The arc of red light on the horizon continued to shrink, and one by one, all of the lights in the courtyard flickered to life. They had another half hour before a warden would usher everyone back inside.
"Shit," Mitch murmured. Dipper didn't look at him, but he could assume Mitch was shaking his head and scratching his beard. Getting the man to shut up was a feat, and Mitch hadn't said a word through the last hour of Dipper's story. "So you're a murderer." He scoffed. "Didn't peg you for a murderer, Bigfoot. Maybe a... pedophile, or somethin'."
Dipper glowered at him. "Fuck off," he said.
"So hold on a second. If you killed a man, how come you ain't in for life?"
"I was only charged with voluntary manslaughter, after everyone found out what he'd been doing to her. Ten year sentence, out in eight for good behavior."
"Hold on, 'voluntary manslaughter?' That sounds a lot like murder to me."
"It's considered voluntary manslaughter if some kind of emotional distress leads you to do it. In my case, I'd just watched him... you know. Through the window."
"Well, shit. And that was the last time you saw her? Didn't she ever come to visit?"
"She did. Once."
"And what did she say?"
Even though it was eight years ago – three months into his sentence – it was one of Dipper's most recent memories. Lying in his cell, chewing cafeteria food, playing poker in the rec room – these things were all easily forgettable, leaving plenty of room in his head for the few times people had come to see him. The people he had shooed away. Wendy had walked in with her hands clasped at her front and approached the table slowly, as if afraid Dipper would crumble like a Jenga tower if she made any sudden movement. "She just started talking about normal things. She told me what her brothers were up to. And her friends from work. I wasn't really processing what she was saying, and then I snapped and told her to leave."
Mitch was apparently so invested in the story that that angered him. "What? Why?"
"Because when I killed her dad and left, I figured that was it. I'd spent three months coming to terms with the fact that I wouldn't ever see her again, and then she showed up out of the blue and acted like nothing had ever happened. I thought it was pretty obvious that she couldn't be friends with someone who murdered her father, but I guess she didn't agree."
"What did she do then?"
"Well, she left, when I told her to."
"Fucking hell, Bigfoot. You're crazier than I thought you were, turning away a girl like that."
"The hell are you talking about? You don't even know her."
"I think I know her pretty well, after everything you told me."
"Whatever. I wasn't 'turning her away,' I was saving her. If I was capable of killing somebody, then I couldn't trust myself to be anywhere near her. She's had enough... unstable men in her life. She deserved something better. Deserved to be around normal people."
"Have you heard anything about her? Do you know where she is? Other people must have come visit you, right? At least early on?"
"My parents came twice, but they could hardly look at me. My uncle came a few times. And my sister used to visit a lot. Last I saw her was five years ago, though. She said Wendy moved back to Colorado and she was studying again. Not sure what."
"Your sister as in your twin sister? Why did she stop coming?"
"Same reason as Wendy. I told her to. Mabel was a little more persistent, though."
Mitch lit up another cigarette, an orange glow on his face in the fading daylight. The guys down at the tables packed up their dominoes and wandered inside. "Wendy was the girl from your stories, wasn't she?"
Dipper nodded. It was a trilogy now – Willow, the redhead orphan from the village of Cameria, born the daughter of two magi, with an ability to turn her hair to flames and channel them with her hands. In the first book, she breached the castle in Nathos and slew the king who molested her as a child. In the second, she was crowned queen of Nathos. And in the third, she fell in love with her best friend, Neil – the first person in Cameria to join her on her quest – and through Neil, she learned to trust men again, discovered the joys of making love, and relinquished the terror. Dipper had been careful to make Neil as different from himself as possible, create somebody that truly deserved a heroine like Willow.
"So you were telling me things about your life all along, in your own Bigfoot way."
"I guess so."
They were quiet for a moment. Mitch sighed. "Reckon you'll get much sleep tonight?"
"Nope." Dipper stood up and stretched out all his joints. "Might as well turn in, though." He started to descend the metal benches, down to the baseball field, his steps echoing around the empty courtyard.
Mitch called out from behind him, "you're up at six A.M., ain't ya?"
"Yep."
"That's it? No goodbye? No 'thank you?'"
Dipper turned and smirked up at him. "What would I thank you for?"
"For... I don't know. The good times?"
"If you consider anything that's happened in here 'good times,' you need to get outside more." He climbed back up the bleachers and shook Mitch's hand. "A handshake sort of implies mutual respect, right? Neither of us should respect one another. We're both killers."
"What, d'you wanna kiss instead?" He took a drag on his cigarette. "Say I ever get out of here and I want to look you up. Where would I find you?"
"No idea. Depends on a lot of things. I still think about Alaska a lot. I can see myself in a cabin out in the wilderness. Windows in all four walls but all I can see for miles is snow and trees."
"Alaska's a big place."
"You can just assume this is the last time you'll see me, then."
He nodded and grinned. "Take care of yourself, Dipper."
Again, halfway to the bottom of the benches, Dipper stopped. He looked out over the ocean, the reflection of the moon, and at the lights gradually multiplying in Coos Bay. "Tell you what," he said. "One thing I will miss is the view."
"I hear they're better on the outside," Mitch said. "Less barbed wire."
Dipper sat on the wooden bench, and when the rumbling bus in front of him pulled out of its bay, the view of the opposite side of the street opened up – parking lots for the various stores and offices, mostly. The sidewalk was busy. A woman walked by with an empty stroller and two young boys trailed behind her, competing to jump between bricks without stepping on the cracks. Dipper tucked his feet under the bench to make room for a mobility scooter coming from the other direction. The sun kept peeking out from behind the clouds, showing itself for a few seconds, warming his face, but then disappearing again.
He looked to his left and spotted a bright red Coca-Cola machine a few benches down, bordering a patch of grass and a row of trees. He smiled to himself. As silly as it was, that was his first taste of freedom. Unsurprisingly, though, it was cash-only, and all Dipper had was the debit card he'd been given that morning with the balance he'd earned working the laundry room. The ATM was out of service, so he wandered back over to the ticket window and asked the lady behind the glass if he could get any cash if he gave her his card.
"I'm sorry, sir, we only offer cash-back if you're buying a ticket. Would you like to buy a ticket?"
Dipper hesitated, unsure if he should say anything. "I bought a ticket, like, five minutes ago, remember?"
"Okay, but I can give you cash-back if you buy another."
"Well... I don't really need to go anywhere else."
Her face twisted into an exaggerated wince. "Sorry."
"Okay. That's fine. Hey, can I get the time, please?"
"It is... eleven thirty-seven."
"Great. Thank you." He walked back over to the sidewalk and checked his ticket again. Medford to San Francisco, departing at 1:20 this afternoon. He glanced left, then right, and the street seemed to go on infinitely in both directions, no giant concrete walls to stop him, nobody posted up with a pistol or a baton, dedicated to watching his every move. The vending machine he could handle; this was a little overwhelming.
He chose left, back past the vending machine, past the row of trees. He crossed an intersecting road, passed a nondescript brick building on the corner, and then suddenly he entered a throng of people, whizzing between stores and cafés on either side of the street. For a few hundred steps, he was staring into the faces of people walking past, fascinated, really, that they all blended perfectly into society. He kept imagining their backstories, like he had with the people on the decks of distant cruise ships from the courtyard. One woman, on her cell phone, noticed him staring and frowned, and he ducked into a random store before he had a chance to creep someone out and break his parole in record time.
A bell above the door dinged when he stepped inside. It was a small, claustrophobic clothing store, sweaters and hoodies hung on the walls all the way to the ceiling, and baseball caps hanging from the ceiling itself. He couldn't step through the aisles without brushing the racks of shirts on either side, like pushing through bracken on a woodland trail. Natalie Imbruglia played quietly on the speakers overhead.
He hadn't planned on buying anything, until he thought about it and decided that the black sweater and camo pants he had been given the day before weren't even close to what he would have worn on the outside, eight years ago. He was flicking through a row of shirts when he heard a quiet, high-pitched voice behind him, and he jumped.
"Can I help you with anything, sir?" She was short, with wide eyes and neat brunette hair. Smiling. Couldn't have been any older than eighteen. And yet, she made him jump.
"I'm– I'm fine. Thank you."
"Okay." She lingered for a second, still smiling, then made a beeline for the checkout counter.
With his head turned away from her, he frowned at his own behavior. He had been fine talking to his parole officer that morning – in fact the interaction had been polite and friendly. If all he was going to do all day was stare at strangers and stammer at basic questions, he might as well have robbed the store and headed back to prison. At least there it was more appropriate to act like a creep.
He drew the curtain of the one fitting room in the store, which was more of a box than a room, and tried on a blue and green flannel shirt and some jeans. In the mirror, he caught a glimpse of who he used to be, before becoming a convict, and he smiled, and with a burst of confidence he smiled at the girl behind the counter when he went to check out.
"Would you like a bag for that?"
"Yeah, please. Um, can I get ten dollars back in cash, too?"
"Sure." She bagged up the clothes and he paid thirty-nine dollars on his card. "Have a nice day," she said as he left the store, and when he was back out on the street, he wanted to turn around and go back inside to talk to her. She was friendly, and nobody else had entered the store while he was in there – she may not have had a whole lot of company. But again, he had trouble deciding whether that would have been considered unusual, so he erred on the side of caution and headed back to the bus station.
On his way, the smell of bacon lured him over to the other side of the street, to a bustling little café, with people sitting at metal tables on the sidewalk. Hunger wasn't a sensation he experienced all too often in prison – there was no point being hungry for prison food, because your stomach always ended up disappointed. He bought a sub with sausage and cheese and peppers, and wolfed down half of it before realizing it was the best thing he had eaten in years, and savored the rest.
And back at the vending machine, he inserted two dollars, pressed the button for Dr Pepper, and when he reached into the tray at the bottom, he pulled out two bottles of Dr Pepper. Somebody had just left one in the tray. He laughed to himself, took one and left the other, and then there was an hour of sitting and waiting. Luckily, he had become quite good at both of those things.
It took a total of ten hours to get to San Francisco. The bus stopped three times, various characters filtering in and out, but it was never more than a quarter full. It was dark long before they got to the city. They drove through his home town, Piedmont, and his heart raced when they passed the turning for his old neighborhood, thinking he might see his parents standing at the bottom of the road, or something, but they might not have even lived there anymore. They might not have been in the same town, the same state, or even the same country. He thought briefly about the possessions he had left behind in his childhood home, the things he hadn't deemed important enough to load into his pickup when he moved north. Books, magazines, band posters, old clothes, old toys. He wondered what his parents had done with them. Wouldn't want a murderer's belongings in your house, tainting the place.
Then they rolled out of Piedmont, downhill and over the bridge into the city. Dipper watched out the window as the brightly lit skyscrapers came into view, and once they were off the bridge, he expected to see more of San Francisco, but the bus passed a handful of gargantuan offices and apartment buildings and pulled up outside the bus station. It was kind of anticlimactic.
When he stepped off the bus he asked the driver if there were any hotels nearby, and the driver gave him walking directions to a Holiday Inn a few blocks away.
He asked at the front desk if he could buy a toothbrush and toothpaste, thinking it would raise all kinds of red flags, but the lady reached under the counter and gave him both for free, without a second glance. They didn't notice or care that he had no luggage, either.
It was 1 A.M. when he went to bed, and 4 A.M. when he got to sleep. The unending chatter, coughing, and breathing of inmates had kept him awake for years, and now the lack thereof was having the same effect. The silence was unnerving. He kept drifting to sleep then jolting awake again.
Up at 8. It took him a full minute, eyes cloudy and mind hazy, to remember where he was, and when he did recall, all he felt was a twinge of sadness. He showered for a half hour, wondering why he felt that niggling sadness, and landed on the decision that it was lonely, here, even though he had done as much talking that morning as he would have any morning in jail.
Breakfast perked him up. He loaded up his plate with bacon, eggs, hash browns, then half a watermelon and two croissants for dessert. He sat at a table for two by the window, and spent half the time ignoring the view of the street below and marveling at the warm, orange light flooding the hotel restaurant. He didn't think it could have been all natural light from the sunrise, it was too brilliant, but he couldn't come up with any other explanation, either.
He rode the elevator up to his room, his stomach so full he could practically hear it jiggling, then lay back on the bed until his chest burned with indigestion.
And then he sat up, and it was time. Time to see his sister.
He showered again, left his new clothes hanging in the bathroom for a while until they smelled less like bacon and more like soap. He stuffed the black sweater and the camo pants into the tiny waste paper basket under the glass table. He brushed his teeth, and left the toothbrush and toothpaste on the bathroom counter, because they wouldn't fit in his pockets without jutting out. The man at the checkout desk was as polite and disinterested as the lady who had checked him in the night before. Dipper didn't know if hailing taxis was a thing of the past – he had traveled eight years into the future, after all – so he asked the man behind the desk to call one for him. He sat on a white leather couch in the lobby and flicked through brochures for nearby tourist attractions. None of the words were registering, because he was too nervous, but if he didn't read something, if he left himself to his own hyperactive thoughts, then he knew that he would start tapping his foot, and start biting his nails, and perpetually survey the room to the point of being shifty enough to raise alarm, and somebody would come over and ask if he was alright, and if they were perceptive enough to notice that he was not alright then it would only be a matter of time before they realized he was a murderer, too.
Somebody called out his name and he started. It was the man at the desk, telling him his taxi was outside.
It was warm, but windy. He crossed a busy sidewalk and got in the back of the cab. He gave the driver the name of the street and they traveled west across the city, along a straight of apartment buildings and hotels and other businesses. With every red light they stopped at, the urge to jump out of the car and run became greater. He should have gone shopping for a phone charger – that way he could have phoned ahead, checked if he was even heading to the right address, and if Mabel didn't want to see him, it would have been easier on both of them if she said it over the phone. The taxi passed a set of iron gates and a plaque that said Presidio, and suddenly they were surrounded by beautiful greenery, flowerbeds, and large cream-colored houses with utopian front lawns. It was so far away from what his life had become that none of it felt real. He didn't know how close they were, now, but it couldn't have been far. He wanted to ask the driver to cruise around the park for a couple of hours while he worked up some courage. The seat of the cab – and the warmth of the sunlight through the window – was just becoming comfortable, and far more comfortable than how the rest of his day would play out, surely.
The taxi slowed to a stop at the foot of a hill and Dipper felt his insides squirm. On his right, a narrow road led up the hill, curving to the left, houses either side.
"This is it," the driver said, over his shoulder. "You sure you don't want me to go further up?"
"No, that's fine," Dipper said, unable to tear his eyes from the road.
"Eighteen twenty," the driver said.
Dipper handed him a twenty from his wallet and mumbled "keep the change." The first thing he noticed, when the cab was out of sight, was how quiet it was. The hustle and bustle of the city had been replaced entirely by birdsong, and that, together with the cloudless sky, inspired enough optimism for Dipper to set aside his worries and start up the road. It was cracked and weathered, but the houses were modern and clean. As he passed he inspected the numbers beside the front doors, and stopped at 1610. It was semidetached. A spacious front lawn, neatly trimmed, a narrow concrete path cutting through it. No porch, but three steps up to the front door. The house backed onto another road, and behind that, woodland.
Still, there was no sign that she would be inside. No indication that she lived there. Dipper ambled up the path, his eyes on the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of somebody he didn't recognize, another family entirely, so that he would have an excuse to retreat to another hotel room, and investigate where she had moved to, and come up with something he could say when he first saw her.
Because when he rang the doorbell, he still didn't know what he was going to say.
And when she answered the door, and her jaw dropped open and she covered her mouth with her hands, tears flooding her stunned, motionless eyes, all that he said, in a weak, broken voice, was, "hey, Mabel."
She lunged forward and threw her arms around his neck, with force you wouldn't think her tiny body capable of. He steadied his feet so they wouldn't tumble down the steps, and gently put his hands on his sister's back while she wept into his neck. Dipper didn't cry, he didn't feel much of anything, but he supposed that his emotions were out of practice, and they would catch up to him later.
Mabel pulled back and held his cheeks in her hands. "It's you," she murmured. "It's really you."
"It's really me," he said, and then came the delayed lump in his throat.
Something snapped in Mabel's brain, and she stood straight, wiped the tears from her eyes, and exhaled a long breath. "Okay," she said, and glanced over her shoulder at the house, as if she had forgotten it was behind her. "Okay. I suppose it's time for you to meet everybody." She grinned, eyes puffy, and stepped back inside, held open the door for him. "Come in."
Dipper took two slow strides into her home. She shut the door, shut out the brightness. There was a narrow hallway leading into a kitchen, and another room on the left that Dipper couldn't see into. White walls, dark hardwood floor. On his right, the stairs rose up to a closed door, and at the foot of the stairs was a wooden cabinet, mail stacked on top, a bowl for keys, and a framed photo of a fluffy white dog that he did not recognize. He could feel Mabel's eyes on him as he stood pressed up against the front door, as far away from the house as one could be without actually leaving it.
"Andy?" she called out. Amidst the questions compiling in his head, Dipper recalled that Mabel was married to a man called Andrew – Andrew Hollis, an actor famous for his supporting role in a sitcom Dipper had occasionally seen on the TV in prison. Mabel called out his name again.
"Yeah?" came a muffled response, from upstairs.
"Can you come down here, please?"
When the door at the top of the stairs opened, Dipper stopped aimlessly surveying the hallway. Andrew, a tall man, with shaggy blond hair, jogged down the stairs and slowed to a stop, with enough reservation in his expression to tell Dipper that Andrew knew who he was. And what he was.
"Andy, this is Dipper. My brother. Dipper, this is Andy, my husband."
Andrew held out his hand. "Hi, Dipper. Good to finally meet you."
"You too," Dipper said, slightly thrown off by both the man's smile and his British accent – he couldn't recall if his character in the show was British, but Dipper also tended to leave the room whenever Andrew came on screen, lest he jog too many memories of his sister.
The interaction reached a stalemate. Both Mabel and her husband stared as if Dipper were a ghost.
Dipper thumbed the door behind him. "I can leave, if you want."
Mabel stepped forward and took one of his hands, held it between hers. "God, no, Dip. It's just– it's hard to believe you're really standing there. In our home." She looked back at Andy, and they both smiled. "We... I mean, we talk about you all the time. I can't believe this day has actually come. And so much earlier than I expected, too."
"I'm sorry I didn't call ahead. Um, my phone–"
"No, don't be silly. I'm glad you didn't call ahead." She laughed. "I don't think I'll see a better surprise for the rest of my life."
"It really is good to see you," Andrew said, leaning on the banister. "We've got a lot of catching up to do, I reckon. Why don't we all go have a seat in the living room?" He turned to Mabel and spoke quieter. "Shall I bring the girls down?"
She thought about it for a second, nodded, and suddenly she was leading Dipper by the hand, into her living room, and Andrew was jogging back up the stairs. "The girls?" Dipper murmured, slightly alarmed at the pace at which he was re-entering his sister's life. But, that was Mabel. She lived at breakneck speed. Andrew had proposed to her two weeks after they'd met, so he couldn't have been much different, either.
"My girls," she said. "My daughters." She turned and smiled up at him. "You're an uncle, Dipper."
He sunk onto a couch, and leaned back, which wasn't particularly polite, he knew, but his legs had turned to gelatin and it was either the couch or the expensive-looking vase that he had to collapse onto. Mabel hovered above him, eyes alight with concern. "Is that too much? Oh my god, of course it is, I'm so sorry. I'll tell Andy to keep them upstairs–"
"No," he said, and rubbed his temples. "No, I want to see them."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course. I mean, they're your kids. I'm sure I'm gonna love them right away."
Mabel gazed at him for a second, and put her hands up to her chest, like she couldn't believe he had said that. He could hardly believe it, either. It sounded normal. And warm. And not even intentionally so, because to him, it was as factual as declaring the sky blue.
Mabel hurried out of the room, towards the soft footfalls on the stairs. While she whispered something to her family, Dipper had a few seconds to take in his surroundings – the room was neat and clean, two couches, an armchair, widescreen TV, giant basket of toys in the corner. Then there were four pairs of eyes on him. Mabel crouched down beside her two daughters. The taller one was the spitting image of her mom, long brown hair and pink cheeks, and the shorter girl had her dad's curly blonde hair. Mabel asked them gently to say hello, but they only stared, the younger one sucking her thumb.
"This is your uncle Dipper," she said. "Do you remember? We saw him in the pictures. On the iPad." She turned to Dipper and grinned. "They're very shy. Dipper, this is Zoey and Bianca."
Dipper lifted his hand and attempted to smile, but it was hard to hide his discomfort. The poor girls looked terrified of him. Mabel laughed it off and sat on the opposite couch with Zoey in her lap, and Andrew did the same with Bianca, and with their upright posture and neat hair and easy smiles, Dipper could have pulled out a camera and snapped the perfect family photo.
"Oh," Mabel said. "I'm sorry, did you want anything to drink? Something to eat?"
"I'm okay, thanks."
"Are you sure? We've got root beer." She nudged Andrew's arm and laughed. "All this guy ever used to drink was root beer. The dentist told you off for it once, didn't she Dip?"
He attempted a smile again. "That's right."
"Mom told her to mind her own business."
They fell into silence. Dipper tried not to choke on it.
"Have you been in the city long, Dipper?" Andrew asked.
"No, I, um– I just got in last night. I mean, I got out yesterday morning. So I thought I'd come here. It felt like... not the only thing to do, but the right thing, I guess. I'm sorry I showed up unannounced."
"No, please," Andrew said. "Don't apologize. You're welcome to stay as long as you like."
Mabel nodded enthusiastically.
"Oh," Dipper said, "well, I wasn't planning on staying. I mean, I can't just turn up out of the blue and interrupt your lives. I was going to stay in San Francisco for a while, but I can get a hotel room."
"God, you can't pay hotel prices around here. You'll be skint within a week. We've got a guest room upstairs." He turned to Mabel. "We can get that ready this afternoon, can't we?"
"Yeah," she said. "You have to stay, Dipper. I won't let you leave." Her face fell. "I mean, you'd be able to leave, obviously. It wouldn't be like– blegh. My big mouth. The point is that you're welcome to stay. And I would be very happy if you did. We would all be. The girls love you already."
Dipper lowered his eyes to the lap-bound children. They were still staring. "I'm not sure how that could be true," he said.
"It is," Mabel said. She squeezed Zoey's cheek. "If this one doesn't like somebody she throws her toys at them. She has a bit of an attitude problem."
Before he knew it, two hours had passed. Mabel told him all about her job – she was an illustrator for children's books – and Andrew told him a little about working in Hollywood. They didn't ask Dipper any silly default questions, like what have you been up to? which he was grateful for. It was more realistic to assume that he hadn't existed for eight years, and to fill him in on what he had missed.
But he hadn't come here merely to chat, and when Andrew took the kids outside to play on their tricycles, and Mabel had finished telling Dipper how their cousins' lives had evolved, Dipper saw an opportunity to jump in. He scratched his head. "Listen, Mabel... I have a lot that I need to apologize for."
"Nope," she said, and jumped to her feet. "We're not going to do that right now."
"But–"
"I know we have a lot to talk about. But we're not going to talk right now because it's only 2 P.M., and I still have a lot to do today, and right now I have to make lunch for my kids and I don't want to be crying into their sandwiches." There was a steadfast, motherly look in her eyes, daring Dipper to object.
"Okay," he said. "Yeah, that's fine."
"Good. So, why don't you come in the kitchen and help me make lunch, and then after lunch we'll go out for a drive and pick up some of the things you're going to need. Starting with a working phone."
The radio in the kitchen played folk music while Mabel made cheese and cucumber sandwiches for her daughters, and passed them over to Dipper to cut off the crust. A simple task, but he couldn't focus on it. He kept glancing out the window to the backyard. The girls were gliding through Andrew's legs on a Slip 'N Slide. Dipper looked around the kitchen at the framed photos, the pinboard exhibiting the children's drawings, FAMILY spelled out of magnets on the refrigerator, and he tried not to feel too out of place. He was supposed to be easing back into life in the outside world, and he couldn't work out whether the idealistic family home he found himself in would be a hindrance to that.
Lunch was a quiet affair. They all sat around the dining table and Mabel tried getting him to collaborate on a list of stores they would need to visit that afternoon, but he found it hard to talk with two beady pairs of eyes on him at all times. He thought he had moved on from the days of being watched – and yes, it was a little ridiculous to compare innocent children to prison guards, but Zoey and Bianca seemed to have the same effect on him as even the sternest warden. They made him feel unwelcome. Ostracized.
Andrew stayed at home with the kids and tidied up the guest room, and driving with Mabel, Dipper loosened up a little. They drove out of Presidio, back into the city, and stopped first at a Target to buy him a new cell phone. Mabel hightailed it around the aisles with a shopping cart, asking what groceries he wanted, but when he only gave noncommittal answers she quietly loaded up the cart with food she knew he used to like – pizza rolls, instant ramen, root beer. A couple of beef steaks. He would have attempted to pay at the register, but he knew Mabel would have vehemently refused, and he didn't have the energy for an argument.
They went to a busy mall, which kickstarted Dipper's claustrophobia again. Every time they stepped into a store he breathed a sigh of relief, even if Mabel only looked at one price tag, snorted, and turned right around to leave. Eventually, they picked out a few t-shirts, some button-ups, jeans, chinos. A long time ago, he would have been irritated by his sister picking out clothes for him. You're undermining my independence, he might have said. Now he was just happy she was here.
"I'll knit you a sweater," she said. "It's pretty mild here in the winter but you'll still need a sweater."
He smiled, but it faltered; it was October. Surely he wouldn't still be living in his sister's guest room come winter. He thought a lot about that on the drive back to the house. The list of places he could go was still the same as on the night he planned to flee with Wendy, from her dad, all those years ago, and the more remote the place, the further up the list it sat. He didn't need to hide from the general public anymore, but he wanted to.
There was a single window in the guest room, overlooking the neighborhoods on the hills below, and the tops of skyscrapers in the background. He stood at the window for the better part of an hour, watching the sun glint on the ripples of the ocean, relishing the quiet, but at the same time drawing comfort from the sound of his nieces' voices through the floorboards. It was a perfect blend of peace and safety, like falling asleep in the Mystery Shack to the muffled sound of Stan's TV downstairs.
They ate dinner, and Dipper joined the family in the living room afterwards to watch TV, on Mabel's invitation. And even though no-one was talking, and the girls were distracted enough by the TV that they no longer watched Dipper like hawks, he still couldn't shake the feeling that he was intruding. This room was for family, and how could he be considered family if he missed their wedding? Missed the birth of their children and every birthday after that?
At around eight o'clock Andrew took the girls up to bed. Dipper didn't quite know how to react when they both said goodnight to him, unprompted. He defaulted to smiling and waving. "I think I'll turn in as well," he said to Mabel.
She looked like she was about to ask why, but stopped herself. It was strange that he had traveled down here to escape solitude and now he was trying to escape company, but he needed company in small doses, he felt.
"Okay," Mabel said. They both stood up, a foot apart, and Mabel laughed at the awkwardness and hugged him.
"Thank you," Dipper said. "For letting me stay. I know I've been quiet, and it probably doesn't seem like I appreciate what you're doing for me, but I do. And, you know, if there's anything I can do to repay you... I mean, I got pretty good at doing laundry, for one."
"You? You got good at doing laundry?" She grinned.
"Yeah. I know it's not much, but–"
"Dipper, don't worry about it. We just want you to... relax. Take some time to recover. You're welcome here as long as you want to stay. We want you to stay. And, you know, when you're feeling better, I'm sure you'll naturally start helping us out anyway. I mean, the girls can be a handful. I cannot wait to have a free babysitter."
"Yeah... I think I might need to get to a point where they're not terrified of me, first."
"What? They're not terrified of you. They said goodnight to you. I didn't even tell them to do that."
"Okay, what I really meant was that I need to get to a point where I'm not terrified of them."
"How can you be terrified of them? I mean, normally they're monsters, but ever since you turned up they've been behaving like little angels."
"I'm just not used to kids, I guess. I don't know what to... do, or say. There aren't a lot of them in prison."
She chuckled and shook her head. "I love hearing you talk like that."
"Like what?"
"Like... I don't know. Like everything's a joke. Like you don't have a clue what you're doing."
He frowned. "Thank you?"
She pushed him gently. "You know what I mean. You're funny." The smile faded from her face and something more serious took over. "God, I missed you."
The memory of her last visit flashed in his mind. How she looked over her shoulder as she left, tears smearing her makeup, and Dipper only stood up from the table and turned away. "I missed you too."
"I know what you're thinking," she said. "We still have a lot to talk about."
"Yeah. I can wait. You know, whenever you're ready."
"Okay."
He hesitated for a beat and said, "I'm really happy for you. I mean, Andrew seems great. Your daughters are beautiful."
"Okay," she said, pushing him out of the room. "That's enough of that. I am not ready to cry just yet."
He chuckled and headed for the stairs. "Night, Mabel."
"Goodnight, Dipper."