Chapter 14

"Wow." Ellie took in the sprawling Party City with raised eyebrows. It was only a few days before Halloween and parents and children were rushing in all directions to snatch the perfect costume. More than one child was screaming as a parent dragged them away from an expensive costume. "This is wild."

"Do you typically do anything for Halloween?" Joel asked.

Ellie shrugged. "Riley and I would rip some of her old t-shirts and pants and be zombies. We chased all the younger kids." The corner of her mouth lifted. "It was fun."

"Sounds fun." Joel smiled as he looked at the aisle in front of them. "Maybe you can switch it up and be a princess this year."

"Ew." Ellie made a face at the line of princess costumes before walking past them. "I'm not wearing a fucking dress."

"Language." Joel muttered as he followed her. There was no heart in his reprimand. How could he tell off a kid who'd gone through what she had? Judging from the single raised eyebrow when Ellie glanced back, she was thinking the same thing.

"Hmm." Ellie meandered down a seemingly random aisle and picked up a giant spider decoration. "Can we get this?"

"Throw it in the cart." Joel gestured.

Ellie did as he asked. "Everyone is going to be terrified of your house." She added a few more spooky decorations to the cart then took off for another aisle. Joel followed her.

"Why would anyone be a clown?" She muttered as she shoved through a rack of costumes. "They're so creepy."

"I agree." Joel rubbed his chin. "You could be an animal. Like a lion or bear or something."

Ellie cringed. "And what, let you draw whiskers on my face? No way."

"No dresses, no whiskers." Joel repeated. "You have strange hangups on costumes." Ellie waved his comment away as she made her way down the aisle. He'd worried on the silent car ride to the store that this visit would be a disaster, but she seemed to at least be trying to find a Halloween costume. As to how much of her interest was forced, Joel didn't know. If someone who hardly knew Ellie saw her here, they'd think she was fine. Joel knew better. He saw the tremor in her fingers as she reached for another costume, heard a dullness in her voice that she'd never had before. Even her eyes seemed wary and distant, two traits that were not Ellie at all.

He ached to take Ellie's pain away, add it to his own instead. He wanted to help her, but he had no idea how. Part of him screamed that dragging Ellie to a store mere hours after this nightmare was the worst thing he could have done. Joel had hated the rare times where he had to pretend to be whole around others. Maybe he should have let her process what happened in a private place instead of dragging her out immediately.

And then the other part of him heard Tommy's voice in his ear with the advice he'd ignored two decades ago. "When our parents died, I felt somewhat like I imagine you do now, like life would never be worth living again. It was unbearable. Sometimes I'd just be in my apartment sitting on my couch and it would be so hard to breathe. Nothing I ever did or thought made the pain go away." He'd stared at his knees, his eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "The only thing that helped was distracting myself. I forced myself to spend time with friends or go out even when I didn't want to do anything. It sucked for a long time, but eventually, I started thinking about our parents less. And the pain became less sharp. Then a year later, I realized my life had gone on."

Joel had snapped that losing parents was nothing compared to losing a daughter. That he never wanted to think about Sarah less. He saw now that he'd missed the point entirely. The only way he could keep going was by… going. If he'd distracted himself from his daughter's death with the activities of a life, he might have eventually found life worth living. He hadn't.

Ellie was going through a very different kind of pain, but he knew allowing her to wallow in it would have the same disastrous consequences. He wouldn't allow Ellie to repeat his mistakes.

"Now we're talking." Joel turned to see Ellie picking up a red and gold snarling dragon mask.

"What happened to no animals?" Joel asked.

Ellie shot him a withering look. "Dragons are way better than animals." She put on the mask. Joel saw her green eyes narrow through the eye holes before she ran at him with a fearsome yell.

"Aghh!" Joel stumbled backwards in surprise.

Ellie pulled off the mask, and Joel's heart leapt at the grin on her face. "Got you!" She crowed.

"You startled me." He grumbled even as he smiled.

"Like I said, dragons are awesome." Ellie picked the rest of the costume off the rack, complete with wings and a spiked tail, and threw it in the cart.

"Sarah liked dragons too." Ellie looked up in surprise at his words. Joel felt the heaviness in his chest that always came with saying his daughter's name and pushed through it. "She was reading a series called Eragon, all about dragons. She loved it." Joel remembered her devouring those books in her hospital bed. Had she ever finished it? He couldn't remember. "We should get you those books. Bet you'd like them."

Ellie bit her lip. "Or… could I just read hers?"

Her words felt like a kick to Joel's stomach. Of course she could just read Sarah's copies. They had to be sitting in her room along with all her other stuff. Dusty and untouched for decades. "Sure." Joel managed.

The long silence was broken by Joel's phone ringing. He pulled it from his pocket. "It's CPS. I better take this."

Ellie grinned. "You have to buy everything I put in the cart while you're on the phone." Then she was sprinting down the aisle before Joel could argue. He watched her disappear around the corner with a smile. Ellie was the most resilient child he'd ever met. They would get through this.

He answered the phone. "Hello?"

"Hello sir, I'm with the Texas Child Protective Services." A man's voice said. "Am I speaking with Joel Miller?"

"Yes." Joel replied.

"Good. I understand that you need to start training immediately to become a foster parent to a child currently in your care." The man continued. "I'll need some information from you to put you in classes."

"I'll give you everything you need." Joel responded. He closed his eyes briefly. This was happening. He was adopting a child.

The man rattled off several things Joel needed to send in: immunization records, address, criminal history. Joel scribbled everything down on a notepad. Then something the man said made him drop it.

"Can you repeat that last part?" Joel asked as he scrambled to grab the notepad from the floor.

"The child will need her own room." A pause. "Will she have that in your house, Mr. Miller?"

Joel swallowed. He only had one extra bedroom in his house. "Yes, she will."

"Good. I'll send someone over to inspect the house this evening. Have a good day." Then the man was gone.

Joel let the phone drop from his ear and closed his eyes. He knew he'd have to go into Sarah's room eventually. He hadn't thought it would be today.

Ellie rounded the corner with a full cart and a satisfied expression. "I hope you brought your wallet, old man."

Joel laughed in spite of himself. "How'd you get that much stuff so fast?" He complained as he followed her to the register.

During the car ride home, Joel was the quiet one as Ellie talked about where she would put each decoration they'd bought. He nodded and made the occasional suggestion, but he was thinking about Sarah's room. Did he even remember what it looked like?

The moment Joel stopped the car in his driveway, Ellie was out and grabbing the bags of decorations from the back seat. "Ok, so I'm thinking the spider can go above the garage, kind of like he's looking out at everyone. And the witch, I want it on a rope over the door so it swoops down and scares everyone. You can do that, right? We'll need a motion sensor…" Ellie looked back and finally saw that Joel was still in the car. "Joel, you good?"

Joel slowly stepped out of the car. "Leave the stuff outside for a second, Ellie. I gotta show you something." Ellie's green eyes were curious as she followed Joel inside. He stopped in front of his daughter's door. "You- you're going to stay in Sarah's room."

Ellie's eyes widened. "Oh." She studied the door. "How long has it been since you've gone in there?"

"Twenty years." Joel murmured.

Ellie let out a surprised sound. "That's… a while." Her gaze turned to Joel. "Why so long?"

Joel blinked in surprise. "Well… I don't know." He stumbled over his words. "I couldn't bear to see it after I left the hospital without her. I guess nothing ever changed."

Ellie's brow furrowed. She was silent for a long moment. "You know that stuff you said earlier about not letting what happened to me stop my life? That can apply to you too."

Joel felt his old defensiveness come creeping back. "Losing a child is different." He replied shortly.

"I know." Ellie fiddled with her fingers. "I lost my best friend. I lost my mom, though I'm not sure I ever really had her. Never lost a child though. I don't know what that's like." Her eyes flicked up to meet his. "But would Sarah want you to live like this?"

Her question hit Joel like a lightning bolt, as did the instant answer. Sarah loved going to new places, meeting new people, always doing things. They'd had a running joke that Joel never got a lazy weekend because Sarah always dragged him somewhere. She would be horrified to see the hollow shell he'd become.

Joel turned and opened the door. In twenty years, the door had grown in his mind into a great stone monolith that could never be moved; that picture crumbled in a heartbeat as the door swung open.

He stepped inside and a wave of anguish swept him as he reentered his little girl's world. There were her three favorite stuffed animals on her dark purple comforter. There were the pink and purple walls he'd painted one Saturday while she was at a birthday party to surprise her. There were the shelves stuffed with books, the messy desk, the fluffy white rug. He could almost convince himself that she was about to come in laughing, asking what her dad was doing in her room. He could almost hear her voice…

"Whoa, the walls are cool." Ellie spun in a circle as she walked in after Joel. "My bedroom walls were always gray. So boring." She went to the bookshelf and started reading the titles. "Hey, is this that Eragon book you mentioned?" She pulled it out and looked at the picture on the front. "That's a dope dragon."

Impossibly, Joel found himself smiling. "There's four of those books, and they're each around six hundred pages long, so pace yourself."

"I'll do no such thing." Ellie murmured, already flipping to the first chapter.

"Hey, I thought we had some Halloween decorations to put up." Joel pointed out.

"Yes!" Ellie snapped the book shut and tucked it under her arm as she marched toward the door. "I'm taking this with me."

"You can leave it here, you know." Joel called after her. "This is your room now."

Ellie turned around and her startled expression made Joel laugh. "Right." She said as she hurried back in and put the book on the bed. Her bed. "So weird." She muttered, taking one last bewildered glance around the room before leaving again. Joel followed her. His heart felt so light. He never thought he'd leave Sarah's room with a smile, and yet here he was. Smiling. Somehow, Ellie took away the sting of his loss. Instead, he felt the warm glow of Sarah's presence.

"Hey Joel, you can make the black cat statue chase people around the yard, right? Since you're a home repair dude?" Ellie was outside before he had a chance to answer her question. He chuckled.

"She's a wild one, isn't she, Sarah?" He murmured.

He could see his daughter smiling in his mind. "She's awesome."

/

It's me. Hi. I'm the problem, it's me.

In other words, sorry for being so late with this chapter! I will get the next one to you as soon as possible.