A/N: Neal is 4 and loves stomping in puddles. Peter is 16 and is learning to drive.
Rainy Day
Ellen Parker sat on the porch swing, watching the neighborhood through a misty rain. It had been nearly a year since they'd moved here, and she thought they'd settled in well. It turned out that teaching Danny to speak French had done a lot to keep Dahlia grounded. She'd moved on to teaching him Japanese, and she was talking about adding Spanish to his repertoire next.
Ellen was learning along with Danny — partly to keep her mind occupied, and partly in order to follow what he was saying given his tendency to switch between languages mid-sentence.
Part of Ellen thought she should tell Dahlia to stop. They were in WITSEC. They didn't want people to figure out who they really were. But on the other hand, it made Dahlia so happy to keep some part of her past self alive. Here in Albany, both Dahlia and Ellen worked rather boring desk jobs for a restaurant supply company. It paid the bills, but it didn't exactly feed their souls.
So Dahlia drew on her past as a diplomat's daughter who had traveled the world and become fluent in an astounding number of languages. That kept her happy. Balanced.
The rain was getting heavier, and Ellen couldn't help thinking of the tears that had run down Dahlia's face a year ago, when she learned Danny's father had been arrested, and again when she learned they would need to leave their lives behind and start over in a new place with new names. She'd been so devastated, Ellen had harbored doubts about how she'd manage in WITSEC.
But it had turned out well. They were thriving. Right now Dahlia was in the kitchen, baking something complicated and French, and making something else elegant and Japanese. Danny was "helping," which consisted mostly of taste-testing and singing children's songs in either French or Japanese, depending on which recipe Dahlia was focusing on at the moment.
Later they would take those goodies to the neighbors, as an expression of thanks. So many families had helped in various ways over this last year, including watching Danny in the afternoons when preschool was over and Ellen and Dahlia were still at work. Almost every weekend Dahlia either invited a family over for dinner or delivered something she had cooked in repayment.
Danny rushed outside. "It's raining!" he announced.
"Yes," Ellen agreed. It had turned into a downpour.
"Can we go puddle stomping?"
She chuckled. "Let's get our gear."
They put on rain boots and raincoats. Ellen didn't bother with an umbrella, because puddle stomping with Danny meant that most of the water would come from below instead of above.
He took her hand, tugging her toward his favorite spots — the places where tree roots had pushed sidewalks up at interesting angles. Rainwater gathered there and formed deep puddles. Danny reached the first one and jumped into it. Then he looked up at Ellen and grinned.
"You're part duck," she said, because that always made him giggle.
And then a car drove by. Ellen didn't have to look up to recognize it, because it had been driving up and down the streets of the neighborhood for a solid hour. Peter Burke was learning to drive, and he practiced with his dad every weekend. He was pretty good by now.
The car sluiced through a massive puddle near the curb, and an impressive wall of water drenched Ellen and Danny.
The car stopped, and Peter hopped out. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to do that. I think we have a couple of towels in the back." He opened the trunk of his father's car and started rummaging through it.
"I don't think a towel is going to make much difference," Ellen said.
Peter looked up from the trunk, a stricken expression on his face. "I'm so sorry," he repeated.
"We were out here with the goal of stomping in puddles and getting soaked," Ellen reassured him. "We don't mind. Isn't that right, Danny?"
"Do it again!" Danny yelled.
"Yeah, it's safe to say we're not upset," Ellen added.
A/N: It brings me so much joy to give Neal fluffy childhood moments!