When Joseph decides to move to Piedmont, California, his mother follows. It's not surprising his mom wanted to be close to all her grandchildren but rejection hurts no matter where or how it comes. So he pretends to be happy telling Joseph he'll come and visit if he can take the kids to the beach and tan.
They visit him this time on their way down to California they don't want to fly with a toddler and two infants they make enough fuss in the car Joseph tells him. They stay in a Motel close to the shack and seem relatively unimpressed with Gravity Falls though like Ford before her Joey loves the place she's very curious and at three years is going through her "what's that?" and "mine!" phases. For example, when they first arrived she stole his Fez and she refused to give it back. Though when she brought in a few bucks when she came on tours with him, the people thought it was cute he brought his 'granddaughter" to work with him.
They only stay a couple of days; they have to beat the moving truck to California, and after a quick goodbye they bundle the kids into the car and leave he doesn't cry. He doesn't.
Time flies by again and before he knows it nine years has passed. Nine! He doesn't know how so much time passed before he noticed, he's gotten nowhere with the locations of the journals and goes back to tinkering with the portal that frustrates him to no fucking end, he doesn't know how many times he just ends up swearing at the goddamn thing half the fucking night. These days he seems to be getting a constant stream of pictures and videos of the twins and Joey from California. Most of the Twins like his brother Joey is very camera shy and is quite happy to be the one behind the camera.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he's realized he's almost 70 years old, he still fit and active right now, but he knows that it won't last, granted his mother's in her nineties, and she's still active, but he wonders if he'll bring Ford home in her lifetime mostly because he wants to see Ford mad at someone other than him for a change. He wonders how Ford will react when he finds out about Johanna and Stanford, will he be upset? Will he happy and Upset that he missed so much? He doesn't know, but he can't wait to find out.
Joey is almost a teenager, and that realization terrifies him, six fingers or not Johann is going to be a pretty girl, Ford would have had to buy a shotgun to keep the boys at bay but for now, while she stays with his mother she will have to beat them off with a stick. There's been a change in plans.
His mother won't take Joey this year she told Joseph, Marie and Johanna it was old age, and he knew it was part of the answer and after talking to his mother he finds out the rest of the answer. Part of it is his mother as she gets older and older had come to the 'realization' that she played God when it came to Joey and Stanford's births and had spontaneously decided that Johanna shouldn't have been born, and on top of it all the child has dared to act too much like her long gone son for her to be comfortable with.
He knows Joey is smart (too smart)his mind supplies, so when the bus pulls into Gravity Falls he knows she understands to some extent of why grandma doesn't want her doesn't ask who Ford is, and that makes it easier to keep it a secret it's also that summer he finds out she doesn't know about her brother Ford either,
The way she fins out is easy enough he still keeps their newborn pictures on his desk alongside Dipper and Mabel's, when she asks he's furious, Joey is twelve long past the time she should have found out about her dead twin, he doesn't want to be the one who tells her but he might be the only one who will. He sits her down in the kitchen and tells her a half truth (she can't know about her father yet) he tells her Ford just stopped breathing one day when they were babies and waits to see if she has the Pines temper. She doesn't. While there is a lot Ford in there, there's also an equal amount of Marie in there, and she's over it in a little more than 3 hours and asks to see more pictures of her brother. She doesn't like the Northwest boy he thinks when she asks why he gets a list, but he understands that she thinks he's rude and a bully. He constantly calls her sixie which pisses the twelve-year-old off, so when he decides to call Manly Dans daughter a giant freak she throws the punch before Wendy can. It's the first time he realizes there's a bit of him in there too. Northwest runs off crying and Joey has a bruised knuckle but he is absurdly proud of her, he takes her out for ice cream and teaches her to throw a real punch, by the end if it the kid has one hell of a punch. They both agree not to tell her Parents. In the end he's sad to see her go and he only, realizes that as the bus drives back to California and fades from sight. It's been a fun 8 weeks with the kid and it's been nice to have someone besides Soos around.