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"I found some of your old stuff in the attic," Laura told Joe one mealtime.
She had gone up into the attic to get down some of Frank's old winter coats to see if one would fit Joe until they were able to find him a new coat that could cope with the sudden cold snap. Joe had coats of his own, coats he had clearly cared greatly for if the neat repairs were any indication. But he admitted he felt a little weird wearing them around the Hardys – they had been gifts from Marsden or the Bramptons – and Laura had been keen to provide him with an alternative.
And up in the attic she had found boxes upon boxes of things. Items that had been too painful to keep close and too painful to get rid of. She had asked him if he wanted to see them, preparing herself to spend a day when the boys were at school looking through them if Joe was not keen on the idea. Joe had managed three out of the five days of his first week at school. Laura had been furious with Frank and Joe for skipping school on their first day, furious with the teachers for failing to contact her until both her sons had been AWOL for two hours. She had forgiven Frank and Joe quickly, accepted it when Joe had declared after one day at school that he needed a day to take stock of everything. She'd let him stay at home and been extremely proud that he had managed two days in a row to end the week. If increasing his time at school in increments was the only solution, she was on board.
But Joe had been keen to see the things she had, if not a little apprehensive. Frank had been thrilled by the idea, excitedly talking about all the stuff he was sure was upstairs in the boxes marked 'Joe', but Laura had quietly asked him if he could allow it to just be a moment between her and Joe. The last thing they needed was for Joe to become overwhelmed and feel like he had to put on some sort of front before Frank and Fenton. So Fenton took Frank out to get pizza while she moved the boxes into the sitting room.
"Dr Miller thinks this will be good for me," Joe said.
Laura hated how much she read into that. She hated how she felt like she overanalysed everything her youngest did. But Joe had a habit of saying 'Dr Miller says' or 'Dr Miller thinks' when he was very nervous about something. Not only did it show that Joe had actively brought the subject up with his therapist (who he had taken to seeing twice a week given how he was experiencing so many new things) but it also showed whatever Joe was really feeling about a situation was a weakness he was not willing to share.
"Dr Miller is a very smart man," Laura smiled.
Joe nodded. He opened the door, looking inside. There were four cardboard boxes out on the side and a battered old suitcase. He crossed over to the suitcase first. With shaking hands, he freed the metal clasps. Neatly packed inside were a child's clothes. T-shirts and jeans and a little suit. A sun hat and swimming shorts and a dressing gown. There was a set of mittens and dozens of pairs of socks. Joe found his hands catching on a small raincoat.
"We gave some of your clothes away," Laura admitted. "Our grief councillor thought it might help if we knew the clothes were helping another family but… It didn't help and I couldn't give away most of it. Some of these clothes were Frank's before they were yours. But that coat… Do you remember us getting it?"
Joe didn't respond. He just kept his eyes on the coat, suddenly pale as if the items were haunting him. Laura didn't push him.
"Your father had just finished a very long case that had taken him away from us for three weeks. And all he wanted to do when he got back was spend time with me and you and Frank. So he suggested we go camping. And we were both exhausted, me from looking after two small boys and your father from catching criminals. We forgot the suitcase that had all of the clothes we'd packed for you and Frank. We didn't realise until we were at the campsite and neither of us wanted to drive back. So we took you and Frank to the nearest town to buy all the clothes you'd need for the trip. You didn't want to buy clothes. You wanted that coat so we let you convince us to buy it. And you didn't take it off the entire trip. You were wearing sandals and that coat all week."
Laura laughed gently at the fond memory. Joe nodded. He carefully folded the coat back up into the case, saying he could vaguely remember going camping.
Then he turned to the boxes. Laura watched him, breath caught in her throat. Slowly Joe opened the closest. He reached in, picking out a plastic folder full of a child's art.
"You were quite the artist," Laura said. "Frank liked to look at art but you liked to make it."
There were a lot of drawings and a variety of different finger paintings. One picture had the imprint of leaves on it. In the corner of many, an adult had written 'Joe' although there were some where Joe recognised his own young handwriting. One, a hand-drawn picture of five stick figures on a beach, had Joe's handwriting all over it with attempts to scrawl names and a neater handwriting just below translating what each one said. Joe lingered, staring at it. There was him, Frank and their parents. And there was also his aunt.
"You were very fond of your aunt," Laura told him. "And she liked to pretend she was very stern but she couldn't resist it when you would pout at her."
Joe nodded. He could remember seeing pictures of her, see the fondness on all of their faces when they talked about Gertrude. All of them seemed to adore her and Joe got the impression it was upsetting her no end to be forced to stay away from her brother and his family for so long. Yet no one seemed at all surprised that she hadn't come barging in. Joe knew it was an expression of love for him, that she wanted to give him the space to settle in. He wasn't sure he liked it. He would have preferred if she was aggressive about it, demanding to be allowed to see him. That was more the thing he was used to, even when it came to affection.
Feeling very numb, Joe slipped the drawings away. He found another folder, full of paperwork from his young life, notes from daycare, hospital bills. A lot of paperwork he had already seen in the efforts to pull his life back. He considered opening the folder, wondering if he might feel more comfortable going through clinical detached paperwork, the sort of papers he wasn't meant to have an emotional response to. One look at Laura told him that was not the exercise, that she was eager to see him explore the rest of the boxes.
Laura gasped as Joe pulled up a battered and scratched plastic magnifying glass.
"Oh, you loved that," she smiled, her mind crowding with memories of Joe playing in the garden.
A smile fixed itself into place on her youngest's face.
"For solving mysteries," he grinned.
"For finding bugs. Frank wanted to be an entomologist. You liked to follow him about, help him catch his specimens. You would dress up as an explorer."
"With the hat?" Joe said.
Laura's face lit up and she nodded. She reached into the box, picking out a plastic jar with a magnifying glass fitted into the lid. She turned it slowly in her hands, remembering all the times her little boys had come running over to where she sat reading in the garden to show her the latest beetle they had come across.
And then something else caught her eye. She reached in, pulling out a battered old blanket.
"Oh, you would take this everywhere with you when you were a baby. You'd cry non-stop when you didn't have it."
"Was that the blanket you took me home in?" Joe asked.
Laura shook her head, saying that Joe had never particularly liked that blanket.
"When you were two, you stole this from your grandparent's dog. He put up with so much from you and Frank. We tried to get you to give the blanket back but you didn't want to so we washed it as many times as we could and let you have it. Thankfully he'd only had it a month before you decided you wanted it."
"And that was your… Dad's parents, right? They had the dog?"
"Yes," Laura said. "Grandma and Grandpa Hardy. Their dog was this big German Shepherd. He looked like a police dog. I'd say he would never hurt a fly but he once attacked a man who came there looking to hurt them to get to your father. He never would hurt anyone with good intentions. Poor thing used to wait by the door whenever he saw Frank because he was so sure you would be with him."
"They don't have a dog anymore do they?" Joe asked.
Laura nodded, saying the dog had passed away a few years ago. She paused, studying Joe. Then she asked if he liked dogs.
"I don't know," Joe said. "Mom and… Sorry! The Bramptons! The Bramptons never liked dogs."
Laura fought the urge to reach out toward her son and place a comforting hand on his shoulder. She knew he would not like someone trying to touch him.
"You don't need to apologise. We all make slip-ups. Number of times I only pick up three sets of cutlery when laying the table."
Joe pulled an unsteady smile onto his face. Then he reached into the box. He produced a cuddly toy T-Rex. It was clearly well loved. One of the limbs had been sewn back on and some of the green fur was patchy in places.
"Oh! Rexie!" Laura gasped. "You had two cuddly toys you were absolutely obsessed with. Rexie and this octopus toy we bought you on a trip to an aquarium. Frank has the octopus in his room. I'm sure he would give it back to you if you…"
Joe shook his head, saying it was fine. He held the T-Rex up, staring into the black plastic eyes.
"You've had it from the day you were born. Frank was being watched by some family friends so, after we were sure everything had gone well, your dad decided to bring him to the hospital when he came back to pick me and you up. And on the way they pulled in at a store and Frank picked out the T-rex. We were worried he might want to keep it but the moment he saw you he dropped it on top of you so you could play with it. He could be a little heavy-handed at first with you. Took him a little while to understand babies are breakable. One time you lost Rexie at the park and…"
"I remember," Joe said, turning his eyes onto Laura. "I cried and cried."
"You did. Kept demanding we go back. And of course we did. And then Rexie was covered in mud so you sat nearby as I got him cleaned and ran off to cuddle him before I had a chance to dry him."
"I was just so glad to have him back."
Laura nodded. She walked toward Joe.
"Can I…?" she asked, angling a hand toward him.
Joe nodded. Laura smiled. She took her son into her arms, running her hand through his hair.
"I am so glad to have you back, Joe. You and your brother are the most precious things to me."
"Can I keep Rexie? Please?" Joe asked.
Laura pulled back, looking at her son as if he was mad.
"Yes, of course. Everything in those boxes is yours. You can have whatever you want."
"I lied," Joe said.
Dr Miller frowned. It was only his fifth session with Joe but he had come to see a few things in the blond that had formed into patterns. Many of Joe's relationships were transactional. He didn't really bother with small talk or pleasantries. It was something Miller knew they needed to work on but the way the boy immediately got down to business the moment he walked into the room had grown on him.
"To who?"
"To Mrs Hardy."
"Your mother?" Miller frowned. "What did you lie about?"
"Mrs Hardy brought out all these things from when I was a little kid. Cuddly toys. Photographs. Clothes I had worn and toys I played with."
Dr Miller nodded, letting the silence press Joe for more information.
"I told her I recognised them. But I didn't. Not a single one of them. I just pretended, made vague comments so she thought I knew what I was talking about. I read her expressions too. You could see her begin to frown so I would change what I was saying. Marsden taught me to do it. Stage mind readers do it."
Miller nodded, saying it was a well-known trick but one that took a lot of practice to get right.
"And all those things she showed you, you remembered none of them?"
Joe nodded. He let out a sigh, saying that it had felt like he had broken into someone else's house. They were the things belonging to a child, a child who might have had similar interests to him, but they weren't his.
"There's this cuddly toy I took into my room that I told her I remembered but I only knew the name because she told me. She says it was my favourite, that Mr Hardy and Frank picked it out for me when Fenton was bringing Frank to meet me in the hospital but…"
Joe trailed off with a shrug as if dismissing the thought.
"Does it hurt more that you lied or that you didn't remember them?"
Shaking his head, Joe admitted he didn't know.
"Do you know why you lied?" Miller asked.
Joe shifted back in his seat. Miller could tell that was a yes. He sat there patiently, allowing Joe to collect his thoughts.
"She… She really wanted me to remember."
"So you are going to pretend you do?"
Joe met Miller's eye.
"I know she wouldn't have hit me. Like… Like when you walk out on those glass platforms above big drops. You know it's safe. You know it's not going to smash and let you fall. But you still feel nervous, right? That's… That's what it feels like with them. I know in my head they are good people. I just can't get… Whatever part of me feels this way to… I realised I didn't remember anything and I just thought 'she's going to slap me. And then Mr Hardy is going to come home and I'm going to end up locked up in that attic until Frank can get me out or they call the police to have me taken away.'."
The doctor nodded.
"Have you spoken to anyone about this? Frank perhaps?"
"I'm good at lying," Joe admitted.
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