Chapter Text
Joel’s in the dining hall when he sees her. It’s early December, the weather’s been changing mighty fast these last few weeks, and Jackson has been doing as much as they can to prepare for it.
Last winter was harsh, deadly. Crops wiped out, livestock sharing diseases amongst themselves, residents passing around a flu outbreak that had ended with their clinic resources well overrun and a few more graves buried out in the cemetery.
No one was much looking forward to this winter. Least of all Joel. Well, except maybe Ellie a bit more. She probably wasn’t excited ‘bout it either if the last three winters were any indication. Not that Joel would know for sure this year, considering she’s barely talked to him since he’d tracked her down in Salt Lake City, and she’d spat those words at him.
We’re done.
And she hadn’t wavered since.
Didn’t look at the house when she let herself into her little garage apartment. Didn’t ever once leave her door unlocked in case he mistook it as some sort of invitation. Didn’t catch his gaze in the dining hall. Didn’t patrol with him a single time, not all summer long. She’d taken the lake route a few dozen times. With Tommy or Jesse or Meg. But never Joel.
Does she ever think about those summer afternoons when he taught her how to swim? He can still feel the phantom pressure of her little hand digging into the crown of his head to try and dunk him under the water, can catch the ghost of her laughter riding on a summer breeze.
It had made this most recent summer hard, all those good memories the two of them had created in those sun-drenched months. Her sixteenth birthday at the museum, guitar playing out on the porch, jam and sunflower butter sandwiches cut into triangles that they ate around the firepit in the backyard. The first year when they’d been fresh back to Jackson and everything had been raw and red and peeling, how she still came to him then, even as she insisted on sequestering herself out in the damn garage every night.
There was a cowboy hat sittin’ on the coat rack nowadays. Same one she’d propped on his head and a few dozen dinosaur statues. It sat there like she might walk through the front door and plop it back on, start throwing around her shitty Texan accent and making dumbass jokes. There were a lot of fucking nights Joel could used a dumbass joke.
But now it’s winter. And winter is hard, too. Winter’s hard ‘cause he knows what they mean for her. He’s seen how they uproot all that healin’ she’s done and drag her back someplace different, dark. Tortuous. The two before this she still wasn’t all that forthcoming with him. And he wasn’t pushing her then, not when he could feel the weight sitting between them, not when they were having such a hard damn time finding their footing.
But he could still be there. Could knock on the door with mugs of tea morning and evening. Could drag her into the house for a movie night until she passed out on the couch with her toes dug beneath his thighs. Could find her in the dining hall and drop a forgotten coat around her shoulders.
Now she don’t even look at him. He might as well be dead. Far as Ellie’s concerned, it’s like he already is.
The few family dinners they’ve both been at since their falling out back in the spring, she won’t acknowledge a word he says. He ate two rolls on Thanksgiving Day without a single bit of butter ‘cause she wouldn’t dare pass him the dish. ‘Course he could’ve stood up and gotten it himself, but somehow that just felt worse than swallowing down dry, crumbling bread.
So it kinda surprises him, knowing how Ellie likes to pretend he don’t exist and all, when one of her little friends sidles up beside him.
Dina. Of course he knows Dina. She’s kind in a sort of way most teenagers ain’t, not Before and certainly not now. She treats Ellie good, better than that friend Cat of hers seemed to, and aired on a side of sensitivity that Jesse never could quite pick up on.
Dina offered to do the dishes and to help set up for community events and brought back the casserole dish Maria had leant out to her sparkling clean. Joel liked Dina. Even if he did catch her and Ellie high as goddamn kites last March.
Just ‘cause he knows her and he likes sure doesn't mean that he expects to be talkin’ to her. She doesn’t ignore his general existence like Ellie does, says excuse me if she bumps into him and smiles pitifully when he gets caught watching Ellie from the other side of the room. But they don’t have a whole lot else to talk about. She’s less eager to start her patrols, only going on a few since turning seventeen as opposed to Ellie who about repelled herself over the wall to get started.
“Hi, Mr. Miller.”
Joel looks around, just making sure Tommy isn’t anywhere that he’s missed. “Dina,” he says with a tip of his head in her direction. “You, uh…you doing alright?”
And there’s that sad little smile from her. If Joel didn’t feel so goddamn pathetic he might be more irritated by it. But as it stands, well, he was awfully pathetic.
“Yes.” She nods her head once, looks out over the dining hall with him as if the two of them are surveying the land. The night is wrapping up. Only a few of the late patrollers and their families left in the space, talking and laughing and eating. One of the younger kids up way past their bedtime is full of late night giggles. She’s got a dollop of whip cream on the end of her nose and every time her mom pretends like he’s going to eat it off, she erupts in full blown belly-laughs.
Joel looks away. He turns to Dina. “What can I do for ya?”
She shifts her weight, crosses one arm over to grab at the other. “I, um, I know you and Ellie aren’t exactly on…great terms right now,” is how she starts which just riles something longing and aching and sad inside of Joel. “So, like, don’t tell her I did this, okay?”
He blinks at her. “...Okay?”
“Ellie’s sweatshirt.”
“Her…”
“The navy blue one with the old Yellowstone picture on the front? It’s really soft and warm?”
“Yeah. I know which one you're talking ‘bout.” It had practically been her uniform these last couple of years. She donned it every morning just about, sooner wearing that thing out in below freezing temperatures before she’d dare put on a damn coat.
Sarah had been the same way. Hers was a Hollister sweatshirt. Pink and red, worn so frequent she’d ended up poking her holes through the cuffs.. He can still remember her bickering with him next to the front door as the school bus rolled down the street, backpack hanging off one shoulder. It’s not even that cold, Dad.
“I think it’s in your house somewhere.”
Joel likes Dina, but he would sure like to know what in tarnation this conversation is. “Alright?”
“Ellie needs it.”
Oh. So that’s how this is going to go, is it?
“She’s welcome to come and get it whenever she damn well pleases.” It’s not that he’s angry, not at Ellie, but sometimes that’s about all he has to offer in a situation like this. He’d spent a little too long pushing all his emotions down, leaving only anger left to draw upon. It was still too easy to grab ahold of.
That response earns him a hearty eye roll, the most widely used expression in all of teenage girldom. “You and I both know she won’t.”
‘Course he does. Though it kind of stings, knowing that Dina’s got the same read on the situation.
Every once in a while Joel still lets himself hope. There’s hope in a way he never got to have after Sarah…Well, there wasn’t any hope in that situation. But in this one, there’s a chance Ellie might accidentally meet his gaze. A possibility that a crack of a branch might have her head swinging over and catching a glimpse of the house. A thin, thready belief that she could one day see the why in it all. That she would understand how she’d been worth it then and worth it now and worth it fifty years down the road when Joel was dead and gone, and Ellie was still blissfully, miraculously alive.
“I can’t take her bitching about it anymore, Mr. Miller.” Dina doesn’t curse a whole lot around the adults. It surprises him a little. S’pose it shouldn’t. She’s hanging out with his hooligan after all. “Every day she mentions it in one capacity or another. I can’t take it.”
Dramatics. The other language that bridges entire cultures when it comes to teenagers. They all spoke it fluently.
“So you’re here asking in her stead?”
“No,” she shoots back quickly, her head finally swinging around to look at him. “Ellie would be pissed if she knew I was asking you for it, but…desperate times, ya know?”
It makes him smile, the hint of an accent and the flippant shrug of her shoulder and the familiarity she talks to him with. It makes him feel a little bit like…like Ellie could be there, too.
Joel runs a hand down his face, hears those baby giggles devolving into overtired cries. It’s a fine line at this hour, that’s something Joel still hasn’t forgotten. “I’ll make sure it’s clean and set it out for her tomorrow.” Even if it means he stays up half the night in the community laundromat waiting for it to finish. There wasn’t any urgency to it, the kid ain’t gonna freeze to death. Joel would know, after all. He’s the reason she almost did a few years back.
A huge sigh of relief. “Thank you, Mr. Miller.”
Even though Joel had been the one about to leave, Dina turns quicker than him and is already a few tables away when he calls out, “Hey, Dina?”
She spins back, ponytail whipping around and a polite smile on her face. The crying toddler is being hauled outside. Those on cleanup duty are scraping the leftovers into the compost bin and clanging the dishes together in the sink.
“Is she…is she doin’ alright?”
The answering expression on Dina’s face mirrors how Joel feels pretty damn well. “She’s trying to be, I think.”
The answer cleaves him apart. He doesn’t bid Dina goodnight before he turns and leaves out the back, where there’s no one else to see him go.
//
Two weeks later, Joel sees Dina fresh off a shift on the wall. There’s a beanie pulled down low over her ears and a remaining laugh caught in her throat as she’s talking with Jesse.
Joel wasn’t necessarily planning on it, but seemed like too good of timing to pass up. “Pass one of these off for me, would ya?” Two pairs of women's gloves, fitted in the fingers so they won’t throw off their shooting but warm enough that they won’t lose any damn fingers going out there for ten, twelve hour days. Especially once Dina starts joining for more patrols.
Already Joel had tried to get on Tommy’s case about it, telling him it wasn’t appropriate to have kids so young out there for so long. But Jesse had done the same routes at that age. And besides, Ellie was one of the best new patrollers they’ve got. She had good aim and kept her head on her shoulders in the face of trouble.
Not that Joel much fancied the idea of her finding trouble out there without him around to keep an eye on her.
“She made it the whole way back to Salt Lake City all on her lonesome, didn’t she?”
And, well, that’s not a reminder Joel needs.
“Don’t you think that-”
“Please, Dina.” He doesn’t need someone else telling him what he should do. He just needs to give her something. Christmas is in three days. It’ll be the first one he’s spendin’ without her. Even on the road he’d jokingly wished her a merry Christmas on what he approximated was near the 25th. Not that he had any gifts to give her, but there was a Savage Starlight in his bag that he’d been saving for just the right moment. The last two he’d talked her into sleeping in the house with him was on Christmas Eve. They camped out in the living room “just like old times.” Last year she got him a finely crafted blade for his woodworking and made a drawing of their museum adventure from four months prior.
He still had it of course. Framed and all.
“It ain’t gettin’ any warmer for a while, is it?”
Dina’s stuck staring at the gloves. Jesse’s looking between the both of ‘em. Joel’s trying not to show every ounce of pitifulness that seems to be crawling beneath his skin.
“Please,” he says now much like she’d said to him a few weeks before. “She won’t take them from me. And I’m not too keen on your fingers falling off on ya either.”
Dina takes the gloves.
//
Joel finds her crying outside the library around the start of April. It’s been raining off and on all day, and the clouds hang low and heavy, obscuring the mountains from view and filling the air with moisture. Joel’s boots leave muddy footprints along the walkways, sloshing and sliding in all that had come before him. It was a slipping accident just waiting to happen. Especially as the young kids were all outside, screeching and playing in the brief breaks of torrential downpour.
He felt a bit of pity for whoever got stuck cleaning up a mud monster of a child. Then a pang of sadness in knowing he wouldn’t be one of them.
“You alright, Dina?”
When she looks up from where her face had been buried in her hands, Joel has to wonder if he should’ve moved right along. She didn’t seem none too pleased to find him there.
At once her hands rake over her face and mop up the lingering tears. Her sweatshirt sleeve wipes away the snot. And here he thought it was just his kid who still did shit like that.
“Hey, Mr. Miller.” There’s a false cheeriness imbued into her words.
It doesn’t fool Joel for a second.
The rain is starting up again. Joel moves towards the library and beckons her along with him. At once her head begins to shake. “I-I don’t want to go back in there right now.” That false cheer is gone, replaced with trembling words.
Joel looks over his shoulder, scanning for threats at once. Old habits and all. “What’s going on? Are you okay?” Because sure, it’s not like she’s his kid, but in Jackson raising kids ain’t any one person’s job. They were a community, true and proper. And same way Mrs. Creely iced up Ellie’s wrist when she sprained it two springs prior or Linda sat on the porch with Ellie until Joel came home after she had that panic attack their first winter here, Joel won’t just go turning his back on a kid in need.
Well, technically Dina had turned eighteen three weeks ago. But still. A kid.
“It’s s-stupid.”
Joel shakes his head. “Not if it’s got you this upset it ain’t.”
Lightly, he presses his hand to her back and leads her away from the library. The two of them pick their way around the worst of the mud and rain puddles, coming to the cafe that had opened in Jackson this spring. Almost like a true, bonafide coffee shop. With actual goddamn beans from a group that had traveled all the way up from Mexico. Best damn trade they’d made in all the years Joel’s been here. Who needs electricity and running water when they have coffee?
Now they were trying to cultivate a few trees of it in a corner of one of the greenhouses. Mel was the woman in charge, and Joel tried not to remind her that his life was resting in her hands every other day.
In the meantime, there’s a fresh batch once a day in the communal cafe along with brewed teas and some variations on beer. Maria joked if they kept this up they’d have a tourism boom within the month.
It’s much too late in the day for any coffee to still be remaining, but Joel gets them both a steaming mug of tea, even when Dina protests she can get it herself, and one of those muffins that’s chock full of blueberries, frozen right after they were picked in the summer so they still tasted fresh as the day they’d ripened. The supply was nearing the end, but a new crop in a few months would replete their resources nicely.
He rips off the first bite, leaning back in his chair angled across the table from Dina. Her hair’s wet and plastered against her head and there’s still the occasional little hiccup of a sob.
“How’s, uh, how’s school goin’?”
“You really don’t have to do this,” she groans.
But Dina’s a nice kid. And on top of that, she’s the closest connection he has to Ellie. And he likes to think that maybe, by looking out for Dina, it can be a little bit like looking out for his kid who won’t so much as answer a direct question from. Not that he’s trying anymore. He’s giving her space. That’s what he’s supposed to do just…wait it out.
“Share a muffin? Girl, I’ve made far bigger sacrifices in my day.”
That earns him a watery smile and she reaches out and rips off a piece from the top. “It’s about Jesse,” she says with her mouth half-full.
Ah, boy trouble.
“Need me to go beat him up for ya?”
Now that gets him a proper laugh. “I’ll keep you posted.”
The rest of the time there they eat and sip in silence. There’s people coming and going, Joel watches them with varying degrees of interest, catching snippets of conversation and tidbits of information. Not a whole lot interesting going on. Patrol found a hoard a couple miles west of the usual route. Joel was already aware of it. He had plans to go out with a group tomorrow evening.
When they’re finished, Joel takes their dishes and washes them before laying them out in the rack to dry. Dina’s eyes aren’t red and puffy anymore. Her breaths are smooth, even. She smiles up at him when he comes back over and stands, pulling her partially dried rain jacket back on. “Thanks for…the muffin.”
She’s a good kid. She looks out for his kid. But there’s something even more than that, this part of himself that just can’t help but see a kid in need and have the compulsion to fix it. “Anytime, Dina.”
“Hey, Mr. Miller?”
The words catch him when his hand’s already extended towards the doorknob to leave.
“She’s doing a lot better. Ever since the snow melted…she’s a lot better.”
There isn’t much good news in this world, even with a place like Jackson, but that tidbit of information settles within him, soothes the errant figure attempting to rise up and fix a problem he has not been invited to work on.
“You watch out for her, got it?”
A mock salute; it reminds him an awful lot of the ones Ellie used to shoot his way with varying degrees of disdain. Dina’s is all playful. “You got it.”
//
This patrol isn’t anything new.
Joel wakes up early, fills a thermos with chicory root that sure as hell ain’t coffee, and reports to the stables to commandeer his horse for the day.
Marvin and him had been getting on pretty well the last few rounds, even if that was a dumb as hell name for a horse. Joel forgave him on account of being one of the last to spook and the first to trek through the rushing water of rivers.
What is new is finding that he’s got a freshly eighteen year old girl paired with him today.
Now, there’s nothing Joel has against going out with some of the younger members of Jackson. Jesse held his own quite well and Chandra was really mastering that bow and arrow, even Alice had finally stopped yelping every time something unexpected happened. Thank god, because Joel was one more trip out from banning her for life.
But what he doesn't expect is to have Dina and…no one else.
“Where’s Charlie?” he grunts, coming off more irritated than he really is. It’s early. He hasn’t woken up enough yet to be talkin’ and all.
“Sick.”
Well, damn. “Just you and me then?”
Dina nods, her shoulders are squared.
It reminds Joel a little too much of Ellie. How she stood at attention when she wanted him to take her seriously, wanted to seem big and tough and so much older than her age.
But Dina’s eighteen. She’s done a few different paired patrols. She’s not a kid anymore, even if some part of Joel will always see her as one.
“Well, let’s get goin’ then.”
He mounts Marvin, pats him down and clicks his tongue at the same time his heels dig in a little. Dina’s mare follows in line automatically.
The doors swing open just as they’re approaching, and Joel takes just a second to turn back and ask, “You okay doin’ this just you and me?”
“Of course.”
“‘Cause if not I could ask Tommy. Or even Maria. You know she’s lookin’ to get out more and more as Leo keeps driving her up the wall.” And maybe Dina doesn’t know that, but Joel assumes she does. Ellie sure knows it. She and Maria have been going out together almost three times a week. Patrolling and hunting and, he thinks, maybe just strolling about.
No denying he’s glad that Ellie’s got Maria. Also no denying the rush of jealousy he can’t help rising up in him knowing that she’s spending all that time with Ellie when it should be him.
“I’m fine, Joel.” Dina sniffs. “As long as you…”
“I trust ya plenty, girl.”
And that’s the end of the conversation.
It’s a moderate route at best. A decent ride out to the old lake house they use as a shelter-in-place when the weather necessitates. They clear one seemingly recent Infected off the path and find nothing else along the way.
Joel lets her clear the building, hairs on the back of his neck raised as they always are when he takes a step back and allows someone else to be in charge. It ain’t in his nature, risking someone like that. Especially not a kid. Especially not his kid’s best friend. But it’s a pretty safe building to do it in, and there’s only one way for her to learn, only one way for all these kids to become competent and able so they don’t need men like Joel as the years keep coming for him.
“All clear,” Dina announces with a decisive nod. She keeps her gun in hand, though. Joel does his own sweep and signals his agreement. She tucks her weapon away. “I’ll sign the ledger.”
Ah, yes. The ledger. Sometimes when it was just Joel and Tommy, Joel would take the time to flip through all the entries. Ellie’s been taking this path out in one capacity or another for almost a year now. She loves signing these books, crackin’ her jokes and making little comments in the margin.
Seth was always complaining about it. Said it just showed how immature the “kids these days” were.
But out of all the ways to goof off? Well, Joel felt like making a pun in a goddamn notebook was a pretty alright one.
Nevermind anyone that it was his kid he was defending with that take.
“Okay.” Just like that, Dina’s moving back towards the horses and preparing to head out.
Joel whistles to get her attention, nods his head towards a patch of grass cast in speckled shadows beneath a tree. “How ‘bout some lunch before you ride them horses any harder?”
“We barely took it at a trot out here,” she retorts.
“Sit down and eat your goddamn sandwich, girl.”
Dina plods over to him and sinks to the ground. She crosses her legs beneath her as she digs around in her pack. The dappled sunlight is cast across her cheeks as she takes a long pull from the canteen that sloshes with less than half the water they’d started out with.
The lunch she unwraps has a sunflower butter and strawberry jam sandwich in it. The crusts are cut off and gathered in a separate little corner. Just like…
“Ellie made it for me.” Dina tracks his gaze. “Cucumber slices too.” She holds up the container of them, unevenly sliced circles all clattering together in red sauce stained tupperware that’s older than the kid who holds it.
Joel takes a bite of his jerky, swallows it down like sandpaper on his throat. “That’s…that’s nice of her.”
Dina shoots him this little smile, shy and a bit sad. It’s not somethin’ Joel likes. The whole town knowing that his own damn kid don’t want anything to do with him. Partially because it’s none of their fucking business, and partially ‘cause a little bit of him always has his momma in the back of his head saying, “Now don’t go airing our dirty laundry out to dry, boy.”
Didn’t seem right. Everyone sticking their noses where they don’t belong.
Dina clears her throat. “You miss her a lot, huh?”
It takes everything in Joel not to cry. So he kind of ends up laughing instead. “Now what makes you say that?”
The girl’s smart enough to recognize a rhetorical question at least.
“For the record,” Dina says. She’s chewing thoughtfully, ripping up her crust pieces into smaller bites before eating them. She’s saving the best for last, getting all those dried bits out of the way first. “I keep telling Ellie she should make up with you.”
It takes Joel by surprise. Less that Dina’s cheering in his favor, for some reason that doesn’t seem so out of place, but more the fact that these two talk about his existence at all. He’d assumed Ellie had the same tactic with everyone else that she kept with him: pretend he’s as good as dead.
“And why’s that?” If he listens close, he can hear the rush of the creek not too far from where they’re sitting. Spring has recently sprouted and the run-off from the mountains is sure to have the water rushing by. There was a couple of summers ago that the four of ‘em, Tommy and Maria and Ellie and Joel, had come out here for a picnic much like this one. Ellie had still been a kid, hadn’t even yet turned fifteen. He let her write their names in the ledger that time, too.
It was the end of summer and the creek was barely moving, slow and lazy with its dwindling water. Ellie had stuck her feet in, relishing the tepid water on that hot, humid day. Minnows had come up swirling around her ankles. She’d laughed. God, Joel really thought he would carry that laugh with him forever. Same as Sarah squealing with delight when he tickled her belly and tossed her in the air. He didn’t think that sort of joy could end.
He should’ve known better.
When Dina hasn’t answered him yet, Joel adds on, “It’s not like you know why she’s mad at me anyway.”
“Because you lied to her,” Dina answers casually. For a moment, Joel wonders if Ellie would ever dare tell the story in its entirety. He can only pray she’s smarter than that. But also…what a secret she’s been saddled with. What a goddamn weight to have to carry beneath the ragged, swirling scars muddled across her forearm.
Joel nods; he eats another bite. “She still laugh so hard it comes out in a snort sometimes?”
The smile they share is a conspiratorial one. And Joel can’t help it, he loves this girl for loving his girl, for knowing that Ellie’s got a friend to rely on and not having to lay awake and wonder if that same crippling loneliness dared to sink its claws within her.
He eats his sandwich and he watches the water trickle by, the wind whistle through the green leaves, the lazy passing of clouds overhead. He hears it on the tailend of a breeze, a laugh bright enough to chase away the darkness. A laugh that he’d have to hold onto through memory alone.
//
She stays out later than she used to.
Ellie’s an early riser, getting up before the dawn to get to the stables. Even with school finished, she kept her before dawn shift. Opting for her late mornings and early afternoons free and taking an evening shift up on the wall. She used to come home straight after most days. He’d see the lights flip on. Sometimes he’d hear her music, see a little plume of smoke comin’ out one of her windows from all that damn grass she keeps managing to get ahold of.
But now she comes in later and later.
Joel don’t know what she’s out there doing, if there’s someone she’s sweet on that she’s spending her time with or if she’s out drinking with some of the older kids in Jackson. She’s not a kid, none of ‘em are anymore. They’re one year post patrol graduation, not just relegated to newbie trails any longer. She works longer hours, studies in a few other fields to find where she best fits.
When she does her construction rotation, it shouldn’t shock Joel when she picks Tommy.
It doesn’t shock him, just hurts him.
He and Tommy don’t talk about it much. Joel doesn’t think there’s a whole lot to talk about. His kid hates his guts. He can’t really blame her. That’s that. It doesn’t change anything, talking it over. Things will stay the same way they’ve always been. She’ll change her mind when she’s good and ready. Joel can’t be holding his breath waiting for her, but he’ll be in the wings, ready, if she ever got there. Couldn’t pressure her, couldn’t force her.
But he could watch out his window and make sure her ass gets home at night.
Which was getting harder and harder when she’s comin’ traipsing back at eleven, midnight, two in the goddamn morning.
Joel ain’t eighteen, and he’s gotta get up in the morning, after all.
But she’s not home yet, and he doesn’t go to sleep until she is. Sometimes she swaps patrol rotations with somebody. Sometimes she goes on these little horseback trips with Tommy. Sometimes she assists with the wool or cheese pick up from one of the surrounding farms that they partner with.
There’s no knowing where she’s at right now. There’s no knowing she’s safe. Not until she’s home.
Finally when the clock strikes 3, Joel grabs himself a coat and makes his way outside.
The air’s frigid, winter waiting on the coattails and inserting itself further and further within the valley. Joel’s come to not mind the cold so much as the years have gone by. It makes his joints hurt more, reminds him a little too much of those harrowing months between Silver Lake and Salt Lake when he wasn’t sure if he was gonna be enough, if he was going to be able to keep her alive.
But still, the cold don’t slice him to pieces like it did before.
So tonight he shoves his hands deep in his pockets, hunches his shoulders against the freezing winds, and he sets off to one of the few places he can imagine his girl being.
She’d be angry with him, he already knows. Ellie doesn’t want Joel looking out for her. She’s too grown, first of all. But he’s lying to himself if he pretends that all it is. He’s a damn fool if he doesn’t recognize that she wants nothing to do with him because she hates him, resents him.
For all intents and purposes, Joel has been dismissed from Ellie’s life. And though he’ll respect that, won’t force his presence in her life, he won’t ever stop looking out for her. Not when he’s already lost another daughter to the gnarled grasp of death. Not when he’d buried her beneath a rising Texan sun, placed within the ground with her shirt still blood stained and her eyes just not staying closed, no matter how much he and Tommy both tried.
Joel hadn’t wanted to put her down. He let Tommy start the hole as he cradled his dead, lifeless baby girl. And then he made Tommy hold her as Joel took out the next five and a half feet. Not stopping, not even pausing. His hands split open on the handle of the shovel, cracked and bleeding and ripped all to hell. It hurt, but he barely felt it. It was a hell of an infection risk, but it didn’t matter. Not when he was planning to be gone before the moon dipped beneath the horizon that coming evening.
Shaking off that horrid, tumultuous memory, Joel presses forward to find his kid now. The one who’s not six feet under. The one whose blood had stained his hands but she’d been there to help wipe ‘em clean. And wasn’t that just something. How she’d been beaten and bruised and battered and when that nose of hers started gushing anew and Joel clamped the sleeve of his shirt against it to stop the torrent, Ellie had let him with only a few mumblings of complaint. But when it had stopped and he’d pulled away and they’d both barely been alive, barely fucking breathing, she’d taken the leftover water he’d been using to get her clean and started to wash away the blood that had only just coated his hands.
Jesus, he’s got to get ahold of himself here.
Joel makes his way along the frequently trodden down paths, hoping he’ll come upon her and pretend he’s just out for a late night stroll. Well, early morning, as the minutes kept ticking by.
But there’s no Ellie.
The stables are quiet. The wall is still.
He knows two other places she might be. And he shouldn’t be knockin’ on doors at this hour, not when she ain’t his to keep tabs on. But even though he knows that, it isn’t enough to keep him from going and doing it anyway.
What if she’d gone out on an evening patrol and hadn’t come back? What if she’d been out with her friends and gotten herself into some trouble? What if she was too drunk or high to walk herself home? Or maybe an early bout of illness slipping its way through the community and sinking its teeth within his kid first?
Either way, it gets him to keep going, debating his way between Dina and Jesse. She doesn’t spend much time with Cat these days, though Joel wasn’t sure if that was them growing apart or a more thorough falling out. He never cared for that one much anyway, not the way he did her other friends who seemed to make a point to treat her right, who got her laughing harder than anybody else, socked her bicep in a joke or slung their arms around her shoulders on their way home in the evenings.
Joel was pretty sure Jesse was sweet on Ellie, though he couldn’t tell if she returned the favor or not. Besides, he and Dina were always doing that off and on again nonsense. It might get messy if she starts dating him.
Either way, because he’s hoping it’s the case or because it feels more likely, Joel heads towards Dina’s place first.
He’s remiss to knock on the door, probably going to scare the daylights out of her and her sister both, but he’s still circling in worry as to where Ellie could be or the sort of trouble that may have found her.
So he knocks once, a little too quietly to be wakin’ anybody from a dead sleep, though, so he knocks again.
The porch light comes on. Talia steps outside wrapping a robe tighter around herself to protect against the cool night air. “Mr. Miller? Is everything okay?” There’s a tinge of panic in her own voice as she glances to the cracked door behind her, like she would be able to determine if Dina was safe and sound inside or not just by peering over her shoulder. “Is Dina-”
“She’s fine,” Joel interjects quickly. “I was just, uh, just wondering if Ellie might be here?”
“No, I don’t think-”
“Talia?” Dina steps outside, flannel pajama bottoms and…Ellie’s Yellowstone sweatshirt on. Interesting. And here Joel thought he’d stayed up until midnight cleaning that for his own kid last winter. “What’s going on?”
Joel shakes his head, tries to use the icy air slicing through his bronchioles as a means to ground himself. It wasn’t a big deal. Of course his kid didn’t come home. She doesn’t ever come home. She sequesters herself into a garage in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter, and doesn’t think anything of it. She doesn’t even look towards home. The place that was supposed to be theirs with two bedrooms and a breakfast table with two chairs. A little stand for the guitar and a TV and DVD system that had all the movies she liked best on hand. The home that had walls freshly painted and a newly sanded down bed frame with shelves built right into the headboard for all of her little knick-knacks. There was a growing stack of books there. Joel added one every time he found something she might like out on patrol.
A home that wasn’t ever gonna just be a place. It was going to be the two of them, together day in and day out. Alive.
But instead…
“I’ll go check at Jesse’s. Sorry to bother y’all.”
‘Cept Dina darts back inside and comes out a second later, hobbling into her winter boots without any damn socks on her feet. “I’m coming with you.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. I just-”
“It’s three in the fucking morning, Mr. Miller. You really think I’m not going to join in on looking for her?”
And it feels a little like she’s saying, “You really think I’m going to let you do this alone?” so he waves her forward and simply says, “C’mon then.”
The porch steps creak beneath her weight as the door lock slips back into place. Dina’s keychain dangles as she shoves it deep in her pocket and looks over her shoulder to wave goodbye to her sister who’s watching from the window.
“Do you think she’s hurt?”
The town is silent, only a few emergency lights continuing to burn. Not even the bakers are up making bread for the day ahead. Not even the stable hands have begun to tack and prep the horses for the morning rotation.
It’s just the two of them, feet tromping through frosted paths and breaths puffing out in clouds of condensation. “I don’t…” Joel shakes his head, breaking loose the fears and the uncertainty and the circling panic he’s dragged himself into. “I think she’s fine, but I just…”
Dina’s looking over at him. Her teeth are cutting into her bottom lip. Her eyebrows are furrowing. “Ellie’s kinda like that, too,” she says as they walk. “She gets something in her head and then…she’s not always very good at letting it go.”
Joel runs a hand down his face. He feels it something fierce tonight. The missing, the lack, how he’s got a daughter just within his reach, but how she refuses to ever let him hold her again, how she’ll deny his love, his affection, his support until his dying breath because she’s enshrouded by rage, blanketed by betrayal. And it’s the price he’s gotta pay. It’s the one he’d offer up over and over again if it kept her alive, kept her here.
There’s no question about, never has been.
Doesn't mean it ever gets easier, not when she’s here in a way Sarah never will be again, but she’s not much closer to him. The distance, it just keeps wedging itself further into place.
“Go on home, Dina.” The words are bone-weary. His knees are aching. His hands are trembling. His heart is splintered. “Ellie’s just fine.”
He ain’t lookin’ at her, but when he eventually does pan up, her shoulders are squared back and her expression is fixed. “I’m not leaving you until we find her.” And now it doesn’t seem so much like Dina’s sticking around for Ellie, but almost like she’s keeping pace for the sake of staying with Joel.
“Alright,” he says quietly.
They walk on.
“You know…my parents died a really long time ago.”
The words are laid out there, set before him much like the path they follow. It’s his choice what to do with it, how he handles her statement. Orphaned kids ain’t anything special at the end of the world. But in a place like Jackson, it’s a little less common. There were families of three, four kids who had a mom and dad to go home to. Little kids who don’t know the way the world was twenty-five years before anymore than they know what it’s really like outside these walls. They’re read story books and build snowmen in the winter. There’s a wagon that pulls them through town in the middle of the school day, hauling masses of preschoolers out to the orchards or to play within the safe confines of the creek and fields.
But the older kids, they know loss like most everyone else on this god forsaken earth these days. Lost siblings, parents, friends. So orphans still weren’t all that rare. Even still, he feels something at Dina’s statement, some piece of himself stirring with her youngness, her loneliness. Makes him think of Ellie in that FEDRA school, how she’d told him ‘bout how nothing there was your own, nobody cared, nobody gave a damn when your birthday was or if you lost a tooth.
He was too tired for this shit.
“It’s nice,” Dina says with her arms wrapped tight around her midsection and her voice coming out just a little too tight, a little too honest with the emotion wrapped within it. “Seeing that sort of love again.”
It about stops Joel in his tracks. ‘Cause that's what it is, plain and simple. Been a long ass time since he’s told anyone he loves them. Even Leo, Joel can’t be sure he’s ever said it to Leo. The words are too foreign, too far out of reach. He doesn't know how to love somebody anymore.
Except he does. Except he loved a girl who he’d damned the rest of the world for. Loved a girl who he’d carried in his arms to the backseat of a stolen SUV, sequestered her away to some place safe, some place where she could grow, could live. And she despised him for it.
“It just…it makes me remember my mom and dad, I guess.” She shrugs like it’s nothing when in reality it’s everything. “I know she’s super mad at you or whatever, but she’s lucky to have you, if you ask me.”
Joel just keeps walkin’. It’s the best he can do.
“I mean, you’re super nice even just to me.”
“No even just, Dina,” he tells her with what little voice he can manage to muster. “You’re a good kid. You treat my-you treat Ellie right. Means a lot to me, gettin’ to see her cared for like that.”
She doesn’t answer him. They walk in silence until Joel decides it’s high time to call in some additional reinforcements and knocks on Tommy and Maria’s door, praying he doesn’t wake they’re rambunctious pre-schooler and land himself amongst the ranks of Maria’s personal wrath.
Turns out Ellie’s there. It’s probably where he should’ve started looking in the first place. She’d been babysitting and had fallen asleep right on the edge of Leo’s toddler bed. Tommy covered her with a blanket and she’d yet to wake up since.
All that rigamarole for nothing. “Sorry for dragging you out here with me,” Joel says, the slightest bit sheepish after everything.
“Come on.” She links their arms together and leads him away. “I daresay we’ve both earned ourselves a cup of coffee.
They reach the coffee shop before it even opens. Thankfully, the barista Rachael takes pity enough to let them in.
Together they sit and drink the first cups of the day, conversation sparse and exhaustion heavy, but it’s something like a camaraderie. It’s something like having just a little piece of his kid beside him again.
Dina raises her mug, holds it out for him to clank against.
“What’re we cheersin’ to?” Joel asks, smacking his cup against hers without an answer.
She takes a sip, swallowing down her tanned, sweetened coffee and releasing a long, “Ahhh,” as she does so. “To…loving people enough that you stay up the whole night.”
Joel doesn’t repeat it back, just lets the words settle down in his gut, sliding their way down his esophagus much like hot coffee that burns on the way.
“Sure thing, kiddo. Sure thing.”
//
New Year’s Eve. The whole of Jackson is at the party with a few wall patrollers swapping out halfway through the shindig so everyone can join in. Fiddles are going, people dancing like their lives depend on it and whiskey being poured more liberally than any other night of the year. It’s a celebration of another year survived, another year in Jackson’s walls, another year of growth and development and this seeming promise of tomorrows, more certain here than maybe anywhere else in the world.
Honestly, Joel thinks maybe everyone’s just drinkin’ a little too much all things considered. But he’s three glasses deep so maybe he can count himself on that bus as well.
Leo’s running around, playing with the other kids his age, but he darts over by Joel and shows off some art project or another. “Ellie helped me make it!” he declares with pure pride radiating from him.
And that’s the start of it.
Then it’s Mrs. McHendry asking after Ellie and how she’s doin’. Then it’s Tim praising her for tackling patrols so well, even telling Joel all ‘bout how she took out four Clickers on her own just last week.
And well, doesn’t that get him to down another few fingers of liquor. Thinking of his girl out there, slicin’ and dicin’ goddamn monsters without him around to watch her back. Or, hell, to hide her behind him and take the threat out on his own.
It almost surprises him when he catches sight of them two of ‘em. When he manages to make out the sight despite his swimming vision and the twinkling fairy lights and the hustle and bustle of so many bodies moving and gliding and dancing along. People laughing and drinks pouring.
But of course he spots her. A part of Joel has always had an eye out watching his daughters, just to make sure they’re okay, safe, happy. He’d been the same way with Sarah, when he was able to. It ain’t any different with Ellie.
It sure is something, having another kid to call his own after all these years and yet to have to live on the periphery of her life. Sometimes it makes him wonder, if they’d gotten to the Fireflies sooner, if Tommy had been the one to take her there, if Marlene hadn’t bothered to even consider cutting Ellie’s goddamn brain outta her goddamn skull.
Everything could be different. Maybe they’d be living a life as more than two people who don’t even speak. More than some guy keeping tabs on a kid who isn’t even technically his.
Dammit. He’s had too much to drink.
But then there she is, soft as she ever gets these days, with her flannel clad arms twined around Dina. The two of them are dancing slow and sweet, both of ‘em smilin’ in a way that…oh. Well, shit, guess she might not be sweet on Jesse after all.
It was probably the sorta thing he should’ve considered. He’d gotten enough lectures from Frank ‘bout “Compulsive heterosexuality” as he drank a glass of “top shelf wine” that quite honestly just tasted like a bottle of red if you asked Joel. But he just hadn’t…hadn’t considered it before.
Which is stupid. Goddammit he knows it’s stupid. Especially thinkin’ back to that conversation he had with Tommy and to Dina wearing that Yellowstone sweatshirt, and Ellie shooting eyes at Cat that had Joel askin’ just what in the hell that friendship was all about. Well, now he was starting to think it wasn’t a simple friendship at all.
He’s an old sap at this point in his life, just relieved to see Ellie with someone he trusts, someone he knows is going to be kind to her, to look out for her. Someone who sees the value in his girl in all the ways he does.
There’s a light in Ellie’s eyes, a shy smile on Dina’s lips. He gets the feeling this is something fresh between the two of them and looks away for the sake of granting them both some privacy. And well, in the next moment when they’re kissing, Joel really makes a point to look the other way. He knows Ellie don’t want him involved in any aspect of her life, doesn’t want him bearing witness to her greatest achievements as much as her fleeting failures or milliseconds of vulnerability.
Maybe he’ll head back early. Finish the drink in his hand and call it a night.
Except then Seth is butting in, can’t even just make his little comment and let it go. No, he’s gotta keep on pestering those girls, even goes as far as to break out words Joel hasn’t heard in damn near two decades and gladly so. This fucker’s ranting and raving about issues regarding Joel’s kid which ain’t somethin’ he’s about to stand for. And he’s calling Dina slurs. And that’s all it takes for Joel to step in, shove that fucker with both hands against his chest and tell him to “Get the hell outta here.”
He doesn’t care if this ain’t the time or place. He doesn’t care if he needs to take this outside and find some goddamn manners. He doesn’t even care about that damn fine glass of whiskey he just left behind on the table.
“Get your hands off of me.”
The two of them square up, and Joel sure didn’t come to a party lookin’ for a fight tonight, but there ain’t much to keep him from throwing the first punch. No one talks to his kid, or her maybe girlfriend, like that.
But then Maria’s coming between ‘em, diffusing Joel with a hardened stare as she and Tommy both work on directing Seth the hell away. “Fresh air” isn’t what Joel would say the bastard needs, but it’s what Tommy insists on with a hardened edge to the suggestion.
A few years ago, Joel would have followed them out and made sure Seth received the message loud and clear. Do not mess with Joel’s kid. Not Ellie. Not Dina. Hell, throw Jesse in the mix too.
It’s instinct, the steps he takes following after Ellie’s retreating figure. The, “You alright, kiddo?” that he asks, the same way he had on sleepless nights and haggard, gray mornings, and moments when she’d just be sittin’ there, fingertips tracing the mycelium lines of her forearm. Not talking, not looking, not even processing a damn thing he was saying to her. And his chest seized up, the panic grabbed hold and shook the air straight from his lungs, stole the very blood from his arteries until he’s damn near ready to get down on his knees and beg her to tell him what the hell he can do, how he can help her.
She never did let him.
Not then.
“What is wrong with you?”
And not now.
“He had no right-”
“And you do?” The words are sharp, her gaze fixed on him for the first time in so damn long. Behind her, he catches Dina, who’d been staring resolutely away, shift her gaze back towards Ellie, something like surprise across her face. “I don’t need your fucking help, Joel.”
It’s then that he processes more than just Ellie in front of him, hears the whispers, catches the stares. Ellie’s glare cuts through him like icy wind on a February night, like a knife through flesh and muscle, like a bullet through bone and organs and tissue. She cuts right through him, gets him right where it hurts most, and Joel can’t stand seeing her watch him like that. He can’t take it.
So instead he listens to his gossiping neighbors, scanning from one side of the room to the other before answering with, “Right,” and walking away from it all.
The walk home is sobering, even though he hadn’t been the least bit drunk by the time he left. Sometimes he forgets, only when he pushes himself too, only when he lets it all go faint and fuzzy and he sees her out there, livin’ her life. It’s what matters after all. Not that she won’t talk to him, barely looks at him. She is out here living. Going to parties on New Years Eve and kissing a girl who’s got a way of drawing a smile outta her, manages to make those defensive shoulders drop and the hard planes of her face soften.
A life where she could grow, change, become whoever she wanted to be. And ain’t no goddamn neighbors gonna be the ones to tell her otherwise.
Joel turns on a single lamp inside the house. It’s too big for one person. Bedrooms with walk in closets, a living room big enough for a whole family to sit around in. A kitchen with an eat-in table that only ever needs one chair sat at it. A shoe rack for one pair of boots, a bookshelf and a DVD player and old craft supplies that are still laid out on a desk cornered in an upstairs bedroom.
She hadn’t slept in it long, hadn’t stayed here more than a couple of months, but it was still hers. Joel had stripped the wallpaper. Repainted the walls a soft sorta blue. Even after she’d left, he hung shelves on her walls and fixed those uneven legs on her desk. He didn’t know how to do much with a needle and thread, but he’d exchanged a few replaced boards on Ms. Gerty’s porch for an embroidered comforter, solar systems and dinosaurs both.
Ellie was probably too old for those things now, wouldn’t want them anymore. Least of us all would she want ‘em from him.
There’d been so many years he’d missed. She was fourteen by the time she came into his life, smartass little teenager. He’d missed all those years before, used to mourn that fact whenever she brought up moments of her life before. Her first missing tooth or how she’d learned to read or what happened to her when she got sick. It felt like some sort of failing on his part, even when it had been totally out of his control.
And now here he was, missing more years, more moments. It was still out of his control when she hated him the way that she did. There wasn’t any fixin’ it because there was no changing what he’d done, the choice he’d made. He would make it over and over again, a fact that he suspected Ellie was well aware of. Not that he’s delusional enough to think she’d forgive him if he had any remorse to offer up, but the lack of it isn’t likely to fix a whole lot between them.
Joel’s debating between another glass of whiskey and the comforting solace of a darkened bedroom when there’s a knock at the door.
It’s probably Tommy, coming to commemorate. Or, god forbid, Maria comin’ to chew him out for losing his cool at a community function like that. As if that was even close to what he wished he’d done. If he’d been half the man he was a few years ago, Seth’s face woulda been a bloody pulp. A gurney would’ve had to drag him out of there. A little shove? Now that was self-restraint at its finest.
‘Cept Joel doesn’t have it in him for company in any capacity. He’s mourning the fact that his daughter hates his guts, wallowing in the loss that he’s had to endure just to allow her to gain her whole life back.
The words to dismiss his brother or sister-in-law are already on the tip of his tongue when he swings the door open and finds- “Dina.”
“Hey, Mr. Miller.”
Dina crosses her arms over her chest. Her teeth are digging into her bottom lip and she looks every bit of the definition of “uncomfortable” standing there on his porch.
“Come in, kid. You’ll damn near catch your death.”
Dina crosses over the threshold. She hasn’t got her coat on. It’s ‘bout to be January and she don’t even got a coat.
A full body shiver traces through her. Joel snatches that old crocheted blanket off the back of the couch and extends it to her. “You want something to drink? Tea?” There was still a stockpile of the stuff. Mint leaves and dried raspberry pieces kept in an airtight canister just above the stove. Joel used to make it for Ellie on the nights she couldn’t sleep or when her appetite simply refused to make an appearance. It was something so small, trivial, but it was a little way he could take care of her, brew a cup of tea and let her wrap her hands around the warmed mug until the blood came back to the tips of her fingers, until the life diffused through her body from head to toe.
“No, that’s okay. I don’t mean to like, intrude or anything.”
“You ain’t-”
“I just wanted to say thank you.”
Now that gives him a little pause.
“You don’t have to-”
“I do,” she interrupts him again. The blanket’s draped around her shoulders and the blunt edges of her nails dig against the knit from where she holds to keep it in place. “It’s…” Dina blows out a harsh breath, shifting from one foot to the next. “It’s not really the shit that matters anymore, I know that, but I’ve read books. I know what it was like before. And having Seth call me that…I didn’t want Ellie to get into the middle of it. I mean she’s as much of a target as I am. But it…meant something. You jumping in like that. Defending us.”
“‘Course,” Joel answers automatically. It was the right thing to do. He hopes that if he hadn’t been there, someone else would’ve stepped up and called Seth out for his hateful words and unnecessary insertion of himself in the relationship of two young girls. “Nobody deserves to be talked to that way, Dina.” Joel clears his throat, then adds, “and if you’re given any more trouble, you just let me know. I’ll take care of it.”
Moisture dots the ends of her lashes as one corner of her lips tilts upward. “And I…I just wanted you to know that I’m not taking this lightly. I’m not taking Ellie lightly.”
The way Dina says her name has a reverence to it, a sweetness. Like she knows she’s got something special. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you, Dina.”
“I know you’ve listened to me cry over Jesse and have probably seen us argue in the dining hall and shit but…it’s not like that with Ellie. Jesse was never right,” she goes onto insist, head shaking minutely and eyes blinking fast as her gaze darts all around the living room. They rest on the guitar resting in the corner and a smile takes over her face. Joel wonders if Ellie’s busted out her own guitar to show off a time or two. It was how Joel used to try and endear Sarah’s mom. Had worked, too. Even if she’d insisted his musical talent wasn’t the thing that eventually led to them creating human life together.
The words that aren’t spoken end up sitting between them. Leaves Joel to be the one asking, “But Ellie is?”
Dina shakes her head, such small movements Joel could almost miss them entirely. But then she sighs, laughing and rolling her eyes. “Yeah. I just…I really think she is.”
It’s almost all he could want for his girl. Love, the kind that leaves you shaking your head in the dead of night, unable to conceptualize how you could end up here, this far gone. Love from someone who was going to put you first, who was going to look out for you the same way you do for them, who wasn’t going to take anything lying down.
“You treat her right,” Joel says even though it’s not his place. Ellie’d made that crystal clear tonight after all.
Dina smiles. “As if I could treat her any other way. She knows, ya know? She knows what love looks like, how it’s shown way more than how it’s said.” And then, “She learned it from you, even if she never admits it. You’re always so nice to me, and I see it then, how you must be with her. How you must’ve shown her in a million different ways and how she’s turned around and done the same for me.”
It hurts, as good as it stands to be, it hurts more than anything else. “She cuts your damn sandwiches into triangles.”
Dina swipes at a tear and who the hell knows what they’re cryin’ about, but Joel’s fighting an open display of emotion of his own.
“She does.” The words are followed by a laugh. “She really fucking does.”
This gentle affection Joel feels for Dina is born out of his love for Ellie, sure, but it also comes from the part of him that can’t help but love kids, that never could brush off a crying child, even as they’d stopped being kids and transitioned into teens, into young adults. Sarah’s tears at fourteen had moved him just as strong as the ones when she’d been two. The need to fix, to hold, to soothe.
Call it the dad in him, call it the soft-hearted nature that somehow had yet to be replaced by a hardened killer, call it damn foolish. It don’t matter, that’s who he is.
So he wraps Dina in his arms, folds around a kid who no longer has parents, who maybe feels a little lost in the world and in herself, and gives her something to ground herself within. An assurance, a steadiness. It wasn’t much, what he had to offer, but he was glad that someone was willing to take it.
“Thanks, Mr. Miller.”
“You can really call me Joel,” he scoffs. After a couple dozen patrol missions, coffee dates, and more than a few wiped away tears, Dina could certainly drop a little of the formality.
There’s no replacing what she’s had before, but there is being something here and now, something she might not have had for a few too many years. “And if your sister gives you a hard time about…tonight, you just have her come and talk to me.”
“Are you going to beat up Talia?” Dina asks with narrowed eyes.
“Jesus, girl. No. I’m gonna set her straight.”
Dina giggles, and Joel shoots her a question glance. “Come on, you know if Ellie was here she’d be making some god awful joke about how there’s no setting her straight.”
“Yeah,” Joel says, his voice coming out sadder and softer than he meant it. “Yeah, I do.”