his head. His gaze passed onto Laura.
"I went with football," she said.
Joe was forced to admit she wasn't right. He turned to Frank who had a smirk on his face as he turned his board around to show them he had written 'E-sports'.
"Ooh, that's a good suggestion," Laura said.
Frank's face fell when Joe shook his head. The blond glanced down hesitantly toward his whiteboard before looking back up at them.
"Not really sure if it is a sport but… uh… skateboarding."
"Of course, that's a sport," Fenton rushed to reassure him.
Frank hummed his agreement but he wasn't truly focusing. His mind was analysing the answer. He knew there was lots to draw from it but tried to warn himself not to take every answer Joe gave like it was some big mystery. Joe's favourite sport being skateboarding didn't mean he was necessarily against taking part in team games, he might have just never had the chance. And it didn't necessarily mean that Joe was amazing at skateboarding.
But there was one thing that Frank couldn't ignore.
"You didn't bring a skateboard with you," he remarked.
Joe's attention firmly settled onto Frank. The older boy rushed to reassure Joe he didn't think he was lying. It was just an observation. Joe had not brought a single skateboard with him when he had come to stay in Bayport. And the one thing the Bramptons had been very good at was buying Joe things. There was no way they wouldn't have gotten Joe a skateboard.
"I left my skateboards in storage in New York," Joe admitted. "I didn't know if there would be anywhere to use them in Bayport and…"
"There's a skatepark," Frank reassured him. "We should go down there sometime."
Joe's face lit up. It was subtle, the guarded look that Joe often gave when he wasn't quite sure he had the right to be openly happy about something.
"Okay, my turn now."
The next few turns around the table had not been good for Joe and Laura got the terrible feeling her plan was backfiring. There were only so many times they could let Joe count vague answers before he would feel like they were taking pity on him but he just wasn't getting the questions right.
And Frank was, of course, dominating. She could sense Joe growing increasingly frustrated, feeling like the game was just a demonstration of how little he belonged in the family.
And she felt even worse as a question about Frank's favourite colour led to her and Fenton picking up sweets while Joe was forced to sit back. He was glaring at his whiteboard and Laura couldn't help but wish she had put down the wrong answer to the question, just so Joe didn't feel so bad about not knowing.
Because she could tell it was annoying him. Not just because he wasn't able to take sweets. He knew that he should know a majority of the answers that were being posed. Through no fault of his own, he didn't. But the people who had caused that were being punished. She hoped the courts realised no punishment would ever be enough. They had taken ten years of Joe's life from him, left him isolated and anxious, distant from the family that loved him dearly.
And then it was Joe's turn. He picked up a card.
"My favourite place to go on holiday."
There was a grim tiredness to his voice. Laura considered clearing the next go around would be the final one. She didn't want to make learning about his family members feel like a take he didn't want to take part in after all.
She glanced down at her board, feeling utterly lost. There were so many places and Joe's family had been rich. He could have been on holiday anywhere. He might not have even enjoyed holidays. She took a steadying breath, trying to think of somewhere Joe might enjoy. Florida seemed like a good bet, Orlando specifically. She could see him enjoying all the attractions in the city, being desperate to try out the theme parks.
Fenton had said the same thing but Frank had written 'Holiday home in California' on his board. Joe's face brightened at the sight of the answer. He nodded toward Frank, saying that was right.
"He told me when we were in New York," Frank shrugged off but Laura could tell how much it meant to Joe to know Frank not only listened but remembered a comment made weeks beforehand.
"What sort of things do you do there?" Laura asked, desperate to capitalise.
"Scuba dive," Joe said as Frank tossed a piece of popcorn into his mouth. "I surf a little too."
Laura reported both her husband and son could scuba dive before tacking on that she had always been tempted to try. It was something of a white lie. She had always considered scuba diving but had never really believed she would ever give it a go. But, if it was something she and her three boys could bond over, she was determined to learn.
"Great! Frank told me that he's swum with sharks before!"
"That went well," Laura said as she picked up the empty bowls.
They'd finished a few more rounds of the game before calling an end to it and allowing Frank and Joe to clear up the rest of the snacks. She was keeping the cards, planning to play the game again in a few weeks, subtly prove to Joe how much he was learning about the family over time.
Fenton agreed, pressing a kiss to her cheek as he told her what a great idea it was.
"I was thinking, Joe has the key to that storage locker all his stuff is in, right? Why don't we take him up there and help him pick up some more stuff? Doesn't seem fair his skateboards are all the way in New York when we have more than enough space for them."
Fenton grinned.
"A great idea," he told her.
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