Chapter 5: Photographs and Memories

Photographs and memories
All the love you gave to me
Somehow it just can't be true
That's all I've left of you

It's Sara's birthday, and finally Hopper feels ready to talk about his first daughter with his second one.

Hopper wasn't sure whether it was a blessing or a curse that he had to go to work today. In the past, he'd always taken this day off, and Flo, bless her annoyingly maternal heart, never gave him shit for it, even though he'd never told her the real reason for his absence. But last year, he'd found that being home with El was hardly better than working. It wasn't as if he could drink himself into a stupor with a twelve-year-old watching. And the silent fear in her eyes when he'd lied and said he was too sick to get out of bed had filled him with guilt that made the whole thing that much more unbearable.

It was just a normal day, he told himself as he got dressed. Just a day. Sara wasn't more dead just because she should have been turning thirteen today. He tried not to notice that his hands were shaking as he lifted his toothbrush to his mouth. He also tried not to notice the way El watched him during breakfast, as if she could tell he wasn't okay but didn't know whether she could ask him about it. He'd already rehearsed what he would say to her if she did ask. Just a cold, kid. Just a little tired. Nothing to worry about. He only hoped she wouldn't be perceptive enough to remember that this was the same date as the last time he'd been sick.

He knew that he could just tell El that it was Sara's birthday. She would understand; her capacity for empathy, even after all she'd been through, still amazed him. And while Sara had still been a secret last year, El now wore her old hair tie on her wrist every single day. He could tell her, and it would be okay.

But he also could barely bring himself to look El in the eye this morning, much less ruffle her hair or kiss the top of her head or give her a hug the way he usually did before leaving for work. He tried not to notice the confusion and hurt in her face as he shut the door behind him.

As soon as he arrived at the station, he thought that this had probably been a bad idea. As awful as he would have felt staying at home stone-cold sober while pretending to be okay for El's sake, being at work stone-cold sober while pretending to be okay for all of Hawkins was infinitely worse. He immediately shut himself in his office, not bothering to grab a donut or even a cup of coffee the way he always did. The thought of eating made him feel nauseous. He put his head in his hands. His hands were still shaking.

It was nine-fourteen. Thirteen years ago at this exact moment he'd been driving Diane to the hospital, furious at how slowly his car was moving through the several unplowed inches of early-February snow. Diane was yelling at him—hurry up, hurry up, do you want the baby to be born in the car—and he was biting his tongue to keep from snapping back at her in frustration. This birth thing was far more stressful than anyone had ever warned him about. He only hoped that, at the end of it, he'd have a son.

There was a knock on his office door and he groaned into his hands before lifting his head. He wondered whether he could get away with telling whoever it was to leave him alone. Probably not, he decided. "Come in."

The door opened and Flo stepped in before shutting it behind her. Her arms were crossed and she was looking at him sternly, but he thought he could see some sympathy there, too. "Why are you here today, Hop?" she asked, with as much gentleness as he'd ever heard from her.

She knew, then. Of course she did. Knowing Flo, she'd probably dug up Sara's birthday from some public record to confirm her suspicion years ago. Still, he pretended not to understand her meaning. "It's Monday, isn't it?" he grunted.

"Hopper." She gave him a look that he couldn't quite decipher. "Go home. We'll take care of things here."

He almost argued with her. A small part of him wanted to get through this day just to prove that he could. But he glanced at his watch and it was nine-eighteen, which meant that he and Diane had just been getting to the hospital right around now, and Diane was being wheeled into a room and the next time he stepped out of the maternity ward he'd had a tiny baby girl in his arms. No, he thought, he really couldn't handle being here.

"Thanks, Flo," he muttered, and put on his coat and hat and brushed past her without another word.

He had no intention of going back to the cabin. The wrong little girl would be there to greet him, and he felt so guilty for thinking of El that way that he couldn't stand to face her. So he just started driving, aimlessly, and rolled the windows down so that he could feel the bitterly cold air stinging his hands and face.

It wasn't that he wished El was Sara. Not really. El was his kid as much as Sara had been and he loved her with the same desperate fierceness. But this morning, when he'd watched El stumble tiredly from her bedroom to the bathroom, watched her slide into her chair at the kitchen table with a glorious bedhead, he'd felt nothing but a hollow sort of bitterness that he'd never see Sara do those things. And if he was being honest with himself, he was terrified that he'd mess up and say something to El that made her feel like his second choice, his consolation prize. And she wasn't.

But wasn't that part of the problem? Hopper turned a corner more sharply than he intended, causing his tires to screech against the pavement. How could he see El as anything but his second choice without it feeling as if he was betraying Sara? El would never have come into his life if Sara hadn't died. So loving El was like being glad that Sara was gone.

He knew that was irrational, of course. Knew that wasn't how love worked, wasn't how grief worked, wasn't how parenting worked. But it was hard to convince himself of that today.

Usually, Hopper tried to keep a handle on his memories of Sara. Tried to pack them away, move on with his life. But as he drove, he let all his memories wash over him.

Her first birthday party had been mouse themed. It had been Diane's mother's idea, based on a picture book that always made Sara giggle. It was difficult now to imagine himself as a person who would throw a mouse-themed birthday party, but he thought it might have been the most fun he'd ever had at an event. She'd smashed her cake with her tiny fist and smeared it all over her face, and then over his face when he'd tried to clean her up.

There had been an ice storm on her second birthday, and they'd had to cancel the party. Diane had been disappointed, but even without her extended family there Sara was delighted, toddling around the living room and pointing at all the decorations and clapping. She'd managed to blow out her own candles that year, after a few tries.

Hopper realized his hands had gone numb. He also realized that he did not really know where he was. He found he didn't care.

There had been other children for her next few birthdays, their friends' kids and eventually some friends of her own from school. Games and screaming and singing and more than a few tantrums and enough chaos that he and Diane had fallen into bed exhausted and vowed never to host a party like that again. Bitterly, he supposed they'd gotten their wish.

When Sara turned five, they took her to the Brooklyn Children's museum. For her sixth birthday they went ice skating. She'd refused to let go of his hand the entire time, insisting she would fall, but she hadn't wanted to leave even when the rink closed for the evening. They spent her seventh birthday in the hospital. She spent most of the day in and out of a fitful sleep. She felt too sick to eat the cupcake Hopper brought her, even though it was chocolate with strawberry frosting.

That birthday had been the last one.

Hopper didn't realize how long he'd been driving until the sun was suddenly low enough to be in his eyes. He put down the visor and looked at the time and cursed loudly. It was nearly five, and he had no idea how long it would take him to find his way home from wherever he'd ended up. Now, on top of everything else, El would be angry that he was late. And he'd already hurt her enough with his behavior this morning.

It was just after six when he finally knocked on the door of the cabin. He held his breath, half-afraid that El just wouldn't let him in, and felt sick with relief when her heard the locks click almost immediately.

He expected her to snap at him about being late. Instead she just looked up from where she sat on the couch with a book and said, a little hesitantly, "I made dinner."

And she had, he realized, glancing at the kitchen table. Instead of the usual TV dinners there was a plate for each of them with a sandwich cut jaggedly into triangles and a little pile of potato chips and even some carrot sticks. He noticed that his pile of carrot sticks was considerably bigger than hers, and it prompted the closest thing he'd experienced all day to a smile, even as it made the lump already in his throat seem to double in size.

"Thanks, kid," he said, his voice coming out strangled-sounding. He was sure she noticed, but she didn't comment, just stood from the couch to join him at the table.

It should have made him feel better, that she'd gone to the effort of making dinner to try to cheer him up. But instead it just made him feel intensely guilty. She didn't know that today was a hard day for him. He'd just been cold and distant this morning, without any explanation, and she probably thought that it was her fault, that she'd done something to upset him, and now she was trying to make up for it.

Or maybe she did know. She was watching him carefully, just like she had at breakfast. Eventually, after she'd eaten most of her food and he'd managed to pick a little at his, she asked quietly, "Are you okay?"

Hopper hadn't cried yet today. His grief for Sara was beyond tears, somehow—it felt less like sadness than a cavernous, gaping whole in his chest. But now he felt a stinging in his eyes and he had to swallow a few times before he trusted himself to answer. "Yeah," he said gruffly. He wanted to feed her the line about having a cold that he'd rehearsed for breakfast, but he didn't think he could get any more words out.

"Friends don't lie," she said. He'd only ever heard that line in the middle of an argument, when she said it accusingly, angrily. Now, though, her voice was almost gentle.

And that was more than he could handle. He dropped his face into his hands so that El couldn't see the tears escaping down his cheeks, as if his broken, defeated posture was any less incriminating. He took a few deep breaths, trying to get himself under control. When he looked back up, El looked started and uncertain, like a deer in the headlights.

"Today is Sara's birthday," he said, voice shaking.

El's face fell. "Oh," she said softly.

Hopper knew he couldn't eat any more without being sick, even though he'd hardly eaten all day. He tried not to let the additional guilt of not finishing El's meal overwhelmed him. He just needed to go to bed, he thought. He'd ask El to stick to her room for the rest of the evening so he could have some privacy, and things would be a little more bearable tomorrow. He was about to excuse himself from the table when she spoke again, sounding nervous, like she thought he might be angry with her for asking.

"Tell me about her?"

And Hopper hadn't been expecting that at all, though in retrospect he thought he should have been. Sara was, at least on paper, El's half-sister. She was closer to a real sister than that girl Kali, who El had run all the way to Chicago to find. And all that El knew about her was that she liked space and had once owned a blue hair tie.

On any other day, Hopper thought he would probably have refused. He couldn't stand to think about his little girl, much less talk about her. But he'd already spent so long today absorbed in his memories that it seemed silly and selfish to deny her this.

"She…" He didn't know how to start, had no idea how he could put Sara into words that would do her justice. Then he realized that he maybe didn't have to. "Come here," he said, and beckoned for El to follow him as he went to open the basement hatch.

She watched him pull out the box labeled with her name, wide-eyed, and he knew she was probably wondering why she'd never gone through it herself. He knew exactly what was inside this box, but still he had to steel himself before opening it. When he did, he immediately let his eyes fall shut, squeezing back a sudden resurgence of tears.

He took the box to the couch and waited for El to sit down beside him before lifting out the stack of photographs that sat on top. He held them out to her and she took them slowly, careful not to let her fingertips touch them much. He wondered if she had learned that somewhere or if it was instinct.

"Sara," she whispered, gazing down at the top photograph. Sara must have been four years old in that one, sitting in front of a Christmas tree and wearing a little gingham dress. She wasn't looking at the camera but at the half-opened present in her lap. She was smiling.

Hopper stared at the picture for a long time before he could make himself speak. "That was Christmas," he said finally. "The box she's holding has a new Magna-Doodle in it. She loved her old one so much she wore it out."

El didn't look up at him, still gazing at the picture. "What's a Magna-Doodle?"

"It's a…it's something you can draw on with this special pen that lets you erase it so you can use it over and over again."

El nodded her understanding and flipped to the next picture. Sara was a little older here; it must have been just before her diagnosis. She was a wearing a pink swimsuit and splashing gleefully in a kiddie pool in a yard that Hopper couldn't identify. Some friend or relative who he hadn't thought about in years, probably.

"She loved swimming," he said. "Was so excited when we took her to a real big pool for the first time. Couldn't wait to go off the diving board." He didn't tell El that Sara hadn't lived long enough to ever go off a diving board. She hadn't been a strong enough swimmer before she got sick for it to be safe.

"Pretty," murmured El, her finger hovering over Sara's laughing face.

Hopper couldn't speak, so he just nodded.

In the next photo, Sara's hair was up in pigtails. El looked closely at them, then traced the hair tie on her wrist, and looked up at Hopper for confirmation.

"Yeah," he said, after swallowing hard. "That's the one."

Suddenly El set the photographs aside and leaned against him, wrapping an arm around his middle and laying her head against his shoulder. "I wish I could meet her," she whispered.

He wrapped an arm around El's shoulders to pull her closer and kissed the top of her head. "Me too, kid."

She shifted a little so that she could look up at him. "Can I…" She trailed off, looking hesitant. "Can I call her…sister?"

For a moment, Hopper allowed himself to imagine it: a world in which Sara had survived and he had also somehow ended up with El. They would be close to the same age. He imagined them playing together, arguing, swapping clothes and sharing secrets and all the things that sisters were supposed to do.

"Of course you can." He was crying again, tears dripping down his cheeks and running into his beard, and he scrubbed them away with his free hand. "She always wanted a sister."

"Really?"

"Really."

She picked up the stack of photographs again and looked at the next one. Sara sat behind a huge pink cake with four candles in it. "Happy birthday, sister," whispered El.