Chapter Five: A Helping Hand

Emma wound up calling in sick to work and Neal didn't have to go in at all on Saturdays so eventually, after round two, a nap, and a leisurely lunch, they decided to go shopping. Well, browsing really. To get an idea of what they might like in their limited price range. But Neal chomped at the bit, eager to make up for lost time while Emma had already started making long mental lists of all the things they would need now. Things like a crib and a changing table and a car seat. They'd need a stroller obviously and she'd always seen those little swings, all propped up close to the ground. Babies seemed to like those and so maybe their son might like one too.

(Their son. She really liked the sound of that.)

But they'd have to get diapers and wipes and baby clothes too. Bottles, of course, even if she might like to try breast feeding. He should have toys and a little baby blanket and fuck. It was never ending, wasn't it? And she kept thinking of more and more – a trying task when she continued to add in her feeble attempts to also calculate the exact costs to go with it.

(It would all cost the same in the end, but maybe, if they bought a little bit at a time the dent to their budget wouldn't be quite so overwhelming and obvious.)

And, considering they only had a one-bedroom apartment, space was gonna become an issue pretty quick too. But at least now, when she looked at the patio furniture in their kitchen, the lone orange recliner in their living room, the refrigerator that made odd clunking noises, and the used television that still required antennas and aluminum foil to upgrade a snowy screen to a blurry picture, Emma didn't let the doubt creep in. Someday they would have the money to replace their crappy things, but right now they still had plenty to take care of their basic necessities.

Still. That giant list of things was gonna make for a tight squeeze.

"It's not like we're strangers to tight spaces, Em," Neal said when she had pointed out the complete lack of room, "and the baby isn't gonna be worried about having his own room for a while yet."

Emma couldn't quite bring herself around to match his certainty. Something Neal obviously sensed because he pressed a gentle kiss to her temple and added, "We'll get through it, baby. Everything will work out. It always does."

(And she supposed that, yeah, things had gone pretty smoothly in the wake of their mad rush to escape Portland.)

They didn't go to the mall. Not with its stores catered specifically to babies and expectant mothers. Places guaranteed to have prices that would break their fragile budget. Instead, Neal took the extra time, browsing notices pinned up at the grocery store (a pit stop after she announced her sudden craving for salt and vinegar potato chips dipped in horseradish), finding a garage sale in the middle of some suburban neighborhood a few miles outside the city. Emma protested at first, worried about germs and safety issues and something about lead paint because she had read an article that told her she should be. But Neal liked the idea of an item that had history and character and so, naturally, promised Emma that everything they bought would get a thorough cleaning before the baby even touched it.

(Plus, Neal was really good at haggling, able to talk anyone into anything, and this tactic worked much better on people trying to get rid of old crap taking up necessary space in their garage.)

Emma, however, absolutely hated shopping. In any form. It reminded her, for one, how little they could actually afford. And while she liked the fast pace of a crowd moving along at a brisk pace in the city, this seemed to get lost everywhere else, people forgetting how to walk with any efficiency, blocking potential progress with their talking and their mingling and their odd sort of shuffling. Plus, it forced interaction, crowding Emma into making a decision before she was ready just to get pushy sales people off her back.

This only got worse now that Emma was pregnant.

Like they had found out in Portland though, pregnancy did have its advantages; no one ever suspected the mother-to-be and, if she showed even just a hint of need, vendors and customers alike scrambled to help her, providing words of wisdom, giving them leads on where else they could, maybe, find used but cared for baby items. Unfortunately, people did this while fawning over her and, more specifically, her protruding stomach, asking her all sorts of stupid questions that she definitely had no interest in answering because hell, they didn't know her and she definitely didn't know them.

(At least she had some answers now though because talk about awkward when she hadn't even decided what, exactly, she wanted to do with the baby.)

Take this gray-haired woman, for instance, with a voice like sandpaper who had just finished telling her about the cutest store back in Alabama that hand-knitted everything for that real home-grown touch. Completely unprompted and it didn't really help Emma at all, y'know, seeing as they lived in Florida. But the woman seemed to miss Emma's discomfort and poorly disguised annoyance, instead squeezing her shoulder and asking, tone syrupy sweet, "Did you bring your husband with you? I could give him the directions."

Emma hated that. This assumption that she needed to be married in order to have a baby and be successful at that. Maybe because she just hated assumptions. Or possibly because family-like matters and the question of her own abilities had turned into a sore subject as her pregnancy progressed and so the woman's comment, while probably innocent and well-intentioned, managed to strike a nerve. Regardless, it resulted in Emma reaching a breaking point, ready to snap.

(A perilous position that they could have avoided if Neal hadn't left her alone to do … well, whatever he had gone off to do.)

(Seriously. Where the hell did he go?)

Before she could make a scene, however, becoming the pregnant girl that yelled at sweet old ladies, rescue found her in the form of a dark-haired, heavily tanned woman clutching the hand of a little girl with a toothy grin.

"Delilah, hello sugar," she said brightly and with a heavy southern drawl, throwing an arm around her in a convincing enough way that Emma, no stranger to the fine art of conning herself, nearly questioned if the stranger had actually mistaken her for someone named Delilah. "It's been forever, hasn't it? And then imagine running into you at a yard sale way out in the middle of the sticks of all places. Pregnant to boot. We must catch up." Emma found herself led away with a deft hand as her rescuer rambled on about a sorority and pineapples and someone named Barry.

"You're welcome," she said pointedly, dropping the act as soon as they had left the woman's earshot (whose presence this stranger had pointedly ignored). The southern accent had shifted too, becoming something far less obnoxious as she stepped back, giving her room to breathe.

Oh, Emma liked her.

"Joy," she said, before nodding at the little girl that had removed herself from her mother's side, probably at the first sign of her distraction, wandering to a nearby table, looking at the contents completely awestruck. "And that's Maya."

Emma smiled. Or tried to, but it was this tight sort of thing that probably gave away her discomfort around small children and just people in general. But she gave her name too and added a sincere, "Thanks."

Joy waved it off, "No problem. We've got to look out for our own, after all."

Emma nearly missed what she had meant before she remembered the cause of the problem to begin with. And oh right … mothers. Did that make her a part of a group now? Maybe even upgrading her from the last category she'd been lumped into: Orphan.

Maya returned to her mother's side, handing her something all wide-eyed and hopeful before turning her attention to Emma, looking up at her curiously. "Do ya know what you're having?"

"A boy," said Emma, smiling slightly when the little girl scrunched her nose in distaste. Suddenly she found the questions far less intrusive.

"Are you shopping for him or pleasure?" Joy asked, almost absently as she returned the thing (a snow globe, Emma realized) Maya had presented to her back to one of the tables.

"Him. We kinda just started," admitted Emma, half-distracted by Maya's quiet pleas, which Joy expertly waved off, forcing her daughter to settle for staring at the snow globe longingly.

"Well," started Joy, "if you're looking for baby stuff on the cheap, I've got some of Maya's old things that I've been looking to unload. Crib, changing table. Y'know the basics. And while I can't promise hand-knitted bibs and diapers," here Joy rolled her eyes, "it does have a certain special touch."

Emma found herself taken aback by the offer because by basics she really meant the basics, but she could hardly say no when it could, potentially, save her the hassle of getting dragged to one of these things every weekend.

"Really?" A nod. "Yeah, we'd love to take a look."

They talked some more, hammering out all of the details as they browsed, moving from table to table, Joy having to pause from their attempts to put a name and a story to some of the more obscure items to scold Maya when she came too close to mishandling the goods, Emma flinching whenever something began to teeter, coming dangerously close to falling to the ground.

"Welcome to your future," noted Joy dryly as she deftly rescued one such item, Emma observing that she didn't look annoyed. Not in a 'I can't believe I'm stuck with this' way that she remembered having graced the faces of most of her foster parents on a near daily basis.

It was nice, really, to find one of the good ones.

x-x-x-x-x-x

Neal had found a set of used paints and brushes which, admittedly, wasn't the most useful thing to buy, but he had wanted to give the baby something that'd be his. And Neal, while definitely not the best artist in the world, could draw well enough and so, even if they didn't have the most spacious apartment in the world, he figured that maybe he could give his son something nice to look at, crafted with love and care.

"John," said Emma, sparing an unhappy look at a bag in his hand as she managed to not stumble over the use of his new fake name (something she'd been training herself to perfect after fumbling through a piss-poor introduction with one of her coworkers – Grace, was it? No, Gretchen).

"This is Joy and her daughter, Maya." He smiled, offering a bright greeting and a wave to the little girl as Emma continued, "Joy mentioned that she might be able to help us out with some baby stuff."

"Really? That'd be great," he expressed, sounding pleased. Though not as pleased as he had felt when he had returned to Emma's side and found her conversing with the pair, no sign of the scowl she typically wore in the presence of new company (it took her a while to warm up to people was all, a byproduct of circumstances that taught her to not give her trust to people automatically). But Joy seemed sensible enough. She had a happy daughter. And maybe this would save them from buying the white crib on wheels that Emma, when out of earshot of the well-meaning owners, had deemed both an ugly piece of shit and a fucking deathtrap.

(They would have to work on their language.)

They made plans for the following weekend, where they followed directions to a Military Base, a fact that caused them to nearly turn around upon discovery. Joy had made the necessary arrangements prior though and Emma and Neal got waved through easily enough. Maya greeted them with an enthusiastic wave, jumping up and down in the way only a five-year-old could when they pulled into the driveway set in a row of near identical houses.

"Mommy! Emma and John are here!" she shouted, rushing in their direction, Emma wincing because Neal was still in the process of parking.

"They have no sense of personal safety," she hissed to Neal as she unbuckled her seatbelt. "Our kid probably won't even make it to five."

"Happy face," Neal countered because it probably wouldn't do if Joy somehow overheard Emma making indirect jabs at her parenting. Neal himself smiled brightly, reaching through the open window to give Maya's hair a playful jostle, causing her to shriek with laughter, dodging out of his reach, and letting Neal clamber out of the car before giving a playful chase.

Emma hung back, her usual discomfort around new people and her admitted dislike of small children (though Neal still suspected that she had exaggerated to get her point across) giving her a slight air of awkwardness as Neal listened with great interest to one of Maya's stories about a trip to the park she and her mother often frequented and then complimenting the chalk drawings that lined the driveway, asking her opinion on what sort of picture he should paint above the baby's eventual crib.

Joy joined them outside just as Maya started explaining to him about Dora the Explorer, the familiarity of a fellow adult prompting Emma to lose some of that trademark stiff-ness as they said their hellos. She even made a wry comment to Joy about his child-like behavior that he supposed he should have taken offense to.

(He didn't.)

"It's in the garage," Joy announced, after they made the appropriate amount of small talk, Maya skipping ahead to lead them in the right direction.

When the door opened and they stepped inside it didn't take Neal very long at all to let out a low, awe-filled whistle. He hadn't known what to expect, exactly, but a matching set of hand-crafted mahogany baby furniture hadn't even made the list. Crib, changing table, rocking chair, and even a matching chest were all-included.

"My husband made it," she explained as Emma ran a hand gently across the polished wood of the changing table, an impressed look on her face.

"It's all beautiful, Joy, truly," said Emma. "But we couldn't possibly. Wouldn't you want to keep something like this?"

Joy shook her head. "Maya's obviously outgrown it and Tom … well, we'll be moving across town soon and our new place just doesn't have the room."

Emma smiled sadly at the words left unspoken. "I'm sorry."

Joy shrugged as if to say what can you do, and he saw it then, the sadness in her eyes that could only come with loss. "You'd be doing me a favor, really, taking it off my hands. Even if I have another someday I wouldn't be able to bring myself to use it again and Tom would have wanted it to all go to someone who'd put it to good use."

Neal stepped forward, abandoning his examination of the intricate design that coated the chest. "If you're sure," he said carefully, almost afraid to look too eager, "we can give you a fair price for it, at least. Maybe not all upfront, but …"

But Joy shook her head again, halting him with a hand. "Tom wouldn't have heard of it."

"Joy-" Emma protested. She despised charity. Even Neal hated to take advantage of a grieving mother's kindness. Not even if she insisted.

"If you don't take it," said Joy, "it'll just wind up on the curb."

Waste. The only thing, Neal knew, that Emma hated more than charity. And that evening, after loading Joy's truck and carrying everything up three flights of stairs, they both fell into bed, laughing with unsuppressed glee at their sudden bout of luck.

They spent the next day rearranging their apartment. And while they had anticipated the concern about space correctly, they couldn't bring themselves to care, not giving a damn that the baby would have better furniture than them or that both their bedroom and living room had turned into two separate halves of a nursery.

x-x-x-x-x-x

Emma spent a week fretting over how she might return the favor to Joy. Neal suggested that they simply invite her over for dinner, but that hardly seemed like enough to Emma.

"She gave us her dead husband's hand-carved baby furniture, Neal," she said, "we can't feed her hamburgers and potato salad."

(And, okay, maybe she worried about Joy getting a close look at their tiny apartment and the pathetic furniture that occupied it and feeling even more pity toward them than she probably already did.)

So they decided to invite her and Maya out for dinner instead, finding a restaurant suitable to everyone's different taste buds, but only after Emma insisted on gifting them with a thank-you card, flowers for Joy, and a Dora the Explorer doll for Maya.

(Neal, of course, just had to point out to her, long after they got home, that Maya had ordered the cheeseburger while Joy got a side of potato salad to go with her barbeque chicken.)

They spent the dinner talking about nonsense, Neal crafting a seasoned lie about how they met while Emma slowly warmed up to their youngest companion, listening to Maya as she excitedly told her about the upcoming school year and meeting her new teacher.

After, Neal treated everyone to ice cream and talked Joy into letting him take Maya on the bumper boats, the mother likely regretting the decision later when they clambered out of the shared contraption both laughing and soaking wet.

"Well, then. Seeing as we're all squared away," said Joy practically as she and Emma watched the childish display, "I hope that means I can actually invite you to lunch without any strings attached."

Emma laughed and nodded, a bright smile taking over her features.

x-x-x-x-x-x

Emma surprisingly enough, maybe, liked Joy. She was straight-forward and practical, but without the prickly thorns that accompanied Emma's own unfortunate bluntness. Instead Joy was warm and approachable and didn't get annoyed when Emma asked question after question about pregnancy and raising babies. She was like a diamond in the rough, a rare gem of a person whose friendship and kindness came with no strings or expectations. She had yet to see even a trace of judgment regarding Emma's age or her and Neal's financial situation.

And yeah, she kind of had Gretchen and Mark, Emma supposed, and while she liked them, even going so far as to call them friends, they were the sort of people you wanted around if you needed someone to bury the body. Which was good. Great, even. Joy, however, was the type of person that would keep you out of the situations that led to dead bodies to begin with. And no, Emma didn't get into that sort of trouble, exactly, but she still needed that. Wanted it even.

But Joy had basically taken her under her wing, showing Emma friendship and her years of wisdom (she had seven on Emma). Y'know, without making her feel like an idiot when she didn't know something. So when Emma's traitorous mind assaulted her with all sorts of new worries and negative thoughts in the ridiculously warm weeks leading up to October, she purposefully sought out Joy, letting her make cocoa and sitting down in her half-packed living room with worried tear tracks marring her cheeks.

All of her fears, of course, came down to one thing: "I'm going to be a horrible mother."

When Joy responded with an amused laugh, Emma felt ridiculous and decided maybe she'd better leave.

"Sit down," said Joy, unimpressed. "You came in like the world's ending. Every new mother in the world has felt the exact same thing you are. Have you talked to John about this?"

How could she? He loved kids, had embraced fatherhood on day one, and had apparently already known that newborns couldn't sleep on their stomach.

Joy gave a knowing tut as she secured a box with tape.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Emma," said Joy. "It's going to be hard. They'll be times when you'll want to rip your hair out. And it only gets worse as they get older."

Emma furrowed her brow. "Really. Because Maya –"

"Is a delight," agreed Joy pleasantly, "except when things don't go her way." As an afterthought, she added, "Naturally, I love her more than anything. And you'll feel the same about your child. Parenting is a job where you learn as you go. And when you screw up, you'll also do anything to fix it. It's that simple."

(Emma could think of a few examples contradicting that supposedly simple notion. And therein lied the problem.)

It always came back to the same thing, of course. Her sucky, sorry excuse of a childhood. And as much as she had tried to leave it behind, both now and when she had hopped a bus to cross the country, it still hung over her head like a black cloud, telling her that no one wanted her, plaguing her with examples of the lowest scum of humanity, reminding her that she and Neal hadn't been any better before they had settled into Tallahassee.

(How could they teach their son things like following the rules and common decency if they had spent years unwilling to do the same themselves?)

"How did you deal? When your parents kicked you out?" Emma asked hesitantly, apology and a new subject ready and waiting, knowing that she might have stumbled on dangerous territory, even if Joy had made no secret of the fact that she didn't speak with the family that had basically disowned her when she failed to follow their plans to deal with what they had called her predicament.

Joy, however, didn't even blink.

"What any kid would do, I suppose. Cried, fell into a pit of self-pity and loathing. Because obviously it was me, right? My fault. Not theirs." Joy shrugged. "Then I decided, screw them. If they wanted to kick me to the curb for one mistake then I'd make my own family. Besides, it happens sooner or later, doesn't it?"

It did, she supposed, and Emma tucked the nugget away for further consideration as the conversation shifted, leading to something less taxing, Emma joining Joy, helping her to wrap various picture frames and memorabilia in bubble wrap until Joy had to go pick up Maya from school, Emma thanking her again on the way out, admitting that talking about it had helped and that she would even think about bringing it up with John.

Joy, however, had given Emma something else to think about too. Because Joy had moved on by letting go of the past. And, before moving to Tallahassee, Emma and Neal had agreed to do the same, making a similar vow to the one Joy had made with Tom. They had promised to be a family. Together. Emma wanted that, still, more than anything. But maybe she needed to let go too.

Maybe she needed to, finally, stop looking.

She had a small box containing all the remnants of her childhood hidden deep in the back of their closet. She didn't have much. A few trinkets and some photographs (some from later, most from her time with the Swans), a couple newspaper articles, and a hand-crafted baby blanket.

She looked through it one last time, fingers tracing the purple hand-knitted letters of her name before she stuffed it back into the box.

Honestly, Emma had always sort of considered the thing a walking contradiction, something that would keep her up at night as a kid, wondering how someone could put such effort and care into a hand-woven blanket only to turn around and dump the child they had made it for out, just like someone would with yesterday's trash.

She used to think that the blanket had to mean something. Some hidden clue to a past that just needed solving.

(Maybe a hint that her family would come back for her.)

But Emma was a mother now. She had doubts and fears, worries that stemmed from a place of love and anticipation and protectiveness for her son. And yeah, sometimes a parent couldn't keep their child. But there was a difference, she thought, between taking measures and finding someone who could care for their kid and what her parents had so callously done to her.

She couldn't forgive it. And she absolutely had to stop wasting time and energy on searching for people that clearly didn't want to be found. She had her family now - a person who loved her and a baby that would soon need her full, undivided attention.

Emma would do better.

She started by letting go, dumping the shoebox, blanket and all, in the trash.

Time to start over.


Thanks for reading everyone! And thank you to steelneena and maressaonce for taking the time to leave such nice reviews!

Next Chapter: Baelfire and Swan