Chapter Text
12.
“Who are you?”
“Sir?”
“Who are you?”
“Ain’t much, sir”.
The burly man sighs, moustache quivering as he looks down at the scrawny child standing in his front porch with an old backpack slung over her shoulder, knees scraped and left eye swollen.
“Are you Randy Nedley, sir?” the child asks him, feet scuffing about on the old welcome rug.
He narrows his eyes.
“Yes,” he starts, and then deflates. He doesn’t know what to say.
“I’m afraid I’m your niece”.
His moustache quivers even more, eyes widening in surprise. He stands still for what feels like an eternity before he gestures for the dangerously skinny kid to come in.
“Your mother never-“ he starts, cutting himself short. It’s been fifteen years since he last spoke to her. Of course he wouldn’t know.
The child’s red unruly hair is the same as the man’s who’d held onto her shoulder the last night they saw each other, though her eyes speak of gentleness Nedley does not think the redheaded man was capable of fitting inside himself.
“You have her eyes,” Nedley says after a second, knees trembling until he manages to sit down in his old reading chair.
The child with the red hair and the kind eyes stares back at him, emotionless. Her hands fiddle with her backpack’s zipper.
Her silence is oppressive, and her seriousness makes his spine tingle with discomfort.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, already knowing the answer.
“It ain’t… I can’t live with them,” the child says with the first sign of emotion he’s seen. “Momma said I had an uncle, once”.
As the sheriff, it would be a lie to say this is the first time he’s seen a kid with a black eye and a hidden desperation to be anywhere but where they are.
As the sheriff, he knows it is not his place to take them in.
As the uncle of a child he’s never seen before, he shows her his guest bedroom and tells her he’ll warm up some waffles.
***
He stares, only mildly surprised, as the child in front of him eats ten waffles with inhuman amounts of nutella in about fifteen minutes, not stopping to talk, look up, or breathe.
He tries to hide his own fondness.
“Want anythin’ else?” he asks her when she finally stops to breathe.
“Coffee?” she asks with a smile, and he has to contain his laughter at a twelve year old kid asking for black coffee at three in the afternoon.
***
“Nasty black eye,” he comments as he reaches for clean towels in the upper cabinet on the bathroom.
The child hums, slowly swinging her feet as she sits on the closed toilet lid, eyes following his every move.
“Ya dad did that?” he presses further, unsure.
“Yes, sir,” she answers with something between shame and pride.
Nedley’s heart aches ever so slightly.
He grumbles under his breath, afraid too much empathy will push the child away. She doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who likes being felt sorry for.
He hands her the fresh towel, explaining how the hot water works before moving to leave her alone.
“Sir?” comes her voice, quiet and shy for the first time.
“Yes?” he asks, turning his head to look her in the eye, hand resting on the door handle.
“Will I have to go back?” she asks, steeling herself with the innocent kind of bravery only a child can muster.
Nedley sighs deeply, eyes shut.
He shakes his head.
“I ain’t the devil, kid,” he tells her, and pretends he does not hear the alleviated sigh which echoes on the bathroom tiles.
***
Nicole Haught, as young as she is, likes having a schedule.
It was one of the many things she doesn’t remember ever having, try as she might, so as soon as she arrives at the funny sheriff’s house, she asks for a piece of paper, and she writes down with her embarrassingly childish calligraphy her schedule for each and every day.
It goes as follows:
6 a.m. – Wake up, make my bed;
6:30 – Shower;
7 a.m. – Eat breakfast (if he makes me some);
8 a.m. – Organize my things;
12:30 p.m. – Eat lunch (if he makes me some);
13 p.m. – Maybe watch TV (check with Randy Nedley);
6 p.m. – Eat dinner (if he makes me some);
She tries to think of anything else, but comes up empty, so she asks the police officer with a belly she doesn’t think should be that big for his job if there’s anything she can do around the house.
“What ya mean?” he asks her, leaning over her shoulder as he tries to read her schedule.
It’d taken her one hour to complete, and the sun had already set. He had to insist for her to finally turn on the light of the room he’d given her. She’d said she liked the dark.
“I ain’t got much on my schedule,” she says gravely, as if the thought of sitting still was a blasphemy and a curse.
She doesn’t really understand why he looks so sad as he reads her words. Maybe her handwriting is worse than what she thought.
“What about school?” he asks her, swallowing around his own words.
She lets out a low whistle.
“Ain’t gone to school in a while, sir,” she tells him, wondering if her handwriting wasn’t enough for him to know that.
He looks at her as if she’s just said the most absurd thing in the world.
“They didn’t take you to school?” he asks, as she is clever enough to know who they are.
“Used to. Didn’t in a while,” she repeats clearly, wondering what was so hard to understand.
The funny sheriff with the inappropriate belly and the gentle smell of aftershave crouches down beside her, holding her schedule as if it was the bible.
“Nicole,” he says for the very first time, and the name sounds nice in his voice, caring, different from the way her father shouts it and her mother loathes it. “You’re going to have to tell me everything, alright?”
So she does.
***
She tells him how she stopped going to school because she never had the time to do her homework and no one wanted to help her figure out how fractions worked.
She tells him she thinks her mom ain’t doing too good but she didn’t want to come with her.
She tells him it took her three days to get to Purgatory, a city she’d never heard of, and that she’d found his address by chance when her mother forgot an old phonebook over the coffee table of their small apartment.
She tells him she stole some of her father’s savings and left a note saying she was sorry but he ain’t too good a dad and her mom ain’t too good a anything.
He asks her if she thinks they’ll come after her, and she laughs before saying they’re probably glad she left. Maybe they’d want the 73 dollars she took with her back, though.
Nicole Haught asks Randy Nedley if she can stay here a while, maybe work for him or cut the grass outside or wash his car, she ain’t gonna be a bother, and when he’s tired of her he can tell her and she’ll leave, she promises him.
Randy Nedley tells Nicole Haught to stop being silly, she doesn’t have to do nothin’, she can stay as long as she can handle his nightly reruns of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Nicole tells him she doesn’t know who that is but she likes the TV a lot so she’s sure she won’t mind.
***
That first night, no one manages to fall asleep in Nedley’s house.
Nicole has a feeling in the back of her neck, like her father’s heavy breathing after he lit up the old, rusty spoon and shot himself with something she didn’t understand. She feels heaviness inside her, competing with the lightness of not sleeping on the floor or on an old couch for the first time since she can remember being a person. She’s scared, she admits to herself with frustration. Her hands shake, and her breathing comes with labored attention.
She wonders if this Nedley man isn’t going to be just like them, though something behind her chest and locked away by her ribs tells her someone who smells that good and whose eyes are that soft could never be like them.
Nedley cries, sobbing with a heaviness he’s entirely unaccustomed with. He’d tried very hard to forget about his sister, even harder to forget the man she’d left with, and it was embarrassing just how well it had worked. He feels disgusted at himself, the knowledge that his selfishness had almost ruined an innocent child weighting like an anchor on his chest.
Forgetting is all too easy when remembering tastes like cold, unsweetened coffee.
***
It’s slow, her progress.
Nedley tells her she can do whatever she wants whenever she wants, that she doesn’t need his permission to eat or watch TV or go out to the front yard, but she’s not used to that. Every time she leaves her room without a clear invitation she feels the familiar dread in the pit of her stomach, the memory of stinging slaps and cutting words so fresh and sour she can feel the taste of copper in the back of her tongue.
The way she behaves reminds Nedley of the small kitten he’d insisted his mother let him keep when he was fifteen, how it ran away from him for days on end, hiding behind furniture and under the couch, only coming out for food when there was no one around.
Be patient, his mother had said to him. He will come out when he’s ready.
So Nedley sat down on the floor with his comic books, reading aloud and pretending he didn’t see the kitten slowly approaching, each day a little closer to his feet. And one day, the cat crawled on his lap, licking his wrist before falling asleep.
Just like that.
***
The first week, she only leaves her room to run to the bathroom, or when Nedley tells her to come down to eat. He isn’t home sometimes, not around lunch, so she sits on her bed and counts how many specks of dust she can find on the ceiling until he comes back home, stomach grumbling in discomfort through the entire afternoon.
Nedley tells her she ain’t gaining much weight, so he starts leaving her cookies and chips and bags of gummy bears in her room before he leaves each morning.
The first time she sees three bags of gummy bears and two bags of potato chips sitting on the old desk of her new room after she comes back from their shared breakfast, she checks to see if he’s already left before crying her tiny little eyes out.
He doesn’t say anything while they eat dinner, and she ain’t ever had much to thank for before so she doesn’t say nothing either.
By their second week together, he notices she always eats the gummy bears and chips but never the cookies, so he practically drags her out of the house and begs her to please just pick some snacks for herself so he will know what she likes and what she doesn’t like.
It takes a while, but she sets to choosing fruit snacks and gummy bears and jell-o and asks for one bag of each kind of chips, and it’s the first time Randy Nedley sees her as the child she really is. He laughs when he asks her if she likes ice cream and her eyes go so wide he’s scared for their sockets, pretending he’s asking for her help to choose some of the flavors and watching with barely contained joy as she sets on telling him all the flavors she wanted to try but never did.
She pushes the shopping cart with giddiness, and helps him bag and organize their groceries without him having to ask, and he is a little blue that it took her this long to come find him.
***
“What do ya do all day, kid?” he asks her as they share a pint of cookie dough ice cream one evening as drag queens yell at each other onscreen, to Nicole’s endless amusement.
“Count,” she tells him simply, bringing a spoonful to her mouth.
He frowns.
“Count?” he repeats.
“Yeah,” she confirms, nodding her head as she returns her attention to the TV. “Tiles, specks, furniture,” she adds after she notices he still doesn’t get it.
He sighs, deep and dejected.
“What do you like to do?” he tries again.
“Watch TV,” she shrugs. She’s probably watched more TV this past few weeks than she has her entire life.
“Aside from that,” he rolls his eyes.
“I dunno,” she shrugs, “never thought about that”.
Nedley hums, the now familiar burn of anger bitter in his tongue.
***
It turns out it is absurdly hard to figure out one’s own interests.
Particularly when you’ve never had the privilege to figure them out before.
So Nedley buys her coloring pencils and books and little car figurines.
She hates coloring, her hands feel too big and the spaces too small. She tries drawing, too, but her rendition of Nedley makes him laugh though he tries his hardest to hide it.
(he does put it in the fridge afterwards, so she allows herself to be proud, if nothing else, of finding someone who does not try to hide her from themselves).
She hates reading, which she already knew, but she tries to read all of the books anyways, because Nedley says it’s important to read and it makes her feel a little less stupid, even when it takes her five minutes to get through two paragraphs.
She likes assembling car figurines, and she tells Nedley she likes doing things with her hands, which makes him smile a rare smile. He buys her more of those, taking her to a weird little shop and telling her to pick whatever she wants. She chooses a small gardening kit and a variety of vegetable seeds.
She’s a little embarrassed. Her father used to tell her it was silly to garden, useless, but she tells Nedley she’s doing it because his belly is getting real round, to which he laughs, so she thinks he won’t mind too much.
She no longer needs his approval to leave her own room, and she spends the summer afternoons tending to the little stretch of land Nedley gave her, measuring and watering and fertilizing with scientific precision.
***
It’s late one evening when Nedley arrives home. It’s eerily quiet, and a strange heaviness settles in his stomach as he wonders if his sister decided to come get her daughter. He hears heavy footsteps running down the stairs, then, and sighs in relief.
“Nedley, sir!” yells Nicole, and he rolls his eyes at the formality of it all, “sir!” she yells again, and he looks up as she walks inside the kitchen, face red and chest heaving.
“Yes?” he asks her, moustache twitching as he attempts to hide his amusement at her childishness.
“You won’t believe it!” she yells again, though there’s only a kitchen island standing between them.
“What is it, kid?” he asks, sipping on the beer he’s just opened.
“My cabbages started sprouting today!” she yells once again, gesturing wildly around her as if the sprouting of cabbages could only compare to the Big Bang her old science teacher had told her about once.
Nedley feels as if someone lit a campfire just beside him. Her excitement is like marshmallows.
“That’s so cool, Nicole!” he tells her honestly, smiling, “I’m real proud of ya”.
She stares back at him with no recognition, as if he’s not really there. Like he’s just a ghost.
He worries for a moment, but then her thin little arms wrap around his waist and she’s hugging him with the strength of daily bags of gummy bears.
Just like that.
***
It is a particularly warm day, and sweat runs down her hairline in a steady and, frankly, annoying trickle. The sun shines down oppressively over her, casting a strong shadow on the small little signs of life she’s planted. She watches as droplets of salt water fall over ever so often, worried the salt might hurt her little friends.
She hears Nedley’s truck pull up on the driveway but makes no effort to move, instead continuing to add precise quantities of fertilizer over the little cucumber sprouts, conversing with them as she goes.
“Howdy,” comes the strong boom of Nedley’s voice, and she turns around, hand over her eyes as to avoid permanent blindness.
“Howdy, sir,” she answers, still crouched over wet earth.
“How are the tomatoes coming along?” he asks her, big hands resting on his utility belt as he slowly walks up to where she is, Stetson casting a shadow over his eyes.
Nicole envies his hat.
“Nicely, sir,” she tells him, unbending her knees until she’s straightened up. Her cut off shorts are covered in dirt, and she worsens the situation by wiping her hands on them.
Nedley stares at her for a second, the way he stares at her when he asks her something about her parents or her interests or her math level.
She gulps, suddenly nervous.
“Somethin’ wrong?” she asks, going for casual but sounding like a scared animal.
Though she tries to ignore it, it takes a little more than a few weeks to grow from twelve years of being told you are not desired.
“Nothin’ wrong,” he assures her with a nod, “but school’s startin’ in a couple weeks”.
“Ah,” she says simply, dumbly, still staring.
“I’m the sheriff around here, so nobody comes around asking any questions, but they’ll be if I don’t get your scrawny ass in school”.
“Ah,” she says again, dread settling in her stomach like an array of rocks, pulling her down down down until her feet are deep roots and her face is smothered in dirt and wet earth and tiny little bugs. “I ain’t too good at it,” she informs him.
“You’re a smart kid,” he tells her gravely, thumbs resting on his belt loops, “we can talk to the principal. Put ya in classes on your level”.
“I ain’t going to school with a bunch o’ babies!” she tells him, crossing her arms against her chest defensively.
“Didn’t say you were, kid,” he tells her with endless patience, “just… if needed be. We’ll see how it goes”.
He leaves, then, and Nicole knows there’s little arguing she can do.
She knows he’s right, as he often is, but she remembers teachers yelling at her for never getting anything done and kids laughing at her for wearing old shoes and never bringing any lunch, so she doesn’t feel any excitement with the prospect of reliving a hell only better than her private hell of a family.
***
It’s a Saturday when Nicole Haught goes to the mall for the very first time in her life.
She doesn’t like crowds, so she pulls her proud head out of her ass and holds Nedley’s hand tightly, a little too tightly, squirming against his solid presence as they pass nicely dressed ladies with whiny children and dogs who are way more nicely treated than Nicole ever was, men in suits which are most definitely not compatible with the heat outside, and old ladies who stare at her old clothes with too much judgment in their eyes.
“Doin’ okay?” Nedley grumbles under his breath, looking down at the too tall kid holding his hand like a lifeline.
Nicole lets out something like a whine, and he holds it tighter.
***
“I ain’t needin’ no new clothes, sir,” Nicole tells him for the third time, to which he once again shakes his head with vehement sweetness.
“Well, I wanna buy ya new clothes, chicken,” he tells her, the nickname slipping with familiarity from his lips. He’d called her that after they’d had a heated argument veiled with laughter over how thin her legs were. She pretended to hate it, but it brought warmth to her heart and a stupid smile to her face.
He lets her loose in an enormous department store, claiming he has no clue what to buy for a twelve year old kid.
“I’m a teen,” she tells him, to which he rolls his eyes with fondness.
“Sure, sure,” he says, gesturing for her to go on, “off you go, twelve year old teen”.
Nicole wanders around aimlessly through aisles of girly clothes, complete with glitter and pink and ribbons, and she hates every single option she has.
“Sir?” she starts, heart beating just a little faster than usual.
She’s a wild thing, she knows.
“Hm?” Nedley hums, uninterested as he stares with horror at a baby pink dress which glimmers painfully under the fluorescent lights.
“I ain’t too fond of pink,” she tells him, ready to scurry off and run away and never be found again.
He stares at her for a second, nodding in agreement. He ain’t, neither.
“Wanna head over to the boy’s side?” he asks her, only half paying attention to their conversation. His feet hurt in his new, heavy boots and his back is not what it used to be.
Nicole stares at him, mouth opening and closing as if she’s trying to think of something to say.
“You don’t mind?” she asks him finally, eyes cast downwards.
He looks at her before rolling his eyes.
“Kid, as long as you change out of this god-awful clothes ya have, I ain’t give a shit whatcha wearing”.
Nicole laughs at the bad word which left his mouth, giggling still as she chooses mountains of plaid shirts and dark jeans and enormous T-shirts Nedley is sure could fit three Nicoles inside.
***
They eat cheeseburgers, Nicole’s favorite food in the entire planet as she very gleefuly tells him, and he chuckles at the absurd amount of food she can eat.
He wonders if it is okay to call them a family yet.
***
As it so often happens with the ones we love, Nicole arrives in Nedley’s home with no expectations and no clue of what she’s doing, and Nedley takes her in with no expectations and no clue of what he’s doing and maybe just a little pity.
As it so often happens with the ones we love, it takes very little time for Nicole to be completely unable to imagine herself without the heavy presence of a pot-bellied old man who buys her too many gummy bears, and Nedley to be completely unable to imagine himself not smiling every time he sees a bag of gummy bears.
***
“What if they show up?” Nicole asks one evening as they eat the dinner she’d made for them.
(she was used to cooking for herself and for others, and they quickly realized she was way better at it then Nedley).
(she tells him she’s glad she has something else to add to the schedule she’s put up on the wall of her bedroom with scotch tape, and he smiles a sad smile she does not understand).
Nedley, of course, knows who they are.
If she’d asked the same question a few weeks earlier, he’d maybe be less affectionate and more cowardly in his answer.
But love is affection and bravery, so he tells her he’d rather shoot someone dead than let them take her away from him.
Nicole smiles.
***
More often than not, love is the threat of murder disguised by the sweetness in our eyes and the smile on our lips.